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the end of
of Tiffany
If ever the romance of a brand was captured by one person and one film, it’s Tiffany and Audrey Hepburn.
She is forever Holly Golightly, the beautiful drifter, out to see the world, who ends up finding the rainbow’s end in the windows of the great Fifth Avenue store.
They never play the Henry Mancini music in the store but everyone who’s ever been there swears that they do.
But romance on this scale doesn’t happen by accident, it’s carefully planned. And that plan started way back in 1837 when Charles Louis Tiffany opened a ‘stationery and fancy goods emporium’ on Broadway. It may have been a modest beginning but his ambitions were anything but. His eye for a bargain and his instinct for his customer’s tastes seems to have been infallible. His fancy goods included some very fancy gold and diamond items. Within a few short years his client list included the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia. The firm became the jeweller to Queen Victoria, the Czar and Czarina of Russia, the Emperor of Austria, the kings of Belgium, Italy, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Rumania, the Khedive of Egypt, the Shah of Persia, and a whole gaggle of the bejewelled and be-titled.
And because he had them, he also had all of the grand families in the New America. This was The Golden Age, the age of Astors, Vanderbilts, Morgans and Rockefellers. The new Americans wanted to be like the old Europeans – they built houses on Park Avenue that looked like French chateaux. And he knew how to meet that demand. He scoured Europe for one-off unrepeatable items. When the French Republique sold off their crown jewels Tiffany snapped them up then exhibited and sold them, a stone at a time, to his eagerly clamouring audience. He was a genius at self-promotion. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated everyone in the audience knew that Mrs Lincoln’s pearls came from Tiffany. When one of the world’s finest fancy yellow diamonds came on the market he bought it and named it the Tiffany Diamond. (He claimed, loudly and often, that it was the biggest yellow ever found. It wasn’t.) The cutting of that stone was covered by every newspaper in America.
The new Americans wanted to be like the old Europeans – they built houses on Park Avenue that looked like
So, long before it became a thing, he knew how to marshal a story. He also knew how to deliver a brand. Everything he sold, everything, left the store in a little blue box. All of his literature, all of his catalogues, advertising, leaflets, posters – blue.
It’s 1878. Tiffany & Co.’s catalogue is now called Blue Book and has its first cover in the robin’s-egg shade that we now know as Tiffany Blue. It was chosen because it was closest to turquoise, which was very fashionable with brides and Charles Lewis Tiffany always had a clear-eyed focus on the wedding business. In real life, romance is never an accident: someone, somewhere, decided to make it happen.
Today, Tiffany Blue is patented and Pantone 1837 Blue (remember that date?) cannot be used without permission.
But for all the huge success and wealth and having made the name world-famous, there still wasn’t a Tiffany look. CLT bought in what he knew he could sell: he followed fashion. It wasn’t until his son took over that the Tiffany name would start to dictate trends and actually set fashion.
Louis Comfort Tiffany was not like his father. He was an artist, not a businessman. His first big decision, in 1902, was not to take over as President or Chairman. Instead, he gave himself the new title of Artistic Director.
He was already a successful designer in his own right and his company, Tiffany Studios, had its own de luxe client list. It was pretty starry: in 1882 President Chester A. Arthur refused to move into the White House until Tiffany had redesigned the interiors.
In real life, romance is never an accident: someone, somewhere, decided to make
And he was not just a rich man’s son. He was a real hands-on craftsman and designer. He wasn’t interested in working with gold and diamonds, preferring the textures and tones of semi-precious stones and setting them in silver, bronze and copper. He loved materials and did wonderful work in mosaics, enamels, metalwork, jewellery and ceramics, where he used shimmering, opalescent glazes.
For a man of his time, he was extraordinarily open-minded. He had travelled extensively in Europe, where he was very impressed by William Morris and the Arts & Crafts Movement. On a painting trip to North Africa, he was profoundly influenced by Moorish and Islamic art and architecture – there is always a scent of the exotic and mysterious East in every Tiffany design. In his huge home on Long Island he had a Museum of Native American Art, long before any such thing was openly discussed.
He was most famous for his glass and here again he took a radical approach. For stained glass, he used thin copper foil to join the pieces, instead of the heavy lead channels that Europeans has been using for hundreds of years, which meant that he could work in much finer detail – a technique that found perfect expression is his Art Nouveau style. He upset his craftsmen by bringing in cheap jam jars and bottles because he wanted imperfections and accidental effects, as in Nature, and the art glass makers, trained for perfection (a bubble was a sin), shuddered at the thought. Interestingly, it was the young women in his studio, and there were many of them, who got what he was after and who delivered most of the famous pieces of Tiffany glass.
The classic Tiffany lamp is so familiar that we no longer see it at all. But consider this. When Tiffany was working, electricity was new (he actually worked with Thomas Edison - yes, the Thomas Edison - on the first electric lighting for a theatre). People wanted big, bright lights, that turned night into day. They wanted to let the neighbours see how light and bright their homes were. Tiffany lamps didn’t do that, they glowed gently. That was, and still is, the beauty of them.
They were haunting, and exotic, and mysterious. Oriental colours flowed mysteriously around elaborate Art Nouveau plant forms. Even the light seemed richer than that from lesser lamps. They were works of art, one of the first great iconic designs of the 20th Century, a classic from the moment they left the bench. (When Steve Jobs lived alone the only furniture he had was a Tiffany lamp and a sound system.)
And so for the first two decades of the new century, the pieces that flowed from the Tiffany workshops astonished the world. Lamps and screens and windows and vases and pavements and fountains were delivered all over America and out across the globe. To homes and palaces and castles and cathedrals.
And then it all went wrong.
The world changed. And style changed with it. The new look was Modernist. Art Deco. Minimalist. The luxurious opulence of Tiffany was as obsolete as a coach and horses.
Tiffany & Co continued: gold and diamonds have never gone out of style, the store was a busy as ever. But by 1930 Louis Comfort Tiffany’s studio was bankrupt and he died, a forgotten and penniless recluse, in 1933. His death certificate said Pneumonia: a more accurate diagnosis would have been Despair.
He loved history
and references,
all captured
in impeccable craftsmanship
It’s worth asking: did it have to end this way? Could this man, who was so smart, so worldly, well-travelled and impeccably connected, not have adapted to the new style, not have found a way to make it work. The answer is no, he simply could not. He loved history and culture and allusion and references, all captured in impeccable craftsmanship. In one apartment that he designed for friends he used Japanese, Chinese, Moorish, Viking, Celtic, and Byzantine references. The prevailing theme of the main room was derived from Celtic, Viking, and other medieval sources. For Tiffany the Modernist aesthetic - where a chair can be a tubular chrome frame with a black leather seat - was cold, sterile, dead. He could see no value at all in an object with no history and no obvious connection with the natural world.
But for the Tiffany company, the story was very different. They seemed to surf effortlessly on the waves of change that crashed ashore with every decade of the 20th Century. The shrewd commercial opportunism that had seen the potential in the grand homes of The Gilded Age adapted with feral speed to the new democratisation of money and taste. In 1886 they launched something called a diamond engagement ring. The year on year growth of that business continues to this day. “Every girl loves a ring. And if it comes in a blue box, so much the better.” The Tiffany store saw that the supply of grande dames waiting to be measured for a diamond tiara was dwindling, but the queue for rings could run the length of Fifth.
The dynamic art deco style that Louis Comfort Tiffany so despised became the design philosophy of Manhattan and made New York the architectural capital of the world, with masterpieces like the Chrysler Building and the Rockefeller Centre demanding every bit as much from their craftsmen as earlier styles had. And Tiffany Art Deco was the best of the best: lamps, china, glass, silverware, jewellery. All beautifully crafted and designed.
People changed too. Heritage and history had once been the only qualifications for social success. But a new-minted phenomenon was falling off the end of the production line: celebrities had been invented.
Tiffany saw this coming. They started, as they always did, at the very top. In 1904 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was surprised to find the engagement ring that he had discretely purchased was on the front of the New York Times. Half a century later Jackie Kennedy was a lot less coy about stepping through the famous doors on Fifth. Today’s regular customers include Anna Wintour and Ellen DeGeneres. Every red carpet is a display stand. Every magazine a window.
This is a brand that sailed into the 20th Century on the crest of a huge wave. One month before that century ended the brand was sold to LVMH for $16.2billion. They must have been doing something right at 727 Fifth.
But what of the man who did so much to create the Tiffany legend? Their first great designer, Louis Comfort Tiffany, who died his lonely death so far from the bright lights of the great city.
Thankfully, this story has a coda. In the 1950s some serious collectors began to retrieve his work from attics and basements. When it’s shown to the public the response is overwhelming. Critical studies follow and it’s not long before the breadth and depth of his contribution is recognised. He is now seen as one of the great American designers. So many of the things that we strive for today are the things that he was practicing. Openness to different cultures, respect for materials, innovative techniques, understanding of history.
But, above all, make it beautiful.
The life of the great designer is celebrated in an elegant biography, “The Art Of Louis Comfort Tiffany” by Vivienne Couldrey (Full disclosure: the mother of The Lyrical Saboteur, Alan Couldrey. We haven’t yet seen Alan in full Tiffany regalia, but we live in hope.)
Words: Paul Cardwell,
The Laughing Saboteur
People's Mission Hall
20-30 Whitechapel Road
London E1 1EW
4/F Cheung Hing Industrial Building
12P Smithfield, Kennedy Town
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The CARES Act Isn’t Careful Enough
By George A. (Sandy) Mackenzie Thu, Apr 16, 2020
If this agonizing period leads to genuine reform, our 'blood, sweat and tears' (to borrow Winston Churchill’s famous words) won't have been in vain, writes our contributor.
The “blitz” of World War II, when German bombs rained down on London and England’s other large industrial and commercial cities from November 1940 to May 1941, had relatively little effect on the operations of small businesses, despite the physical destruction and loss of life they wrought.
Will the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects be even more devastating to the U.S.’s small businesses and their employees than the Luftwaffe’s bombs were to English shops?
This column provides an updated summary of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and then turns to the growing debate over how best to aid American small businesses—businesses with less than 500 employees—and their workers.
The CARES Act
Including its tax measures—mostly tax breaks for businesses—the CARES Act is now estimated to amount to $2.3 trillion, not $2 trillion, in stimulus measures. This does not include the measures that the Federal Reserve is taking to support credit markets. Given its massive size and impact on the federal debt, it will be important to ensure that this money is spent effectively. CARES’s main features, as described by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) are as follows:
Measures to benefit households and individuals
Issuance of checks or direct deposits to taxpayers of $1,200 for single filers with AGI up to $75,000 and $2,400 for joint filers with AGI up to $150,000 plus up to $500 per child ($290 billion) Rebates are phased out at a rate of $50 for every $1,000 in income above these limits.
Expansion of the coverage of state unemployment insurance (UI) and increase the weekly payment by a flat rate of $600 for about four months, while increasing the maximum payment period by thirteen weeks ($260 billion)
Expansion of the social safety net, including the SNAP and other nutritional aid ($42 billion)
Measures to support business
Loans and other assistance to large corporations ($510 billion), of which $454 billion will support loans to corporations, states and municipalities through a Federal Reserve facility and $29 billion will be loaned to airlines. The Federal Reserve will be providing massive support to all sectors of the economy by financing the purchase of loans, whose collateral terms will be relaxed. (For some reason, large corporations receiving aid were not required to offer paid sick leave to their furloughed employees.)
Loans and other assistance to small businesses ($377 billion)—also known as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)—as explained below. Congress has already begun to debate an expansion of this program.
Support to transportation providers and industries ($72 billion), including $33 billion to airlines and their contractors to avoid furloughs and pay cuts.
Other expenditure programs to support critical infrastructure and public services
Grants and other assistance to hospitals and other medical facilities (at least $180 billion)
Assistance to state and local government ($150 billion)
An increase in FEMA’s disaster assistance fund ($45 billion)
Increased education spending (at least $32 billion)
Other (at least $25 billion)
Tax measures
Corporate tax reductions (mainly increased interest and operating loss deduction allowances ($210 billion) and payroll tax reductions for businesses that retain workers at a loss (an additional $55 billion)
Personal tax reductions ($20 billion)
The stimulating effect of the tax relief for businesses is highly uncertain. It is unlikely to result in anything close to a dollar-for-dollar increase in investment. Its effect on decisions to retain workers is also uncertain. As noted in my March 26th column, the direct payments to taxpayers are not well targeted to those in need. No money is provided for non-filers, who are among the most vulnerable. The effect of that provision is therefore hard to predict.
Rescuing small businesses and their employees—the United States contrasted with Europe
In the U.S., small businesses are being offered loans through the banking system and the Small Business Administration (SBA). The loans will be converted to grants if the recipients keep all of their employees on the payroll for at least eight weeks, even if they are not working. Funds may also be used to cover rental payments and other operating costs.
Small businesses will need assistance along the lines of the PPP to cover the wages and salaries of their employees, if these are not to be laid off, and to pay for their employees’ health insurance. Unemployment insurance will help support workers who have been laid off, particularly the low-paid, but will not pay health insurance premiums. Small businesses will also need help with rental and mortgage payments, property tax, and certain other expenditures.
Some prominent American economists and economic journalists have criticized this approach as being too indirect, and unlikely to prevent the permanent closure of many businesses. They contrast it with the approaches of the United Kingdom and Denmark, where the central government directly supports firms that retain their workers by paying a very high share of their wages, while also providing money to make rental and mortgage payments for other obligations.
In the United Kingdom, private sector workers will receive 80% of their pay, and in Denmark 75%. Canada has also just approved legislation that will provide funds to businesses to pay up to 75% of their employees’ salaries to keep them on the payroll.
The success of the U.S. approach will depend on how quickly and efficiently the program can be implemented. Similarly, relief to laid-off workers, including the self-employed who are now without work, will depend on how speedily their states can handle the huge increase in UI claims. Many or most of those workers who do not remain at least nominally attached to their employer will lose their health insurance, although furloughed workers are an exception.
It would be grim indeed if large numbers of small businesses proprietors were forced into bankruptcy. Unlike London during the blitz, however, the pandemic will not destroy physical premises. Their businesses can in principle be reopened, possibly by new owners. That said, they might well be shuttered for some time even after the pandemic has done its worst. Large-scale bankruptcies obviously have to be avoided, and the economic and social consequences of the associated unemployment would be dire.
The United Kingdom and Denmark have important advantages in implementing their approach. In particular, they are both highly centralized. The U.K., the devolution of some governmental responsibilities to Scotland and Wales notwithstanding, is a highly centralized country. It has only one UI administration, as does Denmark, which has the added advantage of being very small. Its labor market is about one-thirtieth the size of the U.S. labor market.
In addition, in neither country does unemployment spell the end of health insurance. Canada’s federal system is in some respects like that of its giant neighbor, but UI is centralized, which is easier because of Canada’s much smaller population. The more flexible character of the U.S. labor market may have one notable advantage over Europe: workers can more easily move to those few sectors where labor demand is growing, like delivery services and health.
The U.S. cannot remake its institutions into a European model overnight, even if there were sufficient public support for so great a political and constitutional sea change. It must work with the institutions it has. Every effort has to be made to make the loans program work.
News reports speak of banks’ being swamped by requests, and processing only applications from established customers. Banks themselves are also reported as needing more guidance. The states differ in their ability and perhaps their eagerness to process UI claims, and news reports suggest that some states are definitely behind the curve.
Federal legislation may be needed to prevent the loss of health insurance by the unemployed. There is no good reason for the exemptions of large corporations from offering paid sick leave. On the plus side, the direct payments to households from the IRS have started to flow.
The pandemic will inflict staggering losses in life unless the stay-at-home rule is rigorously enforced for a sufficient time. That said, a prolonged absence of workers from the workplace, necessary as it is, is bound to have a heavy cost in purely economic terms and in personal misery.
The writer, a naturalized citizen born in Nova Scotia, believes that the pandemic has made clearer than ever the inequities and inefficiencies of his adopted country’s social safety net and health insurance system. If this period of agonizing trial can lead to genuine reform, perhaps we may say that the blood, sweat and tears (to borrow Winston Churchill’s famous words in 1940) of our most vulnerable citizens will have not been entirely in vain.
The author was founding editor of the Journal of Retirement and a former International Monetary Fund official. He would like to thank Dallas Salisbury, Allison Schrager and Elaine Weiss for valuable comments. He alone is responsible for any remaining errors of fact or interpretation.
© 2020 RIJ Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.
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Why Sammons MYGA Sales Spiked in 2020
New law to show who qualifies for a PPP loan
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Election-eve poll shows Sask Party lead over NDP narrowing
CTV News Saskatoon Staff
Published Sunday, October 25, 2020 5:07PM CST Last Updated Sunday, October 25, 2020 5:11PM CST
Scott Moe (left) and Ryan Meili (right) hit the road for the final weekend of campaigning for the Saskatchewan Provincial Election. (Stefanie Davis/CTV News)
SASKATOON -- If the provincial election were held today, the Saskatchewan Party would form government according to the latest election poll by Mainstreet Research.
But the latest poll suggests the NDP is closing the gap.
Moe, Meili hit the highway for final weekend of campaigning
Here’s what you need to know for Election Day in Sask.
A day before Saskatchewan’s general election, 48.6 per cent of voters said they would choose the Sask Party, 32.6 per cent of voters chose the Saskatchewan NDP. Thirteen per cent of respondents were undecided.
Among decided voters, 55.2 per cent would cast a ballot for Scott Moe and the Sask Party, compared to 37.3 per cent for the NDP, an 18 per cent gap.
The results of the poll are based on a survey completed by 616 adults, 18 years of age or older living in Saskatchewan on Oct. 24.
According to Mainstreet, the NDP holds a slight lead in Regina with 54 per cent support compared to 38.1 per cent for the Sask Party. In Saskatoon, the Sask Party holds the lead with 51.4 per cent support compared to 45.4 per cent for the NDP.
The poll shows an overwhelming majority of support for the Sask Party in the rest of Saskatchewan with 61.4 per cent compared to 25.8 per cent support for the NDP.
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Corona Road – The History of a Lee Street
The word ‘Corona’ with the suffix of ‘virus’ is currently striking fear into the population of much of the world. In a leafier part of Lee, just off Burnt Ash Hill, there is a street with the name which pre-dates the virus by 140 years and has a much more benign meaning – ‘something suggesting a crown.’ This post looks at some of the history of the street and the neighbouring area.
The land to the east of Burnt Ash Hill in Lee had been probably been in the ownership of the Crown since 1305 as part of the estate of the Eltham Palace which was originally used for hunting. The area has been covered several times by Running Past in relation to two of the farms on the land, Horn Park and Melrose Farms, as well is in passing in relation to pubs linked to John Pound – including The Crown.
As the city expanded with coming of the railways, they arrived in Lee 1866, the Crown began to sell off fields for housing and related activities. One of these sales was land for a brick works on the corner of Burnt Ash Hill and what would become Winn Road – a hundred metres or so down the road from another of Lee’s farms, College Farm. By the 1850s these were, at least partially, owned by John Pound – one of the more significant builders of the Northbrook estate (generally to the west of Burnt Ash Road and Hill) who, as mentioned, also built a quartet of pubs plus a public hall for popular entertainment.
It appears that the brick works was bought by William Winn by 1874 as he had made an application soon after to build what was to become The Crown pub (above) on land which was formerly part of the brick works; in the application he was described as a lighterman and barge owner living at 16 St Stephen’s Road in Bow (1). Despite being married to Elizabeth, he was living there separately as a lodger, something that was still the case in 1881. There was another William Winn who was the bailiff at Burnt Ash Farm in the 1850s and early 1860s of a similar age both from East London; however, unless William Winn had two families, it wasn’t him.
In addition to Corona Road, the roads developed by Winn were the eponymous Winn Road and Guibal Road, along with some houses on the eastern side of Burnt Ash Hill. The early press reports for what was initially called the Burnt Ash Hill Estate are silent on the builder. However, William Baker who was based at 43 Ronver Road in the 1881 census and employing 12 men, was mentioned in the second phase of the development of the street applying for permission to build 5 homes on the north (2) and 5 on the south side of Corona Road. So it is quite possible that he built the entire estate. The houses were substantial ones at the edge of Victorian suburbia – beyond and to the back was rural Kent – as the Ordnance Survey map from 1897 shows.
While the Board of works provided four gas street lights in 1881 (3), it wasn’t until 1889 that they adopted the street and planted lime trees (4); the Board had previously refused to do this, despite complaints from residents, until the builder brought it up to an acceptable standard (5).
It isn’t known how much the houses were sold for but the annual rent was 55 Guineas (£55.25) in 1882, applications could be made at 15 Corona Road which was perhaps being used as a show house for the second phase of houses (6). This house, now numbered 61, is the only remaining one from the 1880s – it is the left of the two above..
Four years later number 5 was for rent and was described as (7) being in a
Rural situation, on high ground with bracing air. Near station, shops and tennis ground. Kent £60
The tennis ground was in the apex of Corona Road and Guibal Road and was probably lost in the 1930s as the southern section of Woodyates Road was developed – it isn’t clear whether this was part of the same development as the northern part of the road which was covered a while ago in Running Past.
So who lived there? A few of the houses were occupied and sold or rented out by the time the census enumerators called in 1881 – in Corona Road itself, only 9 was let or sold, it was home to the Powells – Harry was a senior Civil Servant. Several on the wider Burnt Ash Hill Estate were the temporary homes to those working for the builders. Archibald Harrison who was living in one of the houses on Corona Road ‘Burgoyne Cottage;’ he was described as ‘Builder and Decorator, Master’ in the census – it is possible that he may have built some of the estate, or have been a subcontractor for William Baker.
Next to The Crown, on the corner of Corona Road, at Corona Villa, was Elizabeth Winn the seemingly estranged wife of William, their two adult children including William (born 1859) and three servants. It is worth pausing on the middle one of these, which given the issues that have brought the street name to the fore in 2020, her name seems depressingly apt – Mary Le Fever (see above). This is almost certainly an enumerator mangling the relatively common French name for an ironworker or smith – Lefèvre.
By the time the census enumerators called again in 1891 Corona Road was an established community. Archibald Harrison, the builder and decorator was still there. The rest of the street clearly oozed wealth an included several were living on their own means, with inherited wealth or had retired with a sizeable income; there was an East India Merchant, a Shipowner and broker, an Accountant, a Civil Engineer and a Chemical Manufacturer. Virtually all had servants, most had more than one. Elizabeth Winn was still thereon the corner of the street but marked as a widow, with her daughter Maria who was also a widow.
A decade later Archibald Harrison remained and the ‘class’ of occupant was much the same and included a grain merchant, a confectioner, a hardware merchant, a wholesale bookseller, a couple of living on their own means, a shopkeeper, a retired engineer, a solicitor and an accountant. There was also a Mantle manufacturer, George Smith, perhaps the supplier for Alexander Aitken’s shop next to the Lee Green fire station. Again virtually all had servants.
By 1911, not that much had changed, the households were still relatively small in the large houses, almost all with a servant – amongst the occupants was still George Smith, his neighbours included a retired builder, an artist (living on her own means), another living on own means, a ship broker, a company secretary, a bookseller, and a bank cashier.
The 1939 Register was compiled soon after war broke out. A lot had changed since the 1911 census, only one, quite old household had a servant and the household incomes sources and occupations had changed dramatically – jobs now included a teacher, a municipal accountant, office maintenance worker
Corona Road, more particularly the northern side of it fared badly in World War 2, the London County Council maps show much of that side destroyed or damaged beyond repair (8). By 1948 when the Ordnance Survey surveyors mapped the post war urban landscape, that side of the road was full prefab bungalows, no doubt not dissimilar to those that are still present (spring 2020) on the Excalibur Estate a mile to the west.
From the exterior of the current blocks and houses the prefabs were probably replaced in the late 1950s or early 1960s by Lewisham Council.
On the opposite side of the road while the bomb damage maps had marked the land as less badly damaged, the site seems to have been cleared by 1948. This was presumably for the blocks of Elwyn Gardens, which look as though they may have been built soon after the war.
The housing at the western end of Corona Road is newer, perhaps from the early 1980s, following the demolition on the houses facing Burnt Ash Hill. Like the rest of the estate, where homes have not been sold under right to buy, it is now owned and managed by a housing association L&Q.
Either side of the only house from the 1880s (pictured above), there are a few what look like 1930s houses, but almost certainly date from the 1950s given the wartime destruction.
Kentish Mercury – 29 August 1874
Woolwich Gazette – 02 October 1880
Kentish Independent – 10 December 1881
Woolwich Gazette -27 September 1889
Kentish Independent -13 November 1886
22 September 1882 – Kentish Mercury
26 February 1886 – London Daily News
Laurence Ward(2015) ‘The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps 1939-1945’
A massive thank you to Pat Chappelle who made the link of Corona Road to the correct William Winn – any subsequent errors are, of course, mine.
The 1881 census image is via Find My Past as are all the other census, 1939 Register and related references – subscription required
The Ordnance Survey maps from 1897 and 1948 are via the National Library of Scotland on a Non-Commercial Licence
This entry was posted in Lewisham History and tagged Burnt Ash Hill, Corona Road, Council housing, Crown Estate, Crown Tavern, Guibal Road, John Pound, Lee, Prefabs, Winn Road on March 13, 2020 by Paul B.
← The Three Fire Stations of Lee The Almshouses of Lee – The Boone’s Almshouses →
13 thoughts on “Corona Road – The History of a Lee Street”
47bus March 13, 2020 at 9:13 pm
Yes, the estate comprising the curly bit of Corona Road and Danescombe (off Winn Road) was built (fairly sure it was Lewisham council not the GLC – both had housing responsibilities then) at the end of the 1970s – have vague memories of playing with other kids on the vacant site in the months before it was built, and to a lesser extent when they made a ‘proper’ playground on part of the site (which street view suggests has been turned in to a basketball court now)
and fairly sure it must have been occupied early 1980 or 81, based on being involved with a 5 a side team in the Lewisham primary schools’ league that we called the Corona Crowns, on the basis that one or two of our team (quite possibly the one who owned the ball) lived in the new estate – most likely summer 1980.
Corona road was made a no through road when the estate was built.
Paul B Post author March 13, 2020 at 9:44 pm
Thank you, that’s really helpful – I had assumed it was a Lewisham estate as I vaguely recall seeing some Lewisham signage that must have been from before the demise of the GLC. Given new council house building more or less stopped around 1981, I assumed the homes backing onto Burnt Ash must be some of the last.
derek acourt 1a queenswood road da158qp March 14, 2020 at 8:41 am
Prefabs would help the housing shortage and bring the cost down for emergency housig. Quick to install and cheap.Good starter homes. I loved them.
Paul B Post author March 14, 2020 at 9:05 am
Lewisham has some on the Ladywell Swimming Pool site which are able to be moved when they fully develop the site. People shouldn’t though be still living in original ones though – a lot of the Excalibur prefabs are still used, they are impossible to heat and in a poor state of repair. A colleague will be in there for at least another winter.
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The Ghosts of Hillyfields & Blackheath Prefabs Past
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Home Judeo-Christian America SCOTUS Ignites New Level Of Fight For God and Country
Judeo-Christian America
SCOTUS Ignites New Level Of Fight For God and Country
BY LLOYD MARCUS, PROUD UNHYPHENATED AMERICAN
My sofa felt pretty comfortable. Ninety percent of the time, I’m on the road as chairman of the Conservative Campaign Committee.http://bit.ly/1Nm7PHJ This was a rare occasion to be in town for the Volusia 9/12 Project monthly meeting. I saw the email reminder about the meeting earlier that day and thought it might be good to attend considering the two devastating outrageous rulings handed down by the Supreme Court (Obamacare and same sex marriage).
But when 5pm rolled around and I would have to leave at 6pm to get there on time at 7pm, I was sorely tempted to stay home on my extremely comfortable sofa. And yet, almost robotic, I showered and prepared to leave. At our front door, my wife Mary gave me a kiss and said, “I’m proud of you for going.” I asked, “Why?” She replied, “I don’t know.”
The 9/12 group’s meeting was the same day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage. I’m a Christian and know that God has everything under control. Still, I was emotionally shaken; angry, frustrated, hurt and concerned about the dark place our country is headed – evil appearing to triumph everywhere you turn.
Thank God I attended that meeting. It was awesome. The hall was filled with patriots, mostly Christian, still passionately engaged after meeting for the past seven years. The Supreme Court’s judicial activism though dispiriting appears to have sparked a new level of commitment in them to fight for God and country.
The leader of the group is Ray Sanchez. Wow, I regret not bringing in my phone to record Ray’s inspiring rip-roaring opening monologue, pledging to continue pushing back and seeking new ways to defend the Godly traditions and values that have made America great.
There was talk of churches bowing out of 501c3 status; liberating them from government dictates.
A gentlemen at the meeting lamented that the GOP is committed to staying away from social issues. Meanwhile, Democrats/Leftists are cramming their consensus on social issues down our throats. He said the Supreme Courts rulings punctuates how crucially important it is to put people of moral character in office.
Allowed a moment on the microphone to speak about his travels, I was blown away by the passion and commitment of 79 year old Reynerio Sanchez (not related to the group’s leader Ray Sanchez). Last year, Mr Sanchez drove 10,464 miles giving away copies of the U.S. Constitution. He also gives away copies of the Ten Commandments; upbeat, enthusiastic and not showing any signs of slowing down. Mr Sanchez read the group a moving “thank you” email he received from a young waitress on the other side of the country. Mr Sanchez’s website is: reysan.org
One of the ladies excitedly reported about this year’s “Patriot Camp” for 1st to 6th graders. She and her team teach American history through storytelling, drama, crafts and games. I was told that Patriot Camp is extremely popular with kids and parents.
Patriot Camp
The keynote speaker was Dr Tom LaHue. His topic was “The Decline of the Church” which appears to be a worldwide phenomenon. The stats Dr LaHue shared showing the decline in attendance and effectiveness of the church in our culture were pretty disheartening.
When asked what we can do to change the direction of our country, Dr LaHue said we should “have a burden for America”. He said some may be called to Christian ministry, while others are led to fight back in other ways. His point was it is crucial that every patriot continues to do their part; continuing to fight to restore America.
From the ladies who run the group’s Patriot Camp to elderly Mr Sanchez touring America handing out Constitution booklets and the Ten Commandments, these are people simply doing whatever they can to restore the country they love. We did not reach this current level of debauchery in America over night. It will take faithfulness, prayer and wisdom to turn it around.
The unwavering determination and commitment of the Volusia 9/12 Project truly inspired me. I suspect their “burden for America” is representative of Tea Party groups across America.
My brother said, in essence, SCOTUS made it illegal to be a Bible believing and functioning Christian. I told him I do not think we are totally there yet, but are swiftly headed in that direction.
I pray that there is a silver lining in the Supreme Court’s betrayal, the igniting of a new intensity in the level of resistance to Obama and his minion’s fundamental transformation of America.
Brother and sister patriots, go with God. Go with God.
The Moral Liberal recommends Lloyd Marcus’s Confessions of a Black Conservative: How the Left has Shattered the Dreams of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Black America with foreword by Michelle Malkin.
The Moral Liberal Contributing Editor, Lloyd Marcus, is an internationally renowned writer, speaker, singer/songwriter and entertainer, who holds a prominent place in the historic Tea Party Movement. Of the latter he has been a spokesperson for 7 Tea Party Express national bus tours, as well as entertainer, performing his original song, “American Tea Party Anthem”, at over 400 tea parties nationwide. He is also the author of “Confessions of a Black Conservative: How the Left has Shattered the Dreams of Martin Luther King Jr., and Black America” (click here), and the Chairman of The Campaign To Defeat Barrack Obama. Marcus has appeared as a guest on Fox News and CNN. Visit LloydMarcus.com
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The Long, Rough Ride Ahead for ‘Made in America’
2017-04-17 Ranbiz
Mini motorcycle and go-kart maker Monster Moto made a big bet on U.S. manufacturing by moving assembly to this Louisiana town in 2016 from China.
But it will be a long ride before it can stamp its products “Made in USA.”
The loss of nearly one out four U.S. factories in the last two decades means parts for its bike frames and engines must be purchased in China, where the manufacturing supply chain moved years ago.
“There’s just no way to source parts in America right now,” said Monster Moto Chief Executive Alex Keechle during a tour of the company’s assembly plant. “But by planting the flag here, we believe suppliers will follow.”
Monster Moto’s experience is an example of the obstacles American companies face as they, along with President Donald Trump, try to rebuild American manufacturing. U.S. automakers and their suppliers, for example, have already invested billions in plants abroad and would face an expensive and time-consuming transition to buy thousands of American-made parts if President Trump’s proposed “border tax” on imported goods were to become law.
When companies reshore assembly to U.S. soil – in Monster Moto’s case that took two years to find a location and negotiate support from local and state officials – they are betting their demand will create a local supply chain that currently does not exist.
For now, finding U.S.-based suppliers “remains one of the top challenges across our supplier base,” said Cindi Marsiglio, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s vice president for U.S. manufacturing and sourcing. Wal-Mart partnered with Monster Moto and several other U.S. companies in a drive to increase spending on American-made goods by $250 billion by 2023 in response to consumer demand for American-made goods.
Their experience has shown Americans’ patriotic shopping habits have limits, namely when it comes to price.
Take Monster Moto’s bikes, which sell for between $249 to $749. Keechle, the CEO, says he can’t raise those prices for fear his price sensitive prospective customers will turn to less expensive rivals made in China.
“Consumers won’t give you a free pass just because you put ‘Made in USA’ on the box,” Keechle says. “You have to remain price competitive.”
Keeping a sharp eye on labor costs in their factory is one thing these U.S. Manufactures can control. They see replacing primarily lower-skilled workers on the assembly line with robots on American factory floors as the only way to produce here in a financially viable, cost-competitive way. It’s a trend that runs against the narrative candidate Donald Trump used to win the U.S. presidency.
Since taking office, Trump has continued promises to resurrect U.S. manufacturing’s bygone glory days and bring back millions of jobs. On March 31, Trump directed his administration to clamp down on countries that abuse trade rules in a bid to end to the “theft of American prosperity.”
But it’s more complicated on the ground for companies like Monster Moto.
“It’s almost as if people think you can just unplug manufacturing in one part of the world and plug it in to the U.S. and everything’s going to be fine,” said David Abney, Chief Executive Officer of package delivery company United Parcel Service Inc., which helped Monster Moto reconfigure its supply chain to bring its Chinese-made parts to Ruston.
“It’s not something that happens overnight,” he said.
A White House official said that the Trump administration’s efforts to encourage manufacturers to reshore production will be focused on cutting regulations and programs to provide new skills to manufacturing workers.
“We recognize that the manufacturing jobs that come back to America might not all look like the ones that left,” a White House official said, “and we are taking steps to ensure that the American workforce is ready for that.”
Making robots great again
In Monster Moto’s cavernous warehouse in Ruston, boxes of imported parts that are delivered at one end then become bikes on a short but industrious assembly line of a few dozen workers.
A solitary, long-bearded worker by the name of Billy Mahaffey fires up the bikes to test their engine and brakes before a small group of workers puts them in boxes declaring: “Assembled in the USA.”
Helped by that label, Monster Moto has experienced a recent boom in demand from major customers that include Wal-Mart. The company expects to double production to 80,000 units and increase its assembly workers — who make $13 to $15 an hour — to 100 from around 40 in 2017.
The most likely components Monster Moto could produce in America first are black, welded-metal frames for bikes and go-karts, but they would have to automate production because human welders would be too expensive.
“We can’t just blow up our cost structure,” said Monster Moto President Rick Sukkar. “The only way to make it work in America is with robotics.”
The same principle applies for much larger manufacturers, such as automotive supplier Delphi Automotive PLC’s.
Chief Financial Officer Joe Massaro told analysts in February that 90 percent of the company’s hourly workforce is in “best-cost countries.”
When asked about shifting production to the United States from Mexico, Massaro said depending on what happens to trade rules “it would have to be much more of the sort of the automated type manufacturing operations just given… the labor differential there.”
That trend is already showing up in data compiled by Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
According to senior economist Rob Scott, not only did America lose 85,000 factories, or 23.5 percent of the total, from 1997 to 2014, but the average number of workers in a U.S. factory declined 14 percent to 44 in 2014 from 1997. According to Scott, much of the decline in workers was due to automation.
“We’re going to see more automation in this country because it makes good sense economically for every company,” said Hal Sirkin, a managing director at the Boston Consulting Group. “You can spend a lot of time bemoaning it, but that’s not going to change.”
Manufacturers say automated production requires fewer, but more skilled workers such as robot programmers and operators.
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) estimates because of the “skills gap” there are 350,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs today in a sector that employs over 12 million people.
In Ruston, Mayor Ronny Walker bet on Monster Moto by guaranteeing the company’s lease because he wants to diversify the city’s economy, and envisions suppliers setting up alongside Monster Moto’s assembly plant.
“Could it take a long time to bring manufacturing back here?
Sure,” he says. “But you have to start somewhere.”
China’s Economy Gains Steam; 1Q Growth Fastest Since 2015
‘The National’ Newspaper of Abu Dhabi Sees Layoffs after Sale
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New COVID-19 Field Hospitals Constructed
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SHEQ selected as a partner for Gamlins Law’s Go For Growth
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View Obituary Los Angeles Times Obituaries
John R. Stahr
October 29, 1932 - October 14, 2020 John R. Stahr, lawyer, leader and philanthropist, died in his sleep in Costa Mesa, California, on October 14, 2020. He was born on October 29, 1932, in Fort Dodge, Iowa. His father, Dr. Roland Stahr, was a pediatrician, and his mother, Dudley Casteel Stahr, was a homemaker. John and his parents moved to Reno, Nevada, in late 1939, where Roland was one of the first pediatricians in the state. The family moved to northern Virginia in 1942, where Roland served in the Army Medical Corps during World War II, then returned to Reno at the end of the war. For high school, John Stahr attended the Phillips Exeter Academy; for college, he attended Stanford University, on a Naval ROTC scholarship. While at Stanford, he was a member of the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity and served as the student manager, the paid supervisor of all the student clubs. He graduated from Stanford as a member of Phi Beta Kappa in June 1954 and immediately joined the Navy, based in California and serving as a supply officer in the Pacific. He married his college girlfriend, Elizabeth Burgess Dempster, in the Stanford Chapel in January 1955. After completing his naval service, in 1957, he entered Harvard Law School, graduating from there with honors in 1960. Upon graduation, he joined what was at the time a small Los Angeles law firm, Latham & Watkins, and settled with his young family in Arcadia, California. His legal work was mainly corporate: he helped many small companies navigate mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings. In 1972, John Stahr and another young Latham partner opened the firm's first office outside of Los Angeles, in Orange County. John and his family moved to Newport Beach, where the children attended local schools and John and Elizabeth were active in local charities. After his retirement, in 1996, John was even more active in charities, including the Pacific Symphony, South Coast Repertory, Pacific Chorale, University of California Irvine and Arts Orange County. He served more than thirty years on the board of the Pacific Symphony and for one critical year (the year of the symphony's first European tour) was chairman of the board. He and Elizabeth were honored with the UCI Medal in 2003 and with the Newport Beach "Citizen of the Year" award in 2016. National charities in which he served on the board included the Hoover Institution and the Defense Orientation Conference Association. He loved to travel, especially in Latin America, where he could use his excellent Spanish. John is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Stahr, his four children, Walter Stahr (Masami), Fritz Stahr (Erin), Gretchen Stahr Breunig (Christopher) and Karen Stahr, and his five grandchildren, Clancey Stahr, Adam Breunig, Lydia Stahr, Ellis Breunig and Altay Dilari. A memorial service will be held at St. James Episcopal Church on a date to be announced. Donations in John's name may be made to the Pacific Symphony.
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Man Dressed as Santa Robs Banks — (canoe.com)
SSRI Ed note: Man pleads guilty to robbery committed under Paxil influence.
‘Santa’ who bungled bank robbery says anti-depressant drug made him do it.
NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. (CP) — A man dressed as Santa who tried to rob a bank in Penticton, B.C., says an anti-depressant drug made him do it. Alain Chevrier, 32, earlier pleaded guilty to charges of robbery, unlawful confinement, wearing a disguise and wilful damage.
He was wearing a Santa Claus hat and beard and packing two guns when he walked into a Bank of Montreal branch in downtown Penticton on Dec. 27, 2000, and demanded money.
He then held six people captive in the bank for 61/2 hours before surrendering peacefully to police.
Chevrier told a sentencing hearing that he committed the offence after he experienced a marked change in character when he took extra doses of Paxil, a commonly prescribed anti-depressant.
The Crown and defence have completed their arguments on sentencing. The judge will hand impose the sentence Nov. 28.
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South Big Data Innovation Hub
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Expert panelists to discuss bots, lies, and the new information environment
March 3, 2017 March 21, 2017 / southbdhub
The explosion of social media, blogs, and websites purporting to be news sources, along with a 24-hour news cycle and ubiquitous assess to the internet from cell phones and other devices, means a new information environment. That environment is radically different from the days when we depended on the New York Times and local newspapers for information, and it is rewriting the norms of social interaction, conversation, public discourse, and news reporting.
The South Big Data Innovation Hub will bring together four experts for a roundtable discussion that explores how bots and other new phenomena are shaping conversations and shifting public discourse. The impact of these technologies and social media platforms can build bridges among groups who might not otherwise connect and promote positive change. However, those same tools can be harnessed to spread misinformation or used by terrorist groups. The Brookings Institution, for example, estimates ISIS has more than 70,000 Twitter accounts.
The roundtable discussion Anti-Social Computing: Bots, Lies, and the New Information Environment will be webcast from noon – 1:15 p.m. Thursday, March 9. The webcast is free and open to all. The public can also attend the roundtable in person at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. For details or to register for the webinar, click here.
About the panelists:
Nitin Agarwal, PhD, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Agarwal is the Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor in the Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology at UALR. He is also director of the Collaboratorium of Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies and a Fellow of the International Academy, Research and Industry Association.
Kathleen Carley, PhD, Carnegie Mellon University
Carley is a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon’s Institute for Software Research, an IEEE Fellow, and director of the university’s Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems in the Institute for Software Research, School of Computer Science.
Huan Liu, PhD, Arizona State University
Liu is a professor of computer science and engineering in the ASU School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering. He is an IEEE Fellow and co-author of Social Media Mining: An Introduction.
Rand Waltzman, PhD, Rand Corporation
Waltzman is a senior information scientist at the Rand Corporation. Prior to joining RAND, he was the acting chief technology officer of the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He also did two five-year tours as a program manager in the Information Innovation Office of DARPA where he created and managed the Social Media in Strategic Communications (SMISC) program and the Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales (ADAMS) insider threat detection program.
About the moderator:
Lea Shanley, PhD, South Big Data Hub
Shanley is the co-Executive Director of the South Big Data Hub. She was the founding director of the Washington-based Wilson Center’s Commons Lab, guiding strategic research in social media, social computing, and big data for disaster response and humanitarian assistance.
The roundtable is sponsored by the South Big Data Regional Innovation Hub, an initiative to build public-private partnerships that apply data science and analytics to scientific and regional challenges. The South Hub is one of a network of four Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs funded by the National Science Foundation. For more information, visit the South Hub website.
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Stage Struck Review
Reviewing Theatre For Over 40 Years
Tag Archives: Kieran Flanagan
“Charley’s Aunt” at Whittier: Take an old favorite, add zing, and enjoy
2 Comments Posted by Frances Baum Nicholson on June 7, 2014
The cast of “Charley’s Aunt” at Whittier Community Theatre, in a period-style portrait
Just as with film, some older stage comedies easily stand the test of time. Nobody objects to a new, albeit period, production of “Harvey” or “Arsenic and Old Lace” because they are genuinely funny. The same is true for less-often revived works as well, as long as they are approached as if new – that is, approached with the same zest that performers would give a brand new joke. The rule of thumb is, always, that one cannot expect something with a long reputation of being entertaining to continue to be so without human energy and commitment.
This is hard on less experienced performers or companies, where some performers may let the script drive the show while others are more in charge. Take, as an example, the production of “Charley’s Aunt” at the Whittier Community Theatre. The silly, cross-dressing comedy has been beloved for over 120 years, having originally opened in London in 1892. As such, the wit has the same formality one hears in Oscar Wilde, and comes from the same ethos. Yet, the humor reaches the audience through emotional connection and vitality in the playing of it. At Whittier, this verve is unevenly present. A little charging up of a few characters is almost all that is needed for the piece to shine.
The story has a good foundation for humor. Jack Chesney and Charley Wykeham, two Oxford undergrads, have fallen in love. The objects of their affection, Kitty and Amy, are the niece and ward of a stuffy solicitor who would never see his way to letting the girls be alone with two college men. Fortunately, on the date they hope to meet for lunch, Charley’s benefactor and aunt – whom he has never met – is due to arrive. Then she doesn’t.
To keep the tryst from dissolving, the boys talk fellow student Lord Fancourt Babberley into dressing up as an old woman and playing the wealthy, widowed aunt. The plot thickens as the solicitor, as well as Jack’s father, both make plays for the elderly woman in order to solidify their fortunes. And then, of course, a very aunt-like woman arrives with her own ward in tow.
Let’s face it, a guy dressed up as a woman but wanting to be a guy is just funny. Kieran Flanagan, as the increasingly reluctant Lord Babberley is absolutely the best thing in the WCT production, in part because he has all the best bits. Andrew Cerecedes, as Charley, does frustration and panic very well, and Austin Sauer, as Jack, certainly looks the part of an Oxford man, though he sometimes needs to evince a bit more excitement.
Anthony Duke does well as Jack’s proud but somewhat impoverished father. Tim Heaton plays the solicitor as such a dunderhead it all ends up in a comic “sameness.” Jim Gittelson as Jack’s “scout” or in-house servant should be tying everything together with lively commentary about his betters, but instead sometimes slows the action down with his formality. Nancy Tyler as the mysterious arrival, brings the speed back up, and Jasmine West, Amanda Riisager and Louisa Brazeau play the sweet innocent young ladies to the hilt.
Which is all to say that, at its core, this is a fine production. It just needs a little juice. Tightening and energy will bring it back to the level people have been laughing at all these years. Director Roxanne Barker has a long history in community theater, and knows how to make that happen, but needs to make certain that it does.
One possible issue, at the start, has to do with the set, whose design is uncredited in the program. The standard housing of an Oxford man at that time would have been comparatively cramped, but in a noble attempt to create a set allowing a series of very quick changes, Jack’s is vast – and the humor to be gained with a small space full of panicky young men is lost. On the other hand, the set’s two other aspects work well with the script, so perhaps that is the gain to this particular loss. In a positive note, a strong nod goes to Lois Tedrow who once again supplies a host of reasonably period costuming.
In the end, “Charley’s Aunt” is long for a modern theater-going audience, but the WCT production is often quite engaging. A bit more zip and the evening will fly by. In general, it is good to see a play which has been so loved for so long up on its feet again. And that may be one of the purposes of a place like Whittier Community Theatre – itself the oldest continually operating community theatrical group west of the Mississippi River.
In that vein, one must also tender respect for WCT’s recent loss. Deac Hunter, who was busily playing supporting roles onstage as recently as this season, passed away in March at age 92. A longtime WCT member, he was the kind of person community theater is built on. If you go to the performance, look for a lovely remembrance in the program. Even as just an audience member, I will miss him.
What: “Charley’s Aunt” When: Remaining performances 8 p.m. June 13 and 14 Where: Whittier Community Theatre at The Center Theatre, 7630 Washington Ave. in Whittier How Much: $15 general, $10 seniors, students, juniors, and those with military ID Info: (562) 696-0600 or http://www.whittiercommunitytheatre.org
Review Amanda Riisager, Andrew Cerecedes, Anthony Duke, Austin Sauer, Charley's Aunt, Classic Stage Comedy, Jasmine West, Jim Gittelson, Kieran Flanagan, Lois Tedrow, Louisa Brazeau, Nancy Tyler, Roxanne Barker, Tim Heaton, Whittier Community Theatre
Community Noir: “Laura” in Whittier
Leave a comment Posted by Frances Baum Nicholson on February 28, 2014
The cast of “Laura” mysteriously appears at Whittier Community Theatre
Ah, “Noir”. The works of the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, with their cynical gumshoes and fatalistic romantic tone, stand apart even today as a special part of American culture. Of these, none is better known than “Laura,” which began life as a story, a novel and then a play, all by Vera Caspary, before becoming an Otto Preminger film.
Now “Laura” returns to the stage in Caspary and Geoge Sklar’s original version at the Whittier Community Theatre. It’s a solid performance – well cast and strongly directed – which shows the polish often-maligned community theater companies can achieve. And there’s that good old mystery to go along with it.
For anyone who doesn’t know somehow, “Laura” is the story of a murder investigation. The detective in charge, Mark McPherson, finds himself fascinated by the victim whose portrait hangs in her apartment. In a story filled with peculiar twists and turns, this detective’s determination to find out the truth both of the murder and of the obviously complex character of victim Laura herself, make for fascinating watching.
Director Suzanne Frederickson has the feel for this piece, and it shows all the way down to the costuming and furniture. She has amassed a cast which manages to fit the various stereotypes required of this kind of story, and with talent enough to make them all human.
As McPherson, Steven Sullivan is the picture of a solid Irish cop, from his sharp eye, a crisp loyalty, and a subtle tugging of the heart. As the man who feels he “created” Laura, Norman Dostal manages the somewhat soft and slimy panache required to make Waldo a disturbing character. Jay Miramontes gives Laura’s fiance an interesting balance of acquisitiveness and fondness, while Candy Beck fusses with great warmth as the loving maid Laura hired and befriended.
Also worthy of note, the mysterious “girl” gets rounded treatment by Amy Anderson, Kieran Flanagan makes nice work of the rebellious teen from down the hall, and Julie Breihan bristles with genuine indignation as his frustrated, heartsore mother. John Francis makes a short, entertaining, but somewhat less believable appearance as a beat cop.
Considering the generally somewhat “low rent” nature of community theaters, which survive on tiny budgets and volunteers both in front of and behind the scenes, this production proves quite delightful. The pacing is good, the tone is right, and the mystery appropriately mysterious. If you’ve never seen “Laura” nobody telegraphs the ending. If you have, it’s a lovely and inexpensive chance to spend time with an old friend.
Although this run is almost over, stay tuned for this company’s next offering: “Charley’s Aunt”, due at the end of May.
What: “Laura” When: 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 28 and Saturday, March 1 Where: The Center Theatre, 8730 Washington Ave., in Whittier How Much: $15 general, $10 seniors, students, and military ID Info: (562) 696-0600 or http://www.whittiercommunitytheatre.org
Review Candy Beck, Jay Miramontes, John Francis, Julie Breihan, Kieran Flanagan, Laura, Norman Dostal, Steven Sullivan, Suzanne Frederickson, Vera Caspary, whittier, Whittier Community Theatre
Part 3 – The Play’s the Thing… but the Movie Musical…
Part 2: The Play’s the Thing: What Audiences Will Believe
Part 1: The Play’s the Thing. The Movie? Sometimes great, sometimes… nah
Adjusting To The New: Musing on Life and Art
Candlelight Pavilion’s “Peter Pan”: Tweaking the Nose of Tradition, Done Well
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Theatre in L.A.
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St Matthew's and St Cross
The Church of England in Stretton, Appleton, and Appleton Thorn
Weddings, Christenings and Funerals
Weekly Notices
Saints and Souls
October 31, 2019 October 31, 2019 / Stratocastermagic / Leave a comment
In the Church calendar, the first of November is All Saints’ Day, also known as All Hallows. In the early church, when believers died for their faith, they were commemorated on the anniversary of their martyrdom. With an increasingly full calendar of saints’ days, and the possibility that there might be some Christian martyrs known to God but not to us, the Church added a celebration of all the saints, which at some point settled on 1 November. If ‘All Saints’ feels a bit like the Church’s ‘Hall of Fame’, what about those who have died whom we knew and loved, regardless of whether or not the Church might regard them as ‘saints’? For them, we follow All Saints’ with All Souls’ Day, a commemoration of the faithful departed. (In a more ‘catholic’ understanding, we might pray to the Saints and for the Souls!)
In practice, we will mark both All Saints’ and All Souls’ days on the nearest Sunday (3 November this year). In our morning services that day we will consider the example of the saints who have lived out their faith in their day – “lights of the world in their several generations” as the 1928 prayer book put it – and pray that we will have God’s grace to follow them in our lives. The day also reminds us that the Christian life is lived as “members of a company of saints whose mutual belonging transcends death”. In the evening, we remember and give thanks to God for “those we love but see no longer”, the ‘souls’ whose memory we treasure.
In my preaching on All Saints’, I often like to say that the ‘Hall of Fame’ view isn’t necessarily very helpful or biblical. Sometimes, the example set by saints in their own day doesn’t transfer well to our experience. Take Saint Simeon Stylites. He was born in about 390AD, the son of a shepherd in what is now Turkey. As a 13-year-old child, Simeon heard a sermon on the Beatitudes and “developed a zeal for Christianity”. At 16, he entered a monastery but his extreme austerity led his brothers to ask him to leave. He shut himself up in a hut for 18 months and apparently went through the whole of Lent without eating or drinking. He then moved to a mountain in what is now Syria; but even there he couldn’t escape from the crowds of pilgrims who came to ask for his counsel and his prayers.
So Simeon did what any of us might do. He spent the rest of his days out of reach on top of a pillar. There he could stand and pray, experiencing the scorching heat and numbing cold, kept alive by gifts of food sent up to him. He still couldn’t escape attention (some said he did it for attention!) and even emperors sought his counsel. Walls were built around his pillar to keep people away – especially women. (He wouldn’t even see his mother until after her death when her coffin was brought to him so he could say his goodbyes.) (See this article by Margaret Visser.)
As I said, sometimes the examples of the saints of history are not all that helpful. The second thing to note is that the New Testament doesn’t recognise a ‘Hall of Fame’ model of sainthood. In fact, we are all called to be saints (Romans 1.7, 1 Corinthians 1.2). Many New Testament letters are addressed to “the saints” in a particular place (e.g. Ephesus, Philippi or Colossae) with no distinction between those who are doing a cracking job of it and those (the majority, I think) who were struggling. These ‘saints’ are not those who have died and passed on to glory. They are living out their calling in this world with an imperfect faith and the constant experience of ‘falling short of God’s glory’ (Romans 3.23). They will also catch glimpses of God’s grace and know that they have this “treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Corinthians 4.7). I also like to point out that the New Testament always uses the plural form – ‘saints’, never the singular, ‘saint’. In other words, being a saint isn’t something that we do on our own. It’s always something we do together. Which is why we have a church to belong to. God might occasionally call someone to live their Christian life atop a pillar, but I doubt that that would be true for many. No, we are called to be saints together, encouraging one another in the tricky business of living out our faith in a world that needs a demonstration of what love looks like. There are no solitary saints. Come to a church service near to you and get your encouragement to live out your calling to be a saint!
Alan Jewell
The Big Welcome
August 25, 2019 / Stratocastermagic / Leave a comment
It’s five years since I became vicar in the Benefice of Stretton and Appleton Thorn. My institution took place in a service at St Matthew’s on 10 September 2014. Doesn’t time fly! If you have heard me speak about that occasion, you will know that my clearest memory is of getting whacked in the face with a bell rope. I was carrying out the new incumbent’s traditional job of tolling the bell to let the parish know that it had a vicar. I was determined to give it my best shot, as people say that the number of times the bell rings is the number of years that the vicar is planning to stay. To begin with, I couldn’t hear anything so I pulled a little harder until I knew that the bell was moving. I also knew, from watching Dave Allen on the tele, that church bells are capable of lifting you off the ground if you are not careful. What I didn’t realise is that, unless properly controlled, the rope can whip back and smack you about the face, which is what happened to me. The Archdeacon and Rural Dean were the closest witnesses: they saw the whole thing but were not injured in the process. To be honest, it was only my pride that took a blow, but it’s quite something to be welcomed with a slap in the face!
For someone whose youthful ambition was to be a rock guitarist, it’s also humbling to think that some of my favourite moments from my time here so far have involved not the guitar, but the ukulele. The guitar (especially the electric guitar) is a cool instrument. But no one ever looked cool playing the uke, and that’s part of its charm. It’s a fun instrument and it makes you smile. At Praise and Play in both churches, I enjoy sitting on the carpet at the front of church, and singing with the little ones and their carers. I have on one occasion played the uke at a wedding – at the Bride’s request – and once at a Baptism – at the child’s mother’s request.
The uke also features in another of my favourite regular activities, The Singing Kettle, where we meet once a month in the church hall and sing through some old favourites, mostly from the 1950s given the age of the audience and the musicians, but older and newer songs too.
You may also be aware that the past five years have not been without their struggles, both personally and professionally. I won’t dwell on that here, but I am happy to acknowledge the support that we have had, and I hope that the next five years will see progress and growth in the life of both churches.
At St Matthew’s, we have now launched the Big Welcome project. When I first made enquiries about the post here, I was interested to see that St Matthew’s had plans to develop the building, to make it more accessible and welcoming, not just for regular churchgoers but to the community we are called to serve. It is an ambitious undertaking and not everyone is persuaded, but the Chancellor of the Diocese issued the Faculty which gives us permission to do the work on the basis that the parish has
“demonstrated clear and convincing justification for the changes proposed… (which) will better serve the ministry and mission of the church in the parish and area.”
With the permissions in place (from the Church and the Borough Council) it is up to us to raise the funds if the reordering is to go ahead – no easy feat, granted! At Walking Day, there was a presentation (by Eric and Kylie no less!) and display. We have had leaflets produced outlining what we hope to do and inviting people to show their support by returning a pledge card.
At its heart, I think this is a matter of what we believe the church to be and what we think we are here to do. I know that, like most churches in the country, we are struggling with numbers and with fabric and finance. (Both churches have had damage done to their churchyard walls within a matter of weeks!) But I don’t see any point in simply battening down the hatches waiting for the storm to blow over. We need to engage with our communities and I believe that the Big Welcome project is part of our vision to do that.
At the time of writing number of fundraising events and ideas are being planned – from mugs and pens, to a barbecue, quizzes and a band night. Please look out for details of these and support them if you are able.
I hope that you will return your pledge card, if you haven’t already done so, and commit yourself to pray, to work and to support the Big Welcome project.
How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place
April 22, 2019 April 18, 2019 / Stratocastermagic / Leave a comment
I’m writing this having seen those terrible images of the fire which has ravaged the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. Today there is aerial footage of the extent of the devastation but that doesn’t match the shock of watching video of the spire collapsing. Someone has commented that the last time the 850-year old building suffered major damage was during the French Revolution, and that it survived two world wars largely unscathed. 500 firefighters attended, risking their own lives in order to save what they could of the building. It was said to be within 15 to 30 minutes of complete destruction.
A priest, Fr Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain to the Paris Fire Brigade, entered the building while the fire was raging in order to rescue precious relics held there.
And, bizarrely, while I am writing this, I answer the phone to someone from Lymm Fire Brigade. They want to arrange a visit to St Cross to arrange a safety inspection – today. I explain that it’s not a great time for me (it’s Holy Week) but hope that a churchwarden might be free to meet them.
The world’s reaction to the fire at Notre Dame has been swift and heartfelt. Pope Francis said:
Today we unite in prayer with the people of France, as we wait for the sorrow inflicted by the serious damage to be transformed into hope with reconstruction.
The French President, Emmanuel Macron said that Notre Dame would be rebuilt “more beautiful than ever”, hopefully within five years. “We can do it and we will come together,” he said. Billionaires and ordinary people around the world have pledged more than 5 million euros to support the rebuilding project, recognising that the cathedral is not just a house of religion, but a symbol of Paris and of France, and an icon that belongs to the world.
Others have expressed conflicting views: given the crisis we face over climate change and poverty, and the fact that people are still living with the consequences of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 which claimed over 70 lives, how can the world justify spending such a huge amount of money on a mere building?
In our own small way, we face similar questions with our churches. Like parishes up and down the country, we have buildings which are much loved and valued, but we find ourselves faced with having to fund repairs and maintenance from the pockets of small congregations of ageing worshippers. While we can’t claim anything to match Notre Dame’s history – Henry VI of England and Napoleon Bonaparte were crowned there, and its where Joan of Arc was beatified – we do have our own stories. St Cross and St Matthew’s are the places where people have been christened and married, and where loved ones are remembered. People come to us for a Christingle service or on Remembrance Sunday. They visit the churchyard on Mothering Sunday. They want us to be there for their grandchildren to have those experiences too. Our buildings are not essential: the early church met in people’s homes. But they do stand as a visible symbol of our commitment to be here for our community (not just the congregation).
At St Matthew’s we have just held our annual meeting. Questions were asked – rightly – about the gap between our income and expenditure, and the costs of repairs to the roof and stonework (amongst other things). We had just received the news that our faculty application – the permission to go ahead with the proposed development of the building – had been granted. But how can we go ahead with a building project when we don’t have the money to mend the roof or pay the bills without dipping into our ‘savings’?
The answer to that question lies in the vision we have for the church. Is it a building that merely needs to be kept open for diminishing numbers of the faithful? Or do we see ourselves as having something to offer our community? How does our building express our faith and the desire to be open to those who live locally but don’t often turn up for regular services? The proposed reordering is about making our building more inviting and accessible by improved access and better use of the space for welcome and hospitality. The Chancellor of the Diocese (His Honour Judge David Turner QC) had to look at our proposals and the objections that were made to them. His job is to consider the impact our plans will have on the building (given its listed status) and the possible benefits to the mission and worship of the church. In particular, he has to ensure that we do no harm to the building’s historical and architectural character.
The Chancellor concluded that
“the parish has, in my judgement, demonstrated clear and convincing justification for the changes proposed which is more than sufficient here to outweigh any minor architectural detriment. In most cases the changes will represent improvement.
In short, I have found the arguments for change persuasive here. These changes, I have no doubt, will better serve the ministry and mission of the church in the parish and area.”
So, we have permission to do the work. We now need the money and the will to proceed. We will be seeking grants for the project and fundraising (as we will for repairs). We need people to come together in support of our vision and mission; not just our regular worshippers but also the wider community.
Unlike Notre Dame, we don’t have billionaires queuing up to give us money. But we do have you. And that’s a great start!
Pressing On
March 5, 2019 March 5, 2019 / Stratocastermagic / Leave a comment
Some years ago, I had a phone call from a parishioner. He worked for one of the utility companies and wanted to know if I could help him with the date of Easter. He was preparing for a meeting and needed to know when Easter would fall over a number of years as it has a bearing on the demand for electricity. There was no Google in those days, so I took down my copy of the Alternative Service Book (1980) and was able to find the information he was looking for. It’s not often that I am able to provide such a useful service!
The calculation which gives us the date of Easter each year is beyond my simple brain, but it has something to do with full moons and the vernal equinox. (Not the actual full moon or equinox, of course, but ecclesiastical ones… Don’t ask me!) I gather that Easter can fall on any date between 22 March and 25 April. This year, Easter Day is 21 April, which is fairly late.
It’s slightly easier to calculate the date of the Annual Parochial Church Meeting: it has to be held not later than 30 April each year. At St Matthew’s, this year’s meeting will be held in church after the morning service on Sunday 14 April. At St Cross, the meeting follows the service on 28 April. Anyone whose name is on the church’s electoral roll is entitled to attend the meeting and take part in its proceedings. It’s worth saying here that, if you wish to have your name entered on the roll for either church, you must fill in an application form. If you have been on the roll before, that doesn’t count as this is one of the years when a new roll is prepared, and your details will not be carried over. Application forms are available from either church and each church has an Electoral Roll officer: at St Matthew’s, it’s Richard Johnson and at St Cross it’s Sandra Bates. If you want further information, please ask.
You may wonder why you would want to have your name on the church electoral roll. There aren’t many benefits, it has to be said! But it is one way of declaring your faith. You are identifying yourself as a Christian who belongs to a particular Anglican church – St Matthew’s or St Cross in our case.
But the Church of England is not really a ‘membership’ organisation. Anyone who lives in the parish is a parishioner – not just those who go to church. Of course, baptism is the sacrament of initiation into the life of the Christian Church. If you are baptised, you become a member of the Church (the catholic – or worldwide – church, not just the Church of England). In Anglicanism, confirmation is usually seen as an opportunity to confirm your baptismal faith – particularly if you were baptised as an infant – and to have your faith confirmed by the Bishop. But, as a former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, said:
“The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.”
Having your name on the church electoral roll, taking part in its annual meeting, perhaps even putting your name forward to serve as a member of the Parochial Church Council or as a Churchwarden, are all ways in which we can serve our parish – including those who are not church members. At a time when church attendance is declining, and many organisations find their membership numbers falling, the importance of us identifying ourselves as Christians is crucial. I’m writing this before Lent, a time when many Christians look again at what it means to identify themselves with Jesus Christ, to walk in his footsteps in preparation for our celebration of the resurrection.
At our annual meetings – either side of Easter, this year – we long to see signs that our churches are alive, made of people who identify with Jesus, in his death and resurrection, knowing the power of his love. As we read in the letter to the Philippians:
“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”
At your baptism, you were baptised into Christ Jesus, his death and resurrection (Romans 6:3,4). In confirmation, you made a public commitment to the faith into which you were baptised. By joining the electoral roll, you identify yourself as an active, worshipping member of a particular congregation. And in all of this, we “press on” because Christ Jesus has made us his own.
I wish you well as you press on in your journey through Lent towards Easter!
‘Mystery Worshipper’
June 1, 2018 May 16, 2018 / Stratocastermagic / Leave a comment
Back in the late 1970s, there was a quirky Christian magazine called Ship of Fools. It didn’t last long in print form but resurfaced as a website on April Fools’ day 1998. One of its regular features is a report from a ‘Mystery Worshipper’. Like the ‘mystery shoppers’ who go into department stores and report back on the service they experience, the Mystery Worshipper attends a church and writes about what they find. The Mystery Worshipper records everything from the welcome they got on arrival, the style of worship, and the length and quality of the sermon, to the coffee served afterwards.
It’s quite difficult to be a Mystery Worshipper when you’re wearing a clerical collar and there’s a seat at the front that’s reserved for you, but occasionally I get the opportunity to attend a service as a regular punter. We were able to do this after Easter, when we were on holiday in Australia. Now to be fair, when I’m on holiday, I don’t always go to church. Shocking, I know, but sometimes it’s nice to luxuriate on a Sunday morning with coffee and pastries. On this occasion, however, we managed to stir ourselves in time to catch the train into Melbourne city centre and arrive for the main morning service at St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral.
St Paul’s is the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne and the Province of Victoria, and is the seat of the Archbishop of Melbourne, who is Primate of the Anglican Church in Australia. (Fun fact: the word cathedral comes from the Latin cathedra which means a ‘seat’. The cathedral is where the bishop’s seat is located, from which the bishop teaches and presides over the diocese.) From its service sheet, we learn that St Paul’s is “home for worshippers from more than two dozen nations” and is situated on the traditional lands of the Aboriginal Kulin nation. On the sheet and verbally in the service, respect was paid to “the traditional owners of the land”.
The service we attended was 10:30 AM Choral Eucharist. As we were there on the Sunday after Easter, the cathedral choir was on holiday. The music, however, was ably lead by the Cathedral Consort – which I guess is the ‘B Team’, but very good they were. The music ranged from a 16th century anthem by Orlandus Lassus, and pieces from Benjamin Britten’s Missa Brevis (1959) to hymns by Charles Wesley and John Bell, a good catholic mix.
The service was led by the Precentor, the Revd Canon Heather Patacca. The preacher should have been the Dean, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, but, we were told, he was off sick. Instead, we were to hear one of the assistant clergy, whose regular responsibility was for the 9:00 AM ‘Family Friendly’ Eucharist. I was looking forward to the sermon because I wanted to see how a ‘family friendly’ priest would address the Choral Eucharist congregation, but I was disappointed that, instead of speaking her own words, she simply read the text of the Dean’s prepared sermon. The sermon ended dryly with, “the Dean would like to invite you to consider…” In their defence, the Dean had prepared a series of addresses on the Gospel of John for Lent, Holy Week and Easter, and this was presumably a follow-up to that, as the gospel reading was from John (20:19-31 – Jesus’ resurrection appearances to the disciples and then to Thomas). In my humble opinion, a sermon is not a text that can be read, but something that happens when the preacher and the congregation work together, and, as they say in certain circles, “God shows up”. I’m happy to elaborate on this if requested!
When we turned to the Lord’s Prayer, we were each invited to say it in our own language. As we were in Australia, most of the worshippers spoke English, but the service sheet gave the opening words to the prayer in French, Spanish, German, and, what I later learned were Malay, Maori, Chinese and Japanese. This was an interesting expression of the cathedral’s emphasis on the diversity of its congregation. It was also good to share the Peace with those around us.
The invitation to communion was inclusive (“all baptised Christians”) and came with a word to the wise: “Please keep your valuables with you”.
I’m afraid we didn’t stay for coffee – or ‘Morning Tea’ as the Australians call it – not because we didn’t feel welcome, but because the sun was shining, and we wanted to be outside. We enjoyed brunch at a riverside café instead.
One of the things that caught my attention at the cathedral was their use of ‘Tap and Go’ technology: their collection plates are fitted with a device that reads credit cards and automatically takes a donation of $20, which, they say, is the average weekly contribution made by their worshippers. As well as on the collection plates, ‘Tap and Go’ devices were located in various places around the cathedral. It’s a thought! (But if we install those in our churches, what amount should they be set to ask for?)
In the Ship of Fools Mystery Worshipper reports, there are a few questions which must always be answered:
Which part of the service was like being in heaven?
For me, as so often, it was the music, particularly the Benjamin Britten and the anthem.
And which part was like being in… er… the other place?
Nothing really, although, as I said, listening to someone reading a sermon they haven’t written, doesn’t do a lot for me.
Did the service make you feel glad to be a Christian?
Yes, it was good to feel at home so far from our actual home.
What one thing will you remember about all this in seven days’ time?
Probably the ‘Tap and Go’ technology.
Experience Easter
March 27, 2018 / Stratocastermagic / Leave a comment
On the day before Palm Sunday, a group of church people, directed by Ruth Mock, came into St Matthew’s to prepare for ‘Experience Easter‘. They went to work with fabric and greenery, pebbles and props to create a series of six displays which were to be used to tell the Easter story, from Palm Sunday to the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus. And a fabulous job they did, too – the church looks great!
‘Experience Easter’ came (like a lot of good things) from the Diocese of Gloucester as an attempt to engage children and adults with the message of Easter. We live in a world where, increasingly, people are not familiar with even the basic elements of the Christian story. ‘Experience Easter’, as its name suggests, it not just about telling the Easter story: rather it aims to get participants to ‘experience’ the dynamic of Holy Week and Easter in a journey through six ‘stations’.
We start with the ‘Hopes and Dreams’ of Palm Sunday. Those who take part in ‘Experience Easter’ are asked what they hope for, what they dream of. Some talk about their career ambitions – especially if they want to be a pop star or professional footballer. Others share their hope that a family member will recover from illness.
We tell them that the inhabitants of Jerusalem dreamt of a day when God would send a saviour to rescue them from their oppressors, the Roman Empire. Riding into the city on the back of a donkey, Jesus looks like a saviour – albeit an unlikely one. He is greeted as a king by cheering crowds. Going against everything we usually say to children when they come into church (‘be quiet!’), we invite the children to wave palm leaves and shout as the crowds did: HOSANNA! They process around the church and are then invited to sit (near the font) to hear about ‘The Servant King’.
Servant King
What kind of king did Jesus know himself to be? And how can a king be a servant? Jesus kneels in humility, like a lowly slave, and washes the feet of his disciples. We explain to the children that, in Jesus’ day, when you arrived at someone’s home you would do so on foot. Having walked through the hot, dusty streets – trying your best to avoid the ‘messages’ left by donkeys and other creatures – your sandaled feet would be in quite a state. Your host might instruct a slave to wash your feet before dinner. But who would choose such a job? In this station, the leader offers to wash the feet of one of the children taking part. (It’s a moving experience to be the person doing the washing.) Drying the child’s feet with a towel, we explain that Jesus said he was giving an example: that those who follow the Servant King should also serve. We ask the children to think how they might serve others.
In the next station, we gather around a table set for a meal – the last supper at which Jesus explains to his disciples that he will die, giving his body to be broken and his blood to be poured out. The station is called ‘Remember Me’ and we ask the children if they have something at home that reminds them of someone special. Children talk about photographs of pets and grandparents that have died. Others have precious objects, like a teddy or necklace that belonged to a family member. Jesus takes bread and wine, gives thanks to God, and shares them with his friends. ‘Do this’, he says, ‘to remember me.’ We give the children a small piece of pitta bread and some blackcurrant squash (no, not real wine!) to eat and drink, and invite them to remember something about Jesus.
After the meal, Jesus goes into the garden of Gethsemane. There he wrestles with the agony of what he must face. But his friends can’t even stay awake to support him and one of them will betray him. This station is called ‘Alone’. Children from Year 3 at the school had prepared poems about loneliness and they show a deep and moving appreciation of what it feels like to be lonely. In our Garden of Gethsemane, we read words of scripture that Jesus may have thought about: how God is always with us, even in our darkest hours and that, with God in our lives, we are never alone.
Sharing our Sorrows
Next, we move to the Cross. As you can imagine, this is a difficult subject for all of us, never mind primary school children. But even young children have the capacity to engage with difficult things. We ask them to sit in silence, holding a small cross, and looking at the wooden cross which stands in the pulpit, draped with red fabric. We ask them to share what the scene makes them think or feel. A number of them talk about the sadness, to think that Jesus died in pain. We explain that the station is called ‘Sharing Our Sorrows’ as we think of how God comes into our world with all its darkness and brokenness to share our lives, sorrows and all. We invite the children to bring their thoughts and prayers (and the crosses they have been holding), and to leave them at the foot of the cross before moving on.
If this was a Holy Week service for adults, we might end there and invite people to come back to church on Easter Sunday to hear the next part of the story. But we don’t do that with children; we don’t leave them with the sadness of the cross. The final station is, of course, ‘Resurrection’. We have a beautiful Easter garden with an empty tomb set up in the sanctuary of the church and invite the children, like those women on the first Easter day, to look into the tomb. What do you think those women felt? Afraid? Worried? Excited?
‘Experience Easter’ ends with the children being given time to ask questions and to look again at the six stations that tell the story. They are also given a small chocolate egg to take away and challenged to remember, when Easter comes and they open their Easter eggs, the story that they have shared through ‘Experience Easter’.
Many thanks to those who created the six stations and to those who have loaned items to decorate them. Everyone who comes into church will appreciate what has been achieved. ‘Experience Easter’ is a wonderful thing and I hope we will be able to repeat it in future years.
I’m writing this in Holy Week: for me, the full experience of Easter still lies ahead. But our prayer is that many visiting the church for an Easter service, or simply coming in to look around at the stations, will experience the Easter message for themselves: that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and that the resurrection of Jesus changes the world for good.
November is the month for remembrance. In the church calendar, we mark the festivals of All Saints and All Souls. In the former, we remember the heroes of the faith, recognized by the church for their outstanding example. In the latter, we remember all those “we love but see no longer”.
On 11th November, Remembrance Day, we think particularly of those who have died in the line of duty during two world wars and subsequent conflicts.
Remembrance Sunday falls on 12th November this year. As well as the usual morning services and acts of remembrance at both churches (10:15 AM at St Cross and 10:30 AM at St Matthew’s), we are planning a special evening service at St Matthew’s at 6:30 PM.
This year marks the centenary of a number of key events in the First World War, such as the Battle of Passchendaele. With this in mind, I have been looking at the poetry of GA Studdert-Kennedy in order to prepare an act of worship and reflection. Studdert-Kennedy was a vicar in Worcester when war broke out in 1914. He volunteered and went to the front line as a chaplain, where his practice of handing out cigarettes earned him the nickname ‘Woodbine Willie’.
He was awarded the Military Cross for his services. His citation read:
“For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He showed the greatest courage and disregard for his own safety in attending to the wounded under heavy fire. He searched shell holes for our own and enemy wounded, assisting them to the dressing station, and his cheerfulness and endurance had a splendid effect upon all ranks in the front line trenches, which he constantly visited.”
As well as a chaplain, ‘Woodbine Willie’ was a poet. His collection, “The Unutterable Beauty“, from 1927, has recently been re-published. He writes from a Christian perspective of the horrors of war, seen at first hand. His work is thoughtful and moving, bringing together the faith of a Christian priest and the questions of someone caught up in bloody warfare.
As well as poetry, the service will include hymns and readings, and I think will provide an opportunity for prayer and reflection in the spirit of remembrance.
I hope you can join us and I look forward to seeing you,
The Commemoration Service
Please join us at St Matthew’s at 6:30 PM on Sunday 5th November for our All Souls Commemoration service. As usual, we have particularly invited families who have arranged funeral services with us in the past year or so to attend, but the service is for all of us who have lost loved ones, whether recently or not.
Thanks to Geoff Buchan, we have a beautiful new book of remembrance which will be in church if you wish to add names to be included in the prayers during the service. (Please write clearly as we have to sight-read them!)
The service will include suitable hymns, readings and prayers, and a sermon. Please come and invite others who might find it helpful.
May 9, 2017 May 9, 2017 / Stratocastermagic / Leave a comment
Prayer. It’s one of those things we know Christians are supposed to do but perhaps we don’t find enough time or energy for. Or perhaps we are stuck with the same words we used as children:
“God bless mummy. God bless daddy…”
Or perhaps we think that praying is best left to the professionals: after all, that’s what vicars are for, isn’t it?
Luke’s gospel tells us that Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray. His answer was to give them the words we call the Lord’s Prayer – ‘Our Father’. Some have called this prayer ‘a summary of the whole gospel’. Others note that whatever differences of belief and practice divide us, The Lord’s Prayer is said by Christians of all traditions and denominations.
In Matthew’s gospel a slightly longer version of the prayer is given as part of Jesus’ teaching that we call the Sermon on the Mount: here the context is a warning against thinking that God is likely to be impressed by the many words we might use in prayer. Keep it simple, Jesus says, and don’t pray to impress others. It’s just between you and God.
Many who are not regular churchgoers have this prayer tucked away somewhere. Occasionally when I have been praying with someone who is quite ill and not at all communicative, I have noticed that the words of the Lord’s Prayer seem to strike a chord. Their very familiarity is a point of contact.
I’m not sure that when Jesus was asked, ‘teach us to pray’, his aim was to give us a formula to recite. After all, in the Sermon on the Mount we are told not to ‘heap up empty phrases’. Rather, I think that the Lord’s Prayer is an example of what prayer is all about. It begins by addressing God in a way that is both intimate and reverent – as ‘our Father in heaven’. Our first concern in prayer is for God’s kingdom and God’s will, before we come on to our own needs (our ‘daily bread’). Then we seek God’s forgiveness, which is tied in with our willingness to forgive others, and ask for God’s protection in the face of temptation and evil.
The Lord’s Prayer, then, is not a formula but a pattern for prayer. It’s also a useful resource to fall back on when we have no words or thoughts of our own!
In 2016, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York invited members of the Church of England to pray, “Thy kingdom come”. The invitation was offered for the period between Ascension and Pentecost that we should pray for God’s Holy Spirit to help us become better witnesses to Jesus Christ and that others might come to faith in him.
“In praying ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ we all commit to playing our part in the renewal of the nations and the transformation of communities.”
In 2017, the invitation is being re-issued. This year, Pentecost falls on Sunday 4th June. At Pentecost, we hear of God’s Spirit being poured out on the disciples, as Jesus had promised. It is the coming of the Spirit that turns them from timid followers to bold witnesses, and makes them the Church. (We sometimes call Pentecost ‘the birthday of the Church’.) This year, as well as attending a service on the day, can I ask you to set aside some time to pray? Perhaps you could do that as soon as you finish reading this! You might simply ask God to pour out his Spirit on you – in a new way, with renewed love and power. And then you might ask God to make himself known to your family, friends, and neighbours. You don’t need many words. Just the willingness to connect with ‘our Father in heaven’. You might think of a handful of people who need your prayer, that they will come to know Jesus Christ.
If you want to know more, there are resources online (‘Thy Kingdom Come‘).
May God bless you as you pray ‘Thy kingdom come’.
It’s an Adventure!
April 1, 2017 March 13, 2017 / Stratocastermagic / Leave a comment
I was talking to someone recently who told me that he had heard that vicars were not allowed to work more than 35 hours a week. I wish I had known that! When I was offered this job, I had to complete a health questionnaire to make sure I was sufficiently fit to take on the demands of full-time vicaring. The company that administered the questionnaire did so on the basis that the job was 40 hours a week. I wish! The reality is that this job will take as much time as you give it and then some more. There are some clergy who have part-time posts but there is nothing part-time about vocation.
So, what about part-time Christians? Is there any such thing? You’d be right if you guessed that the answer is ‘no’. One of the problems we have is that the word ‘Christian’ is often used to mean someone who is good, or kind, or nice. My wife, Rose, says that she once helped a colleague pick up some papers that had been dropped and was told, “that was very Christian of you”. There are many good and kind people – atheists, Muslims and Jews, for example – who would be offended to have their goodness and kindness labelled ‘Christian’. And not all who go by the name ‘Christian’ are particularly good and kind people. Some of us worry that we are not very good Christians…
Acts 11:26 says that “it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called ‘Christians.” In other words, a Christian is a disciple and a disciple is a Christian. So, what is a disciple?
In the gospels, disciples are called by Jesus to spend time with him, learn from him and reach out to others in his name. In the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20), the disciples are sent out to
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. (Matthew 28:16-20)
I often quote the following from the Revd Dr Alison Morgan, a Christian thinker and author:
discipleship is a form of apprenticeship undertaken in community
It’s an apprenticeship: none of us is a master, we’re all learning on the job from the Master. We make mistakes and move on.
It’s undertaken in community: there may be Christians who are called to the solitary life but most of us live out our discipleship in community with others. Alison Morgan, again, says that “the plural of disciple is church“.
Jesus warns that this is no part-time job and no easy calling. In Luke 14:28-33 he compares it to someone who decides to build a tower. Imagine starting off with the best of intentions, digging the foundations, putting up the first few courses of brick and then realising that you don’t have the money to finish the job. Everyone who passes by will see not a tower but a folly, something ridiculous: a monument to your stupidity. Or a king going out to war against another who doesn’t sit down first and work out if he has the troops to get the job done. If he hasn’t, he takes the diplomatic route to see what he can rescue from the situation.
Who among you, Jesus says, if you were going to build a tower or start a war, would not work out first whether you have the resources to finish the task? Jesus is talking to large crowds. Many of them may be simply going along for the ride. Many may not have given any thought as to where this particular ride might take them. We know, as we follow Jesus towards Holy Week and Easter, that his journey is to the cross. On the other side of that is resurrection but he will not get there without walking the Via Dolorosa, the way of suffering.
“I’m going to the cross: who’s coming with me?” It’s hardly the most enticing advertising slogan ever but that is how Jesus calls people to discipleship. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it:
“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
This is not masochism and it gives no support for sadism. All human existence is touched by suffering: Christian discipleship is the call to die! At baptism, we are baptised into the death and resurrection of Jesus. What is it that dies?, given that most of us were baptised as infants and here we are still walking around and breathing in and out! What is it that dies? It is our ambition. It is our self-determination. It is the view that the universe revolves around me. The implications of that take a lifetime to work out but the selfish self must die so that the God-self, your real self, can live.
I’m writing this in Lent, which many find a good time to look again at our discipleship, our walk with Jesus. Have we counted the cost, weighed up the pros and cons? Jesus warns us that Christian discipleship is tough; it’s costly. But, he assures us, the benefits are out of this world! In one of the songs that we sing with the children who come to Praise & Play, we’re reminded that:
It’s an adventure following Jesus.
It’s an adventure learning from him.
It’s an adventure living for Jesus.
It’s an adventure following him.
Let’s go where he leads us
Turn away from wrong
For we know we can trust him
To help us as we go along.
It’s an adventure following Jesus…1
In April, both parishes hold their Annual Meetings: a good time to re-evaluate our calling to live for and serve God in the communities in which God has put us. On 16th April, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and are reminded that although being a Christian is never easy, we are invited to live out our discipleship in the light of Easter.
The resurrection assures us that a life of Christian discipleship, although costly, is worth it. God puts his seal of approval on the self-giving life of Jesus and shows us that a life like that, lived in love, is one that even death cannot ultimately put a stop to.
I hope you will be able to join us for one or more of our services in Holy Week and Easter.
1. [Capt Alan Price © 1990 Song Solutions Daybreak]↩
Curate!
February 21, 2017 February 21, 2017 / Stratocastermagic / Leave a comment
I’m sure you are aware that our parishes of Stretton and Appleton Thorn have a good history of training curates: you might remember some who began their ordained ministry here and went on to other things in the diocese and beyond. Since I arrived, I have let it be known that I would welcome the chance to work with a curate. I am pleased to say that Bishop Peter asked me to consider someone who is due to be ordained in July this year.
The person in question is Mrs Ruth Mock. Ruth is currently the Diocesan Family Life Officer, based at Church House in Daresbury, supporting parishes in their work with families. She is a former primary school teacher and mother of three boys – one doing finals, one doing A levels and one doing GCSEs this summer. I believe Ruth will be a great asset to our mission and ministry.
After consulting the Wardens and PCCs of both parishes, I let the diocese know that we would be very happy to work with Ruth and she said that she would be happy to come.
I am pleased to announce that the bishop has offered the post to Ruth and that she has accepted.
I should say that the post is subject to various conditions, but, all being well, Ruth will be ordained deacon on Sunday 2nd July this year.
Obviously, a curate is not simply an “extra pair of hands” – although that would be very useful, of course. We are responsible for providing her with an experience of parish ministry that will set her up for the rest of her life as a priest in the Church of England. Her job title will be ‘Assistant Curate’ and we would expect her to be with us for up to three years.
You will be interested to know that Ruth is married to the Revd David Mock, currently vicar of All Saints and St Barnabas in Macclesfield. David is going to be the next vicar of Barnton and he will be welcomed to his new post on Monday 26th June. Ruth will, of course, be living in Barnton and will travel in to work here with us. She will have a base in the parish office at St Matthew’s Church Hall.
I’m very excited at the prospect of working with Ruth: I think she has a lot to offer and I hope that we will be able to provide her with a good experience at the start of her ordained ministry.
Please pray with us for Ruth and David, and their family, as they prepare for the next stage of their life and ministry.
Every blessing,
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November 21, 2017 March 14, 2018 Becky
Banned for Life: The Newest Member of MLB’s Banned List
There are no rules in international waters, but apparently, there are rules when it comes to signing international players, and the Atlanta Braves broke those rules.
It was announced today that the Braves have to forfeit 12 international prospects as punishment for breaking rules when it came to the packaging of signing bonuses during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 international signing periods. Nine players from 2016-17 and three from 2017-18 will be declared free agents, and the Braves will lose a draft pick next June. In addition, former Braves special assistant Gordon Blakeley will be suspended for one year, and former GM John Coppolella will be placed on the permanently ineligible list. AKA banned for life.
Coppolella joins an eclectic group of players and management who have been kicked out of the league, spanning all the way back to the late 1800s, when baseball got its start in the country.
Here’s just some of the good company that Coppolella will have on the outside looking in:
Eight Chicago White Sox players: Participated in the 1919 Black Sox scandal. PLayers include Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, and of course, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.
Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle: The two were banned in 1980 and 1983, respectively, for being hired by casinos in New Jersey to act as greeters and autograph signers. The two were reinstated in 1985.
Pete Rose: Ya know, bet on some baseball games when he was the manager of the Cincinnati Reds. His ban is still one of the most talked about and discussed issues (mostly when Rose tries to campaign for himself to get reinstated).
George Steinbrenner: Banned in 1990 for paying a private investigator $40,000 to find out information on Yankees player Dave Winfield.
Jenrry Mejia: Baseball’s first idiot to get a lifetime ban for breaking the three strikes rule of steroid use. And he wasn’t even that good.
Chris Correa: The last victim of the list prior to Coppolella. Correa had a role in the whole Cardinals-hacking-the-Astros situation in 2015. He was also sentenced to 46 months in prison for unauthorized access of a protected computer.
And here are some of the ridiculous reasons why people were banned:
Oscar Walker: He contract jumped in 1877 by signing a contract to play for another team while under contract to the team he left. He’s the real pioneer of free agency.
Lip Pike: In 1881, his playing was so bad it was suspicious, and thus he was banned from the National League and added to the blacklist.
Horace Fogel: As the Phillies owner, he was banned in 1912 for publicly saying that umpires favored the New York Giants and were making unfair calls against his team. If this was still a thing now, MLB wouldn’t have any managers or owners.
Benny Kauff: He was banned in 1920 for selling stolen cars.
The majority of the members on the banned list had some involvement in gambling, fixing games, or bribing players to throw games. One can only imagine what someone does next to get on the list. Until then, Coppolella is the most recent appointee.
Becky Yells About Sports
banned list
Previous Fight for My Right to Write
Next Life as a New York Giants Fan in New England – Especially This Season
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"Tangerine Reef" uses song and visuals to express the need to protect the coral reefs. (Image via Youtube)
Sounds x August 27, 2018
Animal Collective and Coral Morphologic’s ‘Tangerine Reef Aims to Save the Coral Reefs
More like Animal Protective.
By Bradley Howlett, Grand Valley State University
On Aug. 17, Animal Collective released their second audiovisual album, “Tangerine Reef,” in collaboration with the Miami-based duo, Coral Morphologic. The project commemorates 2018’s International Year of the Reef (IYOR2018), an initiative that aims to strengthen global awareness about the values of, and threats to, coral reefs and associated ecosystems.
The album consists of 13 songs, that, when played one after the other (and in order), creates a 52-minute mix. All the songs in “Tangerine Reef” can be found on Spotify, just without the visuals. This should be done with caution because the visuals alongside the continuous soundtrack is what makes this project worth checking out.
For those unfamiliar, Coral Morphologic describe themselves as art-science pioneers of avant-garde coral macro-videography. Their current audiovisual album features 20-plus different species of aquatic life that are common to coral reefs. The majority of the organisms pictured are either hard or soft coral, but sea urchins, anemone, mats and cucumbers are also shown.
Animal Collective utilized studio effects, such as panning and reverb, to emulate organic sounds, like being underwater. The instrumental music fits transcendently with the marine life pictured in the video.
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Sometimes it’s hard to believe that some of the video shots shown are even real. Amazingly, Coral Morphologic did not use any CGI or visual effects.
Audibly, the experimental pop-rock band has never sounded more psychedelic, producing alien-like sounds to complement the foreign-looking art. The group also implements vocals, which are not always easily interpreted, and possibly for good reason, because vocals sometimes make little sense alongside visuals when it comes to making a visual album.
I think this is a beautiful collaboration of art that probably required a lot of heartfelt work; however, I also think that the concept may have been a bit better than the execution. The purpose of the album was to give depleting coral reefs a voice. Instead, the vocals come off as either having nothing to do with coral or are very metaphoric.
Animal Collective’s collaboration with Coral Morphologic has raised awareness about the mortality of the coral reef. (Image via PopMatters)
I don’t think the lyrics are the most important aspect of this project, but Animal Collective’s ode to the dwindling organism is definitely hindered by the words they sing, in my opinion.
The vocals fit the video sonically, but the meaning is questionable and requires more transcribing. In the first song of the album, “Hair Cutter,” the line by line lyrics don’t seem relevant to the video of coral or to the concept of the project. “Like a little/Why does she need it?/As strong as something/For a happy customer/Help her sometimes/Better help her often/She kept on working/And sitting by a hair cutter.”
If the lyrics truly have nothing to do with coral (seemingly so) it is a disappointment because, at least to me, this type of deep project needs to be thought-out and cohesive on every level. Almost all of the songs in the album have lyrics. Some are better than others, but most are very misleading.
In the end, the project is still beautiful regardless of the vocals. The videography gets better and better song after song. Some of the synths used sound similar to the likes of Flume, who is notorious for organic-sounding synths.
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So, overall, Animal Collective did relatively well in their collaboration with Coral Morphologic.
Again, the main purpose of the album is to highlight IYOR2018. If you don’t know, corals are, in fact, animals and are classified as anthozoan cnidarians, a taxonomical grouping that includes many marine invertebrates. They can exist as individual polyps or as colonies with hundreds to hundreds of thousand polyps.
When many coral colonies grow together, the result is a reef: a living, growing structure that provides nooks and crannies as protection for many kinds of oceanic wildlife. Over time, large coral reefs provide diverse ecosystems that allow habitation for thousands of marine species.
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The current state of coral reef is depressing. Coral bleaching is happening faster and more often than ever before. Marine biologists around the world agree that the cause is due to the rise in temperature in the ocean. The slight rise in the ocean’s temperature decreases the amount of energy coral can make from available resources. The result is bleaching followed by eventual mortality.
Bleaching can be reverted; however, it will take a major effort to either find a way to lower oceanic temperatures or enable coral to resist the temperature changes. Research is in the works, but help of all kinds is still needed to restore the once stunning coral reefs back to their optimal health.
Kudos to Animal Collective and Coral Morphologic for contributing to this effort. Hopefully they will inspire more artists and scientists to continue to work on this movement.
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Book, culture, Interview, literature, Throwback Thursday, university
A new Bluebird comes to the Lakes – Interview with Vesna Maric
November 27, 2014 Conny Kaufmann Leave a comment
Another Throwback Thursday, and another interview I did while studying Travel Journalism at the University of Cumbria.
I spoke to Bosnian author Vesna Maric about her memoir Bluebird for Words by the Water in 2009.
This interview was first published in Write On! magazine, the official Words by the Water 2009 festival magazine created by the journalism students at the University of Cumbria.
When Vesna Maric first came to the Lake District, she was a 16-year-old refugee from war-torn Bosnia. This year, she returns to Cumbria to promote her memoir Bluebird at Words by the Water.
Bluebird tells Vesna’s story of the outbreak of the Bosnian war in 1992. She takes her readers with her on the bus journey to Penrith as she explores British culture and traditions and life as a not-so-stereotypical refugee through the eyes of a teenager. “I found it fascinating to see all these ordinary people in an extraordinary situation behaving in ways that you may not expect.”
“It showed me that people’s personalities become exaggerated in difficult situations, for better or for worse. Some people were kinder, others more selfish, while others yet broke or flourished under pressure”
Her book has only been released at the beginning of February 2009, so Vesna is biting her fingernails for the big newspapers to review it. “It was chosen for Radio 4’s Book of the Week and that was really fantastic. I was very flattered by that, as I was by the fact that Woman’s Hour wanted to interview me and talk about the book. It’s all been fantastic! I was especially delighted by the Guardian’s review!”.
She started writing the book in 2004, when she was in Miami for two months. It was the much needed time out, which finally made her sit down and start writing, although she had been entertaining the thought for years. “It was a kind of ‘now or never’ moment.” Since then she’s edited it, added to it and chopped it for years, until the final version was finally ready for publication.
Yet Maric is no stranger to the world of writing, and among her published work can count contributions to the Lonely Planet guidebook series dating back to 2004. “I got into it because I wanted to write for a living and travel for a living – so the two things combined perfectly. I was working at the BBC World Service before that, and it was much too office-based for me” she explains. Yet, she is undecided as to whether she’s happiest at home or on the road. “I really love both. I love travelling and getting out of London when I’ve had too much routine.”
Bosnian author Vesna Maric in the Lake District. Her memoir Bluebird was published in 2009. Photo by Rafael Estefania
“It’s a fantastic feeling to be at a grim airport in the morning, on a red-eye flight, feeling rough, and then, two or three hours later, be sitting in Spain or Italy or Croatia, or anywhere else, with a blue sky above you, the sun shining and the sea glittering ahead. Travelling is the perfect way to shrug off the jaded self, to ward of unnecessary distraction, and to take, and lose control over your daily life. It’s liberating” this intrepid traveller justifies.
“But I equally love coming home and falling into my bed – my research trips can be very long, sometimes around two months, so being able to stay in on the sofa, cook at home, and sleep in your own bed becomes a real luxury. And I adore London and miss it terribly wherever I go. There’s no place like it in the world.”
Ever since she first got off the bus that took her from her homeland to the Lake District, Vesna has also had a special relationship with this region. For her first few years as a refugee in the United Kingdom, she lived in Penrith. “I love Cumbria and I feel like it’s my heart’s home in Britain. Well, alongside London.”
Currently, she is working on a novel, for which she took some time off work. “It’s quite exciting to be writing it and I am grateful to have a couple of months off, to dedicate to it.” Her next Lonely Planet gig will be in London, and she is already looking forward to it. “That will be great!”
Vesna will be speaking at Words by the Water on Monday, 2nd March about “Different Cultures, Different Teenage Years”, alongside fellow travel writer Kapka Kassabova. “I do get terrible stage fright, which I try to mind-control rather unsuccessfully” Vesna confesses. “Though at my last reading, I actually managed to not feel like I might have a seizure – for about five minutes. I watch other, really confident writers read and talk on stage and that makes me feel even worse”. But despite all this, Vesna is looking forward to Words by the Water. “There will be quite a few people I know in the audience, which will make it really fun. I hope.”
Bluebird by Vesna Maric
Author: Vesna Maric
Published by: Granta Books
Get Bluebird on Amazon!
BluebirdInterviewVesna MaricWords by the Water
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A Social Sculpture on Trial: Can Ash Studios Act as a Template for DIY Art Spaces Post-Ghost Ship
on February 1, 2018 at 11:12 AM
Experimental art space Ash Studios took the city of Dallas to court yesterday contending that it’s role as a ‘social sculpture’ shouldn’t require the same occupancy restrictions as commercial operations. As we follow the trial through a series of essays and regularly updated reportage, we wonder: What could this case mean for other DIY spaces under siege across the United States post-Ghost Ship?
It’s December 2nd, 2016, and there’s a fire at The Ghost Ship, a DIY art space where creatives not only worked but occasionally lived; where 36 members of Oakland’s artistic community found themselves dancing their last dance. More than a local tragedy, the Ghost Ship fire was also a cause with several unforseen effects. Parents of missing adults, the California Justice Department had 20, 470 reports of missing people around that time, came looking for their children wondering if they’d found a home among the artists who’d made The Ghost Ship theirs.
Movements such as We the Artists of the Bay Area, an organization that has taken a particular interest in preventing displacement for artists as an act of advocacy, access, and education for both the creative and broader community were formed. Other movements, took the fire as an opportunity to participate in actions tantamount to physical destruction of similar art spaces. Internet forum and Right Wing hub 4chan was used as a space to call on like minded users to report on DIY art spaces such as Ghost Ship, spaces labeled “open hotbeds of liberal radicalism.” One such post, which has been wiped from the site in accordance with a policy that limits pages for comments and timing on posts, announced that “…we must crush their nests before they can regroup!” signing off with “MAGA,” and “happy hunting.” Replies offered tips on how to go about the hunt, such as searching colleges, music forums, and Facebook groups, as well as gaining the trust of event organizers as a way to “infiltrate social circles” – these alt-right activists adapting infamous COINTELPRO tactics aimed at these social spaces. It was implied that some of the liberal radicalism stemming from these spaces included hosting Black Lives Matter meetings and other protest actions. In cities across the United States, such as Nashville, Denver, and Baltimore, DIY art spaces were shut down after reports of code violations. 4chan members claimed responsibility. Local fire marshals brought down the hammer, seeming to target art spaces in a similar fashion as the online zealots.
Now, over a year later, Dallas is seeing an increasing number of its own DIY art spaces being cited for code violations and improper COs (certificates of occupancy). Unable to follow up on the fire marshall’s recommendations about what CO to obtain – a process that usually means costly building improvements and limit the activities of spaces known for collaboration across several mediums- these spaces have been forced to cease or extremely alter the nature of the work being produced and presented inside of them.
Meeting at Ash Studios in Dallas
Ash Studios, a DIY art space and social sculpture meant for mixed use and collaboration, which was founded in the vicinity of the people it is meant to serve, is one of these spaces. The standout action taken by Ash has been their unprecedented contestation of their citation and ensuing court battle with the City of Dallas. The citation and fine of $700 was issued in March of 2017 for a performance of “Waiting for Lefty”; a performance attended by an audience of around 20 people and reviewed positively in the Dallas Morning News before the citation was issued by fire marshal Keith Wilson.
Wilson and the city of Dallas have recommended a Commercial Amusement CO, which would require exorbitant upgrades to the space, as well as specific permissions for their gatherings and activities, playing into a system that could keep Ash and other DIY art spaces in Dallas from ever operating at full capacity. Paul Saputo of Saputo Law Firm filed a motion to dismiss which was declined, but not before the Dallas based lawyer was able to make a couple of interesting points.
The request for dismissal was made on the grounds that Ash Studios is not a commercial establishment, and that no CO exists to address the specific functions of a “social sculpture.” Because of this, Ash should be able to resume as normal until a proper CO was created. In his “motion to quash” the citiation, he states that “Ash Studios is a work of social sculpture as this term is ordinarily defined and understood by contemporary artists, art historians, art critics, curators, university-level art courses, and funding bodies for the arts.” This statement was backed up further by a remarkable document acting as expert testimony by SMU Professor of Art Michael Corris, stating that “In contradistinction to other, more conventional forms of art, the majority of the artworks of Ash Studios demand engagement from the public and encourage a sustainable audience of members of the immediate community in which Ash Studios is situated. In my opinion, this interactive and community-building element is the crucial and necessary feature whereby Ash Studios produces social sculpture.”
Sculpture Park outside of Ash Studios
He goes on to define these activities further:
“The Ash Studios collaborative is not simply a platform for the artists who bring the ideas to the community, but a platform as well for the community. This reciprocity is a hallmark of all social sculpture and relational art, which depends first and foremost on the active and equal participation of the community. Reciprocity, in the form of community participation and shared experiences and creativity, is also the hallmark of all of Ash Studio’s projects.
Ash Studios has structured its programs and events in order to facilitate the dispersion of cultural teaching, learning, and sharing to the broader context of living.”
The people and community served, as well as the established nature and reputation of the space, built context for its importance, and Saputo spoke of the legal rights of co-founder Fred Villanueva, who was called to the stand as one of only two witnesses – fire marshal Keith Wilson was the second – to “prevent the destruction of his work,” going on to say that what the city is doing, in the case of Ash and similar spaces, is “akin to ripping up an artist’s canvas and setting it on fire.”
Group painting at Ash Studios, including co-founders Fred Villanueva (top) and Darryl Ratcliff (bottom right).
Using the presence of four walls and a roof and gathers people for events as an assertion that Ash Studios must secure the proper building CO, the judge set an initial trial date of January 3rd. As of January 3rd, Villanueva has been told by the authorities responsible that Ash is not a space that would be able to resume normal activities under a Commercial Amusement CO, a point raised by Villanueva in court when he testified that the CO seemed appropriate for a “video game parlour” under the city of Dallas’s guidelines. Not only is Ash Studios not a video game parlour, it is also not a commercial enterprise.
On January 3rd, Saputo was present as legal representation for Villanueva hours before the case would have began. Villanueva was present at court minutes after Saputo. While the court date was officially set for 8:30 AM, you’re called when you’re called in Municipal Court, and it was nearer to 10 AM when the case was actually to be presented. Witnesses for the city were not yet present; the city attorney’s response? Calling on a court statute that would allow him not to “make an announcement,” or not to participate in the trial in layman’s terms. The case was rescheduled for the end of the month. Prior to the motion for dismissal and January 3rd court date, rescheduling had become a tactic for the city, which rescheduled court dates a total of four times prior to hearing the motion, according to Villanueva.
Prior to the initial court date, Ash Studios cofounder Darryl Ratcliff said in a written statement: “Our motivation for contesting the citation has a lot to do with the greater environment of the Fire Marshals’ systematic targeting of cultural spaces and the unintended policy effect this has had. Dallas has lost at least 12 existing cultural spaces due to this policy, and there are probably dozens more that do not exist because of this policy. Dallas has lost some of its best cultural talent because of this policy, and is struggling to recruit new talent. This policy has drained Dallas of creative energy at a critical time. Creatives are afraid to invest their energy in a regulatory environment that will punish their entrepreneurism and creativity by shutting down their openings and their events and issuing fines. No other major city in America – all of whom have similar problems, all of whom reacted to the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland – is operating a punitive cultural policy to the extent of Dallas. Although we appreciate the efforts of city staff who have been working on this issue, the reality is that Dallas is substantially less interesting and culturally vital than it was before this policy was implemented.”
While Ash Studios stands alone in contesting their closure, an effort for which they received the offer of a $12 discount on the fine and no more citations as an attempt to settle, the precedent this case will set is one that affects DIY art spaces in Dallas and beyond. “This art gallery isn’t being singled out,” says the city attorney. That is true, and that is the problem. This art gallery isn’t being singled out: art galleries are being singled out. The necessity of the collaborative nature of a social sculpture is being overlooked or misunderstood by the fire marshal and courts, a detrimental action for the greater artistic and cultural communities of the entire state. To what end?
We will be updating this text as the trial progresses in what could prove to be a landmark case in the ongoing closures of DIY art spaces around the nation in the wake of the Ghost Ship tragedy, commenting on the uneasy place that experimental art spaces occupy in urban environments outside of commercialized development narratives. We will include reportage on the trial itself, statements from Ash Studios, and excerpts from the expert testimony both as a detailed look at this trial and as a potential template for others facing similar citations, fines and closures both now and in the future.
DallasEssays
Ash StudiosDarryl RatcliffFred VillanuevaGhost ShipInstituent PracticesMichael CorrisSocial sculpture
Ashley is writer and creative professional with the ability to look at various influences and mediums through a singular lens of artistic context, for a unique worldview and voice. Having studied art abroad as a part of her higher education, and worked with organizations such as MoMA PS1, Ashley’s work has appeared in publications such as TriBeCa based The Untitled Magazine, and North TX focused Arts + Culture.
DMYCC at roaming projects
A Social Sculpture on Trial, part two: Art has a boundary and a price
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Talk About Pop Music
Streaming Forward, Powered By The Past – if you love 80s music, new music, Eurovision, cheesy pop and awesome playlists then let's get this pop party started!
MUSIC BIBLES
THE DAILY POPCAST
STOP! LOOK! PLAYLIST!
PLAY. LIST. LOVE.
PLAYLIST STORIES
COVER Vs ORIGINAL
Posted on March 14, 2020 March 14, 2020 by Christopher Smith
FRESH: ‘Sick Of The Sound’ – Ben Davidson
Ben Davidson is back with “Sick Of The Sound”
Ben Davidson, who we have been following closely over the past two years, has released his brand new single, the gorgeous “Sick Of The Sound”, which, once again, showcases his outstanding vocal ability. The song follows last year’s new track “Anything” and is Ben’s first release of 2020 in anticipation of his second full length album. “Anything”, released through SP Music in July 2019, reached No.58 on Poptastic Confessions Top 100 of 2019. Ben also featured on the superb DSM single “In The Rain” which was released in September 2019. The single reached No.26 on the LGBTQ Music Chart.
Ben started his singing career at 15, after successfully auditioning for the boyband ‘Most Wanted’, taking lead vocals, and going on to tour the UK; with acts such as Westlife, S Club 7, Jamelia, 911 and the Sugababes. He released his debut Energise single “The Chain” in 2017. His debut album “No One Knows” was released the following year reaching No.2 on the UK iTunes Vocal Album Chart and No.39 on the iTunes Album Chart in Switzerland. The Album saw single releases of “Fallin’ In” (runner up for single of the year at the LGBTQ Music Awards), “Learning To Let You Go“, “No One Knows” and “Dirty Mirrors“, a duet with X Factor UK Finalist Sean Smith.
“Sick Of The Sound” is released through SP Music. The track was written by Ben, Dan Scholes and Paul Coxhead and also produced by Dan Scholes. The EP features a Heavenly Mix produced by DSM and remixes by FNK’D UP DJ & Handbag House. The EP also features a Handbag House Megamix. As well being available on digital and streaming platforms the EP is available on a limited edition signed CD. The single will be accompanied by a music video which was shot in New York.
You can purchase Ben’s new single through the SP Music Management store here
Stay in touch with Ben through his WEBSITE, his FACEBOOK page and follow him on TWITTER
Don’t forget to follow all the songs featured on our FRESH music feature. Enjoy!
Submit your songs to us via SubmitHub, MusoSoup or MySphera to be guaranteed a listen. Boost your streams, discover new fans and increase sales with the Indie Spotify Bible.
This entry was posted in:Fresh Music
Tagged with:Ben Davidson, Ben Davidson Sick Of The Sound
Written by Christopher Smith
So perhaps you’ve read an article or two that I’ve written and wondered “just who is this character?”! Well I thought maybe it would be time to introduce myself and what I’m all about. Well it’s all about the music! Having been born in the late 1970’s I was heavily influenced by my parent’s love of ‘popular’ music and rock and roll of the 1950’s and 60’s. My Mother always said she should of married Elvis and my father was, and is still, in love with Sandie Shaw! But while my Dad’s tastes stopped in about 1967, my Mum carried on loving music throughout the 70’s, 80’s and beyond. My first memory was playing on the floor whilst my Mother was ironing one day with the radio on, and hearing ABBA’s “Super Trouper” dancing my nappy off to it! Maybe that’s where it all went wrong…?! Having been subjected to all and sundry in my infant years, I finally found my feet in the mid-1980’s and began ‘partying’ to the likes of Culture Club, Stevie Wonder(!), Elkie Brooks and Bananarama to name but a few! The year 1987 would have a profound effect on my listening tastes and from thereon in my life would be dominated with buying and listening to music. Any number of outstanding songs were released and listened to that year, most notably “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and “La Isla Bonita”. That Summer my mind was completely taken over with music and sounds I’d never heard before and I was totally taken in by it all. My father would say “whaaar rubbish you got on naaaaao?” (I’m from Norfolk!) but I was hooked. And it continued so for the rest of the decade and the next. At the beginning of 1988 I ‘met’ my true love and the singer I’ve worshipped more than any other artist or group. You may know of her. She’s from Australia…! Aside from pop music, my tastes are many and varied and continues to grow and expand as I ‘mature’ in age. I’ve always been heavily interested in films and in particular the mechanics of film making and of course film music, so scores and subsequently orchestral music takes up a lot of my tastes and collection. 90’s dance and club tunes also takes up much of the space in my head and I’m surprised my brain has stopped shaking from the years of abuse it took being dragged to nightclubs, often three times a week in my 20’s! I find with each year that passes I regress back to my youth and of course the 1980’s. 80’s music dominates and the lust to see as many 80’s acts and singers play live now is insatiable. I’m still getting into the groove as much as every breath I take, but I’m never gonna give up listening to my heart and pumping up the volume, simply because I LOVE MUSIC…any kind of music!
View all posts by Christopher Smith
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INDIE BIBLE
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Rogers architect and developer Collins Haynes dies at 70
by Paul Gatling ([email protected]) December 15, 2020 2:44 pm 2,328 views
Collins Haynes
Collins Haynes, a noted architect and developer in Northwest Arkansas, died Dec. 8. He was 70. No cause of death was included in an announcement from HCH Consulting, a Rogers company owned by his son, Hunter Haynes.
Collins Haynes was born in Jackson, Miss. on July 5, 1950. He earned a master’s degree in architecture from Tulane University in 1973, beginning his career as an architect.
According to his obituary, Haynes was named partner at design firm Walk Jones and Francis Mah Inc. in Memphis in 1973. His planning and design experience there included master planning of Shelby State Community College in Memphis and the Memphis Publishing Co. building.
Haynes sold his interest in the firm in 1980 and relocated to Rogers. He served as a visiting professor at the University of Arkansas School of Architecture. He later renovated several historical buildings in downtown Rogers and Eureka Springs. He also designed Beau Chene Farms, the first gated community in Rogers.
Haynes’ reputation was bolstered by his work as a developer in Rogers’ Pinnacle Hills area. He was instrumental in the design and development of Pinnacle Point and Metro Park office parks. He was also instrumental in the Springwoods development in west Fayetteville.
Haynes was an original partner in the real estate investment group The Pinnacle Group and the original developer of Pinnacle Point, along with Dave Watson. The rest of the Pinnacle Group investors bought into the firm later. Bill Schwyhart invested in 1999, while J.B. Hunt, Tim Graham and Robert Thornton joined in 2003. Haynes sold his interests in The Pinnacle Group the following year.
Haynes served on the board of trustees of The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas, and in 2011 the Haynes-Audubon Trust donated 122 acres of wetlands to the city of Fayetteville.
According to the death announcement, Haynes reunited with his ex-wife, Joyce Haynes, in 2012 after 25 years apart. They enjoyed life on the Elk River with their dogs and horses on their farm in Pineville, Mo. Other survivors include a daughter, Lyndall Haynes and son-in-law Sergio Casselles of Denia, Spain; a son, Hunter Haynes, of Fayetteville; two grandchildren, Harlowe and Henley Haynes of Fayetteville; and a sister, Cindy Anderson and brother-in-law Kurt Anderson of Franktown, Colo.
Funeral services won’t be held until summer 2021. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking for donations to the Rogers Public Art Commission.
Design Excellence Program supports multiple downtown projects in Northwest Arkansas
COVID-19 deaths in Arkansas top 3,000; second vaccine could soon arrive
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Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp reveals injured Lucas Leiva to be out of action for around six weeks
4th March 2016, 2:37 pm
Updated: 4th March 2016, 2:39 pm
Lucas Leiva in action for Liverpool in the League Cup final
Liverpool midfielder Lucas Leiva is facing up to six weeks on the sidelines, manager Jurgen Klopp has confirmed.
The Brazilian suffered a thigh strain taking a penalty – which he missed – during his side’s shootout defeat to Manchester City in the League Cup final.
He subsquently missed the midweek 3-0 win over City at Anfield in the Premier League, and Klopp has revealed he is unlikely to return to action until the middle of April.
“It is really unfortunate and a little bit more serious as I’ve never heard of an injury like this with a penalty,” said the German, ahead of Sunday’s trip to Crystal Palace.
“I don’t know exactly how long but he’ll be out for five to six weeks.”
But there is some good news for Liverpool, with striker Daniel Sturridge fit to start against Palace.
The striker was rested for the win over City along with midfielder Philippe Coutinho, who is also expected to return to the starting XI at Selhurst Park.
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No. 29 Contents
Tony Visconti Bonus
by Larry Crane
In the intro for the Tape Op book you mention how you used to battle the old analog tape machines to get good sounds. You seem to like both now though.
Well, everyone is saying digital is getting better and better. People forget that analog is getting better and better too. It's not static. Now, people are waxing lyrical about those great records in the '70s and '60s and how they sounded, that analog sound. I cut my teeth on 4-track — in those days you couldn't record at an elevated level. Analog tape really distorted. It sounded like shit. It distorted, it wasn't just saturated. There's a point where there's saturation and then you can go beyond saturation into pure distortion. So you had to record conservatively if you wanted to get a vocal where the tape didn't automatically d-ess it, or the kick drum didn't just disappear completely. On the way in it would sound like a big kick drum, but on the way out it'd be a few dBs down if you hit the tape too hard. So it was a delicate balance to record. It was a real art, you had to know your tape, you had to know that machine you were on, the console, the meters. The meters especially were always deceptive. That was the hardest thing for me to find out, the difference between a VU meter and a PPM meter and what that means in terms of level. It was so many factors when you were recording in those days. You had to be very, very careful. Nowadays, you just fucking slam the tape. There's no parameters anymore. Analog is great now. It's really super, and it probably will get better — if people want to invest in it. So anyway, about 30 years ago, if you went beyond 0 level it was trash. And now that some of the early analog rock things are on CD, you can actually hear the distortion, not just the saturation, but the distortion. The oxide was so bad compared to what it is now, I used to actually see a little mountain of oxide after a long day's mixing. EMI made their own brand of tape in those days, and I worked on [Wings'] Band On The Run album as an arranger, and Geoff Emerick told me that when they came back from Africa so much oxide fell off that tape that you could hold it up to the light and see through it. You could see shapes through the tape. So the first thing he did was he put it on an 8-track deck and he copied it over to a 16-track machine. And he had to compress every single track because of the drop outs. So if people are waxing lyrical, if they think that's romantic… you know now they freak out if there's a drop out in digital or something like that. In those days it was a constant battle against that poorly made tape. So you're constantly doing a salvage job. If your kick drum comes back, you wouldn't just monitor it that way. You'd have to put a little EQ on it, a little compression, whatever to make it sound as big as it did when it came in. And the joke was like when the group came in, they're only hearing the playback, but you heard how it went in live, and when it came back it wasn't quite as good. Now, say what you want about digital, but basically, what goes in comes out. So if the kick drum is slamming in digital, it's going to slam on playback too. So people are mistaking a medium for a craft. What we did was we used our craft to make that shit tape sound good. That's what we did.
You had Malcolm upstairs designing equalizers…
Yeah, Malcolm Toft and really you had to be… you know musicians were like five times what they are today in those days. There's some great ones that are dead now, or maybe too old to work, and I learned from the best guys, including Malcolm Toft. He taught me ever so much. But you know, when people talk about analog what they're talking about is that process, from beginning to end. Like in the 4-track days we'd have to bounce it to another machine — that's like three or four generations. That's not a beautiful sound after a while. But analog does have a smooth sound to it. The low end can be nice. But again, it's not what's going in, it's what's coming out. It's a little unpredictable, also unmeasurable. And I could accept that. But when digital got really good, that's when I made the switch. I admit in the early days, 16 bit… my first CD I heard I said, "This is terrible." The first batch of CDs that came back I said, "This is no advancement in sound." But I think both mediums are getting very close to each other, and 5 years from now it'll be laughable that you even can compare the two. I've done some hot, warm digital recordings where I've even fooled the mastering engineer, because I'm using my old techniques. You could use tube pre amps and compressors and even plug-ins to fool the ear. And I will admit that there are some people that are blessed or maybe cursed with super sensitive hearing, but that accounts for maybe two percent of the population. Most people have my hearing. Most people aren't going to analyze music that closely, sonically. What they're listening to is the song and the artist. The band. So you can get crazy with this. It's almost an unarguable topic when it comes down to what the end result is going to be. These days it's still CD, you're not making vinyl anymore, at least not like they used to. So it's that long chain of processes that people call analog but it's not analog, you know.
You get a lot of arrangement work. I thought you must have gone to a music college, but then I read that you dropped out of high school at 15 and started playing music full time. So where did you learn arrangement and that? Do you write charts, do you read music?
Yeah. When I was in high school I did get my diploma in summer school. I didn't drop out, I was two years ahead. I just made that May 1st deadline when I was a kid, so when I was in kindergarten I was four. And then when I was in junior high I was skipped a year because I had a high IQ or something like that. My marks were terrible, but they thought I was bored, so they put me in this progressive class, thinking that my marks would improve, which actually they did. So I was 15 1/2 when I was a senior. I just dropped out of the last few months. Then they told me because I was under 16 I couldn't drop out, so I had to go back to school. Dammit, I hated it. So I had four years of high school. And what was really cool was my music teacher believed in me, the head of the music department, so he got me out of gym and got me another music class. Those were the days when they had great music programs in public schools. So my first period was military band, where I would play tuba, and my second period would be orchestra where I would play double bass. I learned double bass, I played cello, violin, I was in the percussion section, I played Glockenspiel, so I was one of the few kids who could really read well. And I started guitar lessons at 11, so by the time I hit high school I was a very good reader. And I was always in band with guys like horn players in my youth, and even though they were rock n' roll players, the horn players were studying music and they could read. So that's when I started working on my arrangement chops. I would write little charts for them, they'd love it. During high school I had music theory for the full four years, and then my teacher saw how well I was doing, so he would teach me privately. And I had another private teacher for arrangement. I studied this thing called the Shillinger System of Musical Composition. I studied that for a while privately. And I wanted to go to university, but at 17 I was working full time, I was a full time musician, and what's the point, you know. And I would continue to write and when I went up to England, that was one of the main reasons I was brought up to England. My boss, Denny Cordell, wanted an all round co-producer. He couldn't read or write [music]. He said, "I want you to write for 20 strings." And I turned white. It was so frightening. I was used to writing for my horn players. But I love classical music. I was playing classical bass and all that. And I would read Beethoven and Mozart and learn the voicings from how they voiced the string section, and I'd apply that. And then I'd listen to George Martin, and I'd say, "That's what he did. He listened to Bach…" He's taking something classical and old and tried and true and putting it in a pop context, so I just worked it out. And I just imitated him for a few years until I developed some tricks of my own.
Have you ever told him that?
Yes. I had the greatest chat with him a couple years ago. I was doing a string section at his studio in London. It was all computer print out, I'm writing directly in the computer now instead of pencil and paper, and I showed it to him. And he said, "Oh, I'm using another program." And here he is, in his 70s, and he's on his computer, right on the cutting edge. And I told him how much he inspired me. A lot of guys my age say, "Oh, Phil Spector was my inspiration." He wasn't. George Martin was my inspiration.
What other producers and arrangers?
Jack Nietzche was great. Whoever the guy is that wrote the strings to the Shirelles "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow". You know I get bits and pieces from other people, other producers. I like Pink Floyd productions. Alan Parsons, I think, is great, but he didn't inspire me 'cause we're about the same age, we grew up together. See Phil Spector, he had that personality. He stamped that personality on his productions.
Not invisible.
No. Totally, totally visible. So he wouldn't be my favorite kind of producer. I think George Martin is quite invisible. He actually has put out records, and you can hear he's got his own thing. But with the Beatles he just would do what was appropriate, which was beautiful.
Interviews | No. 55
Hugh Padgham: The Police, XTC, Yes, Peter Gabriel, more...
Sometimes we interview people who have had extensive careers in recording, yet my record collection only contains a few things they have worked on. With Hugh Padgham the case is different. He's worked...
Behind the Gear | No. 94
Jamie Howarth: Behind the Gear with Plangent Processes
A while back I was working on a restoration process for an album that was long out of print. The only materials I had to work from were a ridiculously scratched vinyl LP and some 7-inch reference...
Robbie Lackritz: Feist, Bahamas, Zeus
by Jesse Lauter
Discovering a brand-new head-turning rock song rarely seems to happen these days. Fortunately in early 2012, NPR Music posted Zeus' "Are You Gonna Waste My Time?" as their Song of the Day. For a...
Interviews | No. 116
Dan Wilson: The History Behind the Hits
by Jon Regen
"I'm elusive, even to the people who work for me," Dan Wilson says via phone from an airport-bound taxi, after his management team finally secured a coveted interview slot for me. If the famed...
Hardware Write Blockers: No Worry, No Write
by Tony Smith
With decreasing costs and increasing storage capacities, hard disk drives have become the ubiquitous nomads of studio environments. When the network is too slow and the project deadline was...
Hip-Hop | No. 101
Just Blaze: Jay-Z, Eminem, Kanye, Drake
by Zac Meyer
Justin Smith, better known as Just Blaze, catapulted to the upper echelon of hip hop in the early '00s as the producer behind a string of hits with Jay-Z and Roc-A-Fella Records. He has been in high...
Steve King: Made In Detroit: Aretha Franklin to Eminem
by Jerry Jensen
Steve King has recorded Aretha Franklin, The Winans, George Clinton, The Dramatics, Sponge, Was (Not Was), 50 Cent and Eminem [Marshall Mathers]. Here's his story, or part of it, from green recruit to...
Rudy Van Gelder: Recording Coltrane, Miles, Monk, etc.
by Sasha Zand
"Rudy Van Gelder has sadly passed away at 91 years of age. He was one of the first 'home recordists' and made some of the most iconic jazz recordings of all time in his parent's living room. He was...
Mike Dean: Hip-Hop Producer/Mixer
If you’re a hip-hop fan it’s almost impossible not to know the name Mike Dean, as his sound is woven so deeply into the last quarter century of music. A low-key legend who prefers to let...
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Unbidden protection
Pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 forced us to learn a lot not only about Virology and epidemiology, but also on the immune system. The presumption that immunity protects the body against external threats proved to be right not always. Many victims COVID-19 not ruining coronavirus as it is death brings their own white blood cells of the patient, which destroy lung tissue, firing the infected cells, and bred such inflammatory panic (the so-called “cytokine storm”) which the body can not cope.
Now I have to question another thesis from a school textbook: the vaccination protects against the pathogen from which it is made.
The vaccine, apparently, there are many side effects — both positive and adverse — and some of them we can turn to his advantage in the fight against coronavirus.
Kill another
When the body is put to the stranger, the immune system needs time to locate him, to report him to higher authorities (lymph nodes, bone marrow and spleen) and to adjust the troops. Much more convenient it would be if the army was already in combat readiness. And the need for this vaccine.
Vaccination is a disease in miniature. We infect your body with the pathogen, but he is so weak and passive that war immunity ends with him winning the first battle, the winners do not bear the losses and then switch to patrol the territory.
But what happens if opponents will be not one, but two — that is, if shortly after the introduction of the vaccine, the body will get another one, another pathogen?
The fact that at the beginning of hostilities in the attack are soldiers of innate immunity that are not fantasy. The tactics of the battle is not depends on who they got in the opponents. For example, the antiviral response begins with the type 1 interferons are proteins that trigger the cell mode of “emergency”. In this mode, the cell slows down its synthesis of DNA, RNA and proteins, in the event of her capture the virus could not multiply. And if so, then it does not matterwho is attacking the body and how many of them — emergency smothers any enterprise.
Therefore, we can assume that if your body is hit by a coronavirus, and you just declared a state of emergency in the event of war with the vaccine, if not stop, at least slow down the invasion of new invaders. Based on this, the American virologist Konstantin Chumakov, who is engaged in the evaluation of the effectiveness and safety of vaccines to the FDA (the American Ministry of health), offered to fight the coronavirus with the long-studied attenuated polio vaccine. He inherits his parents —n virologists Marina Voroshilova and Michael Chumakov — who were involved in the introduction of the live polio vaccine in the USSR in 50-ies of XX century.
Mass vaccination has not only allowed for half a century to get from the two types of polioviruses of the three, but also led to unexpected consequences, directly with non-polio. For example, in 2000-ies in African Guinea-Bissau vaccination has reduced the mortality of children by 19 percent — in the years when polio in the country no one was sick. Chinese scholars noted that children vaccinated against polio, were more likely to have an infectious inflammation of the mouth and on the limbs. And in our country, according to Chumakov, Jr., the campaign of vaccination against polio back in the 1970-ies reduced the death rate from seasonal flu four times. And as soon as the vaccine was a great help in the fight against other viruses, why not use these weapons again?
The polio vaccine has obvious advantages: it is well-known, well-studied and is inexpensive. However, there are some subtleties.
The fact that polio vaccines for two. The first mentioned live attenuated — her kids dropped in the mouth or fed on the sugars. And the second is inactivated, it is injected into a muscle injection.
Inactivated appeared before: it is safer, but less effective. Parents Konstantin Chumakov fought for the introduction of a live vaccine, which gives stronger immune response, and since then all over the world use it. But gradually, as getting rid of poliovirus, countries began to switch back to inactivated vaccine, in order not to put at risk people with weakened immune systems.
If you now start again EN masse to use a live vaccine, there is a chance that people at risk may suffer. Therefore, even for long-familiar vaccines require thorough testing (they are going to, for example, in our country). And if this method of shaking up the immune system and become someone else’s salvation, only for those who have not yet sick and those who need extra protection in the first place, doctors.
Immunity beguiled
But if the idea of a polio vaccine still seems intuitive — after all, the cure for one virus may be helpful from others — while others seem much more strange.
For example, many were inspired when the new York scientists estimate that in countries with mass vaccination against tuberculosis deaths from coronavirus lowerthan in those where the vaccination program was shut down. If these results are confirmed, it would mean that some countries where TB is defeated and the vaccination is required (e.g.,) could relieved exhale: if not TB, so at least coronavirus will be held on a tangent.
But tuberculosis is caused by bacteria — and COVID-19 are caused by viruses.
The article quickly criticized: correlation called irrelevant, and the technique is questionable (among other things, the authors compared the country depending on the average income of the population, which does not always match the quality of the medicine). But after the tel Aviv doctors compared the death rate from coronavirus among Israelis unvaccinated and vaccinated migrants and put an end to this story — the mortality in these groups did not differ. Exhale will not work.
However, the idea is to compare the mortality rate depending on the vaccination history was not born on a level place. Like the polio vaccine, which is credited with the ability to prevent other viral infections, the vaccine against tuberculosis is also the fact of the matter is there are amazing properties.
Tuberculosis vaccine is a weakened strain of bovine tubercle Bacillus, Mycobacterium bovis (also called Bacillus Calmette-guérin, named for their inventors, hence, the reduction of BCG, Bacille Calmette-Guerin). It is akin to the human tubercle Bacillus — M. tuberculosis.
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Time Frames and Taboo Data Blog
The official blog for Time Frames and Taboo Data, by C.M. Houck.
Archive for winter solstice
Posted in Astronomy, Atheist, belief, Christianity, culture, faith, Hebrew scripture, history, prehistory, religion, scriptures, Social, theology with tags "Light of the World", birthdays of various saviors, Capricorn, Christian faith, longest night of the year, Pagan wisdom, seasonal constellation backddrops, Talmud, winter solstice, Yule on December 13, 2014 by chouck017894
Winter Solstice in Faith System Disguises
Posted in Atheist, belief, Christianity, culture, faith, Hebrew scripture, prehistory, random, religion, scriptures with tags Advent, ancient cosmic knowledge, astronomy in faith, Hanukkah, Ramadan, virgin birth, winter solstice on November 9, 2013 by chouck017894
Every year as the hours of daylight grow progressively less in the Northern Hemisphere, western organized faith systems burst forth during the approach of the Winter Solstice in lavish demonstrations of belief that a one-time event occurred just for them a couple of thousand years ago at this time of year. In truth, that which is being celebrated is actually the cyclic celestial panorama which activates the seasons and which has set the pace of life on planet Earth for many millions of years.
Bluntly, it has been astrophysical features that have served as the basis for many portions of scriptural stories which are marketed as “holy” accounts. And it is the two major turning points in the year–the solstices–which have been artfully disguised in sacred tales and which have allowed practitioners of divine deception (faith systems) to manipulate large masses of people.
The seasonal change occurring with the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere signals a time of renewal and revival in Nature. That regulatory cyclic change which is spoken of as “solstice” comes from the Latin word sol, meaning Sun, and the Latin word sistere, past participle of stit, meaning “to stand.” The illusion in the Northern Hemisphere that the Sun moves southward periodically in the winter and northward in the spring is, as we know today, caused by Earth’s axial tilt as it orbits the Sun. In the Northern Hemisphere the Sun appears to reach its most southern point on December 21, and appears to begin a northward movement on December 25. In pre-Christian Rome the twenty-fifth of December was therefore known and celebrated as Natalis Solis Invict, meaning “birthday of the Sun.”
With the approach of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the star Murzim or Murzar (in constellation Canis Major) rises upon the eastern horizon. The name Murzim is said to mean “the Announcer,” and it precedes the appearance of the star Sirius—the brightest star in the sky—which, in turn, seemingly heralds the greater light of the Sun that is to come. Remember, Jesus allegedly said of himself, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). The month preceding the Winter Solstice (November) carried great significance in ancient cultures, and it is from Pagan study and awe of astronomical movements that the observance of Advent (from Latin adventus, “the coming”) was introduced into Catholic formality around 600 by Pope Gregory the Great. This allowed the faith system’s representatives four Sundays before the solstice to utilize the declining light of the Sun as reminder of God’s power, and it was inferred that it was only by the flock’s continuous obedience that the power continued in glory. In Pagan antiquity the commencement of the new yearly cycle was celebrated after the perceptible northward movement of the Sun was certain; then it was perceived as the “Deliverer” or “Redeemer.”
In Judaism the festival of Hanukkah, meaning “dedication” (to the light which will be increasing), is observed within the same seasonal period of the approaching Winter Solstice, being celebrated from the 25th of Kislev (third month of the Jewish calendar) to the first of Tevet (which overlaps December and January). This is known variously as the Festival of Lights, Feast of Dedication, and Feast of the Maccabees. The increase of light for the Northern Hemisphere is disguised here in the story of the Temple of Jerusalem having been rededicated to Yahweh by Judas Maccabaeus in 165 BCE, which had been profaned by Antiochus VI Epiphanes, King and overlord of Syria. Three years earlier, 168 BCE, on the date corresponding to December 25 in the Gregorian calendar, the Syrian king had dedicated the captured Temple in Jerusalem to the worship of Zeus Olympius. When Maccabaeus recaptured Jerusalem, the Temple was purged and a new altar replaced the desecrated one. This re-dedication was then planned to be celebrated for eight days, but woe!–supposedly only one cruse of pure olive oil, blessed by the priest, could be found. Yahweh intervened and that single cruse of oil burned miraculously for the whole eight days! Yahweh’s holy light prevailed.
The connection of the Muslim fast Ramadan to the Winter Solstice is far less obvious, due partly to Mohammad’s (or his scribe’s) misunderstanding of Jewish/Christian myths which allowed for their disguised ceremonial observance of the Winter Solstice period. The link to the Winter Solstice became lost in Islamic observation due to the Muslim year being calculated according to lunar phases instead of solar cycles. Also, being from a desert culture the seasonal changes were not such an obvious yearly transitional event as it was to those in higher latitudes. Therefore Islamic holidays seemingly “relocate” through each season, and in a period of about thirty-three years Ramadan makes a complete cycle of the solar year. For these reasons the Muslim celebration of Laylat-al-Qadr, meaning “the Night of Power,” which is held on the evening of the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month of their year calculation because Mohammed allegedly received his first revelation in this timeframe. Thus, although Ramadan seems not to be obviously related to the “infidel’s” recognition of the approaching increase of light (symbolizing revelation), the fasting and rites of the Night of Power were inspired by the disguised Jewish/Christian observances of the Winter Solstice.
Now back to the Christian faith system observation, which, of these three sister faith systems, is more closely aligned with prehistory (Pagan) wisdom that had deeper understanding of our direct relationship to cosmic forces. It was not any priests who initiated the Jesus cult in Rome; it was Roman aristocrats and literati, for prehistory wisdom was known and revered by them. The Winter Solstice was referred to by the ancient ones as “Mother Night,” and this was because the star Spica, the brightest star in constellation Virgo, the virgin, appears on the meridian at midnight during the longest night. This is why Christian lore relates that the Virgin (symbolic of the cosmic void) gave birth to a divine son (the Sun) which characterizes the Life Principle. Light begins to increase in the Northern Hemisphere after the Sun’s intercourse with darkness, and so light is “born” again—out of itself. Thus the Winter Solstice figuratively marks the “birthday” of life-giving light, and this prehistory acknowledgment of the life supporting Sun’s movements was absorbed into the Christian faith system and dubbed “Christmas,” i.e. Christs’s Mass.
As noted, constellation Virgo makes its appearance on the horizon at the decisive point of the Winter Solstice period, and this is the basis for all the stories of world saviors that were said to have been born of a virgin. The returning light was reason for celebration and gift giving, and this accounts for the gifts borne by the Magi or wise men or kings to such saviors (of spirit) as Zoroaster, Mithras, Tammuz, Jesus, and others.
That respect for ancient wisdom by the Roman authors of earliest Jesus cult texts gradually became smothered by those who awoke to the possible manipulative power that the new cult offered as a mechanism for social and political control. It was the passion for material power, not spiritual enlightenment and guidance that drove men to weave myths upon the ancient cosmic knowledge and build corporate-style “faith” businesses upon them.
Posted in belief, faith, Inspiration, nature, Pantheism, random, religion with tags cycle of renewal, Earth and Heaven, interrelatedness of all life, religion, spirituality, winter solstice on December 1, 2012 by chouck017894
Each year the Sun reestablishes its apparent northward movement on the 25th of December, marking the position at which light begins to increase in the northern hemisphere. This phenomenon is much grander in scope and more awesome in infinite power than is any imagined virgin birth of a demigod or some oil lamp in a temple allegedly burning on limited oil for eight days. The interaction of planet Earth and the Sun is in every way a much truer covenant extended to all life by the creative universal power than are the ego-gratifying stories of special favor extended by god only to some select assemblage of people.
For our ancient ancestors—those much maligned Pagans—who felt a more intimate connection with nature and the observable heavens than is acknowledged today, there was no egotistical need to disguise the natural occurrences such as the solstice and equinox periods as being some mythic miracle performed only for a favored few.
For seven days following the end of the Winter Solstice (Dec. 25), which was honored by the Pagans as “Mother Night,” the beginning of increasing light was reason for celebration and the exchange of gifts among family and friends to acknowledge the approach of production and abundance. And in this period, in recognition of the true miracle of the Sun’s support of life, the customary salutation upon parting with loved ones or friends was the blessing, “May your light increase.”
After seven days of celebration from Earth’s apparent emergence from the long nights, the routine chores of life were taken up anew, and a new cycle was calculated from the end of that seven-day celebration period. Thus the time of the New Year observance that is today recognized across much of the world has its foundation in Pagan recognition of the scientific principles that are active throughout the universe and demonstrated in the Earth/Sun relationship.
The awe-inspiring universe was perceived by Pagan cultures to be a living thing–a vast unified consciousness. When the Pagans looked out into the universe they identified something at work that was much grander in scope than do the constraining faith systems of today which choose to imagine some humanlike personification presiding over and directing that all-embracing power. The Pagans felt an intimacy with that enfolding universal power which the practice of ecclesiasticism can never experience. The spiritual attunement of the ancient Pagans with the surrounding universe confirmed for them the interrelatedness of all things. They would judge as weirdly unrealistic the religious interpretations postulated by self-serving faith systems today that Creation’s power is separate, distant and aloof from everything that is made manifest.
Humankind’s invented hierarchical faith systems always have an unfortunate tendency to leave their followers with vague, uneasy feelings of being unfulfilled, which inevitably erodes their spirit with unrecognized resentment. By ignoring Nature and the universe, and focusing exclusively upon itself, these faith systems have become systems in which one must will themselves to believe rather than feel one’s unity with it all. Intricately structured faith systems such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam are not faiths that can be assessed as arising from natural expressions of consciousness. They are, unfortunately, faith systems that encourage a denial of compassion for all things and beings that coexist with them in spite of their faith system’s self-set boundaries. The reason behind their negative approach to Creation’s wealth of diversity is that allowing oneself to be open to feel compassion for all life is curtly dismissed by male-dominated faith systems as a feminine aspect and is therefore unworthy to be cultivated. In other words, such faith systems are formulated to gratify their egos through carefully crafted hypocrisy.
It is unlikely that each individual’s higher potential was fashioned by a Creator to simply act as some separate organ of some religious social structure. Dedicating oneself to what is only a man-conceived faith system reduces followers to little more than hive workers and breeders who, through indoctrination processing and mental conditioning, would find emotional survival virtually impossible if separated from the body of their faith system. Followers of such systems are made blind to the beautiful transcendent unity that is made possible in the acceptance of all diverse people. The binding element in that acceptance is the yearning of human spirit for enlightenment, and that is not achieved through some self-imposed alienation from everything else.
Despite mankind’s struggles with such bouts of self-inflicted delusions, the heavens still bear witness to the flow of Creation. We need only to remove the blinders that have been placed over our eyes by those who make a habit of taking advantage of our blindness. Lured away from adoring the unity of all things, which is openly expressed and demonstrated in the universe, we have been “guided” to seek spiritual enlightenment by huddling together in echoing “sanctified” enclosures. There, the devout are given role models of heroes and saints and saviors and kings who would never have accepted being herded into such self-demeaning behavior as self-dedicated faith systems teach.
But the universe continues to fuse it all together by patiently extending allowance for wide-ranging diversity. If mankind wishes to pretend that it is the sum-total of universal wisdom, the universe can afford to be patient. Meanwhile the interaction of Earth and the Sun annually extends and reaffirms the covenant to all life, and that power is not restricted by time or mankind’s self-imposed limited beliefs. As another New Year unfolds, that covenant is renewed.
May your light increase.
Source of Savior Birth Myths
Posted in Atheist, belief, Bible, faith, prehistory, random, religion with tags birth of saviors, traditional christmas carol, winter solstice, Yule wheel on December 24, 2011 by chouck017894
Throughout the ancient world the advent of the winter solstice marked the first point of Capricorn and signaled mounting luminary blessings to come. There was also a noteworthy occurrence that always accompanied the winter solstice, for at midnight of the solstice the great star Spica in constellation Virgo (virgin) began to rise above the eastern horizon. The so-called “Pagan” cultures referred to the night of the winter solstice—the longest night of the year—as “Mother Night,” and this is why myths have always tied the Virgin to the birth of a divine son—in actuality, the Sun.
The first magnitude star Spica on the meridian at midnight during the winter solstice was therefore seen to illustrate the bearing forth of the Life Principle out of void conditions so that the Sun might continue to safeguard (save) the world (all matter-life). To paraphrase a traditional Christmas carol, it was thought of as the night divine, the night when light was born. Consequently, all savior figures of various cultures were said to have been born on December 25th, when the Sun again took up its northerly course. This movement began only after a suspenseful three days during the solstice period when the Sun seemed to hang low and unmoving in the southern sky.
In ancient Egypt, for example, the birth of the son, Horus, god of day, to the fertility goddess Isis, was celebrated on this date. Persians celebrated on December 25th the birth of the “prophet” of ancient Iran, Zoroaster. In pre-Christian Rome the twenty-fifth of December was known as Natalis Solis Invict, meaning “birthday of the Sun.” All such celebrations of various “Pagan” cultures were in recognition that an increase of light would follow the longest night of the year.
In many pre-Christian observances during the period of longest darkness, a midnight rite was observed which was known as the “Vigil of Light.” The culmination of the rite often involved the lighting of a great bonfire on the highest ground in the area from which they conducted the colorfully symbolic ceremony of the “Yule” wheel. In readiness for the celebration was a great wheel made of dried twigs, leaf stalks, small tree limbs and coarse grasses. As darkness seemingly engulfed the whole world, the wheel was set ablaze and sent rolling down the hillside into a lake or other body of water. This ceremony commemorated the Sun’s descent into its period of apparent rest, which was regarded as occurring within the waters (energies) of Creation. The bonfires were generally kept burning on the hilltop throughout the rest of the night.
Today’s rigorously structured faith systems, of course, deride this ceremony as nothing more than “heathen ignorance.” The truth is that such ceremonies demonstrated a closer understanding of cosmic processes than pretending that the longest night of the year marks the incarnation of some demigod or is associated with some supernatural “miracle” of oil lamps providing light for eight days for the devotees of some man-conceived faith system. Of course the wholesome understanding of Creation’s patriarchal principles and universal order that was honored by the Pagans does not contribute to the ego-pampering ideas of godly favoritism that is the bedrock of every organized faith system.
A celebration of increasing light is also part of Hindu observance, and is similar in some respects to Christmas and Hanukkah. This celebration occurs in November of the Julian calendar, however. Since the observance is spoken of as being the darkest night of the year, it suggests that it is really a displaced observance of the winter solstice (as with Islamic observance of Ramadan).
The noticeable movement of celestial objects that occur in the heavens is the true substructure of every organized faith system, although that relationship is always heavily disguised. The early representatives of contrived religious doctrines were so fearful that the uneducated followers would discover the true association that the promoters of those contrived religious movements condemned Pagan astronomical observation and study as “star worship.”
Stories of the birth of savior-like beings also invariably included three wise men or kings or magi who “came from the east” bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for the newborn. Older pre-Christian tales relate that three magi bearing identical gifts attended the birth of Krishna, Osiris, Mithras, Zoroaster, Confucius, Socrates, and a list of others. The three “gifts” of gold, frankincense and myrrh are indeed precious to the Life Principle, for they represent the three energy planes that integrate for the development of physical-matter manifestation.
As for the “star” that is said to have led most of these kings, wise men or magi to their destination, it is mythic representation of those involving energies that radiate in the process of matter manifestation. That just may be the reason that there have never been any genuine history accounts anywhere that verify such a celestial phenomenon of a stationary star hovering over a specific earthly location.
Myths Built Around Winter Solstice
Posted in Astronomy, Atheist, belief, culture, faith, history, life, nature, random, religion, thoughts with tags Advent, ceremonies, Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, rites, seasonal changes, winter solstice on November 18, 2009 by chouck017894
Every year as the hours of daylight grow progressively less in the Northern Hemisphere, western organized religions (especially Christian) burst forth during the approach of the Winter Solstice in lavish displays of belief that a one-time-only soul-saving event occurred just for them. In truth, that which is being celebrated is the celestial panorama that activates the seasons and which has set the pace of life on Earth for millions of years.
Astrological elements are the basis for many portions of scriptural stories, and the two major turning points of the year—the solstices—have been artfully disguised in sacred tales which allowed practitioners of divine deceits to manipulate large masses of people.
The seasonal change occurring with the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere signals a time of new beginnings. That change is the meaning behind the word solstice, which comes from the Latin word sol, meaning Sun, and the Latin word sistere, past participle of stit, meaning “to stand.” The illusion that the Sun moves periodically southward in the winter and northward in the spring is, as we know today, caused by Earth’s axial tilt as it orbits the Sun. For life in the Northern Hemisphere, the Sun appears to reach its most southern point on December 21, and appears to remain in a stationary period for three days time, after which it appears to start moving northward again—on December 25th. In pre-Christian Rome the 25th of December was therefore known as Natalis Solis Invict, meaning “birthday of the Sun.”
With the approach of winter, the star Murzim or Murzar (in constellation Canis Major) rises upon the eastern horizon. The name Murzim is said to mean, “The Announcer,” and it precedes the arrival of the star Sirius, seemingly to announce the greater light to come—just as in the New Testament the character of John the Baptist is portrayed as announcing the coming of Jesus (who declared “I am the light of the world”).
The month leading into the Winter Solstice carried great significance in ancient cultures, and it is from Pagan study of astronomical movements that the observance of Advent was incorporated into Catholic formality—which allows four Sundays to make ready for the light (personified as Jesus) to come back in glory.
In Judaism, the festival of Hanukkah, meaning “dedication” (to light which will be increasing), is observed within the same seasonal period of the approaching Winter Solstice, being celebrated from the 25th of Kislev to the first of Tevet of the Jewish calendar (overlaps December-January).
The connection of the Muslim fast of Ramadan to the Winter Solstice is far less obvious, due primarily to Mohammad’s (or his scribes’) misunderstanding of Jewish/Christian myth that allowed for ceremonial observance of the solstice period. Being from a desert culture the seasonal change was not such an obvious yearly transitional event as it was to those of more northerly or southerly regions. In addition, Islam uses a lunar calendar which is about eleven days shorter than the solar calendar that is more widely used throughout the world. For this reason the Islamic holidays “move” each year. Nevertheless, the Muslim celebration of Laylat-al-Qadr, meaning the “Night of Power,” is held on the evening of the 27th day of the ninth month of the Muslim year. Although not as obviously related to recognition of the light phenomenon at the Winter Solstice due to geographic location (desert), the fasting and rites of the Night of Power were inspired by the Jewish/Christian observances of the yearly occasion of feeble light, after which light increases.
John the Baptist, myth of
Posted in Astronomy, Atheist, Bible, Christianity, culture, history, life, random, religion with tags Augustine, Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, midsummer day, Pagan mysteries, Pagans, Pope Gregory I, summer solstice, Tammuz, winter solstice on June 10, 2009 by chouck017894
June 24–or Midsummer day–is alleged in Christianity to be the birthday of John the Baptist. The date was a contrived arrangement instigated by Pope Gregory I (540?-604), who is called “the Great” because his pontificate was marked by fervor in propagating Christianity. The conversion of Britain was begun under his direction and carried out by Augustine in 597, for example. Gregory was passionately opposed to Paganism, introduced numerous changes in the liturgy of the mass, and is credited with revision of church music, better known as Gregorian chant.
The reason for Gregory’s passion for contriving a birth date for the unproven predecessor of Jesus was due to the Pagan’s midsummer festival which always coincided with the summer solstice and which was in honor of the Chaldean, Syrian, and Phoenician messiah Tammuz. In his zeal for gathering Pagans into the Christian fold, Gregory had sent emissaries all across Europe, and the midsummer festival in honor of Tammuz was found to be lovingly favored nearly everywhere. So entrenched was this yearly festival with its curious rites which engaged the minds of men that Gregory could not allow the season to pass without instigating some counter incentive for Christian purpose. He was faced with the problem of what could the Christian faith business offer as enticement.
Gregory was divinely shrewd, counseling his subordinates (such as Augustine) that if Pagans were to be lured into the church the wisest policy was to make an effort to meet the Pagans half-way. The answer to the dilemma was to incorporate the festival activity into the calendar of Christian holy events. Of course it was impossible to retain an honor to Tammuz or Bel, but nothing in the myths of Jesus Christ could be linked as occurring specifically around the summer solstice period. O what to do?
Then divine inspiration struck. Since the birth of the Savior was honored at the time of the winter solstice, and John the Baptist was said to be born before Jesus’ birth, was it not reasonable that the summer solstice was the birth time of his forerunner? Hallelujah!
The Vatican think-tank had to contrive a link with Pagan thought though. The link was discerned hiding in Pagan Mysteries: there, after Tammuz had been slain, he reappeared to the faithful under the name Oannes, and the name used in sacred language adopted by the Roman Church for John was Joannes! Double Hallelujah!
Thus the Pagan festival of June 24 was made to cohabit with Christian ideas under the label festival of Joannes–Nativity of St. John–which, not so subtly, begins exactly as the Chaldean festivities.
The Pagans were not really fooled by all this jockeying. They remembered that the name John was also part of the church promotion of Christmas, with the feast of “Saint John” the disciple (a personification of light) celebrated on the 27th of December immediately after the winter solstice. Because retaliation from the church could be harsh, even deadly, the heathens and Pagans mockingly spoke of the year being divided “from John to John.”
Doomsday 2012?
Posted in Astronomy, Atheist with tags 2012, end of the world, Mayan calendar, winter solstice on March 13, 2009 by chouck017894
(Excerpt from Time Frames and Taboo Data, page 475)
…awareness of universal patterns seem to have been better comprehended in numerous ancient cultures than it is today. “Prediction” of a sort could be attempted as in the age-old Mayan astro-calendar–which was inherited from the older Olmec culture.
Today we live in the time-calculation that the Maya calendar presented as the Great Cycle, and the cycle ended at 4 Ahau 3 Kankin, which corresponds to 23 December 2012 of our calendar. The current Great Cycle, according to Mayan accounts, began in a long period of darkness that occurred on 4 Ahan 8 Cumku, which corresponds to 13 August 3114 BCE. Time was recognized by them as infinite, but they discerned that it advances with cyclic adjustments that are indifferent to individuals, societies, cultures, or civilizations.
Was the end of the world predicted with the last date etched upon the Mayan astro-calendar? Did it foretell some horrendous cosmic or geological cataclysm? Not exactly. The Mayan used a period of 5125-5126 years that made up what is referred to as the “Long Count,” which we may liken to a taximeter that records an accumulated debt–only in this case what is tallied is Earth’s debt to the universe. It is certain that the spread of the human species across the world has disturbed the delicate balances of Nature with little regard to long-term consequences. Changes will occur, of course, and payment must be extracted. Perhaps payment must be violent for human nature to pay attention, for despite all the pretended revealed, divine claims, man seems incapable of establishing an atmosphere of congeniality. The Mayan calendar may seem to suggest an apocalyptic ending, but it was presented without the ugliness of scriptural bigotry. That the date 23 December 2012 was not regarded as the end of all time or even as the end of the world was neatly conveyed by simply having the calendar calculations being suspended on the threshold of the winter solstice–the cyclic period when the process of renewal of life is the order of things. More precisely, the Mayan calendar indicates an end of an era. Earth is at the threshold of no return for some ecologically distrubing practices, but mankind still has it within its power to awaken and progress with reverence directed at universal truths.
However, we must not assume that (religious) belief makes it impossible that in the distant future some scouting cosmic citizens may investigate the scarred little planet once known as Earth. And after intense studies, the visitors to Earth decipher the last records of the species that once dominated the planet. But before the explorers pack up to leave, they pause to erect in a lonely barren spot a commemorative stele upon which is etched their summary of findings.
As this little planet groaned in distress
And seas grew wild and the planet poles moved,
The creature man continued to obsess
And war over gods that could not be proved.
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Mozart’s music style and the late eighteenth century Classical era music are virtually synonymous. The goal of Classical era music was to conform to specific standards and forms, to be succinct, clear, and well balanced, but at the same time, to develop musical ideas to an emotionally satisfying fullness. As a quintessential Classicist, Mozart’s music has become universally extolled; his music represents an outpouring of memorable graceful melody that is combined with formal, contrapuntal ingenuity.
During the late eighteenth century, a musician’s livelihood depended solidly on patronage from royalty and the aristocracy. Mozart and his sister, Nannerl, a skilled harpsichord player, frequently toured Europe together and performed at the courts of Austria, England, France, and Holland. But in Mozart’s native Salzburg, Austria, he felt artistically oppressed by the Archbishop and decided to relocate to Vienna. There, he received first-rate appointments and financial security that emanated from the adoring support of both the Empress Maria Thèrése, and later her son, the Emperor Joseph II. Opera legend relates the story of a post-performance meeting between Emperor Joseph II and Mozart in which the Emperor commented: “Too beautiful for our ears and too many notes, my dear Mozart.” Mozart replied: “Exactly as many as necessary, Your Majesty.”
Mozart said: “Opera to me comes before everything else.” Mozart operas involve all of the existing genres and traditions: the Italian opera seria and opera buffa, and the German singspiel.
During Mozart’s time, the Italians set the international standards for opera: Italian was the universal language of music and opera, and Italian opera was what Mozart’s Austrian audiences and most of the rest of Europe wanted most. Therefore, even though Mozart was an Austrian, his country part of the German Holy Roman Empire, most of Mozart operas were written in Italian. In opera seria, Mozart recognized its excesses; their cardboard-style characters who were rigid and pretentious, and their scores saturated with florid da capo arias, few ensembles, and almost no chorus. He would follow Gluck’s guidelines and strive for more profound dramatic integrity; he parted from existing traditions and endowed his works with a greater fusion between recitative and aria, the use of accompanied recitatives, many ensembles, and greater use of the orchestra.
Mozart’s most renowned opere serie are Idomeneo (1781), and his last opera, La Clemenza di Tito (“The Clemency of Titus”), the latter a work commissioned to celebrate the coronation in Prague of the Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia. By Mozart’s time, the opera buffa, nurtured by the Renaissance commedia dell’arte, had become a favorite genre, its first popular incarnation Giovanni Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona (1733), a work with only three characters, but a quintessential model of the genre: it contained lively and catchy tunes which underscored the antics of a servant tricking an old bachelor into marriage.
The greatness of all art forms is that they express the soul and zeitgeist of their times. The eighteenth century was dominated by the Enlightenment, a philosophic movement marked by a profound rejection of traditional social, religious, and political ideas, and an emphasis on rationalism; the Enlightenment inspired a rebirth in the ideals of human dignity and freedom. Opera buffa provided a convenient theatrical vehicle in which those Enlightenment ideals of democracy and humanism could be expressed in art: opera buffa became an operatic incarnation of political populism. The ruling aristocracies identified and even became flattered by the exalted personalities, gods, and heroes portrayed in the pretentious pomp and formality of the opera seria, but in contrast, opera buffa’s satire and humor provided an arena to portray very human characters in everyday situations; the genre presented an opportunity to examine and express class distinctions and the frustrations of society’s lower classes. As such, opera buffa became synonymous with the spirit of the Enlightenment and the Classical era music: the genre was enthusiastically championed by such renowned progressive thinkers as Rousseau; its music was intrinsically more natural, and its melodies elegant, yet emotionally restrained.
During the latter part of the eighteenth century, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart innovated new perspectives for opera history, imbuing his operas with portrayals of profound matters of the heart, all set against the explosive social and political struggles of Enlightenment Europe. It was the beginning of Mozart and Opera history.
Mozart became the first psychologist of opera history, conveying mood, situation, and character through his ingenious musical inventions. Mozart operas unmask his characters and expose their souls, his musical characterizations providing a truthful expression of their virtues, flaws, and profound human sentiments.
Mozart (1756-1791) was born in Salzburg, Austria. His life-span was brief, but his musical achievements were phenomenal and monumental. He became one of the most important and inspired composers in Western opera history: music seemed to gush forth from his creative soul like fresh water from a spring. With his early death at the age of thirty-five, one can only dream of the musical treasures that might have materialized from his music pen.
Along with such masters as Johann Sebastian Bach and Continue reading →
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False Flag / War / War Crimes
America’s Color Revolution
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts · Published January 10, 2021 · Updated January 10, 2021
Pandering to the Establishment Now Ubiquitous
The Establishment has imposed a color revolution on the American people. Ekaterina Blinova is a journalist who reognized that a color revolution has occurred in America under the guise of a presidential election. https://sputniknews.com/us/202011221081242712-politburo-are-dems-striving-to-win-it-all–turn-us-political-landscape-into-one-party-system/
The Establishment used the Democrats for their purpose, because Trump was in office under the Republican banner. Trump, of course, is a populist, but there is no party that represents the people, so Trump ran as a Republican.
The leftwing, or the fraud that passes for one, thinks it is now in the money. This is a naive expectation. The Establishment is in charge, and there will be no leftist agendas unless they serve the Establishment. If Antifa and BLM cut up, their funding will be cut off, and the presstitutes will be sicced on them.
Biden and Kamala are mere figureheads put in office by a stolen election. Any agenda they think that they have is irrelevant. Here is the Establishment’s agenda:
First: Prevent any political organization of the “Trump Deplorables.” Any who attempt to form a real opposition party will be made an example of. In America it is child’s play to frame up anyone. We saw the show in Russiagate, and Trump will now be exhausted with endless frameups as the Establishment pursues him into oblivion. If the President of the United States can be so easily framed up, an unknown political organizer in the red states can be disposed of at will.
Second: Increase the demonization of white people and the destruction of their confidence. White Americans are still a majority and, therefore, a potential political force. Their demonization is already institutionalized in the educational system, in the New York Times’ propagandistic “1619 Project,” and in the “racial sensitivity” training that all white employes of US corporations, governments, and US military have to take. Trump ordered a halt to the anti-white indoctrination sessions in the Federal government and US military, but the new regime will quickly reinstate the required indoctrinated as a sop to deluded blacks, feminists, and leftwingers.
Third: The Second Amendment will be overturned or bypassed. Trump supporters will be disarmed in order to more easily terrorize them and prevent them from protecting their property and persons if the Establishment believes it is efficacious to unleash armed anti-white militias on them in order to bring them into line. White self-defense will be more or less criminalized.
Fourth: The Establishment will increase its fomenting of racial and gender conflict in order to keep Americans too divided to resist its increasingly odious control measures, whether they be the use of Covid to suppress freedom of movement and association, charges of being a foreign agent in order to suppress free speech as in the Assange case, or round up and internment of Trump Americans trying to organize a political party that represents the people instead of the Establishment.
Fifth: Citizenship for the millions of illegal aliens and open borders in order to reduce the white population to an isolated minority.
These measures will suffice for the Establishment to complete the transformation of the United States from a democracy accountable to the people to an oligarchy of entrenched vested interests.
By the time insouciant white people wake up to their fate, violent revolution will be impossible. Modern weapons in the hands of the state are devastating. Mass spying and control techniques that exist today go beyond those in dystopian novels such as Orwell’s 1984. Free speech is a thing of the past. Free speech no longer even exists in universities. As I write Twitter, Facebook and the presstitutes are suppressing the free speech of the President of the United States, and the President of the United States is powerless to do anything about it. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/533027-twitter-locks-trumps-account-for-at-least-12-hours?rnd=1609978506
The Establishment’s control over the media means that no charge against President Trump is too extreme to cause a protest. The enormous support shown for Trump in Washington on January 6 with estimates of participants ranging from 200,000 to 2,000,000 was easy for the Establishment to turn into a liability by infiltrating the rally.
It was naive for President Trump and his supporters not to realize that infiltration was guaranteed as it was necessary for the Establishment to turn massive support into a massive liability. This would achieve two purposes. One purpose was to terminate the challenge to the electors in the Senate, and it succeeded. Here, for example, is Republican Senator Mike Braun from Indiana dropping his intent to object to the electors from the swing states where the election was stolen: “I think … that today change things drastically. Yeah, whatever point you made before that should suffice. Get this ugly day behind us,” he said. Even Rand Paul was intimidated: “I just don’t think there’s going to be another objection. I think it’s over at that point.” https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533033-gop-senators-hopeful-theyve-quashed-additional-election-challenges?rnd=1609980353 Here is Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler whose reelection to the Senate was stolen from her acquiescing in Trump’s and her own stolen elections: “When I arrived in Washington this morning, I fully intended to object to the certification of the electoral votes. However, the events that have transpired today have forced me to reconsider and I cannot now, in good conscience, object,” Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.). https://thehill.com/homenews/house/533052-congress-affirms-biden-win-after-rioters-terrorize-capitol
The other purpose served was to insure that Trump would not go out as a president whose reelection was stolen but as an insurrectionist. And it has succeeded.
Internationally Trump was denounced by NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg for not respecting democracy. “The outcome of this democratic election must be respected,” declared Stoltenberg. Stolen or not it is democracy to be rid of Trump. https://www.rt.com/usa/511743-uk-france-nato-condemn-capitol/
British prime minister Boris Johnson declared that the US is the world symbol of Democracy and that it is vital there is a peaceful and ordered transfer of power, as if there was an actual insurrection taking place and an election not stolen.
The French President Macron declared: “What happened today in Washington, DC today is not American, definitely.” In other words, it is unamerican to protest a stolen election that the Establishment refuses to address. [I watched presentations by independent experts to the Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan legislatures that proved beyond all doubt the presidential election was stolen. Half of the professional presenters were people of color.]
The German Chancellor Merkel blamed Trump for creating an atmosphere that led to a challenge to democracy in the US Capitol. https://www.rt.com/news/511778-germany-merkel-america-trump-capitol/
Republican senators themselves, former members of Trump’s cabinet, and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff jumped on Trump with both feet. The no longer Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that Trump’s “unhinged thugs” “tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed. This failed insurrection underscores how crucial the task before us is” to restore Establishment control. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533039-mcconnell-after-rioters-storm-capitol-they-tried-to-disrupt-our-democracy
Republican Senator Richard Burr from North Carolina said: “The President bears responsibility for today’s events by promoting the unfounded conspiracy theories that have led to this point.”
Republican Senator Mitt Romney from Utah said: the violence was “an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States.” https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533034-richard-burr-says-trump-bears-responsibility-for-riot
“There is no question that the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob,” said Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the third-ranking House Republican. “He lit the flame.” https://thehill.com/homenews/house/533052-congress-affirms-biden-win-after-rioters-terrorize-capitol
Trump’s Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the presstitutes that “Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump. His use of the presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice.”
General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Trump administration said Republicans “who have continued to undermine a peaceful transition in accordance with our Constitution have set the conditions for today’s violence.”
The presstitutes had a field day with misleading and lying headlines. One of the worst offenders was The Hill, formerly a source of real news on what was going on in Congress, but today a highly partisan Trump-hating source of Establishment propaganda.
With the American Establishment’s foreign puppets, Republicans, Trump’s own cabinet members, military leaders, and the presstitutes speaking with one voice setting up President Trump as an insurrectionist threat to democracy, the Democrats’ wild charges seemed credible.
Democrat Senator Schumer from New York, the new Senate Majority Leader, Democrat House Speaker Pelosi, and a large number of Democrat members of Congress, together with the New York Times, have called for Trump’s impeachment or his removal from office by invoking the 25th Amendment. Here is the new Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) making the case:
“What happened at the U.S. Capitol yesterday was an insurrection against the United States, incited by the president. This president should not hold office one day longer,” Schumer said in a statement.
“The quickest and most effective way — it can be done today — to remove this president from office would be for the Vice President to immediately invoke the 25th amendment. If the Vice President and the Cabinet refuse to stand up, Congress should reconvene to impeach the president,” he added. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533124-schumer-calls-for-25th-amendment-to-be-invoked-after-capitol-riots
Here is Pelosi: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/07/lawmakers-trump-25th-amendment-455832
Here is Adam Smith, Democrat from Washington state and chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services, calling for Trump’s removal from office: “President Trump incited & encouraged this riot. He & his enablers are responsible for the despicable attack at the Capitol. VP Pence and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th amendment to remove Trump, otherwise Senate Republicans must work with the House to impeach & remove him. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/533136-house-armed-services-chair-calls-for-removing-trump-from-office
For the New York Times, it does not suffice to remove Trump from office. He must be prosecuted as well.
To understand the extraordinary hatred of President Trump by the Establishment, listen to his inaugural address. He described the Establishment accurately as a force arraigned against the American people, a force that he intended to dismantle and restore America to the American people. This was a revolutionary challenge, a reckless one as Trump is a populist, not a revolutionary leading a determined movement. Moreover, Trump was so uninformed about Washington that he never succeeded in appointing anyone to his government, other than General Flynn (an immediate casualty of the Estatlishment) who agreed with his agenda of normalizing relations with Russia, bringing the troops home from the Middle East, ending NATO, and bringing the jobs home that American corporations had exported to China. Here was Trump unarmed taking on the American Establishment. This was an act of suicide as it has turned out to be.
People who think in terms of party politics have no likelihood of understanding the situation. The struggle is not Democrats vs. Republicans. or red states vs. blue states. It is the Establishment against the people. If you have any doubt about this, note that the US National Association of Manufacturers, always a throughly Republican organization, agrees with Schumer and Pelosi that Trump must be removed from office. Here is the organization’s statement: “Vice President Pence, who was evacuated from the Capitol, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy.” https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/532988-democratic-lawmakers-call-for-pence-to-invoke-25th-amendment-remove The National Association of Manufacturers want Trump out because they are the ones responsible for China’s rise, the US trade deficit and the destruction of half of the US middle class. All the goods and services imported from offshored production count as imports. It is the offshored production that is responsible for America’s trade deficit, not China.
The presstitutes throughout the Western world have intentionally misrepresented the January 6 rally in Washington in support of Trump. The rally had to be misrepresented, because no one in politics today anywhere in the Western World can demonstrate such massive support other than Donald Trump. No one turned out for Biden or Kamala during the presidential campaign. Their events, soon cancelled, had no attendees. Yet, they won the election? What saps people are. Who turns out for Merkel, Macron, Boris Johnson? No one even knows who the leaders are in the rest of the Western World.
Continue Reading / Paul Craig Roberts >>>
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.
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Answering the food security colonial conundrum? 7, November 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Africa, Qatar, The Gulf.
Tags: Food security, Land grab, Neo-colonialism, Qatar, Sudan
In international relations the security discourse is often monopolised by those with a myopic view of security as focusing disproportionately on military matters. Other factors be they economic, social or environmental, whilst perhaps considered important, have a tendency of being relegated firmly to the second tier of concerns ahead of the simple, brutish realities of the military balance. This kind of position is taken by those known as classical realists. However, even the staunchest realist might pause for thought if they were to hear that by some estimates the State of Qatar imports around 95% of its food from abroad. This is an exceedingly high figure and highlights the critical level of dependence that Qatar has on its food importers. This situation is repeated to varying degrees across the Arabian Peninsula.
In recent years, states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have sought to rectify this situation by buying often huge swathes of land in (usually) developing countries. Billions of dollars and millions of hectares of land have changed hands in countries ranging from Indonesia to Ethiopia and from Pakistan to Cambodia and countless others besides.
Yet it is not just arid, rich Gulf countries that are buying up land abroad. Countries with burgeoning populations such as India, Egypt and China as well as Western private investment banks and institutions are also significantly entering the fray.
Unsurprisingly, there has been a vociferous reaction to these practices. The buying of land to produce foodstuffs primarily (and usually exclusively) for exporting from impoverished countries can be seen as anything from unfair to wrong or even immoral and has been widely dubbed as neo-colonialism. The most egregious example of this occurred when in 2008 Daewoo, a conglomerate from South Korea (GDP per capita $27,000), bought roughly half of the arable land in Madagascar (GDP per capita $1000). This decision contributed to a change in leadership in the African island state and the cancellation of the deal in March this year.
Now it appears that one of the former ‘neo-colonialist’ states, Qatar, has heeded this backlash and is looking to pursue its food security in a different manner. The Qatari Investment Authority has established Hassad Foods with an endowment of $100m to invest in or buy up agricultural companies around the world instead of buying the land. Aside from appearing less ‘neo-colonial’, there are other advantages to this type of programme. By buying up established companies the set-up costs will be less than starting from scratch. Also, from Hassad’s point of view, with the world markets still struggling at the moment, there ought to be some bargains around and, given that food will only ever be needed to a greater degree in the longer term, such investments would appear to be sound.
So far, Hassad has entered into a $68.5m joint venture with an Omani poultry firm and has signed an agreement with Russian grain processing firm PAVA to cultivate land in Sudan. After a modest start, there is potential for the Sudanese joint venture to expand to cultivate up to a quarter of a million acres of land.
Yet one must ask if arrangements such as these are really that much better. Like in the ‘neo-colonial’ arrangement the transport infrastructure and/or the port where the goods will be exported from will be renovated by the importing country. This is, of course, a good thing for the host country. Yet, one must not forget that the foodstuffs produced will still be exported. The international market can and will offer a better price than the domestic one and that is the price at which the food will be sold. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the host country will benefit in terms of food production from this arrangement unless there is some kind of stipulation embedded into the contracts stating that a percentage must be sold domestically.
Indeed, it seems likely that in the newer type of deal (a post-neo-colonial deal?) instead of South Korea or Qatar paying Sudan or Cambodia money directly for their land it will instead go to a private company. Also, could it not be argued that when the deal is at a governmental level there is more scope for provisions for less profitable domestic sales to be included than with two companies both looking to their profit margins as the be all and end all?
Overall, aside from thorny questions to do with territorial rights or sovereignty of the land in question, it appears, therefore, as if there is precious little difference between the neo-colonial and the post-neo-colonial deals.
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Photo: David Duprey/APPhoto: David Duprey/AP
California Supreme Court Overturns Murder Conviction Based on Flawed Bite-Mark Evidence
The court overturned the 1997 conviction of Bill Richards for the murder of his wife, Pamela, finding that false forensic testimony had impacted the outcome of his trial.
May 27 2016, 1:15 p.m.
In a unanimous ruling released Thursday, the California Supreme Court overturned the 1997 conviction of Bill Richards for the murder of his wife, Pamela, finding that false forensic testimony had impacted the outcome of his trial. “Needless to say, we are thrilled,” said Richards’s attorney Jan Stiglitz, a founder of the California Innocence Project, which has represented Richards for the last 15 years. “It’s been a long time coming.”
Richards’s controversial conviction for Pamela’s grisly 1993 murder has long been considered a clear case of wrongful conviction that was based on the discredited science of bite-mark analysis. Indeed, it took the state four attempts to convict Richards — two full trials ended in a hung jury and a third ended in a mistrial during jury selection — and prosecutors were successful only after putting on the stand a legendary forensic dentist who testified that Richards’s highly unique lower dentition was a match for a bite mark found on Pamela’s hand. The dentist, Norman “Skip” Sperber, told the jury that based on his 40-plus years in the field, he could say that out of 100 people, only “one or two or less” would have the same “unique feature” in their lower teeth.
In fact, however, Sperber was wrong. In 2008 he recanted his testimony, saying that he had cited statistics that lacked scientific support and never should have done so, “because it’s inappropriate to cite percentages or things resembling percentages unless there has been some prior scientific study” to back up the assertion. Based on Sperber’s recantation (and that of another dentist, Greg Golden, who testified for the defense, along with additional testimony about new DNA evidence that matched an unknown male), a district judge in 2009 said that the evidence now before the court pointed “unerringly” to Richards’s innocence.
The state appealed that decision and in 2012 the California Supreme Court agreed, knocking down the trial court’s ruling. The decision, which split the justices 4-3 in favor of upholding Richards’s conviction, was tortured: In a decision that was derided as the worst of the year by California Lawyer magazine, the court ruled that expert testimony was merely opinion and therefore could never be considered true or false.
In response, California lawmakers amended the state’s penal code with a measure known as the Bill Richards Bill. That law, which allowed Richards to again appeal his case, made clear that a conviction could be overturned based on an expert recantation or when the science underlying the original testimony had changed.
This time around, the entire court agreed that Sperber’s testimony was false, the bite-mark evidence was material to the case, and there was a reasonable probability that the evidence had impacted the outcome of Richards’s trial. The court noted that aside from the alleged bite mark, there was only circumstantial evidence to suggest Richards had killed his wife — and in its analysis the court seems to have concluded that none of it was particularly persuasive.
It was clear that Pamela had struggled violently with her attacker, for example, but Richards showed no sign of being injured on the night his wife was murdered. The court found that “unusual.” Investigators found no foreign footprints at the murder scene, but that was “not remarkable,” given the desert landscape of the couple’s rural San Bernardino County property. Police said they were immediately suspicious of Richards in part because he was able to identify for them a concrete block and a paving stone that were used to bludgeon his wife — but that too wasn’t exactly persuasive of guilt, since the bloody items were found near her body. “Accordingly, with the exception of the bite-mark evidence, the defense had a substantial response to much of the prosecution’s evidence against [Richards],” the court concluded. “Under these unique circumstances, it is reasonably probable that the false evidence presented by Dr. Sperber at petitioner’s 1997 jury trial affected the outcome of that proceeding.”
The ruling is not only a victory for Richards — though the state could still decide to retry him — but it is also a victory for lawyers who work to exonerate the wrongly convicted. The Richards case was the first test of California’s junk-science statute, which is only the second such law in the country (Texas’s came first). The court’s plain interpretation bodes well for the future of such laws, and for the wrongfully convicted, who face a particularly brutal legal climate in California.
Generally, in order to obtain relief, a wrongfully convicted inmate in California must present a state court with new evidence that “points unerringly to innocence” — an almost impossibly high standard. Not even DNA evidence from some unknown person collected from the murder weapons and from Pamela’s fingernails was enough to vacate Richards’s conviction. The new junk-science statute “makes for an easier path in any situation where the conviction was based on discredited science,” Stiglitz said in a brief interview shortly after the court’s ruling was released.
Experts say that Richards’s case is a prime example of the dangers of allowing junk science into evidence in the first place. Richards’s “wrongful conviction was preventable,” wrote Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation for the Innocence Project, in an email to The Intercept. “The bite-mark evidence should never have been introduced in the first instance.” Nationally, he said, Richards is the third bite-mark conviction overturned in the last eight months, “and demonstrates, once again, that any conviction resting on bite-mark evidence is inherently unreliable.”
Michael Bowers, a Ventura, California, lawyer and forensic dentist — and longtime critic of bite-mark evidence — noted that Richards’s case “emphasizes the dangers invalidated forensic examiners and bite-mark opinions create for innocent criminal defendants.” And he suspects that, in part, the case will serve as a potent example of why the “use of inadequately researched methods like bite marks” should cease in criminal prosecutions.
The California Supreme Court’s ruling kicks the case back to San Bernardino District Attorney Michael Ramos, who will now have 60 days to decide whether his office will seek to try Richards for the fifth time. A spokesperson for the office did not immediately reply to an email from The Intercept seeking comment. For now, Richards will be released from state prison and moved to the custody of local law enforcement in San Bernardino County pending the DA’s decision.
How the Flawed Science of Bite-Mark Analysis Imprisoned a Man for Murder
Junk Science on Trial in Bill Richards Bite-Mark Appeal
Viva 4N6: In Las Vegas, Embattled Forensic Experts Respond to Scandals and Flawed Convictions
Jordan Smith[email protected]theintercept.com@chronic_jordan
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Inside the Washington Insider Murder From ‘Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 2’
CBS.
When Netflix releases it’s the second volume of Unsolved Mysteries to the world on October 19, avid fans from around the globe will bear witness to the Washington Insider Murder.
The series will profile the mysterious death of John P. Wheeler III, whose body was found in a Delaware landfill in 2010. Even though his death was ruled a homicide, the details around the circumstances are questionable.
Here’s what we already know.
Who was John P. Wheeler III?
Known fondly as Jack, at the time of his death, Wheeler was the chief executive and CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, consultant to the Mitre Corporation and former presidential aide to the Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations as well as holding numerous positions in the United States Military and government.
What do we know about his death?
On December 29, 2011, less than 48-hours before Wheeler was found dead, CCTV footage showed him limping into a parking garage. According to witnesses, he showed confusion, held one shoe in his hand, and asked where his car was before refusing help.
The following day, he was caught on CCTV again inside the Nemours building at 8.30 pm — the same expression on his face. The 66-year-old would then turn up dead 14 hours later.
In an interview with The Inquirer at the time, Iman Goldsborough, who worked as a parking-lot attendant, said: “I knew something wasn’t right but I never thought it would end up like this.”
Until his death, Wheeler’s image had been squeaky clean however after his death, police found evidence that he may have been involved in an arson attempt against a couple he was battling in court. He had asked for a temporary restraining order against them, although it was denied.
Netflix Unveils The Trailer For ‘Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 2’
The True Story Behind Netflix’s ‘American Murder: The Family Next Door’
How did he get to Wilmington and what happened afterward?
According to the same outlet, friends of Wheeler said that they last saw him getting on a train to New York “with his wife’s Christmas present”.
He was then presumed to have taken another train to Washington on December 28, before heading to Wilmington.
That same evening, smoke-bombs were set off in an unfinished New Castle home — 9kms from Wilmington, opposite Wheeler’s.
On December 29, he went to a local pharmacy, still in New Castle around 6.00 pm asking for a ride back. According to the pharmacist, he looked “a little upset”. Then, 30 minutes later, he ended up in the first parking garage. How he got there, was never explained.
Goldsborough would later say that his car was never actually in the garage, it was at another one several blocks away — one he went to on a monthly basis.
Wheeler had also told her that her brother had driven him there, although both his mother and brother had passed away years earlier.
Police have no idea where Wheeler had stayed the night he died, even though he was reported to say it was in a hotel nearby.
The following morning, Wheeler turned up dead in a dumpster in Newark, 24kms away. And still, to this day, no one knows what happened.
Watch Unsolved Mysteries: Volume 2 on Netflix from October 19.
Tags: Documentary, Entertainment, Netflix, Streaming, True Crime, TV Series
Anita Anabel October 21, 2020
Everything You Need to Know About Amazon’s ‘One Night in Miami’
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The Sports Roundup Week 10: Upcoming Sports Predictions!
Top 5 Sporting Moments of the Week:
5. Miami Heat win game 3 of the NBA Finals. After a dominant performance by the LA Lakers in Game 1, many were fearing that the Lakers could sweep the series 4-0. However, Jimmy Butler had a different idea. He scored a 40-point triple-double without two of his key starters due to injury. After the game, he was interviewed about his career-best performance. All he said was, “I just want to win”. What a competitor and bring on game 4!
4. Shane Watson keeps getting better with age as he steers the Chennai Super Kings to a dominant victory in the IPL. Shane Watson finished 83 not out off 53 balls, scoring 11 fours and 3 sixes as the Chennai Super Kings beat the Kings XI Punjab by 10 wickets with 14 balls left. At 39 years of age, Watson continues to show his class and value, 14 years after his international T20 debut.
3. Liverpool suffer record defeat on miserable night at Villa Park. Reigning Premier League champions Liverpool were outclassed by Aston Villa, losing 7-2 courtesy of a hat-trick from summer signing Ollie Watkins and a Jack Grealish brace. It certainly isn’t time to worry yet for Liverpool fans, but this result is definitely a shock and how they respond will be fascinating.
2. The women’s draw at the French Open bursts as seeded player after seeded players are sent home. Predicting the results of women’s tennis matches at major tournaments is almost as impossible as finding a needle in a haystack, but this year’s French Open has been more extreme than ever. In the fourth round, both the number 1 and 5 seed were upset by unseeded players and knocked out of the tournament. There are now only 4 out of 30 seeded players left in what will be a fascinating final stage of the tournament.
1. The first week of the AFL finals were filled with drama and thrills. It began with a classy performance by Port Adelaide who weathered the Geelong storm to secure a place in the preliminary final. Brisbane than produced a stunning upset of title favourites Richmond after a scintillating performance by Charlie Cameron. St Kilda than survived an incredible comeback by the Western Bulldogs to stay in the competition, followed by huge underdogs Collingwood holding on to beat the West Coast Eagles.
Feature Article: Upcoming Sports Predictions!
There are always so many different sporting competitions starting and ending, but I felt now was a good time to make some predictions on current sports and who I think will win. We’ll come back to these predictions in a few months and see how I went!
It’s so hard to look past the Penrith Panthers who are on a 16 game winning streak. I think it will be a Penrith Panthers vs Melbourne Storm grand final. Who wins? I’m going to give it to the experience of Melbourne Storm under the eye of Craig Bellamy.
The Brisbane Lions looked incredible against Richmond. I think they can reach the grand final and I think Port Adelaide will be waiting from them there. I think Port Adelaide have more class all over the field and will win the Premiership.
The Bathurst 1000 is an iconic V8 Supercar race in Australia that is consistently dramatic, exhilarating and wildly entertaining. The race will take place on the 18th of October, and I believe the proven partnership of Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes will win the great race.
Arguably, the race for the title is already over. Lewis Hamilton is 44 points ahead of his closest rival and teammate Valtteri Bottas which will be almost impossible to overcome unless Hamilton fails to finish multiple races. However, the constructor’s standings are very close, and I believe it will finish Mercedes, Red Bull, Renault, Racing Point, Mclaren, Ferrari and the remaining teams.
This year’s MotoGP season has been crazy! So many different race winners and almost every race has seen a title contender crash out. The Yamaha’s have looked strong in recent races, so I predict Fabio Quartararo will be able to hold onto his current lead and win the title.
I would love for the Miami Heat to win the NBA Finals. But, I think the LA Lakers are too strong over a 7-game series. I think Miami might win 1 more game, but the Lakers will win the NBA Finals in 6.
We are still in the first few rounds of the new season, but already, the Super Bowl contenders are starting to stand out. The Chiefs, Packers, Seahawks and Ravens all seem like serious contenders. I like the Seahawks, so I think they can get the job done. If Russell Wilson continues to play like he is right now, I believe they can win the Super Bowl.
The start of the IPL has been very unpredictable with no undefeated teams halfway through the competition. The Mumbai Indians and Delhi Capitals are both looking strong, but you can never rule out the star power of the Royal Challengers Bangalore. I think the Delhi Capitals have the most balanced team, so I will think they will win the competition.
Unsurprisingly, I believe Rafael Nadal will win another French Open in the Men’s draw, and I think Petra Kvitova can overcome the seeded players curse to win the French Open in the women’s draw.
It is probably too early in the season to be predicting the results of different soccer leagues, but here are some early predictions:
Premier League: Manchester City
Ligue 1: PSG
Bundesliga: Bayern Munich
Serie A: Inter Milan
La Liga: Barcelona
Tagged AFL, F1, Feature Article, Guess, IPL, MotoGP, NBA, NFL, NRL, Predictions, Sport, Sports Roundup, Weekly Sports Roundup
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The Cook et al. (2013) 97% consensus result is robust
The 97% consensus has been independently confirmed by a number of different approaches and lines of evidence.
97% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
Cooks ’97% consensus’ disproven by a new peer reviewed paper showing major math errors (Anthony Watts)
Communicating the expert consensus is very important in terms of increasing public awareness of human-caused climate change and support for climate solutions. Thus it's perhaps not surprising that Cook et al. (2013) and its 97% consensus result have been the subject of extensive denial among the usual climate contrarian suspects. After all, the fossil fuel industry, right-wing think tanks, and climate contrarians have been engaged in a disinformation campaign regarding the expert climate consensus for over two decades. For example, Western Fuels Association conducted a half-million dollar campaign in 1991 designed to ‘reposition global warming as theory (not fact).’
The 97% Consensus is a Robust Result
Nevertheless, the existence of the expert consensus on human-caused global warming is a reality, as is clear from an examination of the full body of evidence. For example, Naomi Oreskes found no rejections of the consensus in a survey of 928 abstracts performed in 2004. Doran & Zimmerman (2009) found a 97% consensus among actively publishing climatologists. Anderegg et al. (2010) reviewed publicly signed declarations supporting or rejecting human-caused global warming, and again found over 97% consensus among climate experts. Cook et al. (2013) found the same 97% result through a survey of over 12,000 climate abstracts from peer-reviewed journals, as well as from over 2,000 scientist author self-ratings, among abstracts and papers taking a position on the causes of global warming.
In addition to these studies, we have the National Academies of Science from 33 different countries all endorsing the consensus. Dozens of scientific organizations have endorsed the consensus on human-caused global warming. Only one has ever rejected the consensus - the American Association of Petroleum Geologists - and even they shifted to a neutral position when members threatened to not renew their memberships due to its position of climate denial.
In short, the 97% consensus on human-caused global warming is a robust result, found using several different methods in various studies over the past decade. It really shouldn't be a surprise at this point, and denying it is, well, denial.
Quantifying the Human Global Warming Contribution
There have also been various studies quantifying the human contribution to global warming, as we have previously documented.
Figure 1: Net human and natural percent contributions to the observed global surface warming over the past 50-65 years according to Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, light green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange), Wigley and Santer 2012 (WS12, dark green), and Jones et al. 2013 (J12, pink).
Again, there's very little controversy here. The scientific literature is quite clear that humans have caused most of the global surface warming over the past half century, as the 2013 IPCC report stated with 95% confidence.
In Cook et al. (2013), we broadened the focus beyond definitions that quantify the human contribution, because there's a consensus gap on the mere question of whether humans are causing global warming. Nevertheless, we used the 2007 IPCC position as one of our consensus position definitions:
"We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global [climate change], published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW)."
The IPCC position (humans causing most global warming) was represented in our categories 1 and 7, which include papers that explicitly endorse or reject/minimize human-caused global warming, and also quantify the human contribution. Among the relatively few abstracts (75 in total) falling in these two categories, 65 (87%) endorsed the consensus view. Among the larger sample size of author self-rated papers in categories 1 and 7 (237 in total), 228 (96%) endorsed the consensus view that humans are causing most of the current global warming.
The self-ratings offer a larger sample size on this quantification question because of the limited real estate in a paper's abstract. Most journals have strict word limits on their abstracts, so authors have to focus on the specifics of their research. On the other hand, the author self-ratings are based on the full papers, which have much more real estate and are thus more likely to both take a position on the cause of global warming, and quantify the human contribution.
Confused Contrarians Think they are Included in the 97%
There have been a number of contrarians claiming that they are part of the 97% consensus, which they believe is limited to the position that humans are causing some global warming. The first error in this argument is in ignoring the fact that the data collected in Cook et al. (2013) included categories that quantify the human contribution, as Andrew Montford and the GWPF recently did, for example.
The second error has been made by individuals claiming they're in the 97%, but failing to actually check the data. For example, Roy Spencer claimed in testimony to US Congress that he is included in the 97% consensus. Since we made all of our data available to the public, you can see our ratings of Spencer's abstracts here. Five of his papers were captured in our literature search; we categorized four as 'no opinion' on the cause of global warming, and one as implicitly minimizing the human influence. Thus Spencer's research was included in the fewer than 3 percent of papers that either rejected or minimized the human contribution to global warming. Bjorn Lomborg made a similar error, claiming:
"Virtually everyone I know in the debate would automatically be included in the 97% (including me, but also many, much more skeptical)."
In reality Lomborg is included neither in the 97+% nor the less than 3% because as far as we can tell, he has not published any peer-reviewed climate research, and thus none of his writings were captured in our literature search. The 97% is a consensus of climate science experts, and that, Lomborg is not.
Nir Shaviv took the opposite approach, claiming he was wrongly included in the 97%. Though Shaviv also admitted that Cook et al. correctly classified his abstracts based on their content, but claimed that he worded the text in a way to slip it past the journal reviewers and editors.
"I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don’t have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper."
However, Shaviv, Spencer, and all other authors were invited to participate in the self-ratings process that resulted in the sae 97% consensus conclusion.
Tol's Rejected Comment
Richard Tol has also advanced various criticisms of Cook et al. (2013). It's worth noting that Tol does not dispute the existence of the consensus, writing:
"There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct."
Tol has nevertheless criticized the methods applied during the Cook et al. survey. For example, he has argued that the literature search should have been conducted with Scopus rather than the Web of Science in order to capture more papers, but also that fewer papers should have been included in the survey in order to focus on those specifically researching the causes of global warming. Tol has also applied various statistical tests comparing the abstract ratings to the author self-ratings, but these tests are invalid because the two phases of the survey considered different information (abstracts only vs. full papers) and are thus not comparable.
In fact, when we released the self-rating data, we explicitly discussed the difference between the two datasets and how the difference was actually instructive. As John Cook wrote,
"That's not to say our ratings of abstracts exactly matched the self-ratings by the papers' authors. On the contrary, the two sets measure different things and not only are differences expected, they're instructive."
Ultimately Tol submitted his criticisms to Environmental Research Letters as a comment, but the submission was summarily rejected by the editor who described it as a speculative opinion piece that does not identify any clear errors that would call the paper's conclusions into question.
In short, the 97% consensus has passed peer-review, while Tol's criticisms have not. Moreover, all of Tol's criticisms only apply to the abstract ratings, while the self-ratings also found the same 97% consensus result, completely independent from the abstract ratings.
Taking Consensus Denial to the Extreme
One critique of the consensus has been published in a paper in the journal Science & Education. The argument made in the paper was first published by Christopher Monckton on a climate contrarian blog. Monckton has also suggested the conspiracy theory that the journal Environmental Research Letters was created (in 2006) specifically for the purpose of publishing Cook et al. (2013).
The Monckton paper takes the point about quantification above to the extreme. It focuses exclusively on the papers that quantified human-caused global warming, and takes these as a percentage of all 12,000 abstracts captured in the literature search, thus claiming the consensus is not 97%, but rather 0.3%. The logical flaws in this argument should be obvious, and thus should not have passed through the peer-review process.
Approximately two-thirds of abstracts did not take a position on the causes of global warming, for various reasons (e.g. the causes were simply not relevant to or a key component of their specific research paper). Thus in order to estimate the consensus on human-caused global warming, it's necessary to focus on the abstracts that actually stated a position on human-caused global warming.
When addressing the consensus regarding humans being responsible for the majority of recent global warming, the same argument holds true for abstracts that do not quantify the human contribution. We simply can't know their position on the issue - that doesn't mean they endorse or reject the consensus position; they simply don't provide that information, and thus must first be removed before estimating the quantified consensus.
As noted above, when we perform this calculation, the consensus position that humans are the main cause of global warming is endorsed in 87% of abstracts and 96% of full papers. Monckton's argument is very similar to the myth that CO2 can't cause significant global warming because it only comprises 0.04% of the atmosphere. 99% of the atmosphere is comprised of non-greenhouse gases, but these other gases are irrelevant to the question of the CO2 greenhouse effect. The percentage of CO2 as a fraction of all gases in the atmosphere is an irrelevant figure, as is the percentage of abstracts quantifying human-caused global warming as a percentage of all abstracts captured in our literature search.
It's also worth noting that based on Monckton's logic, only 0.08% of abstracts reject human-caused global warming.
Climate Consensus Denialism
Overall, the critiques of Cook et al. (2013) have all exhibited the characteristics of scientific denialism. Given the long history of consensus denial campaigns by fossil fuel interests and climate contrarians, continued resistance to the consensus is an expected result. Nevertheless, the 97% consensus is a robust result from several different studies taking a variety of approaches, including two independent methods used by Cook et al. (abstract ratings and author self-ratings). The criticisms of the paper have all exhibited the same few logical flaws, some more extreme than others, but all erroneous.
Intermediate rebuttal written by dana1981
Last updated on 13 June 2016 by pattimer. View Archives
Phronesis at 20:17 PM on 20 March, 2014
Guys this is really bad. It would be better if you just focused on the facts.
This does not do anything to address the issue: "Thus it's perhaps not surprising that Cook et al. (2013) and its 97% consensus result have been the subject of extensive denial among the usual climate contrarian suspects. After all, the fossil fuel industry, right-wing think tanks, and climate contrarians have been engaged in a disinformation campaign regarding the expert climate consensus for over two decades. For example, Western Fuels Association conducted a half-million dollar campaign in 1991 designed to ‘reposition global warming as theory (not fact).’"
And under "The 97% Consensus Is a Robust Result", you start by citing a study that produce a 75% consensus level -- but you don't tell us that. You cite that study without even revealing the figure, which does not support the claim in your headline. Also, it was a study of abstracts, not scientists, so it's unclear why you think we can mix the two.
The other 97% finding you cite is based on 77 people, which you don't mention.
There is no survey of scientists that gives us 97%. The Cook study was about papers, and you make no mention that most of the papers included in the consensus were coded by human raters as implicitly endorsing AGW. Nor do you mention the substantial disagreement between the raters, or the fact that the disagreed upon observations were still included in the results.
Since the debate is mostly about severity and confidence levels, studies that use broad or ambiguous litmus tests of simple agreement with human caused warming are not very useful. Actual surveys are better, especially if they ask more useful, finer grained questions, like this: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/climate-change/structure-scientific-opinion-climate-change/#
Try to find your 97% there. Severe outcomes are endorsed by less than half of the sample.
(-snip-).
[DB] Tone-trolling snipped.
CBDunkerson at 21:33 PM on 20 March, 2014
Phronesis, the 2004 Oreskes study found 75% of papers explicitly or implicitly supporting the consensus, 25% taking no position, and 0% contradicting the consensus. Thus, amongst papers expressing any view that study found 100% support for the consensus. Your claim that it found only "a 75% consensus level" is a logic error on your part. If you count papers which don't address the issue at all you could bring in hundreds of thousands of papers on quantum physics, stellar cartography, economics, sociiology, et cetera and claim that since none of these take any position on global warming there is less than 1% support for it... or any other subject you want to dismiss via blatantly flawed logic.
Tom Curtis at 10:26 AM on 21 March, 2014
Phronesis seems to have a problem with things not mentioned, but is carefull not to mention a few things himself. I'll come to that, but first lets look at Doran and Zimmerman (2009). Phronesis dismisses that as a survey of just 75 people, but that is false. It was a survey of 3,146 scientists. Among those scientists, overall 82% answered yes to question 2:
"Do you think human activity is a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?"
That question is closest to the proposition tested by Cook et al (2013). That low figure is because most scientists asked were not specialists in the relevant field, and consequently had little more knowledge on the topic than any non-scientist. Of the small portion of the those surveyed who were specialists in climate science, and actively publishing in the field so that they had up to date information, 97.4% agreed with question 2. There were only 77 of those, but they were part of a much larger sample.
Turning now to Farnsworth and Lichter (2012), we find that it is a survey of scientists, 50% of whom were members of the AMS, and 50% of whom were members of the AGU, and all of whom were listed in the American Men and Women of Science. Their 489 respondents are therefore comparable to Doran and Zimmerman's 3,146 respondents, not to the 77 publishing specialists in climatology. Further (the relevant fact Phronesis did not reveal), only 41% of those 489 actively research in any aspect of global climate science.
It is not clear how those 200 scientists compare to Doran and Zimmerman's classification. For Doran and Zimmerman, and active publisher must have published at least 50% "... of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change". That is, by a reasonable measure, at least 50% of their research must be on the topic. In contrast, the 200 scientists from Farnsworth and Lichter need only have actively researched on any aspect of climate science, ie, greater than 0% and need not have brought the research to publication. Nor need they be specialists in climatology. They are probably best equated with Doran and Zimmerman's active publishers. For the other 289, however, the closest category would be Doran and Zimmerman's non-publishers/non-climatologists.
From all of Farnsworth and Lichter's respondents, 84% responded yes to the question:
"In your opinion, is humanly induced global warming now occuring?"
Assuming Farnsworth and Lichter's non-researchers resonded at the same rate as Doran and Zimmerman's non-publishers/non-climatologists (ie,76.6% affirmative), that represents 221 affirmative responses. That leaves only 190 affirmative responses to come from Farnsworth and Lichter's researchers, meaning that 95% of them responded affirmatively.
Given the low bar on expertise set by Farnsworth and Lichter, and the strong correlation between expertise and current topic knowledge and acceptance of AGW found by Doran and Zimmerman, that 95% is surprisingly high. It shows, however, that the results of Farnsworth and Lichter is entirely consistent with those of Doran and Zimmerman, and also of Cook et al, (2013).
Phronesis may rightly reject the assumption that Farnsworth and Lichter's non-researchers affirmed AGW at the same rate as Doran and Zimmerman's as speculative. The implication of that, however, is that no comparison can reasonably be made between their results and those of Doran and Zimmerman because they do not survey groups with the same demographics. Farnsworth and Lichter would then provide information about general scientific acceptance, but not specifically about acceptance by those with specialist knowledge in the field.
Finally, Phronesis misrepresents the results of Farnworth and Lichter on expected outcomes. The question put, and results were:
"Overall, if present climate trends continue, do you regard the likely effects of global climate change in the next 50 to 100 years as:
Trivial to Catastrophic
1–3 (NET) 13
8–10 (NET) 41
Don’t Know 2
Mean 6.6 "
Thus, less than half (but only just less than half) think the results of current climate trends will be catastrophic, or near catastrophic. Slightly more, but still less than half think the results will be moderate, while only 13% think the results will be trivial or near trivial.
Hi guys. One thing at a time. We have no idea what the Oreskes study did. There is no methods section in the paper. The paper is only a page long, and the part that actually deals with the study is only 126 words long.
We're told that papers that were classified as explicitly endorsing, evaluating impacts, or mitigation proposals were lumped together as endorsing the consensus. That's all we know. Note that the fact that a paper evaluates impacts does not imply endorsement or might report small impacts. We just don't know. We can't do anything with a paper when we don't know how it was done.
We also can't be converting 75% to 100% based on a paper that includes unspecified implicit criteria for inclusion into that bucket. Your logic is sound except for the implicit part. I'm not going to infer unanimity via an implicit classification scheme, much less a complete unknown classification scheme. Is this controversial?
Also, maybe your logic isn't sound after all. Let's linger on the fact that these figures are converted into "75% of climate scientist agree", or as you would have it, "100% of climate scientists agree".
How did we get there? Papers. And we ignored papers -- and scientists -- who expressed no position (by the completely unknown filtering and coding protocol Oreskes used). The sample was much smaller than Cook -- I'm not sure why. There would technical papers, heads-down so to speak, that would address narrow issues -- not really at the level of abstraction of human caused climate change, which is pretty high level. Am I correct in assuming there'd be all manner papers related to climate mechanism that would not ever have occasion to use the relevant phrases? We don't know anything about what those scientists think. We only know about the set that were included and rated by methods we have not been apprised of.
That makes me even more reluctant to say anything definite, certainly not that 100% of climate scientist think x, y, or z.
Let me know if I've missed supplemental materials on Oreskes. I didn't see anything.
Lastly for now -- we need detailed questions, nuanced views. Endorsement of the proposition that humans impact the climate or contribute to warming or are the primary cause of warming is not useful. Not if we want to do something with this knowledge, like pass laws and so forth. We need severities, probability and confidence, scientists' views on the likely roles of different forcings and feedbacks, interpretations of the pause in mean global surface temps, estimates of consequences and benefits of warming, etc. Obviously a 1 F warming by 2100 probably doesn't justify major increases in the costs of energy, for most people. I know the lower bound of IPCC 5 is higher than that, but I'd like to know what scientists think. I'd also like to see studies they have the opportunity to just express their judgments in their own words.
And is it true that the raters in Cook et al were not independent? I saw it here: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2013/i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means/
Rater independence is crucial in a study based on rater data.
Tom Curtis at 17:13 PM on 21 March, 2014
Phronesis @4 & 5, it is more than a little hypocritical to not respond to one issue on the basis of limited time "one thing at a time", and then to yourself introduce additional side topics. It strongly suggests your intention is a gish gallop, where you introduce topics that are rhetorically convenient, but plead time constraints to avoid having to answer on issues where you have been shown to have been both hypocritical (leaving out relevant information, while complaining about what you consider to have been relevant information having been left out) and to misrepresent the study you quote.
michael sweet at 20:09 PM on 21 March, 2014
Phronesis,
Here I linked two very recent reports (both less than one month old) from the National Academy of Science (and the Royal Society of England) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science that state clearly what they think about AGW. Both of these reports state clearly that AGW is likely to be extremely severe and that strong actions need to be taken immediately. For your convienence I have linked them again below. These reports state exactly what you claim above you need to make decisions.
What is your issue with these clearly worded reports from the top science organizations in the USA and England? All other Academies of Science in the World agree with these three organizations. The problem is that you have not bothered to try to find out what scientists clearly say.
AAAS report
NAS/Royal Society report
Phronesis #1: "...you start by citing a [Oreskes] study that produce a 75% consensus level"
Phronesis #4: "We have no idea what the Oreskes study did."
So you've gone from claiming that the Oreskes study did something it provably did not, to claiming that we just can't know... even though you originally claimed we did know.
*plonk*
Composer99 at 01:54 AM on 22 March, 2014
Phronesis:
With respect to your desire for information regarding the severity of global warming impacts, etc. - read the IPCC Assessment Reports. That is their purpose.
Rob Honeycutt at 02:43 AM on 22 March, 2014
Phronesis... I don't want to pile on here but would just like to offer one suggestion.
When a scientist gets his hackles up over some published finding, usually the response is to test the results him/herself. This is something you can easily do yourself. You don't need to review 12,000 papers. Honestly, Cook et al was way overkill in regards to what is statistically necessary to establish the point.
There are two easy ways to do this. Here on the SkS site, you can rate abstracts yourself! If for some reason you don't trust the system that SkS has set up, that's fine. Just go to google scholar and start pulling up papers. Set up your own spreadsheet to check the results.
You can get a rational statistical sampling with a couple hundred papers. That might take a few hours to process. But then you know for yourself with data created by someone you trust. You!
Phronesis at 06:44 AM on 24 March, 2014
Guys, has anyone responded substantively to anything I said in my last round? I don't see anything.
Tom Curtis offers an insight about my intentions, that it is a "gish gallop". I don't know what that means, but I assume it's not charitable.
Michael Sweet cites the AAAS report. My earlier posts undercut one of the three sources used in that report, so I'm not sure why the report would be a counterargument. (Or why any of these reports should be interesting, given that they don't use standard scientific methods for aggregating knowledge, e.g. meta-analyses, at least not the AAAS.)
Dunkerson says that I mentioned Oreskes' 75% figure and that I later mentioned how we have no idea what was done in that study (because the paper doesn't tell us). I take the argument to be that the number of problems I've discovered with Oreskes, or the order I in which I've presented them, somehow refutes me?
Honeycutt regrets piling on another irrelevant, non-substantive reply, and talks about Cook. I had asked a question about whether the Cook et al study used independent rates, as stated in the paper. Honeycutt doesn't answer that question, but invites me to start rating abstracts.
( -snip-.)
[DB] Sloganeering snipped.
Phronesis @5&11:
With regard to Schollenberger's criticism of Cook et al, Victor Venema had this to say:
"if you scan the manuscript, you find that much of what you “discovered” in the stolen forum posts was already written into the article manuscript:
“Each abstract was categorized by two independent, anonymized raters. … Initially, 27% of category ratings and 33% of endorsement ratings disagreed. Raters were then allowed to compare and justify or update their rating through the web system, while maintaining anonymity. Following this, 11% of category ratings and 16% of endorsement ratings disagreed; these were then resolved by a third party.”
It would have been fair, if you would have told your readers that this was written in the article."
To that Schollenberger admited:
"I never claimed to have “discovered” anything in the SKS forums. I didn’t claim anything I said was a secret or new. Quoting one source doesn’t indicate other sources were silent on those topics."
So, right from the start much of Schollenberger's criticism consists of describing processes described in the paper, carefully not mentioning that fact, and then going "tut-tut".
There is a small measure of validity in his criticism, however. Some (5-10) abstracts were discussed in the forum, and should not have been in order to preserve independence. To calculate the effect of this, I shall assume that 50 abstracts were discussed, and that all of those were rated as endorsing the consensus. Both of these assumptions are known to be false. However, they are conservative. That is, they will massively overstate the impact of the breakdown in proceedure on the paper.
To estimate that effect, I simply reduce the number of endorsing papers by 50. The result is that the level of endorsement from abstract ratings falls from 97.1% to 97%. That is, this breakdown in procedure at most overstated endorsements by 0.1%, and did not change the headline result. It is very probable that the impact was negligible, because I have significantly overstated the number of papers involved, because not all papers involved were rated as endorsing the concensus, and because even of those endorsing the concensus, there is a high probability that the rating would not have changed to neutral, or not endorsing the consensus without the discussion.
Further, this breakdown in proceedure cannot effect the author ratings which also show a 97% endorsement rate.
Now, the question for you is - did you realize these facts before raising the issue? If not, why did you raise it, given as you claim to be pressed for time?
Phronesis... My point is substantive if you care to entertain the idea. What I'm telling you is that you can cast stones all day long, never hitting a target and convince no one, including yourself, of anything.
If you have genuine questions about what the reality is regarding the consensus of the published research, test the results yourself. Just be ready to adjust your position on this issue when you do.
My guess is, much like everyone I've ever argued with who rejects AGW, you're not really interested in the reality of the situation. You're merely interested in testing your throwing arm.
DSL at 13:18 PM on 24 March, 2014
Sloganeering, DB? More like Hubris ad Absurdum.
Andy Skuce at 19:02 PM on 24 March, 2014
Anyone who thinks that the consensus is significantly less than 97% can demonstrate this relatively easily. All they have to do is to find, let's say, 5-10% or more papers in a given random sample that implicitly or explicitly reject humans as the main cause of global warming. They don't have to do a fine sub-classification like we did, or sort the no-position papers from the rest, just find the thumbs-down papers. (Hint, some doubters of AGW already have some long--and dubious--lists of papers that supposedly reject AGW, so you could just search for them in any given sample.)
A few hours of careful work requiring no special equipment and Cook et al could, in principle, be falsified. Several people who question our work seem to have put lots of effort into writing blogposts, examining our statistics, submitting formal rebuttals, making FOI requests and writing angry letters to all and sundry. Yet, if they were right, a convincing knock-out punch would be easy to deliver, just by looking through a random sample of scientific papers on climate change. But this work has not even been tried, or if it has, it hasn't been reported.
michael sweet at 00:28 AM on 25 March, 2014
It is interesting to learn that you know more about scientific opinion on AGW than the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I am sure other readers will make their own choice about whether they should believe the AAAS or a nameless voice on the internet.
This is a scientific board. People are expected to provide evidence to support their claims. Peer-reviewed evidence is best. You do not appear to care about evidence. You might find that your method of argument is better received at one of the skeptic sites where they do not care about evidence either.
John Hartz at 07:54 AM on 25 March, 2014
To guide the What We Know initiative, AAAS convened a group of prominent experts in climate science.
Mario Molina (Chair), U of California, San Diego and Scripps Institution of Oceanography
James McCarthy (Co-chair), Harvard University
Diana Wall (Co-chair), Colorado State University
Richard Alley, Pennsylvania State University
Kim Cobb, Georgia Institute of Technology
Julia Cole, University of Arizona
Sarah Das, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Noah Diffenbaugh, Stanford University
Kerry Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Howard Frumkin, University of Washington
Katharine Hayhoe, Texas Tech University
Camille Parmesan, U of Texas, Austin and University of Plymouth, UK
Marshall Shepherd, U of Georgia
tlitb1 at 09:50 AM on 15 May, 2014
Though Shaviv also admitted that Cook et al. correctly classified his abstracts based on their content, but claimed that he worded the text in a way to slip it past the journal reviewers and editors.
I went through that link in that statement and don't see anywhere Shaviv agreeing that Cook et al. correctly classified his abstract of his paper "On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget" . And neither, as far as I can see, does the following point Shaviv makes there regarding the wording of the abstract imply he agrees :
"I couldn’t write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don’t have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper.”
Is there some other statement by Shaviv I may have missed where he clearly says he agrees with the Cook et al rating of his abstract?
The main reason I ask is because I recently checked out the Schulte consensus paper (that overlapped with Cook et al), and saw that it had categorised the Shaviv paper as rejecting the consensus. I then checked its Cook et al rating and was surprised to see it was instead classified as endorsing the consensus.
I would have agreed witht the Schulte rating and although the abstract is rejecting the consensus. Or at least not supporting it. This last past part of the Shaviv absrract seems to put it outside.
Subject to the above caveats and those described in the text, the CRF/climate link therefore implies that the increased solar luminosity and reduced CRF over the previous century should have contributed a warming of 0.47 ± 0.19°K, while the rest should be mainly attributed to anthropogenic causes. Without any effect of cosmic rays, the increase in solar luminosity would correspond to an increased temperature of 0.16 ± 0.04°K.
Doesn't the above key passage clearly indicate the paper holds a thesis that there is a greater proportion (>50%) increase in recent temperature rise that is not explained by anthropogenic causes and so puts it clearly outside the consensus?
Tom Curtis at 16:39 PM on 15 May, 2014
Uncomfortable as it makes me, I have to agree with tlitb1 on this one. In partuclar, in stating that he understated his claims in the paper to get past peer review, Shaviv did not state that the claims in their understated form did not reject AGW. Further, in the abstract, Shaviv clearly asserts a climate sensitivity of 0.35 K/W/M^2 (equivalent to 1.3 C per doubling of CO2), and asserts that solar effects including indirect effects through changes in cosmic ray intensity are responsible for 0.47 K of the increase in temperature over the twentieth century. Using AR4 figures, that is 0.47 out of 0.7 K. Both of these should have been sufficient to classify the abstract as rejecting AGW.
The Shaviv paper just happens to be one of the demonstrably small number of mistakes in classification in Cook et al. It is silly to think that a project like the Consensus Project would be mistake free. What is remarkable about the project is how few the mistakes were, and how little impact (if any) they have on the headline result.
@Tom Curtis at 16:39 PM on 15 May, 2014
I'm glad you agree with me about the Shaviv assessement. My attention was only drawn to Shaviv because I had just for the first time read the Schulte paper, which itemises 6 papers (including Shaviv) as examples rejecting the consensus, and I picked Shaviv to compare first.
I've now had a look at the remaining 5 papers picked out by Schulte as rejecting the consensus - with an aim to see how they stack up against Cook et al. - and found: 2 dont appear in Cook et al, 2 agree, and I think have found one other paper, Lai et al. (2005), which Cook et al rates as supporting the consensus but seems actually to be rejecting it. IMO the abstract certainly is not clearly stating a position on anthropogenic contribution being >50%
Global warming and the mining of oceanic methane hydrate Chung-Chieng A. Lai, David E. Dietrich, Malcolm J. Bowman
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&s=&a=dietrich&c=&e=&yf=&yt
If you look at the abstract I think you will see there is nothing that puts it in the consensus. If I am wrong I would love to know what I missed. In fact I think these two statements alone
"However, the extent to which anthropogenic factors are the main cause of global warming is still being debated."
"we propose a new hypothesis for global warming."
by rights should be enough to define this abstract as *not* being in the consensus.
I think the statement "we propose a new hypothesis for global warming" is as near enough to saying 'this paper is not in the consensus' as you can get! ;)
The Shaviv paper just happens to be one of the demonstrably small number of mistakes in classification in Cook et al. It is silly to think that a project like the Consensus Project would be mistake free.
I certainly wouldn't expect Cook et al to be mistake free but I have to say finding a disagreement between 2 of the 4 overlapping examples here in the Schulte paper, a paper which Cook et al itself draws attention to, is quite interesting; interesting because I think the two examples also indicate an insight as to why they were mis-rated, and why more papers could be too.
I think the mis-rating of Lai et al. (2005) could be explained if the raters were slavishly only looking for quantification, and not really parsing any deeper, then at a push I could see it being put in the neutral category, however its being rated in the endorse category still seems wrong.
And again with Shaviv, there is some dispute about the 'wording' indicated in the article above, as if it wasn't playing by the rules, i.e. as Dana Nuccitelli implies above, "he worded the text in a way to slip it past the journal reviewers and editors" . But surely if Shaviv did not lie in his abstract, no matter how it was 'worded' , Cook et al's methodology should have been robust to correctly rate it?
It clearly seems not in this case, could that have happened in more cases?
Tom Curtis at 11:20 AM on 17 May, 2014
tlitb1 @20, sorry, my computer ate my long response, so you will have to make do with the short.
1) I agree with you about Lai et al (2005), which I would rate as (6) "explicitly rejects but does not quantify".
2) From the full rating data, which has been released by John Cook, it can be determined that there is an initial rating error rate between "endorsement levels" of 12.9% on average, which results in an expected error rate between levels after dispute resolution of 4.7%. Given that distinctions between "implicit" and "explicit" are graduated rather than binary (things can be more, or less explicit) such an error rate is unsurprising. It is also overstated in that it treats a large number of ratings of "0" (= uncertain) as errors, which is not the case.
3) The error rate between endorsing or rejecting AGW falls to a low 0.04%. That is because the vast majority of errors are between categories just one level apart, and because nearly all errors (98%) for initial ratings of (4) involve mistakenly identifying an implicitly endorsing abstract as being neutral. Overall, adjusting for errors based on internal data appears to slightly increase the endorsement percentage. (That is a provisional result using simplifying assumptions. More accurate results may change teh sing of the result but will not significantly change the magnitude which is less than 1%. Note that Richard Tol's claim that this adjustment makes a large increase in the "dissensus rate" depends on the false assumption that the error rate and distribution for all rating values is the same.)
4) Despite the low overall error rates, the sheer number of endorsing abstracts means a small fraction will have been incorrectly rated, ie, should have been rated as rejecting the consensus. On the figures above, we would in fact expect two such abstracts. Those figures show only internally detectable errors, however, so the number may by slightly larger.
5) Because we expect some such errors as a matter of course, no amount of highlighting single abstracts being correctly rated will show the Cook et al results to be false. That is because such anecdotal evidence does not provide a basis for statistical analysis. At most the response required is to adjust the values reported for endorsement and rejection in Cook et al by the number of individual abstracts found to be in error. Thus, you have found two abstracts in error. Therefore we would adjust the Cook et al figures of 3896 endorsing and 78 rejecting to 3894 endorsing and 80 rejecting, which changes the percentages (as a percentage of papers endorsing or rejecting) to 97.99% endorsing, down from 98.04%. Even that ignores the probable existence of papers with errors in the other direction, and makes no difference worth mentioning. Even if you were to find a net error of 100 abstracts in favour of endorsement, after correction you still have an endorsement rate of 95.52%, which again is not a challenge to the Cook et al result.
6) Because of this, the only valid method to challenge Cook et al is to do another survey yourself, of at least 2000 abstracts (and prefferably more). Make sure you state your classification criterion clearly. You will find either a result within 5% of the Cook et al value, or your classification criteria will be transparently tendentious.
Rob Honeycutt at 08:50 AM on 18 June, 2014
likeithot... Then Mike Hulme is welcome to replicate the research and show everyone how he believes it should be done. As it is, Cook13 confirms all the previous research on this topic, including Oreskes04, Doran/Zimmerman09 and Anderegg11.
likeithot at 09:25 AM on 18 June, 2014
He actually gives several examples of how the "study" could have been done.
1.For starters, hire some independent people to actually review the abstracts.
2. create a definition of AGW that is actally meaningful, like for a paper to count as supporting AGW it would need to actually state that, and state the degree to which they think humans are responsible, more than 50%, or less, for example. This is obviously crucial, as most scientists don't deny warming or that CO2 has some effect. The debate is about how much of an effect, as they undoubtedly knew and avoided in order to be able to forward their political adgenda.
Incidentally, where else in science is a number like 97% so religiously adhered to/miraculously arrived at in "independent" studies? <Snip>
[PS] Read the comments policy. Compliance is not optional. Future violations are likely to result in the comment deleted rather than snipped.
Rob Honeycutt at 15:15 PM on 18 June, 2014
likeithot said... "He actually gives several examples of how the 'study' could have been done."
How about we change the scare quotes to "...how the study 'could' have been done."
To my point once again, if Hulme has ideas on how the study could be done better, then by all means, let him do what scientists actually do in these situations where they disagree. Replicate the study. If it can be done better, then do it better!
I would suggest that the vast majority of those critiquing Cook13 don't want to replicate because they know they're going to come up with the same result.
In fact, you too can replicate the study, likeithot. Right here on this website. We've created a tab at the top where you can rate abstracts yourself. So, spend a few hours doing it. Maybe you'll come up with different results. If so, you can let us all know.
Anything short of that is, as they say, just belly-aching.
likeithot at 16:29 PM on 18 June, 2014
You didn't respond to any of the points I made regarding how the study should have been done. In short, it is poorly done because it avoids the critical question of the whole debate: HOW MUCH of the warming that we have witnessed is becasue of human activity. Almost no one argues that humans have had no impact, so disproving that is just knocking down a straw man.
As to your suggestion that I re-do the "study", I find the whole point of the study to be political in nature, trying to prove a scientific point by some kind of opinion poll and then bragging all over the press that your opinions are right because you claim to have lots & lots of people on your side. I have no interest in popularity contests. It is a sign that your arguments are weak, and a distraction from the fact that most models are very inaccurate and didn't predict the pause in warming of the past 17 years.
(Rob P) - Readers will note that the strike-through text relates to other climate myths dealt with here (Climate Models Show Remarkable Agreement with Recent Surface Warming) & here (Nuccitelli et al. (2012) Show that Global Warming Continues), for instance.
Dikran Marsupial at 17:08 PM on 18 June, 2014
likeithot if you want a different question answered, then perform a survey of your own. However, if you want to ask how much of the warming we have witnessed is because of human activity, then you are basically only looking at papers that specifically address the question of attribution. Fortunately, there is a report that already summarises th litterature on this topic (chapter 10 looks like a good place to start).
"As to your suggestion that I re-do the "study", I find the whole point of the study to be political in nature, trying to prove a scientific point by some kind of opinion poll"
nobody is claiming that the existence of a consensus on a scientific question is in any way proof that the mainstream position is correct, that is a straw man. The point is to provide evidence of what the mainstream position on the science actually is. Why is this point worth addressing? Because there is a gap in the public perception of the mainstream position and the reality. This is explicitly mentioned in the article, so it is hard to understand how you have misunderstood the purpose of the study.
If you want evidence that the science is right, the IPCC AR5 WG1 report is a good place to start.
likeithot - While the paper could have been more explicit with each individual endorsement level description (at the risk of some repetition), reading the set of exclusive choices as a whole and the guidelines used for evaluations clarifies that endorsement levels of 1-3 are for a majority anthropogenic influence, while endorsement levels 4-7 are for minority or negligible anthropogenic influence. The levels are in fact quite clear on that.
You can only claim a lack of attribution levels in the Cook et al paper by ignoring the context of the multiple exclusive choices presented - in essence by taking things out of context. That's an error on your part, and on the part of many who have criticized the paper.
As to trying some ratings yourself, that's a suggestion made because you (and any critic) have some options available regarding this paper and the consensus.
If you think the Cook et al raters were biased in their work, do some ratings yourself - a few hundred from the evaluation set should be managable in a weekend day, enough to see if the 97% estimate is supported by the abstracts evaluated. Otherwise you're criticizing w/o evidence, hand-waving. That's one of Tols errors.
If you agree with the general consensus level, but are just criticizing the methods used in Cook et al, then you are by your very agreement with results not able to argue rating bias. This is another core error in Tols comment.
If you disagree with the level of consensus entirely, with Doran, Anderegg, Oreskes, and Cook et al, you need to provide some independent evidence, i.e. do the work. Or you're again engaging in unsupported hand-waving.
There really aren't any other choices wrt this paper.
In regards to consensus vs. science - the consensus is not the science, but rather is driven by the science, by the available evidence and data. As in any public policy issue, no one person is expert on everything (although some people act like they are, oddly enough) and we therefore rely on expert opinions. And as noted in the Cook et al paper, the gap between the existing scientific consensus and the public view of that consensus (due in large part to signficant ongoing efforts at obfuscation and misinformation) means that our public policies will be misinformed as well - unless and until that misperception is corrected.
Claims that a scientific consensus on climate doesn't exist despite multiple studies or even cursory looks at the literature, or that expert opinions are meaningless, are really just efforts in denial, and attempts to halt reality-driven public policies. I consider such claims to be wholly ideological rather than evidential. And (IMO, mind you) I regard your claims in this thread in like manner.
If you wish to argue public policy, great, do so, although I suspect SkS is perhaps the wrong place for purely political discussions. But policy discussions need to be based on accurate information, including the reality that the vast majority of people studying climate agree on the basics of AGW.
A clarification on my previous comment:
For those unhappy with Cook et al., there are some issues that need to be addressed.
If you agree with the overall level of consensus, you cannot claim the Cook et al. raters were biased.
If you feel the raters were biased while ignoring independent results, the Cook et al. data (the abstracts) are publicly available - do the work and support your claim, or drop it as opinion and not fact.
If you disagree with the overall level of consensus, provide some evidence. Or again, hand-waving opinion unsupported by facts.
And if you are arguing that expert consensus is unimportant, why is consensus one of the most frequent primary 'skeptic' claims presented to argue against policy changes? Perhaps, just perhaps, because expert consensus is actually critical to policy decisions...
Again I (IMO) view arguments against the consensus, made without evidence, to just be efforts to influence public policy - trying to persuade the public to ignore evidence, to ignore reality.
likeithot... Every single paper or piece of research ever done, and every one that ever will be done, can be done better. That's just a fact of life.
I will take from your combativeness and unwillingness to test the results of Cook13 as an admission that the results are likely to be correct.
R. Honeyutt:
Lindzen’s JP&S article "Science in the Public Square: Global Climate Alarmism and Historical Precedents" sums up pretty well the problem with group think, “look how many people are on our side” type arguments:
http://www.jpands.org/vol18no3/lindzen.pdf
likeithot - If you are in agreement with Lindzen, are you arguing that the consensus is unimportant, that attribution is impossible, or that scientists are wholly motivated by money and status rather than facts? Because all of those contentions are quite false. [And as a side note, the comparisons to eugenics, Nazis and Lysenko in Lindzens article indicate to me that he isn't resenting a fact-based argument, rather just rhetoric...]
In the interests of remaining on topic, I'll just note (as many others have) that public policy decisions are driven by the information available, that on complex subjects we depend upon expert opinion, and that due to some rather serious efforts by 'skeptics' there is a gap between the expert opinion and the public perception of the same. Consensus is very important in informing policy.
I will also note that your "look, squirrel" changes of subject mean that you have not supported any of your claims against Cook et al's methods or results.
scaddenp at 08:27 AM on 19 June, 2014
How do you think policy should be guided? Personally I think that in highly technical areas, policy should be guided by the consensus of experts. It might be wrong, but that is still the best way for policy makers to proceed.
Of course you need to know what the consensus is and interestingly, several ways of examining this have arrived at the same conclusion. If you dont think that this is the consensus opinion, then where is your evidence to the contrary?
I think the idea of group-think in science is total joke. "Science is a contact sport" is more realistic - and utter applies to Lindzen's example which was clearly not group-think. Actually it is example of politically-motivated abuse of science much like the anti-AGW stance which is rather ironic.
Otherwise, the piece consists of misinformation that Lindzen would certainly not say to his peers and the usual political argumentation method of selective historical presentation to support an argument. How about showing a little skepticism for this sort of stuff and checking it against the actual science yourself?
What Lindzen publishes in journals gets noted. What Lindzen presents to the naive is rather different and depressing.
Eugenics was not the scientific consensus opinion by a very large margin. Democracy would work okay if the population was actually accurately informed but as you are aptly demonstrating, people prefer to get their "information" from sources which confirm preconceived beliefs.
Spare us the strawman arguements please. You obviously read a pack of pseudoskeptic sites, why not read what the science is actually saying and predicting instead of the nonsense that would appear to fit your prejudices? Have you ever look at the IPCC WG1 report? It would appear not from those statements.
As a post-script, I have a pretty clear of set of criteria for data that would falsify climate theory based on what climate theory actually predicts.
- OHC flat or declining while known net forcing same or increasing.
- 30 year surface temperature trends flat or declining
- Ratio of insurance costs for weather events/geophysical events on a 10 year average flat or declining
- sealevel rise declining over a 10 year interval.
Do have a set of criteria for changing your mind?
Mal Adapted at 09:38 AM on 19 June, 2014
Scaddenp,
There are some soi-disant skeptics who don't respect the IPCC but do respect the US National Academy of Sciences. Those people might learn something from the 36-page booklet Climate Change: Evidence and Causes, jointly published by the NAS and the Royal Society of the UK. It should be considered to represent, for what it covers, the scientific consensus on AGW.
likeithot said... "...Lindzen is a highly recognized scientist with a lot more published science than all of those who work on this site combined."
So, let me get this straight. One scientist presents a position you like, so that trumps 97 other equally qualified scientists who disagree with him?
Look, no one says that the 97% are absolutely right and the 3% are absolutely wrong. That's not how science works either. But, when it comes to making critical policy decisions you have to have a reference for how to make those decisions. What are the chances the 3% are right and the 97% are wrong?
I would suggest that, even if the figures were 50/50, that would be more than enough reason to take aggressive action on climate change.
If there were a 50/50 chance my house was going to burn down if I didn't get the wiring replaced, you'd be darned sure I'd be making that investment asap.
KR at 13:34 PM on 19 June, 2014
likeithot - Your most recent reply contains several logical fallacies, namely Argument from Authority (while Lindzen is a climate scientist, he is in a distinct and tiny minority on his views, with multiple papers debunked), Red Herrings (eugenics), the Argument from Uncertainty regarding the maturity of the field. You also have Gish Galloped false claims about extreme weather, sea level rise rates, and the temperature record.
From your posts it appears you, in fact, are the person who has been spending too much time in the echo chamber - deep in denial myths.
At this point it's clear to me that you are simply trolling, and are not interested in a rational discussion of the data and science. I would suggest that the correct response is DNFTT (Do Not Feed The Troll).
scaddenp at 20:08 PM on 19 June, 2014
I would also point out the accusations of " sycophant research" is simply empty rhetoric - a dismissive to hide that fact that there is no counter-theory, and at odds with the mass of hard data collection that is the core of climate research.
FF companies have the scientists, the money, computer power and the motiviation to find alternative theories. Instead they invest in PR. Why do you think that is? Perhaps because of what their own scientists tell them? I work in petroleum science - denialists are rare among scientists.
Aanthanur at 19:13 PM on 31 December, 2017
"We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW)."
no you do not determine that level. because according to you data, there would have been a 87% consensus and not 97%.
because you then change the consensus position to include unquantified statements.
"To simplify the analysis, ratings were consolidated into three groups: endorsements (including implicit and explicit; categories 1–3 in table 2)"
so people, carefull when you use that study as a source, the study shows that 97% of published studies state that human activity cause some warming.
the paper does not show that 97% of the scientific literature on climate change support the conclusion that human activity cause MOST of the warming since mid 20th century, as is falsely claimed in the paper.
how did this pass peer review?
BaerbelW at 22:55 PM on 31 December, 2017
Aanthanur @39
Your comment reads as if you haven't yet taken the time to read all the information readily available about Cook et al. on our homepage:
https://skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=home
Otherwise you should already be aware that one important aspect of the rating done for the paper (and actually mentioned in it) is that any wording minimising anthropogenic warming would have made the abstract go into one of the rejection categories, thus ruling out the inclusion of "human activity cause some warming" in categories 1 -3.
Aanthanur at 03:53 AM on 1 January, 2018
they included papers that did not quantify the Anthropogenic contribution to warming.
and when you check the abstracts of for example endorsement level 3, you find that they did count unquantified abstracts as supporting, thus the claim in the intro of the study is false.
[DB] Specific citations required.
Eclectic at 04:53 AM on 2 January, 2018
I note that Aanthanur @41 subsequently went on to cite as example the paper Beyea et al. 1991.
But Beyea very clearly states implicit support for the mainstream science of AGW. And thus the paper goes more correctly into "Category 3" — and yet Aanthanur fails to recognize that categories 1 - 3 all endorse the scientific consensus (contributing to the quoted 97%).
The Beyea et al. paper is all the more remarkable for being published in 1991. Being 26 years ago, and at the start of the survey period.
Since that time, the consensus position, already extremely strong, has gone on to become even stronger (and has no valid challenges to it). So Aanthanur's preoccupation with allocation to category 1, 2, or 3 . . . is a complete waste of time.
Furthermore, Aanthanur displays unawareness that the Cook et al. 2013 paper provides a double validation of the 97% consensus (authors gave a self-rating of their own papers — and the self-ratings verified the 97%).
It should also be noted that the average age of the papers in the Cook survey, is now around 10 years old. With the march of time and further evidence, a renewed survey would show consensus above 99%.
"Aanthanur fails to recognize that categories 1 - 3 all endorse the scientific consensus "
what is the scientific consensus?
they use different definitions in the paper.
"Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming."
one is quantified, the other not.
you cannot use unquantified abstracts to evaluate the support for the consensus as defined in the introduction, the one in the abstract yes.
and i have no problem with a 97% consensus. or 99%. the data used in this study, is not supporting one of the two definitions given in the paper.
i do not doubt AGW in the least, AGW is an observed fact.
I picked just one randomly, the specific paper is rather irelevant, if old or if correct or not, what matters is, if it has a quantified attribution in the abstract.
Aanthanur @43/44 , if I may simplify the philosophical aspects :-
In this world, we have (A) the realities, (B) our human concepts of the realities, and (C) the language of words which we use to describe & handle the concepts.
The nexus between realities and concepts can be valid or poor . . . or even nonexistent. Likewise our words can be useful tools in "handling" concepts . . . but in some cases they can be a handicap, or even completely divorce us from understanding the appropriate concepts & underlying realities.
Aanthanur, I very much fear that you have allowed your "Motivated Reasoning" to lose you in a forest of words — and distract you from looking at the realities. The main game is the reality of a rapidly warming Earth : ice melting, sea level rising, oceans acidifying, surface temperature rising . . . all in a harmful way (and with worse to come). And the causation of it all, is clear.
The "consensus" connects us to the scientific understanding of the [AGW] . . . and you harm yourself by diverting your mental focus toward a forest of verbal trivialites.
Aanthanur at 15:59 PM on 2 January, 2018
i do not hurt myself. what hurts me is when AGW deniers get ammunition, and it was a denier that pointed this out to me. and i had to agree.
but you seem to not care much about accuracy. i do care, i want to use accurate data. and Cook et al is not accurate.
and i hate to be debunked by deniers. and i guess others feel the same. hense my warning to other people debating AGW deniers.
BaerbelW at 18:14 PM on 2 January, 2018
Aanthanur - if you haven't done so yet (which your recent comments seem to imply as they cover old and well-trodden grounds) please read KR's comment upthread from June 2014. If his first two paragraphs - esp. the mention of "exclusive choices" - don't clarify the rating guidelines for you, then nothing will and we can just as well stop any discussion right here.
If you haven't done so, you should also take the time to actually read all the information provided on the TCP-homepage I link to in my comment @40 above (which includes the various articles related to Cook et al. (2013) and subsequent studies).
It's been more then 4 1/2 years now since the paper was published and the likelihood to come up with something, which others haven't yet used to attack the paper with, is as close to zero as it can possibly get.
Basically, you seem to have been taken in by one of the characterstics of (climate) science denial which is "impossible expectations". The denialist you are referring to is playing word games with you while at the same time misunderstanding the rating guidelines himself (and it doesn't much matter if he does so intentionally or not).
"12270,2011,3,3,Wood pellets production costs and energy consumption under different framework conditions in Northeast Argentina"
read the abstract, there is no way to know from the abstract aone if that study attributes 40% of the observed warming to anthropogenic source or if the attribute 140% of the observed warming to Anthropogenic sources of GHGs.
i did read everything avaible on this website on this. and i still thik it is wrong.
i also wrote to the jouranal. the wording is misleading.
yes the "expanded" the definition to include unquantified abstracts, but then they should have changed the sentence in the introduction that claim they evaluate the support for the more than 50% consensus.
i will use Verheggen 2014, they also came to the 87% conclusion. and include the important point about aerosol cooling that is masking parts of the warming.
"impossible expectations"
not the case here, this is not an impossible expectation.
it is simply an error in a paper, and all it needs is change one sentence, that is not impossible.
all they have to do is Change the sentence
""We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW).""
""We examined a large sample of the scientific literature on global CC, published over a 21 year period, in order to determine the level of scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW)."
or just use Support Level 1 and 7 and have a 87% consensus.
Aanthanur - that abstract states "[..]The development of cleaner and renewable energy sources are needed in order to reduce dependency and global warming. Wood pellets are a clean renewable fuel and has been considered as one of the substitutes for fossil fuels.[...]". With that wording it clearly falls under "3.1 Mitigation papers that examine GHG emission reduction or carbon sequestration, linking it to climate change" so, - under our documented rating guidelines - is an implicit endorsement of AGW (and it's called "anthropogenic" for a reason, namely for humans being the main and not just a "minor" or "one of many" causes).
If you prefer other definitions, feel free to conduct your own study and get it published.
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How to Move to Canada
Will they take us in?
By Louisa Thomas
Nov 03, 20046:37 PM
Going North? Don Emmert/Getty Images
After President George W. Bush was re-elected this week, some despairing U.S. residents began talking about moving to Canada. Just how easy is it to relocate to our neighbor to the north?
Historically, Canada has been a relatively welcoming destination for immigrants. Nearly 20 percent of the Canadian population is foreign born. (Just 11.5 percent of the U.S. population can say the same.) The country boasts one of the world’s only permanent immigration programs, and the minister of citizenship and immigration recently announced that she hopes Canada will welcome 220,000 to 245,000 immigrants and refugees in 2005. *
A relatively small number of those immigrants are expected to come from the United States. In 2003, emigrants from the United States constituted only 2.7 percent of the total number of immigrants to Canada, a figure that has held steady over recent years—even in 2001, after the hotly contested 2000 presidential election. (By contrast, more than half of the immigrant population comes from Asia and the Pacific region.)
Nevertheless, Canada has long been a refuge for Americans fleeing the states for political reasons. During the Vietnam War, tens of thousands of draft dodgers jumped the border—many of them illegally (according to the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, there were about 23,000 legal American residents in Canada in 1970). Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau accepted most with open arms, and one Canadian town even recently planned a memorial to the draft dodgers until strong opposition from veterans groups blocked the effort.
Today, permanent residence—and the universal health care and clean air that come with it—is a little harder to obtain. Immigrants must obtain a visa from the Canadian Visa Office and fill out an application for permanent residence from the Consulate General of Canada. Applications take an average of 25 months to process. Bush dodgers arriving in Canada must also provide a valid passport, two copies of a detailed list of all personal items brought into the country and two copies of a list of all items on the way, and proof of enough funds to cover expenses for the first six months. For more information, visit the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website.
Explainer thanks Maria Iadinardi, deputy spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
Correction, Nov. 5, 2004: This article originally referred to the minister of citizenship and immigration as a man. The minister, Judy Sgro, is a woman. Return to the corrected sentence.
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Early socialism
Paris Commune
International Working Union of Socialist Parties
Fourth congress
Nordic model
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
Contemporary socialist politics
Social and political theory
Criticism of capitalism
Role of the state
Utopian versus scientific
Reform versus revolution
Planned economy
Self-managed economy
State-directed economy
Market socialism
Leninism and precedents
Libertarian socialism
Religious socialism
Social democracy and liberal socialism
Socialism and modern progressive social movements
Syndicalism
Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers’ self-management,[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity.[12] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them,[13] with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms.[5][14][15]
Socialist systems are divided into non-market and market forms.[16] Non-market socialism involves replacing factor markets and money with engineering and technical criteria based on calculation performed in-kind, thereby producing an economic mechanism that functions according to different economic laws from those of capitalism. Non-market socialism aims to circumvent the inefficiencies and crises traditionally associated with capital accumulation and the profit system.[25] By contrast, market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and in some cases the profit motive, with respect to the operation of socially owned enterprises and the allocation of capital goods between them. Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm, or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend. The socialist calculation debate concerns the feasibility and methods of resource allocation for a socialist system.
Socialist politics has been both internationalist and nationalist in orientation; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions, and at other times independent and critical of unions; and present in both industrialised and developing nations.[29] Originating within the socialist movement, social democracy has embraced a mixed economy with a market that includes substantial state intervention in the form of income redistribution, regulation, and a welfare state. Economic democracy proposes a sort of market socialism where there is more decentralised control of companies, currencies, investments, and natural resources.
Socialism symbol
The socialist political movement includes a set of political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that were associated with capitalism.[13] By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify opposition to capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production.[30][31] By the 1920s, social democracy and communism had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement.[32] By this time, socialism emerged as “the most influential secular movement of the twentieth century, worldwide. It is a political ideology (or world view), a wide and divided political movement”[33] and while the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world’s first nominally socialist state led to socialism’s widespread association with the Soviet economic model, some economists and intellectuals argued that in practice the model functioned as a form of state capitalism or a non-planned administrative or command economy.[37][38] Socialist parties and ideas remain a political force with varying degrees of power and influence on all continents, heading national governments in many countries around the world. Today, some socialists have also adopted the causes of other social movements, such as environmentalism, feminism and progressivism.[39]
For Andrew Vincent, “[t]he word ‘socialism’ finds its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and then medieval law was societas. This latter word could mean companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic idea of a consensual contract between freemen”.[40]
Utopian socialist pamphlet of Rudolf Sutermeister
The term “socialism” was created by Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would later be labelled “utopian socialism”. Simon coined the term as a contrast to the liberal doctrine of “individualism”, which stressed that people act or should act as if they are in isolation from one another.[41] The original “utopian” socialists condemned liberal individualism for failing to address social concerns during the industrial revolution, including poverty, social oppression and gross inequalities in wealth, thus viewing liberal individualism as degenerating society into supporting selfish egoism that harmed community life through promoting a society based on competition.[41] They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism based on the shared ownership of resources, although their proposals for socialism differed significantly. Saint-Simon proposed economic planning, scientific administration and the application of modern scientific advancements to the organisation of society. By contrast, Robert Owen proposed the organisation of production and ownership in cooperatives.[41][42]
The term “socialism” is also attributed to Pierre Leroux[43] and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud in France; and to Robert Owen in Britain who became one of the fathers of the cooperative movement.[44][45]
The modern definition and usage of “socialism” settled by the 1860s, becoming the predominant term among the group of words “co-operative”, “mutualist” and “associationist”, which had previously been used as synonyms. The term “communism” also fell out of use during this period, despite earlier distinctions between socialism and communism from the 1840s.[46] An early distinction between socialism and communism was that the former aimed to only socialise production while the latter aimed to socialise both production and consumption (in the form of free access to final goods).[47] However, Marxists employed the term “socialism” in place of “communism” by 1888, which had come to be considered an old-fashion synonym for socialism. It was not until 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution that “socialism” came to refer to a distinct stage between capitalism and communism, introduced by Vladimir Lenin as a means to defend the Bolshevik seizure of power against traditional Marxist criticisms that Russia’s productive forces were not sufficiently developed for socialist revolution.[48]
A distinction between “communist” and “socialist” as descriptors of political ideologies arose in 1918 after the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party renamed itself to the All-Russian Communist Party, where communist came to specifically mean socialists who supported the politics and theories of Leninism, Bolshevism and later Marxism–Leninism,[49] although communist parties continued to describe themselves as socialists dedicated to socialism.[50]
The words “socialism” and “communism” eventually accorded with the adherents’ and opponents’ cultural attitude towards religion. In Christian Europe, communism was believed to be the atheist way of life. In Protestant England, the word “communism” was too culturally and aurally close to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists.[51] Friedrich Engels argued that in 1848, at the time when The Communist Manifesto was published, that “socialism was respectable on the continent, while communism was not”. The Owenites in England and the Fourierists in France were considered “respectable” socialists, while working-class movements that “proclaimed the necessity of total social change” denoted themselves communists. This latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany.[52] The British moral philosopher John Stuart Mill also came to advocate a form of economic socialism within a liberal context. In later editions of his Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill would argue that “as far as economic theory was concerned, there is nothing in principle in economic theory that precludes an economic order based on socialist policies”.[53][54] While democrats looked to the Revolutions of 1848 as a democratic revolution, which in the long run ensured liberty, equality and fraternity, Marxists denounced 1848 as a betrayal of working-class ideals by a bourgeoisie indifferent to the legitimate demands of the proletariat.[55]
Charles Fourier, influential early French socialist thinker
Socialist models and ideas espousing common or public ownership have existed since antiquity. The economy of the 3rd century BCE Mauryan Empire of India has been described as “a socialized monarchy” and “a sort of state socialism”. It has been claimed—though controversially—that there were elements of socialist thought in the politics of classical Greek philosophers Plato[58] and Aristotle.[59] Mazdak the Younger, a Persian communal proto-socialist,[60] instituted communal possessions and advocated the public good. Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī, a Companion of Prophet Muhammad, is credited by many as a principal antecedent of Islamic socialism. The teachings of Jesus the messiah of the Christian religion are frequently highlighted as socialist in nature, though this is disputed.[66] Acts 4:35 records that the early church in Jerusalem ‘No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own’; however the pattern soon disappears from church history except within monasticism. Christian socialism was one of the founding threads of the UK Labour Party and is said to be a tradition going back 600 years to the uprising of Wat Tyler and John Ball.[67] In the period right after the French Revolution, activists and theorists like François-Noël Babeuf, Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, Philippe Buonarroti and Auguste Blanqui influenced the early French labour and socialist movements.[68] In Britain, Thomas Paine proposed a detailed plan to tax property owners to pay for the needs of the poor in Agrarian Justice[69] while Charles Hall wrote The Effects of Civilization on the People in European States, denouncing capitalism’s effects on the poor of his time[70] which influenced the utopian schemes of Thomas Spence.[71]
The first self-conscious socialist movements developed in the 1820s and 1830s. The Owenites, Saint-Simonians and Fourierists provided a series of coherent analyses and interpretations of society. They also, especially in the case of the Owenites, overlapped with a number of other working-class movements like the Chartists in the United Kingdom.[72] The Chartists gathered significant numbers around the People’s Charter of 1838, which sought a number of democratic reforms focused on the extension of suffrage to all male adults. Leaders in the movement also called for a more equitable distribution of income and better living conditions for the working classes. The very first trade unions and consumers’ cooperative societies also emerged in the hinterland of the Chartist movement as a way of bolstering the fight for these demands.[73] A later important socialist thinker in France was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who proposed his philosophy of mutualism in which “everyone had an equal claim, either alone or as part of a small cooperative, to possess and use land and other resources as needed to make a living”.[74] There were also currents inspired by dissident Christianity of Christian socialism “often in Britain and then usually coming out of left liberal politics and a romantic anti-industrialism”[68] which produced theorists such as Edward Bellamy, Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kingsley.[75]
The first advocates of socialism favoured social levelling in order to create a meritocratic or technocratic society based on individual talent. Count Henri de Saint-Simon is regarded as the first individual to coin the term “socialism”.[76] Saint-Simon was fascinated by the enormous potential of science and technology and advocated a socialist society that would eliminate the disorderly aspects of capitalism and would be based on equal opportunities.[77] He advocated the creation of a society in which each person was ranked according to his or her capacities and rewarded according to his or her work.[76] The key focus of Saint-Simon’s socialism was on administrative efficiency and industrialism and a belief that science was the key to progress.[78] This was accompanied by a desire to implement a rationally organised economy based on planning and geared towards large-scale scientific and material progress,[76] thus embodied a desire for a more directed or planned economy. Other early socialist thinkers, such as Thomas Hodgkin and Charles Hall, based their ideas on David Ricardo’s economic theories. They reasoned that the equilibrium value of commodities approximated prices charged by the producer when those commodities were in elastic supply and that these producer prices corresponded to the embodied labour—the cost of the labour (essentially the wages paid) that was required to produce the commodities. The Ricardian socialists viewed profit, interest and rent as deductions from this exchange-value.
West European social critics, including Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Louis Blanc, Charles Hall, and Saint-Simon were the first modern socialists who criticised the excessive poverty and inequality of the Industrial Revolution. They advocated reform, with some such as Robert Owen advocating the transformation of society to small communities without private property. Robert Owen’s contribution to modern socialism was his understanding that actions and characteristics of individuals were largely determined by the social environment they were raised in and exposed to.[78] On the other hand, Charles Fourier advocated phalansteres which were communities that respected individual desires (including sexual preferences), affinities and creativity and saw that work has to be made enjoyable for people.[79] The ideas of Owen and Fourier were tried in practice in numerous intentional communities around Europe and the American continent in the mid-19th century.
The celebration of the election of the Commune on 28 March 1871—the Paris Commune was a major early implementation of socialist ideas
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from 18 March (more formally, from 28 March) to 28 May 1871. The Commune was the result of an uprising in Paris after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War. The Commune elections held on 26 March elected a Commune council of 92 members, one member for each 20,000 residents.[80] Despite internal differences, the council began to organise the public services essential for a city of two million residents. It also reached a consensus on certain policies that tended towards a progressive, secular and highly democratic social democracy.
Because the Commune was only able to meet on fewer than 60 days in all, only a few decrees were actually implemented. These included the separation of church and state; the remission of rents owed for the entire period of the siege (during which payment had been suspended); the abolition of night work in the hundreds of Paris bakeries; the granting of pensions to the unmarried companions and children of National Guards killed on active service; and the free return, by the city pawnshops, of all workmen’s tools and household items valued up to 20 francs, pledged during the siege.[81] The Commune was concerned that skilled workers had been forced to pawn their tools during the war; the postponement of commercial debt obligations and the abolition of interest on the debts; and the right of employees to take over and run an enterprise if it were deserted by its owner. The Commune nonetheless recognised the previous owner’s right to compensation.[81]
The International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), often called the First International, was founded in London in 1864. The International Workingmen’s Association united diverse revolutionary currents including French followers of Proudhon,[82] Blanquists, Philadelphes, English trade unionists, socialists and social democrats. The IWA held a preliminary conference in 1865 and had its first congress at Geneva in 1866. Due to the wide variety of philosophies present in the First International, there was conflict from the start. The first objections to Marx came from the mutualists who opposed communism and statism. However, shortly after Mikhail Bakunin and his followers (called collectivists while in the International) joined in 1868, the First International became polarised into two camps headed by Marx and Bakunin respectively.[83] The clearest differences between the groups emerged over their proposed strategies for achieving their visions of socialism. The First International became the first major international forum for the promulgation of socialist ideas.
The followers of Bakunin were called collectivist anarchists and sought to collectivise ownership of the means of production while retaining payment proportional to the amount and kind of labour of each individual. Like Proudhonists, they asserted the right of each individual to the product of his labour and to be remunerated for their particular contribution to production. By contrast, anarcho-communists sought collective ownership of both the means and the products of labour. Errico Malatesta put it: “[I]nstead of running the risk of making a confusion in trying to distinguish what you and I each do, let us all work and put everything in common. In this way each will give to society all that his strength permits until enough is produced for every one; and each will take all that he needs, limiting his needs only in those things of which there is not yet plenty for every one”.[84] Anarcho-communism as a coherent, modern economic-political philosophy was first formulated in the Italian section of the First International by Carlo Cafiero, Emilio Covelli, Errico Malatesta, Andrea Costa and other ex Mazzinian republicans.[85] Out of respect for Mikhail Bakunin, they did not make their differences with collectivist anarchism explicit until after Bakunin’s death.[86]
Syndicalism emerged in France inspired in part by the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and later by Fernand Pelloutier and Georges Sorel.[87] It developed at the end of the 19th century out of the French trade-union movement (syndicat is the French word for trade union). It was a significant force in Italy and Spain in the early 20th century until it was crushed by the fascist regimes in those countries. In the United States, syndicalism appeared in the guise of the Industrial Workers of the World, or “Wobblies”, founded in 1905.[87] Syndicalism is an economic system where industries are organised into confederations (syndicates)[88] and the economy is managed by negotiation between specialists and worker representatives of each field, comprising multiple non-competitive categorised units.[89] Syndicalism is thus a form of communism and economic corporatism, but also refers to the political movement and tactics used to bring about this type of system. An influential anarchist movement based on syndicalist ideas is anarcho-syndicalism.[90] The International Workers Association is an international anarcho-syndicalist federation of various labour unions from different countries.
The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation which was established with the purpose of advancing the principles of socialism via gradualist and reformist means.[91] The society laid many of the foundations of the Labour Party and subsequently affected the policies of states emerging from the decolonisation of the British Empire, most notably India and Singapore. Originally, the Fabian Society was committed to the establishment of a socialist economy, alongside a commitment to British imperialism as a progressive and modernising force.[92] Today, the society functions primarily as a think tank and is one of fifteen socialist societies affiliated with the Labour Party. Similar societies exist in Australia (the Australian Fabian Society), in Canada (the Douglas-Coldwell Foundation and the now disbanded League for Social Reconstruction) and in New Zealand.
Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers’ control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds “in an implied contractual relationship with the public”.[93] It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influential in the first quarter of the 20th century. Inspired by medieval guilds, theorists such as Samuel G. Hobson and G. D. H. Cole advocated the public ownership of industries and their organisation into guilds, each of which would be under the democratic control of its trade union. Guild socialists were less inclined than Fabians to invest power in a state.[87] At some point, like the American Knights of Labor, guild socialism wanted to abolish the wage system.
As the ideas of Marx and Engels took on flesh, particularly in central Europe, socialists sought to unite in an international organisation. In 1889 (the centennial of the French Revolution of 1789), the Second International was founded, with 384 delegates from twenty countries representing about 300 labour and socialist organisations.[94] It was termed the Socialist International and Engels was elected honorary president at the third congrss in 1893. Anarchists were ejected and not allowed in, mainly due to pressure from Marxists.[95] It has been argued that at some point the Second International turned “into a battleground over the issue of libertarian versus authoritarian socialism. Not only did they effectively present themselves as champions of minority rights; they also provoked the German Marxists into demonstrating a dictatorial intolerance which was a factor in preventing the British labour movement from following the Marxist direction indicated by such leaders as H. M. Hyndman”.[95]
Reformism arose as an alternative to revolution. Eduard Bernstein was a leading social democrat in Germany who proposed the concept of evolutionary socialism. Revolutionary socialists quickly targeted reformism: Rosa Luxemburg condemned Bernstein’s Evolutionary Socialism in her 1900 essay Social Reform or Revolution?. Revolutionary socialism encompasses multiple social and political movements that may define “revolution” differently from one another. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany became the largest and most powerful socialist party in Europe, despite working illegally until the anti-socialist laws were dropped in 1890. In the 1893 elections, it gained 1,787,000 votes, a quarter of the total votes cast, according to Engels. In 1895, the year of his death, Engels emphasised the Communist Manifesto’s emphasis on winning, as a first step, the “battle of democracy”.[96]
Antonio Gramsci, member of the Italian Socialist Party and later leader and theorist of the Communist Party of Italy
In Argentina the Socialist Party of Argentina was established in the 1890s led by, among others, Juan B. Justo and Nicolás Repetto, thus becoming the first mass party in the country and in Latin America. The party affiliated itself with the Second International.[97] Between 1924 and 1940 it was a member of the Labour and Socialist International.[98] In 1904, Australians elected Chris Watson as the first Australian Labor Party Prime Minister, becoming the first democratically elected social democrat. In 1909, the first Kibbutz was established in Palestine[99] by Russian Jewish Immigrants. The Kibbutz Movement would then expand through the 20th century following a doctrine of Zionist socialism.[100] The British Labour Party first won seats in the House of Commons in 1902. The International Socialist Commission (ISC, also known as Berne International) was formed in February 1919 at a meeting in Bern by parties that wanted to resurrect the Second International.[101]
By 1917, the patriotism of World War I changed into political radicalism in most of Europe, the United States and Australia. Other socialist parties from around the world who were beginning to gain importance in their national politics in the early 20th century included the Italian Socialist Party, the French Section of the Workers’ International, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the Swedish Social Democratic Party, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, the Socialist Party of America in the United States, the Argentinian Socialist Party and the Chilean Partido Obrero Socialista.
In February 1917, revolution exploded in Russia. Workers, soldiers and peasants established soviets (councils), the monarchy fell and a provisional government convoked pending the election of a constituent assembly. In April of that year, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik faction of socialists in Russia and known for his profound and controversial expansions of Marxism, was allowed to cross Germany to return to his country from exile in Switzerland.
Lenin had published essays on his analysis of imperialism, the monopoly and globalisation phase of capitalism as predicted by Marx, as well as analyses on the social conditions of his contemporary time. He observed that as capitalism had further developed in Europe and America, the workers remained unable to gain class consciousness so long as they were too busy working and concerned with how to make ends meet. He therefore proposed that the social revolution would require the leadership of a vanguard party of class-conscious revolutionaries from the educated and politically active part of the population.[102]
Upon arriving in Petrograd, Lenin declared that the revolution in Russia was not over but had only begun, and that the next step was for the workers’ soviets to take full state authority. He issued a thesis outlining the Bolshevik’s party programme, including rejection of any legitimacy in the provisional government and advocacy for state power to be given to the peasant and working class through the soviets. The Bolsheviks became the most influential force in the soviets and on 7 November the capitol of the provisional government was stormed by Bolshevik Red Guards in what afterwards known as the “Great October Socialist Revolution”. The rule of the provisional government was ended and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic—the world’s first constitutionally socialist state—was established. On 25 January 1918 at the Petrograd Soviet, Lenin declared “Long live the world socialist revolution!”[103] and proposed an immediate armistice on all fronts and transferred the land of the landed proprietors, the crown and the monasteries to the peasant committees without compensation.[104]
The day after assuming executive power on 25 January, Lenin wrote Draft Regulations on Workers’ Control, which granted workers control of businesses with more than five workers and office employees and access to all books, documents and stocks and whose decisions were to be “binding upon the owners of the enterprises”.[105] Governing through the elected soviets and in alliance with the peasant-based Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Bolshevik government began nationalising banks and industry; and disavowed the national debts of the deposed Romanov royal régime. It sued for peace, withdrawing from World War I and convoked a Constituent Assembly in which the peasant Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SR) won a majority.[106]
The Constituent Assembly elected Socialist-Revolutionary leader Victor Chernov President of a Russian republic, but rejected the Bolshevik proposal that it endorse the Soviet decrees on land, peace and workers’ control and acknowledge the power of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. The next day, the Bolsheviks declared that the assembly was elected on outdated party lists[107] and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets dissolved it.[108][109] In March 1919, world communist parties formed Comintern (also known as the Third International) at a meeting in Moscow.[110]
Parties which did not want to be a part of the resurrected Second International (ISC) or Comintern formed the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP, also known as Vienna International/Vienna Union/Two-and-a-Half International) on 27 February 1921 at a conference in Vienna.[111] The ISC and the IWUSP joined to form the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) in May 1923 at a meeting in Hamburg[112] Left-wing groups which did not agree to the centralisation and abandonment of the soviets by the Bolshevik Party led left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks—such groups included Socialist Revolutionaries,[113] Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and anarchists.[114]
Within this left-wing discontent, the most large-scale events were the worker’s Kronstadt rebellion and the anarchist led Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine uprising which controlled an area known as the Free Territory.
The Bolshevik Russian Revolution of January 1918 engendered communist parties worldwide and their concomitant revolutions of 1917–1923. Few communists doubted that the Russian success of socialism depended on successful, working-class socialist revolutions in developed capitalist countries.[121][122] In 1919, Lenin and Trotsky organised the world’s communist parties into a new international association of workers—the Communist International (Comintern), also called the Third International.
The Russian Revolution also influenced uprisings in other countries around this time. The German Revolution of 1918–1919 resulted in the replacing Germany’s imperial government with a republic. The revolutionary period lasted from November 1918 until the formal establishment of the Weimar Republic in August 1919 and included an episode known as the Bavarian Soviet Republic and the Spartacist uprising. In Italy, the events known as the Biennio Rosso[127][128] were characterised by mass strikes, worker manifestations and self-management experiments through land and factory occupations. In Turin and Milan, workers’ councils were formed and many factory occupations took place led by anarcho-syndicalists organised around the Unione Sindacale Italiana.[129]
By 1920, the Red Army under its commander Trotsky had largely defeated the royalist White Armies. In 1921, War Communism was ended and under the New Economic Policy (NEP) private ownership was allowed for small and medium peasant enterprises. While industry remained largely state-controlled, Lenin acknowledged that the NEP was a necessary capitalist measure for a country unripe for socialism. Profiteering returned in the form of “NEP men” and rich peasants (kulaks) gained power in the countryside.[130] Nevertheless, the role of Trotsky in this episode has been questioned by other socialists, including ex Trotskyists. In the United States, Dwight Macdonald broke with Trotsky and left the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party by raising the question of the Kronstadt rebellion, which Trotsky as leader of the Soviet Red Army and the other Bolsheviks had brutally repressed. He then moved towards democratic socialism.[131] and anarchism.[132]
A similar critique of Trotsky’s role on the events around the Kronstadt rebellion was raised by the American anarchist Emma Goldman. In her essay “Trotsky Protests Too Much”, she says: “I admit, the dictatorship under Stalin’s rule has become monstrous. That does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors in the revolutionary drama of which Kronstadt was one of the bloodiest scenes”.[133]
In 1922, the fourth congress of the Communist International took up the policy of the United Front, urging communists to work with rank and file Social Democrats while remaining critical of their leaders, whom they criticised for betraying the working class by supporting the war efforts of their respective capitalist classes. For their part, the social democrats pointed to the dislocation caused by revolution and later the growing authoritarianism of the communist parties. When the Communist Party of Great Britain applied to affiliate to the Labour Party in 1920, it was turned down.
On seeing the Soviet State’s growing coercive power in 1923, a dying Lenin said Russia had reverted to “a bourgeois tsarist machine… barely varnished with socialism”.[134] After Lenin’s death in January 1924, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—then increasingly under the control of Joseph Stalin—rejected the theory that socialism could not be built solely in the Soviet Union in favour of the concept of “Socialism in One Country”. Despite the marginalised Left Opposition’s demand for the restoration of Soviet democracy, Stalin developed a bureaucratic, authoritarian government that was condemned by democratic socialists, anarchists and Trotskyists for undermining the initial socialist ideals of the Bolshevik Russian Revolution.[135][136]
In 1924, the Mongolian People’s Republic was established and was ruled by the Mongolian People’s Party. The Russian Revolution and the appearance of the Soviet State motivated a worldwide current of national communist parties which ended having varying levels of political and social influence. Among these there appeared the Communist Party of France, the Communist Party USA, the Italian Communist Party, the Chinese Communist Party, the Mexican Communist Party, the Brazilian Communist Party, the Chilean Communist Party and the Communist Party of Indonesia.
FAI militia during the Spanish Revolution in 1936
In Spain in 1936, the national anarcho-syndicalist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) initially refused to join a popular front electoral alliance and abstention by CNT supporters led to a right-wing election victory. In 1936, the CNT changed its policy and anarchist votes helped bring the popular front back to power. Months later, the former ruling class responded with an attempted coup, sparking the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).[137]
In response to the army rebellion, an anarchist-inspired movement of peasants and workers, supported by armed militias, took control of Barcelona and of large areas of rural Spain where they collectivised the land.[138][138] The events known as the Spanish Revolution was a workers’ social revolution that began during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly libertarian socialist organisational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to three years, primarily Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia and parts of Levante.
Much of Spain’s economy was put under worker control and in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia the figure was as high as 75%, but lower in areas with heavy Communist Party of Spain influence, as the Soviet-allied party actively resisted attempts at collectivisation enactment. Factories were run through worker committees, agrarian areas became collectivised and run as libertarian communes. Anarchist historian Sam Dolgoff estimated that about eight million people participated directly or indirectly in the Spanish Revolution.[139]
Leon Trotsky’s Fourth International was established in France in 1938 when Trotskyists argued that the Comintern or Third International had become irretrievably “lost to Stalinism” and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power.[140] The rise of Nazism and the start of World War II led to the dissolution of the LSI in 1940. After the War, the Socialist International was formed in Frankfurt in July 1951 as a successor to the LSI.[141]
After World War II, social democratic governments introduced social reform and wealth redistribution via state welfare and taxation. Social democratic parties dominated post-war politics in countries such as France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and Norway. At one point, France claimed to be the world’s most state-controlled capitalist country. The nationalised public utilities included Charbonnages de France (CDF), Electricité de France (EDF), Gaz de France (GDF), Air France, Banque de France and Régie Nationale des Usines Renault.[142]
In 1945, the British Labour Party led by Clement Attlee was elected to office based on a radical socialist programme. The Labour government nationalised major public utilities such as mines, gas, coal, electricity, rail, iron, steel and the Bank of England. British Petroleum was officially nationalised in 1951.[143] Anthony Crosland said that in 1956 25% of British industry was nationalised and that public employees, including those in nationalised industries, constituted a similar proportion of the country’s total employed population.[144] The Labour Governments of 1964–1970 and 1974–1979 intervened further.[145] It re-nationalised steel (1967, British Steel) after the Conservatives had denationalised it and nationalised car production (1976, British Leyland).[146] The National Health Service provided taxpayer-funded health care to everyone, free at the point of service.[147] Working-class housing was provided in council housing estates and university education became available via a school grant system.[148]
The Nordic model is a term for a form of social democracy common to the Nordic countries (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland). During most of the post-war era, Sweden was governed by the Swedish Social Democratic Party largely in cooperation with trade unions and industry.[152] In Sweden, the Social Democratic Party held power from 1936 to 1976, 1982 to 1991, 1994 to 2006 and 2014 to present. Tage Erlander was the leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and led the government from 1946 to 1969, an uninterrupted tenure of twenty-three years, one of the longest in any democracy. From 1945 to 1962, the Norwegian Labour Party held an absolute majority in the parliament led by Einar Gerhardsen who was Prime Minister with seventeen years in office. This particular adaptation of the mixed market economy is characterised by more generous welfare states (relative to other developed countries), which are aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy, ensuring the universal provision of basic human rights and stabilising the economy. It is distinguished from other welfare states with similar goals by its emphasis on maximising labour force participation, promoting gender equality, egalitarian and extensive benefit levels, large magnitude of redistribution and expansionary fiscal policy.[153]
The Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II.[154][155] After the war, the Soviet Union became a recognised superpower.[156] The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world’s first spacecraft and the first astronaut. The Soviet economy was the modern world’s first centrally planned economy. It was based on a system of state ownership of industry managed through Gosplan (the State Planning Commission), Gosbank (the State Bank) and the Gossnab (State Commission for Materials and Equipment Supply).
Economic planning was conducted through a series of Five-Year Plans. The emphasis was on fast development of heavy industry and the nation became one of the world’s top manufacturers of a large number of basic and heavy industrial products, but it lagged in light industrial production and consumer durables. Modernisation brought about a general increase in the standard of living.[157]
The Eastern Bloc was the group of former Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact[158][159][160] which included the People’s Republic of Poland, the German Democratic Republic, the People’s Republic of Hungary, the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the Socialist Republic of Romania, the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People’s Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of the excesses of Stalin’s regime during the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 1956[161] as well as the revolt in Hungary,[162][163][164][165] produced ideological fractures and disagreements within the communist and socialist parties of Western Europe.
In the post-war years, socialism became increasingly influential throughout the so-called Third World. Embracing a new Third World socialism, countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America often nationalised industries held by foreign owners. The Chinese Kuomintang Party, the previous ruling party in Taiwan, was referred to as having a socialist ideology since Kuomintang’s revolutionary ideology in the 1920s incorporated unique Chinese socialism as part of its ideology.[166][167] The Soviet Union trained Kuomintang revolutionaries in the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University. Movie theatres in the Soviet Union showed newsreels and clips of Chiang at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University portraits of Chiang were hung on the walls and in the Soviet May Day parades that year Chiang’s portrait was to be carried along with the portraits of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and other socialist leaders.[168]
The Chinese Revolution was the second stage in the Chinese Civil War which ended in the establishment of the People’s Republic of China led by the Chinese Communist Party. The term “Third World” was coined by French demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952 on the model of the Third Estate, which according to the Abbé Sieyès represented everything, but was nothing “because at the end this ignored, exploited, scorned Third World like the Third Estate, wants to become something too”.
The emergence of this new political entity in the frame of the Cold War was complex and painful. Several tentatives were made to organise newly independent states in order to oppose a common front towards both the United States’ and the Soviet Union’s influence on them, with the consequences of the Sino-Soviet split already at works. The Non-Aligned Movement constituted itself around the main figures of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, President Sukarno of Indonesia, leader Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt who successfully opposed the French and British imperial powers during the 1956 Suez crisis. After the 1954 Geneva Conference which ended the French war against Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, the 1955 Bandung Conference gathered Nasser, Nehru, Tito, Sukarno and Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People’s Republic of China.
As many African countries gained independence during the 1960s, some of them rejected capitalism in favour of a more afrocentric economic model. The main architects of African socialism were Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Léopold Senghor of Senegal, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sékou Touré of Guinea.[169]
The Cuban Revolution (1953–1959) was an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement and its allies against the government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. The revolution began in July 1953 and finally ousted Batista on 1 January 1959, replacing his government with Castro’s revolutionary state. Castro’s government later reformed along communist lines, becoming the Communist Party of Cuba in October 1965.[170]
In Indonesia, a right-wing military regime led by Suharto killed between 500,000 and one million people in 1965 and 1966, mainly to crush the growing influence of the Communist Party of Indonesia and other leftist sectors, with support from the United States government, which provided kill lists containing thousands of names of suspected high-ranking Communists.
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms on issues such as gay rights, abortion, gender roles and drugs[176] in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist approach to social justice and focused mostly on labour unionisation and questions of social class.[177][178][179] The New Left rejected involvement with the labour movement and Marxism’s historical theory of class struggle.[180]
In the United States, the New Left was associated with the Hippie movement and anti-war college campus protest movements as well as the black liberation movements such as the Black Panther Party.[181] While initially formed in opposition to the “Old Left” Democratic Party, groups composing the New Left gradually became central players in the Democratic coalition.[176]
The protests of 1968 represented a worldwide escalation of social conflicts, predominantly characterised by popular rebellions against military, capitalist and bureaucratic elites who responded with an escalation of political repression. These protests marked a turning point for the civil rights movement in the United States, which produced revolutionary movements like the Black Panther Party; the prominent civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. organised the “Poor People’s Campaign” to address issues of economic justice,[182] while personally showing sympathy with democratic socialism.[183] In reaction to the Tet Offensive, protests also sparked a broad movement in opposition to the Vietnam War all over the United States and even into London, Paris, Berlin and Rome. In 1968 in Carrara, Italy, the International of Anarchist Federations was founded during an international anarchist conference held there by the three existing European federations of France, the Italian and the Iberian Anarchist Federation as well as the Bulgarian federation in French exile.
Mass socialist or communist movements grew not only in the United States, but also in most European countries. The most spectacular manifestation of this were the May 1968 protests in France in which students linked up with strikes of up to ten million workers and for a few days the movement seemed capable of overthrowing the government.
In many other capitalist countries, struggles against dictatorships, state repression and colonisation were also marked by protests in 1968, such as the beginning of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City and the escalation of guerrilla warfare against the military dictatorship in Brazil. Countries governed by communist parties had protests against bureaucratic and military elites. In Eastern Europe there were widespread protests that escalated particularly in the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. In response, Soviet Union occupied Czechoslovakia, but the occupation was denounced by the Italian and French[184] communist parties and the Communist Party of Finland. Few western European political leaders defended the occupation, among them the Portuguese communist secretary-general Álvaro Cunhal.[185] along with the Luxembourg party[184] and conservative factions of the Communist Party of Greece.[184]
In the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a social-political youth movement mobilised against “bourgeois” elements which were seen to be infiltrating the government and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. This movement motivated Maoism-inspired movements around the world in the context of the Sino-Soviet split.
In Latin America in the 1960s, a socialist tendency within the catholic church appeared which was called liberation theology[187][188] which motivated even the Colombian priest Camilo Torres to enter the ELN guerrilla. In Chile, Salvador Allende, a physician and candidate for the Socialist Party of Chile, was elected president through democratic elections in 1970. In 1973, his government was ousted by the United States-backed military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which lasted until the late 1980s.[189] Pinochet’s regime was a leader of Operation Condor, a U.S.-backed campaign of repression and state terrorism carried out by the intelligence services of the Southern Cone countries of Latin America to eliminate suspected Communist subversion.[190][191][192] In Jamaica, the democratic socialist[193] Michael Manley served as the fourth Prime Minister of Jamaica from 1972 to 1980 and from 1989 to 1992. According to opinion polls, he remains one of Jamaica’s most popular Prime Ministers since independence.[194] The Nicaraguan Revolution encompassed the rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the campaign led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to violently oust the dictatorship in 1978–1979, the subsequent efforts of the FSLN to govern Nicaragua from 1979 until 1990[195] and the socialist measures which included wide-scale agrarian reform[196][197] and educational programs.[198] The People’s Revolutionary Government was proclaimed on 13 March 1979 in Grenada which was overthrown by armed forces of the United States in 1983. The Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992) was a conflict between the military-led government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or umbrella organisation of five socialist guerrilla groups. A coup on 15 October 1979 led to the killings of anti-coup protesters by the government as well as anti-disorder protesters by the guerrillas, and is widely seen as the tipping point towards the civil war.[199]
In Italy, Autonomia Operaia was a leftist movement particularly active from 1976 to 1978. It took an important role in the autonomist movement in the 1970s, aside earlier organisations such as Potere Operaio (created after May 1968) and Lotta Continua.[200] This experience prompted the contemporary socialist radical movement autonomism.[201] In 1982, the newly elected French socialist government of François Mitterrand made nationalisations in a few key industries, including banks and insurance companies.[202] Eurocommunism was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s in various Western European communist parties to develop a theory and practice of social transformation that was more relevant for a Western European country and less aligned to the influence or control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Outside Western Europe, it is sometimes called neocommunism.[203] Some communist parties with strong popular support, notably the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) adopted Eurocommunism most enthusiastically and the Communist Party of Finland was dominated by Eurocommunists. The French Communist Party (PCF) and many smaller parties strongly opposed Eurocommunism and stayed aligned with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union until the end of the Soviet Union.
In the late 1970s and in the 1980s, the Socialist International (SI) had extensive contacts and discussion with the two powers of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union, about East-West relations and arms control. Since then, the SI has admitted as member parties the Nicaraguan FSLN, the left-wing Puerto Rican Independence Party, as well as former communist parties such as the Democratic Party of the Left of Italy and the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO). The SI aided social democratic parties in re-establishing themselves when dictatorship gave way to democracy in Portugal (1974) and Spain (1975). Until its 1976 Geneva Congress, the SI had few members outside Europe and no formal involvement with Latin America.[204]
Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991
After Mao’s death in 1976 and the arrest of the faction known as the Gang of Four, who were blamed for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping took power and led the People’s Republic of China to significant economic reforms. The Communist Party of China loosened governmental control over citizens’ personal lives and the communes were disbanded in favour of private land leases, thus China’s transition from a planned economy to a mixed economy named as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”[205] which maintained state ownership rights over land, state or cooperative ownership of much of the heavy industrial and manufacturing sectors and state influence in the banking and financial sectors. China adopted its current constitution on 4 December 1982. President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji led the nation in the 1990s. Under their administration, China’s economic performance pulled an estimated 150 million peasants out of poverty and sustained an average annual gross domestic product growth rate of 11.2%.[206][207] At the Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in December 1986, reformist politicians replaced the “old guard” government with new leadership.[208][209] The reformers were led by 71-year-old Nguyen Van Linh, who became the party’s new general secretary.[208][209] Linh and the reformers implemented a series of free market reforms—known as Đổi Mới (“Renovation”)—which carefully managed the transition from a planned economy to a “socialist-oriented market economy”.[210][211] Mikhail Gorbachev wished to move the Soviet Union towards of Nordic-style social democracy, calling it “a socialist beacon for all mankind”.[212][213] Prior to its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy in the world after the United States.[214] With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economic integration of the Soviet republics was dissolved and overall industrial activity declined substantially.[215] A lasting legacy remains in the physical infrastructure created during decades of combined industrial production practices, and widespread environmental destruction.[216] The transition to capitalism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern bloc, which was accompanied by Washington Consensus-inspired “shock therapy”,[217] resulted in a steep fall in the standard of living. The region experienced rising economic inequality and poverty[218] a surge in excess mortality[219][220] and a decline in life expectancy,[221] which was accompanied by the entrenchment of a newly established business oligarchy in the former.[218] The average post-communist country had returned to 1989 levels of per-capita GDP by 2005,[222] although some are still far behind that.[223] These developments led to increased nationalist sentiment and nostalgia for the Communist era.
Many social democratic parties, particularly after the Cold War, adopted neoliberal market policies including privatisation, deregulation and financialisation. They abandoned their pursuit of moderate socialism in favour of market liberalism. By the 1980s, with the rise of conservative neoliberal politicians such as Ronald Reagan in the United States, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, Brian Mulroney in Canada and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, the Western welfare state was attacked from within, but state support for the corporate sector was maintained.[227] Monetarists and neoliberals attacked social welfare systems as impediments to private entrepreneurship. In the United Kingdom, Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock made a public attack against the entryist group Militant at the 1985 Labour Party conference. The Labour Party ruled that Militant was ineligible for affiliation with the Labour Party, and the party gradually expelled Militant supporters. The Kinnock leadership had refused to support the 1984–1985 miner’s strike over pit closures, a decision that the party’s left wing and the National Union of Mineworkers blamed for the strike’s eventual defeat. In 1989 at Stockholm, the 18th Congress of the Socialist International adopted a new Declaration of Principles, saying:
Democratic socialism is an international movement for freedom, social justice, and solidarity. Its goal is to achieve a peaceful world where these basic values can be enhanced and where each individual can live a meaningful life with the full development of his or her personality and talents, and with the guarantee of human and civil rights in a democratic framework of society.[228]
In the 1990s, the British Labour Party under Tony Blair enacted policies based on the free market economy to deliver public services via the private finance initiative. Influential in these policies was the idea of a “Third Way” which called for a re-evaluation of welfare state policies.[229] In 1995, the Labour Party re-defined its stance on socialism by re-wording Clause IV of its constitution, effectively rejecting socialism by removing all references to public, direct worker or municipal ownership of the means of production. The Labour Party stated: “The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that, by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create, for each of us, the means to realise our true potential, and, for all of us, a community in which power, wealth, and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few”.[230]
African socialism has been and continues to be a major ideology around the continent. Julius Nyerere was inspired by Fabian socialist ideals.[231] He was a firm believer in rural Africans and their traditions and ujamaa, a system of collectivisation that according to Nyerere was present before European imperialism. Essentially he believed Africans were already socialists. Other African socialists include Jomo Kenyatta, Kenneth Kaunda, Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah. Fela Kuti was inspired by socialism and called for a democratic African republic. In South Africa the African National Congress (ANC) abandoned its partial socialist allegiances after taking power and followed a standard neoliberal route. From 2005 through to 2007, the country was wracked by many thousands of protests from poor communities. One of these gave rise to a mass movement of shack dwellers, Abahlali baseMjondolo that despite major police suppression continues to work for popular people’s planning and against the creation of a market economy in land and housing.
In Asia, states with socialist economies—such as the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam—have largely moved away from centralised economic planning in the 21st century, placing a greater emphasis on markets. Forms include the Chinese socialist market economy and the Vietnamese socialist-oriented market economy. They use state-owned corporate management models as opposed to modelling socialist enterprise on traditional management styles employed by government agencies. In China living standards continued to improve rapidly despite the late-2000s recession, but centralised political control remained tight.[232] Brian Reynolds Myers in his book The Cleanest Race, later supported by other academics,[233][234] dismisses the idea that Juche is North Korea’s leading ideology, regarding its public exaltation as designed to deceive foreigners and that it exists to be praised and not actually read,[235] pointing out that North Korea’s constitution of 2009 omits all mention of communism.[234]
Though the authority of the state remained unchallenged under Đổi Mới, the government of Vietnam encourages private ownership of farms and factories, economic deregulation and foreign investment, while maintaining control over strategic industries.[211] The Vietnamese economy subsequently achieved strong growth in agricultural and industrial production, construction, exports and foreign investment. However, these reforms have also caused a rise in income inequality and gender disparities.[236][237]
Elsewhere in Asia, some elected socialist parties and communist parties remain prominent, particularly in India and Nepal. The Communist Party of Nepal[which?] in particular calls for multi-party democracy, social equality and economic prosperity.[238] In Singapore, a majority of the GDP is still generated from the state sector comprising government-linked companies.[239] In Japan, there has been a resurgent interest in the Japanese Communist Party among workers and youth.[240][241] In Malaysia, the Socialist Party of Malaysia got its first Member of Parliament, Dr. Jeyakumar Devaraj, after the 2008 general election. In 2010, there were 270 kibbutzim in Israel. Their factories and farms account for 9% of Israel’s industrial output, worth US$8 billion and 40% of its agricultural output, worth over $1.7 billion.[242] Some Kibbutzim had also developed substantial high-tech and military industries. Also in 2010, Kibbutz Sasa, containing some 200 members, generated $850 million in annual revenue from its military-plastics industry.[243]
The United Nations World Happiness Report 2013 shows that the happiest nations are concentrated in Northern Europe, where the Nordic model of social democracy is employed, with Denmark topping the list. This is at times attributed to the success of the Nordic model in the region. The Nordic countries ranked highest on the metrics of real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, generosity and freedom from corruption.[244] Indeed, the indicators of Freedom in the World have listed Scandinavian countries as ranking high on indicators such as press and economic freedom.
The objectives of the Party of European Socialists, the European Parliament’s socialist and social democratic bloc, are now “to pursue international aims in respect of the principles on which the European Union is based, namely principles of freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, respect of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and respect for the Rule of Law”. As a result, today the rallying cry of the French Revolution—Liberté, égalité, fraternité—is promoted as essential socialist values.[245] To the left of the PES at the European level is the Party of the European Left (PEL), also commonly abbreviated “European Left”), which is a political party at the European level and an association of democratic socialist, socialist[246] and communist[246] political parties in the European Union and other European countries. It was formed in January 2004 for the purposes of running in the 2004 European Parliament elections. PEL was founded on 8–9 May 2004 in Rome.[247] Elected MEPs from member parties of the European Left sit in the European United Left–Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group in the European parliament.
The socialist Left Party in Germany grew in popularity[248] due to dissatisfaction with the increasingly neoliberal policies of the SPD, becoming the fourth biggest party in parliament in the general election on 27 September 2009.[249] Communist candidate Dimitris Christofias won a crucial presidential runoff in Cyprus, defeating his conservative rival with a majority of 53%.[250] In Ireland, in the 2009 European election Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party took one of three seats in the capital Dublin European constituency.
In Denmark, the Socialist People’s Party (SF) more than doubled its parliamentary representation to 23 seats from 11, making it the fourth largest party.[251] In 2011, the Social Democrats, Socialist People’s Party and the Danish Social Liberal Party formed government, after a slight victory over the main rival political coalition. They were led by Helle Thorning-Schmidt, and had the Red-Green Alliance as a supporting party.
In Norway, the Red-Green Coalition consists of the Labour Party (Ap), the Socialist Left Party (SV) and the Centre Party (Sp) and governed the country as a majority government from the 2005 general election until 2013.
In the Greek legislative election of January 2015, the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) led by Alexis Tsipras won a legislative election for the first time while the Communist Party of Greece won 15 seats in parliament. SYRIZA has been characterised as an anti-establishment party,[252] whose success has sent “shock-waves across the EU”.[253]
In the United Kingdom, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers put forward a slate of candidates in the 2009 European Parliament elections under the banner of No to EU – Yes to Democracy, a broad left-wing alter-globalisation coalition involving socialist groups such as the Socialist Party, aiming to offer an alternative to the “anti-foreigner” and pro-business policies of the UK Independence Party.[254][255][256] In the following May 2010 United Kingdom general election, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, launched in January 2010[257] and backed by Bob Crow, the leader of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT), other union leaders and the Socialist Party among other socialist groups, stood against Labour in 40 constituencies.[258][259] The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition contested the 2011 local elections, having gained the endorsement of the RMT June 2010 conference, but gained no seats.[260] Left Unity was also founded in 2013 after the film director Ken Loach appealed for a new party of the left to replace the Labour Party, which he claimed had failed to oppose austerity and had shifted towards neoliberalism. In 2015, following a defeat at the 2015 United Kingdom general election, self-described socialist Jeremy Corbyn took over from Ed Miliband as leader of the Labour Party.[265]
In France, Olivier Besancenot, the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) candidate in the 2007 presidential election, received 1,498,581 votes, 4.08%, double that of the communist candidate.[266] The LCR abolished itself in 2009 to initiate a broad anti-capitalist party, the New Anticapitalist Party, whose stated aim is to “build a new socialist, democratic perspective for the twenty-first century”.[267]
On 25 May 2014, the Spanish left-wing party Podemos entered candidates for the 2014 European parliamentary elections, some of which were unemployed. In a surprise result, it polled 7.98% of the vote and thus was awarded five seats out of 54[268][269] while the older United Left was the third largest overall force obtaining 10.03% and 5 seats, 4 more than the previous elections.[270]
The current government of Portugal was established on 26 November 2015 as a Socialist Party (PS) minority government led by prime minister António Costa. Costa succeeded in securing support for a Socialist minority government by the Left Bloc (B.E.), the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Ecologist Party “The Greens” (PEV).[271]
All around Europe and in some places of Latin America there exists a social centre and squatting movement mainly inspired by autonomist and anarchist ideas.[272][273]
Noam Chomsky, an American libertarian socialist
According to a 2013 article in The Guardian, “[c]ontrary to popular belief, Americans don’t have an innate allergy to socialism. Milwaukee has had several socialist mayors (Frank Zeidler, Emil Seidel and Daniel Hoan), and there is currently an independent socialist in the US Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont”.[274] Sanders, once mayor of Vermont’s largest city, Burlington, has described himself as a democratic socialist[275][276] and has praised Scandinavian-style social democracy.[277][278] In 2016, Sanders made a bid for the Democratic Party presidential candidate, thereby gaining considerable popular support, particularly among the younger generation, but lost the nomination to Hillary Clinton. As of 2019, the Democratic Socialists of America have two members in Congress, and various members in state legislatures and city councils.[279] According to a 2018 Gallup poll, 37% of American adults have a positive view of socialism, including 57% of Democrat-leaning voters and 16% of Republican-leaning voters.[280]
Anti-capitalism, anarchism and the anti-globalisation movement rose to prominence through events such as protests against the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 in Seattle. Socialist-inspired groups played an important role in these movements, which nevertheless embraced much broader layers of the population and were championed by figures such as Noam Chomsky. In Canada, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), the precursor to the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP), had significant success in provincial politics. In 1944, the Saskatchewan CCF formed the first socialist government in North America. At the federal level, the NDP was the Official Opposition, from 2011 through 2015.[281]
In their Johnson linguistics column, The Economist opines that in the 21st century United States, the term socialism, without clear definition, has become a pejorative used by conservatives to attack liberal and progressive policies, proposals, and public figures.[282]
For the Encyclopedia Britannica, “the attempt by Salvador Allende to unite Marxists and other reformers in a socialist reconstruction of Chile is most representative of the direction that Latin American socialists have taken since the late 20th century. […] Several socialist (or socialist-leaning) leaders have followed Allende’s example in winning election to office in Latin American countries”.[74] Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Bolivian President Evo Morales and Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa refer to their political programmes as socialist and Chávez adopted the term “socialism of the 21st century”. After winning re-election in December 2006, Chávez said: “Now more than ever, I am obliged to move Venezuela’s path towards socialism”.[283] Chávez was also reelected in October 2012 for his third six-year term as President, but he died in March 2013 from cancer. After Chávez’s death on 5 March 2013, Vice President from Chavez’s party Nicolás Maduro assumed the powers and responsibilities of the President. A special election was held on 14 April of the same year to elect a new President, which Maduro won by a tight margin as the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and he was formally inaugurated on 19 April.[284] “Pink tide” is a term being used in contemporary 21st-century political analysis in the media and elsewhere to describe the perception that leftist ideology in general and left-wing politics in particular are increasingly influential in Latin America.
Foro de São Paulo is a conference of leftist political parties and other organisations from Latin America and the Caribbean. It was launched by the Workers’ Party (Portuguese: Partido dos Trabalhadores – PT) of Brazil in 1990 in the city of São Paulo. The Forum of São Paulo was constituted in 1990 when the Brazilian Workers’ Party approached other parties and social movements of Latin America and the Caribbean with the objective of debating the new international scenario after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the consequences of the implementation of what were taken as neoliberal policies adopted at the time by contemporary right-leaning governments in the region, the stated main objective of the conference being to argue for alternatives to neoliberalism.[288] Among its member include current socialist and social-democratic parties currently in government in the region such as Bolivia’s Movement for Socialism, Brazil’s Workers Party, the Communist Party of Cuba, Ecuador’s PAIS Alliance, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the Socialist Party of Chile, Uruguay’s Broad Front, Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front and El Salvador’s Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front.
Australia saw an increase in interest of socialism in the early 21st century, especially amongst youth.[289] It is strongest in Victoria, where three socialist parties have merged into the Victorian Socialists, who aim to address problems in housing and public transportation.
In New Zealand, socialism emerged within the budding trade union movement during the late 19th century and early 20th century. In July 1916, several left-wing political organisations and trade unions merged to form the New Zealand Labour Party.[290][291] While Labour traditionally had a socialist orientation, the party shifted towards a more social democratic orientation during the 1920s and 1930s. Following the 1935 general election, the First Labour Government pursued socialist policies such as nationalising industry, broadcasting, transportation, and implementing a Keynesian welfare state. However, the party did not seek to abolish capitalism, instead opting for a mixed economy. Labour’s welfare state and mixed economy were not challenged until the 1980s.[292][293] During the 1980s, the Fourth Labour Government implemented a raft of neoliberal economic reforms known as Rogernomics which saw New Zealand society and the economy shift towards a more free market model. Labour’s abandonment of its traditional values fractured the party. Successive Labour governments have since pursued centre-left social and economic policies while maintaining a free market economy.[294] The current Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern formerly served as President of the International Union of Socialist Youth.[295] Ardern is a self-described social democrat[296] who has criticized capitalism as a “blatant failure” due to high levels of homelessness and low wages.[297] New Zealand still has a small socialist scene, mainly dominated by Trotskyist groups.
Melanesian Socialism developed in the 1980s, inspired by African Socialism. It aims to achieve full independence from Britain and France in Melanesian territories and creation of a Melanesian federal union. It is very popular with the New Caledonia independence movement.
The Progressive Alliance is a political international founded on 22 May 2013 by political parties, the majority of whom are current or former members of the Socialist International. The organisation states the aim of becoming the global network of “the progressive”, democratic, social-democratic, socialist and labour movement”.[298][299]
Early socialist thought took influences from a diverse range of philosophies such as civic republicanism, Enlightenment rationalism, romanticism, forms of materialism, Christianity (both Catholic and Protestant), natural law and natural rights theory, utilitarianism and liberal political economy.[300] Another philosophical basis for a lot of early socialism was the emergence of positivism during the European Enlightenment. Positivism held that both the natural and social worlds could be understood through scientific knowledge and be analysed using scientific methods. This core outlook influenced early social scientists and different types of socialists ranging from anarchists like Peter Kropotkin to technocrats like Saint Simon.[301]
The fundamental objective of socialism is to attain an advanced level of material production and therefore greater productivity, efficiency and rationality as compared to capitalism and all previous systems, under the view that an expansion of human productive capability is the basis for the extension of freedom and equality in society.[302] Many forms of socialist theory hold that human behaviour is largely shaped by the social environment. In particular, socialism holds that social mores, values, cultural traits and economic practices are social creations and not the result of an immutable natural law.[303][304] The object of their critique is thus not human avarice or human consciousness, but the material conditions and man-made social systems (i.e. the economic structure of society) that gives rise to observed social problems and inefficiencies. Bertrand Russell, often considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, identified as a socialist. Russell opposed the class struggle aspects of Marxism, viewing socialism solely as an adjustment of economic relations to accommodate modern machine production to benefit all of humanity through the progressive reduction of necessary work time.[305]
Socialists view creativity as an essential aspect of human nature and define freedom as a state of being where individuals are able to express their creativity unhindered by constraints of both material scarcity and coercive social institutions.[306] The socialist concept of individuality is thus intertwined with the concept of individual creative expression. Karl Marx believed that expansion of the productive forces and technology was the basis for the expansion of human freedom and that socialism, being a system that is consistent with modern developments in technology, would enable the flourishing of “free individualities” through the progressive reduction of necessary labour time. The reduction of necessary labour time to a minimum would grant individuals the opportunity to pursue the development of their true individuality and creativity.[307]
Socialists argue that the accumulation of capital generates waste through externalities that require costly corrective regulatory measures. They also point out that this process generates wasteful industries and practices that exist only to generate sufficient demand for products to be sold at a profit (such as high-pressure advertisement), thereby creating rather than satisfying economic demand.[308][309]
Socialists argue that capitalism consists of irrational activity, such as the purchasing of commodities only to sell at a later time when their price appreciates, rather than for consumption, even if the commodity cannot be sold at a profit to individuals in need and therefore a crucial criticism often made by socialists is that “making money”, or accumulation of capital, does not correspond to the satisfaction of demand (the production of use-values).[310] The fundamental criterion for economic activity in capitalism is the accumulation of capital for reinvestment in production, but this spurs the development of new, non-productive industries that do not produce use-value and only exist to keep the accumulation process afloat (otherwise the system goes into crisis), such as the spread of the financial industry, contributing to the formation of economic bubbles.
Socialists view private property relations as limiting the potential of productive forces in the economy. According to socialists, private property becomes obsolete when it concentrates into centralised, socialised institutions based on private appropriation of revenue—but based on cooperative work and internal planning in allocation of inputs—until the role of the capitalist becomes redundant.[312] With no need for capital accumulation and a class of owners, private property in the means of production is perceived as being an outdated form of economic organisation that should be replaced by a free association of individuals based on public or common ownership of these socialised assets. Private ownership imposes constraints on planning, leading to uncoordinated economic decisions that result in business fluctuations, unemployment and a tremendous waste of material resources during crisis of overproduction.[315]
Excessive disparities in income distribution lead to social instability and require costly corrective measures in the form of redistributive taxation, which incurs heavy administrative costs while weakening the incentive to work, inviting dishonesty and increasing the likelihood of tax evasion while (the corrective measures) reduce the overall efficiency of the market economy.[316] These corrective policies limit the incentive system of the market by providing things such as minimum wages, unemployment insurance, taxing profits and reducing the reserve army of labour, resulting in reduced incentives for capitalists to invest in more production. In essence, social welfare policies cripple capitalism and its incentive system and are thus unsustainable in the long-run.[317] Marxists argue that the establishment of a socialist mode of production is the only way to overcome these deficiencies. Socialists and specifically Marxian socialists argue that the inherent conflict of interests between the working class and capital prevent optimal use of available human resources and leads to contradictory interest groups (labour and business) striving to influence the state to intervene in the economy in their favour at the expense of overall economic efficiency.
Early socialists (utopian socialists and Ricardian socialists) criticised capitalism for concentrating power and wealth within a small segment of society.[318] In addition, they complained that capitalism does not use available technology and resources to their maximum potential in the interests of the public.[314]
Main article: Marxism
At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
— Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program[319]
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argued that socialism would emerge from historical necessity as capitalism rendered itself obsolete and unsustainable from increasing internal contradictions emerging from the development of the productive forces and technology. It was these advances in the productive forces combined with the old social relations of production of capitalism that would generate contradictions, leading to working-class consciousness.[320]
Marx in the 1870s
Marx and Engels held the view that the consciousness of those who earn a wage or salary (the working class in the broadest Marxist sense) would be moulded by their conditions of wage slavery, leading to a tendency to seek their freedom or emancipation by overthrowing ownership of the means of production by capitalists and consequently, overthrowing the state that upheld this economic order. For Marx and Engels, conditions determine consciousness and ending the role of the capitalist class leads eventually to a classless society in which the state would wither away. The Marxist conception of socialism is that of a specific historical phase that would displace capitalism and precede communism. The major characteristics of socialism (particularly as conceived by Marx and Engels after the Paris Commune of 1871) are that the proletariat would control the means of production through a workers’ state erected by the workers in their interests. Economic activity would still be organised through the use of incentive systems and social classes would still exist, but to a lesser and diminishing extent than under capitalism.
For orthodox Marxists, socialism is the lower stage of communism based on the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution” while upper stage communism is based on the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, the upper stage becoming possible only after the socialist stage further develops economic efficiency and the automation of production has led to a superabundance of goods and services.[321][322] Marx argued that the material productive forces (in industry and commerce) brought into existence by capitalism predicated a cooperative society since production had become a mass social, collective activity of the working class to create commodities but with private ownership (the relations of production or property relations). This conflict between collective effort in large factories and private ownership would bring about a conscious desire in the working class to establish collective ownership commensurate with the collective efforts their daily experience.[319]
Socialists have taken different perspectives on the state and the role it should play in revolutionary struggles, in constructing socialism and within an established socialist economy.
In the 19th century the philosophy of state socialism was first explicitly expounded by the German political philosopher Ferdinand Lassalle. In contrast to Karl Marx’s perspective of the state, Lassalle rejected the concept of the state as a class-based power structure whose main function was to preserve existing class structures. Thus Lassalle also rejected the Marxist view that the state was destined to “wither away”. Lassalle considered the state to be an entity independent of class allegiances and an instrument of justice that would therefore be essential for achieving socialism.[323]
Preceding the Bolshevik-led revolution in Russia, many socialists including reformists, orthodox Marxist currents such as council communism, anarchists and libertarian socialists criticised the idea of using the state to conduct central planning and own the means of production as a way to establish socialism. Following the victory of Leninism in Russia, the idea of “state socialism” spread rapidly throughout the socialist movement and eventually state socialism came to be identified with the Soviet economic model.[324]
Joseph Schumpeter rejected the association of socialism (and social ownership) with state ownership over the means of production because the state as it exists in its current form is a product of capitalist society and cannot be transplanted to a different institutional framework. Schumpeter argued that there would be different institutions within socialism than those that exist within modern capitalism, just as feudalism had its own distinct and unique institutional forms. The state, along with concepts like property and taxation, were concepts exclusive to commercial society (capitalism) and attempting to place them within the context of a future socialist society would amount to a distortion of these concepts by using them out of context.[325]
Main articles: Utopian socialism and Scientific socialism
Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists. However, visions of imaginary ideal societies, which competed with revolutionary social democratic movements, were viewed as not being grounded in the material conditions of society and as reactionary. Although it is technically possible for any set of ideas or any person living at any time in history to be a utopian socialist, the term is most often applied to those socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century who were ascribed the label “utopian” by later socialists as a negative term in order to imply naivete and dismiss their ideas as fanciful or unrealistic.
Religious sects whose members live communally such as the Hutterites, for example, are not usually called “utopian socialists”, although their way of living is a prime example. They have been categorised as religious socialists by some. Likewise, modern intentional communities based on socialist ideas could also be categorised as “utopian socialist”.
For Marxists, the development of capitalism in Western Europe provided a material basis for the possibility of bringing about socialism because according to The Communist Manifesto “[w]hat the bourgeoisie produces above all is its own grave diggers”, namely the working class, which must become conscious of the historical objectives set it by society.
Main articles: Revolutionary socialism and Reformism
Revolutionary socialists believe that a social revolution is necessary to effect structural changes to the socioeconomic structure of society. Among revolutionary socialists there are differences in strategy, theory and the definition of “revolution”. Orthodox Marxists and left communists take an impossibilist stance, believing that revolution should be spontaneous as a result of contradictions in society due to technological changes in the productive forces. Lenin theorised that under capitalism the workers cannot achieve class consciousness beyond organising into unions and making demands of the capitalists. Therefore, Leninists advocate that it is historically necessary for a vanguard of class conscious revolutionaries to take a central role in coordinating the social revolution to overthrow the capitalist state and eventually the institution of the state altogether. “Revolution” is not necessarily defined by revolutionary socialists as violent insurrection, but as a complete dismantling and rapid transformation of all areas of class society led by the majority of the masses: the working class.
Reformism is generally associated with social democracy and gradualist democratic socialism. Reformism is the belief that socialists should stand in parliamentary elections within capitalist society and if elected use the machinery of government to pass political and social reforms for the purposes of ameliorating the instabilities and inequities of capitalism.
Socialist economics starts from the premise that “individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members”.
The original conception of socialism was an economic system whereby production was organised in a way to directly produce goods and services for their utility (or use-value in classical and Marxian economics): the direct allocation of resources in terms of physical units as opposed to financial calculation and the economic laws of capitalism (see law of value), often entailing the end of capitalistic economic categories such as rent, interest, profit and money. In a fully developed socialist economy, production and balancing factor inputs with outputs becomes a technical process to be undertaken by engineers.
Market socialism refers to an array of different economic theories and systems that use the market mechanism to organise production and to allocate factor inputs among socially owned enterprises, with the economic surplus (profits) accruing to society in a social dividend as opposed to private capital owners. Variations of market socialism include libertarian proposals such as mutualism, based on classical economics, and neoclassical economic models such as the Lange Model. However, some economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Mancur Olson and others not specifically advancing anti-socialists positions have shown that prevailing economic models upon which such democratic or market socialism models might be based have logical flaws or unworkable presuppositions.
The ownership of the means of production can be based on direct ownership by the users of the productive property through worker cooperative; or commonly owned by all of society with management and control delegated to those who operate/use the means of production; or public ownership by a state apparatus. Public ownership may refer to the creation of state-owned enterprises, nationalisation, municipalisation or autonomous collective institutions. Some socialists feel that in a socialist economy, at least the “commanding heights” of the economy must be publicly owned. However, economic liberals and right libertarians view private ownership of the means of production and the market exchange as natural entities or moral rights which are central to their conceptions of freedom and liberty and view the economic dynamics of capitalism as immutable and absolute, therefore they perceive public ownership of the means of production, cooperatives and economic planning as infringements upon liberty.
Management and control over the activities of enterprises are based on self-management and self-governance, with equal power-relations in the workplace to maximise occupational autonomy. A socialist form of organisation would eliminate controlling hierarchies so that only a hierarchy based on technical knowledge in the workplace remains. Every member would have decision-making power in the firm and would be able to participate in establishing its overall policy objectives. The policies/goals would be carried out by the technical specialists that form the coordinating hierarchy of the firm, who would establish plans or directives for the work community to accomplish these goals.
The role and use of money in a hypothetical socialist economy is a contested issue. According to the Austrian school economist Ludwig von Mises, an economic system that does not use money, financial calculation and market pricing would be unable to effectively value capital goods and coordinate production and therefore these types of socialism are impossible because they lack the necessary information to perform economic calculation in the first place. Socialists including Karl Marx, Robert Owen, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and John Stuart Mill advocated various forms of labour vouchers or labour credits, which like money would be used to acquire articles of consumption, but unlike money they are unable to become capital and would not be used to allocate resources within the production process. Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky argued that money could not be arbitrarily abolished following a socialist revolution. Money had to exhaust its “historic mission”, meaning it would have to be used until its function became redundant, eventually being transformed into bookkeeping receipts for statisticians and only in the more distant future would money not be required for even that role.
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil… I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilised in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.
— Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?, 1949
A planned economy is a type of economy consisting of a mixture of public ownership of the means of production and the coordination of production and distribution through economic planning. There are two major types of planning: decentralised-planning and centralised-planning. Enrico Barone provided a comprehensive theoretical framework for a planned socialist economy. In his model, assuming perfect computation techniques, simultaneous equations relating inputs and outputs to ratios of equivalence would provide appropriate valuations in order to balance supply and demand.
The most prominent example of a planned economy was the economic system of the Soviet Union and as such the centralised-planned economic model is usually associated with the communist states of the 20th century, where it was combined with a single-party political system. In a centrally planned economy, decisions regarding the quantity of goods and services to be produced are planned in advance by a planning agency (see also the analysis of Soviet-type economic planning). The economic systems of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc are further classified as “command economies”, which are defined as systems where economic coordination is undertaken by commands, directives and production targets. Studies by economists of various political persuasions on the actual functioning of the Soviet economy indicate that it was not actually a planned economy. Instead of conscious planning, the Soviet economy was based on a process whereby the plan was modified by localised agents and the original plans went largely unfulfilled. Planning agencies, ministries and enterprises all adapted and bargained with each other during the formulation of the plan as opposed to following a plan passed down from a higher authority, leading some economists to suggest that planning did not actually take place within the Soviet economy and that a better description would be an “administered” or “managed” economy.
Although central planning was largely supported by Marxist–Leninists, some factions within the Soviet Union before the rise of Stalinism held positions contrary to central planning. Leon Trotsky rejected central planning in favour of decentralised planning. He argued that central planners, regardless of their intellectual capacity, would be unable to coordinate effectively all economic activity within an economy because they operated without the input and tacit knowledge embodied by the participation of the millions of people in the economy. As a result, central planners would be unable to respond to local economic conditions. State socialism is unfeasible in this view because information cannot be aggregated by a central body and effectively used to formulate a plan for an entire economy, because doing so would result in distorted or absent price signals.
A self-managed, decentralised economy is based on autonomous self-regulating economic units and a decentralised mechanism of resource allocation and decision-making. This model has found support in notable classical and neoclassical economists including Alfred Marshall, John Stuart Mill and Jaroslav Vanek. There are numerous variations of self-management, including labour-managed firms and worker-managed firms. The goals of self-management are to eliminate exploitation and reduce alienation. Guild socialism is a political movement advocating workers’ control of industry through the medium of trade-related guilds “in an implied contractual relationship with the public”. It originated in the United Kingdom and was at its most influential in the first quarter of the 20th century.It was strongly associated with G. D. H. Cole and influenced by the ideas of William Morris.
One such system is the cooperative economy, a largely free market economy in which workers manage the firms and democratically determine remuneration levels and labour divisions. Productive resources would be legally owned by the cooperative and rented to the workers, who would enjoy usufruct rights. Another form of decentralised planning is the use of cybernetics, or the use of computers to manage the allocation of economic inputs. The socialist-run government of Salvador Allende in Chile experimented with Project Cybersyn, a real-time information bridge between the government, state enterprises and consumers. Another, more recent variant is participatory economics, wherein the economy is planned by decentralised councils of workers and consumers. Workers would be remunerated solely according to effort and sacrifice, so that those engaged in dangerous, uncomfortable and strenuous work would receive the highest incomes and could thereby work less. A contemporary model for a self-managed, non-market socialism is Pat Devine’s model of negotiated coordination. Negotiated coordination is based upon social ownership by those affected by the use of the assets involved, with decisions made by those at the most localised level of production.
Michel Bauwens identifies the emergence of the open software movement and peer-to-peer production as a new alternative mode of production to the capitalist economy and centrally planned economy that is based on collaborative self-management, common ownership of resources and the production of use-values through the free cooperation of producers who have access to distributed capital.
Anarcho-communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, private property and capitalism in favour of common ownership of the means of production. Anarcho-syndicalism was practised in Catalonia and other places in the Spanish Revolution during the Spanish Civil War. Sam Dolgoff estimated that about eight million people participated directly or at least indirectly in the Spanish Revolution.
The economy of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia established a system based on market-based allocation, social ownership of the means of production and self-management within firms. This system substituted Yugoslavia’s Soviet-type central planning with a decentralised, self-managed system after reforms in 1953.
The Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff argues that “re-organising production so that workers become collectively self-directed at their work-sites” not only moves society beyond both capitalism and state socialism of the last century, but would also mark another milestone in human history, similar to earlier transitions out of slavery and feudalism. As an example, Wolff claims that Mondragon is “a stunningly successful alternative to the capitalist organisation of production”.
State socialism can be used to classify any variety of socialist philosophies that advocates the ownership of the means of production by the state apparatus, either as a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism, or as an end-goal in itself. Typically it refers to a form of technocratic management, whereby technical specialists administer or manage economic enterprises on behalf of society (and the public interest) instead of workers’ councils or workplace democracy.
A state-directed economy may refer to a type of mixed economy consisting of public ownership over large industries, as promoted by various Social democratic political parties during the 20th century. This ideology influenced the policies of the British Labour Party during Clement Attlee’s administration. In the biography of the 1945 United Kingdom Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Francis Beckett states: “[T]he government… wanted what would become known as a mixed economy”.
Nationalisation in the United Kingdom was achieved through compulsory purchase of the industry (i.e. with compensation). British Aerospace was a combination of major aircraft companies British Aircraft Corporation, Hawker Siddeley and others. British Shipbuilders was a combination of the major shipbuilding companies including Cammell Laird, Govan Shipbuilders, Swan Hunter and Yarrow Shipbuilders, whereas the nationalisation of the coal mines in 1947 created a coal board charged with running the coal industry commercially so as to be able to meet the interest payable on the bonds which the former mine owners’ shares had been converted into.
Main article: Market socialism
Market socialism consists of publicly owned or cooperatively owned enterprises operating in a market economy. It is a system that uses the market and monetary prices for the allocation and accounting of the means of production, thereby retaining the process of capital accumulation. The profit generated would be used to directly remunerate employees, collectively sustain the enterprise or finance public institutions. In state-oriented forms of market socialism, in which state enterprises attempt to maximise profit, the profits can be used to fund government programs and services through a social dividend, eliminating or greatly diminishing the need for various forms of taxation that exist in capitalist systems. Neoclassical economist Léon Walras believed that a socialist economy based on state ownership of land and natural resources would provide a means of public finance to make income taxes unnecessary. Yugoslavia implemented a market socialist economy based on cooperatives and worker self-management.
Mutualism is an economic theory and anarchist school of thought that advocates a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labour in the free market. Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank that would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate, just high enough to cover administration. Mutualism is based on a labour theory of value that holds that when labour or its product is sold, in exchange it ought to receive goods or services embodying “the amount of labour necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility”.
The current economic system in China is formally referred to as a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. It combines a large state sector that comprises the commanding heights of the economy, which are guaranteed their public ownership status by law, with a private sector mainly engaged in commodity production and light industry responsible from anywhere between 33% to over 70% of GDP generated in 2005. Although there has been a rapid expansion of private-sector activity since the 1980s, privatisation of state assets was virtually halted and were partially reversed in 2005. The current Chinese economy consists of 150 corporatised state-owned enterprises that report directly to China’s central government. By 2008, these state-owned corporations had become increasingly dynamic and generated large increases in revenue for the state, resulting in a state-sector led recovery during the 2009 financial crises while accounting for most of China’s economic growth. However, the Chinese economic model is widely cited as a contemporary form of state capitalism, the major difference between Western capitalism and the Chinese model being the degree of state-ownership of shares in publicly listed corporations.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam has adopted a similar model after the Doi Moi economic renovation, but slightly differs from the Chinese model in that the Vietnamese government retains firm control over the state sector and strategic industries, but allows for private-sector activity in commodity production.
The major socialist political movements are described below. Independent socialist theorists, utopian socialist authors and academic supporters of socialism may not be represented in these movements. Some political groups have called themselves socialist while holding views that some consider antithetical to socialism. The term “socialist” has also been used by some politicians on the political right as an epithet against certain individuals who do not consider themselves to be socialists and against policies that are not considered socialist by their proponents.
There are many variations of socialism and as such there is no single definition encapsulating all of socialism. However, there have been common elements identified by scholars. In his Dictionary of Socialism (1924), Angelo S. Rappoport analysed forty definitions of socialism to conclude that common elements of socialism include: general criticisms of the social effects of private ownership and control of capital—as being the cause of poverty, low wages, unemployment, economic and social inequality and a lack of economic security; a general view that the solution to these problems is a form of collective control over the means of production, distribution and exchange (the degree and means of control vary amongst socialist movements); an agreement that the outcome of this collective control should be a society based upon social justice, including social equality, economic protection of people and should provide a more satisfying life for most people. In The Concepts of Socialism (1975), Bhikhu Parekh identifies four core principles of socialism and particularly socialist society: sociality, social responsibility, cooperation and planning. In his study Ideologies and Political Theory (1996), Michael Freeden states that all socialists share five themes: the first is that socialism posits that society is more than a mere collection of individuals; second, that it considers human welfare a desirable objective; third, that it considers humans by nature to be active and productive; fourth, it holds the belief of human equality; and fifth, that history is progressive and will create positive change on the condition that humans work to achieve such change.
Main article: Anarchism
Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates stateless societies often defined as self-governed voluntary institutions, but that several authors have defined as more specific institutions based on non-hierarchical free associations. Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary or harmful. While anti-statism is central, some argue that anarchism entails opposing authority or hierarchical organisation in the conduct of human relations including, but not limited to, the state system. Mutualists advocate market socialism, collectivist anarchists workers cooperatives and salaries based on the amount of time contributed to production, anarcho-communists advocate a direct transition from capitalism to libertarian communism and a gift economy and anarcho-syndicalists worker’s direct action and the general strike.
Main article: Democratic socialism
Modern democratic socialism is a broad political movement that seeks to promote the ideals of socialism within the context of a democratic system. Some democratic socialists support social democracy as a temporary measure to reform the current system while others reject reformism in favour of more revolutionary methods. Modern social democracy emphasises a program of gradual legislative modification of capitalism in order to make it more equitable and humane, while the theoretical end goal of building a socialist society is either completely forgotten or redefined in a pro-capitalist way. The two movements are widely similar both in terminology and in ideology, although there are a few key differences.
The major difference between social democracy and democratic socialism is the object of their politics: contemporary social democrats support a welfare state and unemployment insurance as a means to “humanise” capitalism, whereas democratic socialists seek to replace capitalism with a socialist economic system, arguing that any attempt to “humanise” capitalism through regulations and welfare policies would distort the market and create economic contradictions.
Democratic socialism generally refers to any political movement that seeks to establish an economy based on economic democracy by and for the working class. Democratic socialism is difficult to define and groups of scholars have radically different definitions for the term. Some definitions simply refer to all forms of socialism that follow an electoral, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one.
You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.
— Martin Luther King Jr., 1966
Blanquism refers to a conception of revolution generally attributed to Louis Auguste Blanqui which holds that socialist revolution should be carried out by a relatively small group of highly organised and secretive conspirators. Having seized power, the revolutionaries would then use the power of the state to introduce socialism. It is considered a particular sort of “putschism”—that is, the view that political revolution should take the form of a putsch or coup d’état. Rosa Luxemburg and Eduard Bernstein have criticised Vladimir Lenin that his conception of revolution was elitist and essentially Blanquist. Marxism–Leninism is a political ideology combining Marxism (the scientific socialist concepts theorised by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) and Leninism (Lenin’s theoretical expansions of Marxism which include anti-imperialism, democratic centralism and party-building principles). Marxism–Leninism was the official ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the Communist International (1919–1943) and later it became the main guiding ideology for Trotskyists, Maoists and Stalinists.
Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism, left-libertarianism and socialist libertarianism) is a group of anti-authoritarian political philosophies inside the socialist movement that rejects socialism as centralised state ownership and control of the economy including criticism of wage labour relationships within the workplace, as well as the state itself. It emphasises workers’ self-management of the workplace and decentralised structures of political organisation, asserting that a society based on freedom and equality can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic elite. Libertarian socialists generally place their hopes in decentralised means of direct democracy and federal or confederal associations such as libertarian municipalism, citizens’ assemblies, trade unions, and workers’ councils. Relatedly, anarcho-syndicalist Gaston Leval explained: “We therefore foresee a Society in which all activities will be coordinated, a structure that has, at the same time, sufficient flexibility to permit the greatest possible autonomy for social life, or for the life of each enterprise, and enough cohesiveness to prevent all disorder…In a well-organised society, all of these things must be systematically accomplished by means of parallel federations, vertically united at the highest levels, constituting one vast organism in which all economic functions will be performed in solidarity with all others and that will permanently preserve the necessary cohesion”. All of this is generally done within a general call for libertarian and voluntary human relationships through the identification, criticism and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of human life. As such, libertarian socialism within the larger socialist movement seeks to distinguish itself both from Leninism/Bolshevism and from social democracy.
Past and present political philosophies and movements commonly described as libertarian socialist include anarchism (especially anarchist communism, anarchist collectivism, anarcho-syndicalism and mutualism) as well as autonomism, Communalism, participism, revolutionary syndicalism and libertarian Marxist philosophies such as council communism and Luxemburgism; as well as some versions of utopian socialism and individualist anarchism.
Christian socialism is a broad concept involving an intertwining of the Christian religion with the politics and economic theories of socialism.
Islamic socialism is a term coined by various Muslim leaders to describe a more spiritual form of socialism. Muslim socialists believe that the teachings of the Qur’an and Muhammad are compatible with principles of equality and public ownership drawing inspiration from the early Medina welfare state established by Muhammad. Muslim socialists are more conservative than their western contemporaries and find their roots in anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and Arab nationalism. Islamic socialist leaders believe in democracy and deriving legitimacy from public mandate as opposed to religious texts.
Social democracy is a political ideology which “is derived from a socialist tradition of political thought. Many social democrats refer to themselves as socialists or democratic socialists, and some, for example Tony Blair, use or have used these terms interchangeably. Others have opined that there are clear differences between the three terms, and preferred to describe their own political beliefs by using the term ‘social democracy’ only”. There are two main directions, either to establish democratic socialism, or to build a welfare state within the framework of the capitalist system. The first variant has officially its goal by establishing democratic socialism through reformist and gradualist methods. In the second variant, social democracy becomes a policy regime involving a welfare state, collective bargaining schemes, support for publicly financed public services and a capitalist-based economy like a mixed economy. It is often used in this manner to refer to the social models and economic policies prominent in Western and Northern Europe during the later half of the 20th century. It has been described by Jerry Mander as “hybrid” economics, an active collaboration of capitalist and socialist visions and while such systems are not perfect they tend to provide high standards of living. Numerous studies and surveys indicate that people tend to live happier lives in social democratic societies rather than neoliberal ones.
Social democrats supporting the first variant advocate for a peaceful, evolutionary transition of the economy to socialism through progressive social reform of capitalism. It asserts that the only acceptable constitutional form of government is representative democracy under the rule of law. It promotes extending democratic decision-making beyond political democracy to include economic democracy to guarantee employees and other economic stakeholders sufficient rights of co-determination. It supports a mixed economy that opposes the excesses of capitalism such as inequality, poverty and oppression of various groups, while rejecting both a totally free market or a fully planned economy. Common social democratic policies include advocacy of universal social rights to attain universally accessible public services such as education, health care, workers’ compensation and other services, including child care and care for the elderly. Social democracy is connected with the trade union labour movement and supports collective bargaining rights for workers. Most social democratic parties are affiliated with the Socialist International.
Liberal socialism is a socialist political philosophy that includes liberal principles within it. Liberal socialism does not have the goal of abolishing capitalism with a socialist economy, instead it supports a mixed economy that includes both public and private property in capital goods. Although liberal socialism unequivocally favours a mixed market economy, it identifies legalistic and artificial monopolies to be the fault of capitalism and opposes an entirely unregulated economy. It considers both liberty and equality to be compatible and mutually dependent on each other. Principles that can be described as “liberal socialist” have been based upon or developed by the following philosophers: John Stuart Mill, Eduard Bernstein, John Dewey, Carlo Rosselli, Norberto Bobbio and Chantal Mouffe. Other important liberal socialist figures include Guido Calogero, Piero Gobetti, Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, John Maynard Keynes and R. H. Tawney. Liberal socialism has been particularly prominent in British and Italian politics.
Socialist feminism is a branch of feminism that focuses upon both the public and private spheres of a woman’s life and argues that liberation can only be achieved by working to end both the economic and cultural sources of women’s oppression. Marxist feminism’s foundation is laid by Friedrich Engels in his analysis of gender oppression in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884). August Bebel’s Woman under Socialism (1879), the “single work dealing with sexuality most widely read by rank-and-file members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)”. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both Clara Zetkin and Eleanor Marx were against the demonisation of men and supported a proletariat revolution that would overcome as many male-female inequalities as possible. As their movement already had the most radical demands in women’s equality, most Marxist leaders, including Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai, counterposed Marxism against liberal feminism rather than trying to combine them. Anarcha-feminism began with late 19th and early 20th century authors and theorists such as anarchist feminists Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre In the Spanish Civil War, an anarcha-feminist group, Mujeres Libres (“Free Women”) linked to the Federación Anarquista Ibérica, organised to defend both anarchist and feminist ideas. In 1972, the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union published “Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women’s Movement”, which is believed to be the first to use the term “socialist feminism” in publication.
Many socialists were early advocates for LGBT rights. For early socialist Charles Fourier, true freedom could only occur without suppressing passions, as the suppression of passions is not only destructive to the individual, but to society as a whole. Writing before the advent of the term “homosexuality”, Fourier recognised that both men and women have a wide range of sexual needs and preferences which may change throughout their lives, including same-sex sexuality and androgénité. He argued that all sexual expressions should be enjoyed as long as people are not abused and that “affirming one’s difference” can actually enhance social integration. In Oscar Wilde’s The Soul of Man Under Socialism, he passionately advocates for an egalitarian society where wealth is shared by all, while warning of the dangers of social systems that crush individuality. Wilde’s libertarian socialist politics were shared by other figures who actively campaigned for homosexual emancipation in the late 19th century such as Edward Carpenter. The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women was a book from 1908 and an early work arguing for gay liberation written by Edward Carpenter who was also an influential personality in the foundation of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. After the Russian Revolution under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the Soviet Union abolished previous laws against homosexuality. Harry Hay was an early leader in the American LGBT rights movement as well as a member of the Communist Party USA. He is known for his roles in helping to found several gay organisations, including the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States which in its early days had a strong Marxist influence. The Encyclopedia of Homosexuality reports that “[a]s Marxists the founders of the group believed that the injustice and oppression which they suffered stemmed from relationships deeply embedded in the structure of American society”. Also emerging from a number of events, such as the May 1968 insurrection in France, the anti-Vietnam war movement in the United States and the Stonewall riots of 1969, militant gay liberation organisations began to spring up around the world. Many saw their roots in left radicalism more than in the established homophile groups of the time, though the Gay Liberation Front took an anti-capitalist stance and attacked the nuclear family and traditional gender roles.
Eco-socialism, green socialism or socialist ecology is a political position merging aspects of Marxism, socialism or libertarian socialism with that of green politics, ecology and alter-globalisation. Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, poverty, war and environmental degradation through globalisation and imperialism, under the supervision of repressive states and transnational structures. Contrary to the depiction of Karl Marx by some environmentalists, social ecologists and fellow socialists as a productivist who favoured the domination of nature, eco-socialists have revisited Marx’s writings and believe that he “was a main originator of the ecological world-view”. Eco-socialist authors, like John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, point to Marx’s discussion of a “metabolic rift” between man and nature, his statement that “private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite absurd as private ownership of one man by another” and his observation that a society must “hand it [the planet] down to succeeding generations in an improved condition”. The English socialist William Morris is largely credited with developing key principles of what was later called eco-socialism. During the 1880s and 1890s, Morris promoted his eco-socialist ideas within the Social Democratic Federation and Socialist League. Green anarchism, or ecoanarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden and Élisée Reclus.
In the late 19th century, there emerged anarcho-naturism as the fusion of anarchism and naturist philosophies within individualist anarchist circles in France, Spain, Cuba and Portugal. Social ecology is closely related to the work and ideas of Murray Bookchin and influenced by anarchist Peter Kropotkin. Bookchin’s first book, Our Synthetic Environment, was published under the pseudonym Lewis Herber in 1962, a few months before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. His groundbreaking essay “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought” introduced ecology as a concept in radical politics. In the 1970s, Barry Commoner, suggesting a left-wing response to the Limits to Growth model that predicted catastrophic resource depletion and spurred environmentalism, postulated that capitalist technologies were chiefly responsible for environmental degradation as opposed to population pressures. The 1990s saw the socialist feminists Mary Mellor and Ariel Salleh address environmental issues within an eco-socialist paradigm. With the rising profile of the anti-globalisation movement in the Global South, an “environmentalism of the poor” combining ecological awareness and social justice has also become prominent. In 1994, David Pepper also released his important work, Ecosocialism: From Deep Ecology to Social Justice, which critiques the current approach of many within green politics, particularly deep ecologists. Currently, many green parties around the world, such as the Dutch Green Left Party (GroenLinks), contain strong eco-socialist elements. Radical red-green alliances have been formed in many countries by eco-socialists, radical greens and other radical left groups. In Denmark, the Red-Green Alliance was formed as a coalition of numerous radical parties. Within the European Parliament, a number of leftist parties from Northern Europe have organised themselves into the Nordic Green Left Alliance.
Syndicalism is a social movement that operates through industrial trade unions and rejects state socialism and the use of establishment politics to establish or promote socialism. They reject using state power to construct a socialist society, favouring strategies such as the general strike. Syndicalists advocate a socialist economy based on federated unions or syndicates of workers who own and manage the means of production. Some Marxist currents advocate syndicalism, such as De-Leonism. Anarcho-syndicalism is a theory of anarchism which views syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and with that control influence broader society. The Spanish Revolution largely orchestrated by the anarcho-syndicalist trade union CNT during the Spanish Civil War offers an historical example. The International Workers’ Association is an international federation of anarcho-syndicalist labour unions and initiatives.
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Home / About Us / Leadership
TRC Healthcare Leadership
Wes Crews
As TRC’s Chief Executive Officer and President, Wes brings over 25 years of experience in online information services, software, and publishing. Wes has held the CEO role at three Internet information and software companies including BioSpace, and Infotrieve. He has also held key operational leadership roles in a variety of publishing and online information businesses, including Thomson-Reuters, HealthGrades, and Deloitte Investments. Wes holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Finance from the University of Oklahoma.
Brian Belmont
As TRC’s Chief Operating Officer, Brian brings over 25 years of technology and software development experience. Prior to joining TRC, Brian was Vice President of Engineering at Intel-GE Care Innovations. Brian has held leadership roles a variety of global technology companies including Ensequence, ARRIS, Intel, Texas Instruments, and Compaq Computer. Brian holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and is named inventor on 20 U.S. Patents in computer software and hardware.
Brandy O'Connor
As TRC’s Chief Revenue Officer, Brandy brings over 20 years of sales experience in the domestic and international healthcare markets. Brandy’s vast experience of providing point-of-care solutions for the clinical HIT markets includes serving as Vice President of Sales for Wolters Kluwer Health and, prior to that, as Vice President of Sales for Truven Health Analytics (now IBM Watson). Tasked with expanding the footprint for TRC’s robust platform to their expansive client base, Brandy uses his proven leadership abilities and his passion for clinical decision support and solutions to provide value to the client and sales associate resulting in fruitful partnerships for client and company alike. Brandy holds a bachelor’s degree in business management from Colorado State University.
Joshua Conrad
Vice President of Editorial and Content
As TRC’s Vice President of Editorial and Content, Joshua brings more than 14 years of experience in content development and publishing, clinical decision support, and clinician workflows and information systems. He currently leads TRC’s robust group of editors to create practical and relevant Letters for advanced practitioners, pharmacists, and pharmacy technicians. Joshua holds a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Nova Southeastern University, where he also completed his postgraduate specialty residency in drug information. Joshua has authored several textbook chapters in the areas of clinical research design and mobile medical information consumption. Prior to joining TRC, Joshua held several leadership roles with athenahealth, most recently serving as Director of Epocrates Clinician Experience and Engagement and collaborating across the organization on enhancing clinical decision support, optimizing clinician workflows, and increasing product utility.
Mike Dittmann
As TRC’s Chief Financial Officer, Mike brings more than 20 years of experience in mid-size to large enterprises, with a proven track record of strategic leadership, planning, budgeting, and revenue growth. Prior to joining TRC, Mike held leadership roles at Wineshipping.com, Cytosport, and Century Theaters, among other high-growth, dynamic companies. He currently leads all of TRC’s financial functions, as well as its human resources team. He holds an MBA in Accounting from Golden Gate University.
Carol Leighton
Senior Vice President of Product Strategy
Carol joined TRC in 2019, bringing over 20 years of experience in delivering global healthcare information and analytics solutions. Prior to joining TRC, Carol held executive positions at Carefusion, Zynx Health, Wiley and others. She is also a clinical pharmacist, with experience practicing in London’s top teaching hospitals. Carol leads TRC’s product strategy and innovation and oversees both the product management and marketing functions. She holds a Pharmacy Degree from the University of London and an MBA from Colorado State University.
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Penectomy
Penectomy is the practice of surgical removal of the penis. Ignorance of medicine causes many to believe that genital reassignment procedures for anatomical males involves "chopping off the penis." While removal of erectile tissue is a part of reassignment surgery this does not mean complete removal of the penis as a whole.
1 In medicine and psychology
2 Involuntary penis removal (assault)
4 Historic cases
6 Discuss
In medicine and psychology
Cancer of the penis sometimes necessitates removal of all or part of the penis.[1] In very rare instances, botched circumcisions have also resulted in full or partial penectomies, as with David Reimer. Celibacy is an exceptionally rare ground for penectomy.
Genital surgical procedures for trans women undergoing sex reassignment surgery do not usually involve the complete removal of the penis. Instead, part or all of the glans is usually kept and reshaped as a clitoris, while the skin of the penile shaft may also be inverted to form the vagina in a typical inversion procedure. When procedures such as this are not possible, other procedures such as colovaginoplasty are used for the vaginal vault leaving the penile skin for other uses if present.
Issues related to the removal of the penis appear in psychology, in the form of "castration anxiety" or anxiety over fertility. Criminal psychology, particularly in cases of spousal assault, has special symbolic significance. Due to the association of the penis with rape, (male) dominance and aggression, the assault victim may consciously or subconsciously see it as a weapon and express a hatred for it. There is some potential for those who have hatred for the symbology the penis has, to either desire harm or attempt to commit violent acts on male persons.
Some men have undergone penectomies as a voluntary body modification, but professional opinion is divided as to whether or not the desire for penile amputation is a pathology, thus including it as part of a body dysmorphic disorder, much as all other forms of treatment by amputation for body dysmorphic disorder.
Males who consider themselves third sex will sometimes want a demasculinization, i.e. they opt to be castrated and penectomized.
Involuntary penis removal (assault)
There have been incidents in which men have been assaulted, usually by their sexual partners, by having their penises severed. Lorena Bobbitt, for example, was popularly known for cutting off the penis of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, out of rage after he allegedly raped her, though he claimed it was for revenge when she discovered his infidelity. Bobbitt's penis was successfully reattached, and he later had a brief career in pornographic movies.
This was not the first modern case, however. On May 18, 1936, Sada Abe (also known as Abe Sada) strangled her lover (believed to be at his request, he wanted to die while having sex) Kichizo Ishida (Ishida Kichizo) and cut off his penis, placed it in her kimono and carried it around with her for days before eventually turning it over to the police. She spent a very brief time in jail, and was granted amnesty in 1940. The penis was last seen at a department store exhibition in 1949. This episode was the basis of the film In the Realm of the Senses.
In ancient civilizations, removal of the human penis was sometimes used as a means of demonstrating superiority: armies were sometimes known to sever the penises of their enemies to count the dead, as well as for trophies, although usually only the foreskins were taken.[2] The practice of castration (removal of the testicles) sometimes also involves the removal of all or part of the penis, generally with a tube inserted to keep the urethra open for urination. Castration has been used to create a class of servants or slaves (and especially harem-keepers) called eunuchs (Greek: ΕυνοÏχοι) in many different places and eras. In Italy, it was used to preserve the pure, high voices of young male singers, who were known as castrati.
In the modern era, removal of the human penis is very rare (with some exceptions), and references to removal of the penis are almost always symbolic. Removal of the testes is performed as a treatment of androgen sensitive prostate cancer in cases where hormone blocking therapy is not adviced.[3][4][5]
In addition to the below examples, there have been instances in the 21st century in which captives in the Iraq war and Yemen have been castrated.[6][7]
Historic cases
The first documented case of a completely successful penis replantation, restoring full function, was performed at Massachusetts General Hospital by a team led by Dr. Hugh H. Young II, with fellow urologist Dr. John F.S. Daly and plastic surgeons Dr. Benjamin E. Cohen and Dr. James W. May. The case is documented in the February 1977 issue of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons journal, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
In 1966, six-month old David Reimer's penis was destroyed during a botched circumcision using an electrocautery device. He was re-assigned as a girl. As a teenager, he underwent genital reconstructive surgery to restore his male organ. Years later, David committed suicide.[8]
On September 20, 2005, the first successful penis transplant was begun in a military hospital in Guangzhou, China. A 44-year-old man had sustained an injury that severed his penis in an accident. Despite atrophy of blood vessels and nerves after a protracted period of time had elapsed, the arteries, veins, nerves and the corpora spongiosa were successfully matched. After seven hours' surgery, the penis regained its function and even managed to attain erection. The extent to which the penis' function was restored and occurrence of rejection or infection remain to be seen.[9]
David Reimer
↑ Korets R, Koppie TM, Snyder ME, Russo P (2007). "Partial penectomy for patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the penis: the memorial sloan-kettering experience". Ann. Surg. Oncol. 14 (12): 3614–9. doi:10.1245/s10434-007-9563-9. PMID 17896151.
↑ See an example of this in the story of David's courtship of Saul's daughter in 1 Samuel 18:25-27; Then Saul said, “Thus shall you say to David, ‘The king desires no bride-price except a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, that he may be avenged of the king's enemies.’â€
↑ Loblaw, DA; Mendelson DS, Talcott JA, Virgo KS, et al. (2004-07-15). "American Society of Clinical Oncology recommendations for the initial hormonal management of androgen-sensitive metastatic, recurrent, or progressive prostate cancer". Journal of Clinical Oncology. PMID 15184404. Retrieved on 2007-01-11.
↑ Terris, Martha K; Audrey Rhee, et al. (2006-08-01). Prostate Cancer: Metastatic and Advanced Disease. eMedicine. Retrieved on 2007-01-11.
↑ Myers, Charles E (2006-08-24). Androgen Resistance, Part 1. Prostate Cancer Research Institute. Retrieved on 2007-01-11.
↑ Worth, Robert F., and Marshall, Carolyn, "G.I. Crime Photos May Be Evidence," The New York Times, August 5, 2006, accessed October 20, 2009
↑ Judd, Alan, "Our soldiers are mortals who will suffer, not superheroes," Telegraph, October 7, 2001, accessed October 20, 2009
↑ Colapinto, John. "Gender Gap: What were the real reasons behind David Reimer's suicide?", slate.com, 2004-06-03. Retrieved on 2007-01-11.
↑ "世界首例异体阴茎移æ¤æˆåŠŸ 40å²æ‚£è€…数周åŽå‡ºé™¢", southcn.com (Chinese), 2005-09-22. Retrieved on 2007-01-11.
American Cancer Society's Sexual Impact of Penectomy article
The No-Penis Club
"11:14", a 2003 Patrick Swayze-Colin Hanks movie depicting a penis severing
Interview with a "nullo"
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Share this Story: Uber confirms plans to begin ride-hailing service in Metro Vancouver
Uber confirms plans to begin ride-hailing service in Metro Vancouver
The company follows a similar announcement from Lyft earlier this month, as B.C. finalizes its guidelines for ride-hailing companies.
Stephanie Ip
Uber has announced it plans to begin offering its ride-hailing service in Vancouver. Photo by Ryan Remiorz /CANADIAN PRESS Files
Uber announced plans Wednesday to begin service in Metro Vancouver, a move that prompted taxi associations that have previously sparred on a range of issues to meet and plan a united response against regulations they say unfairly favour ride-hailing companies.
B.C.’s Passenger Transportation Board said earlier this week that ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft will be allowed to operate in larger operating zones than taxis, and with unlimited fleet sizes and the ability to raise rates during busier times.
Uber confirms plans to begin ride-hailing service in Metro Vancouver Back to video
The decision has some taxi drivers now seeking to recall two NDP MLAs in Surrey and Delta who they say courted their votes, but are now reneging on promises to create a level-playing field for taxis as the ride-hailing industry arrives in the province.
A day ahead of Uber’s official statement saying it will apply to the Passenger Transportation Board for approval to operate in Metro Vancouver when the application period opens on Sept. 3, members of the B.C. Taxi Association heard from a group of taxi drivers.
Gurdip Sahota, general manager of North Vancouver-based Sunshine Cabs, said he was at a taxi association meeting in Surrey on Tuesday where drivers said they have contacted Elections B.C. and are seeking to begin recall proceedings against NDP MLA and Minister of Citizens’ Services Jinny Sims in Surrey-Panorama, and NDP MLA Ravi Kahlon in Delta North.
“In the run-up to the (last provincial) election, the Liberals, previously, and the NDP, (while) trying to woo the drivers and their votes, said if there is ride-hailing in B.C., there would be some (new) regulations for taxis,” said Sahota.
Specifically, he said, “everyone is pissed off (now) there is an unlimited cap (on the number of cars that can be run by) ride-hailing companies. This will mean so much congestion on roads. We can’t compete if there are thousands of (ride-hailing) private vehicles.”
Catherine Read, chair of the Passenger Transportation Board, has said that fleet size for ride-hailing companies might be “re-addressed … as data becomes available.”
She said the independent tribunal decided to allow unlimited fleet sizes and “surge pricing” (charging higher rates during prime periods) because they are key to the models of ride-hailing companies.
However, the board said ride-hailing companies in B.C. will not be able to offer discounts or coupon savings that charge below the taxi flag rate of $3.25 to $3.95 in Metro Vancouver, as is permitted in other jurisdictions.
Mohan Kang, president of the B.C. Taxi Association, said he was aware of talk by some drivers to collect signatures in support of a recall of the two MLAs, but that “the association has nothing to do with that.”
On Wednesday afternoon, directors from the B.C. Taxi Association and the Vancouver Taxi Association met “to first discuss amongst ourselves some common options we may have together,” said Kang, declining to be more specific.
Earlier in the day, Uber said it will apply to operate in what will be known as Region 1, or the Lower Mainland/Whistler area, which covers Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, Squamish and Lillooet. The specific communities in which Uber will offer its services will be finalized closer to its yet-to-be-decided launch date, based on how many drivers are recruited, and where.
B.C. Liberal MLA for Richmond-Queensborough Jas Johal called for the elimination of municipal boundaries for taxis, which require them to pick-up and drop-off passengers in restricted zones while ride-hailing companies will be allowed to operate in much wider areas.
The two taxi associations have been divided on this topic. Drivers with B.C. Taxi Association-affiliated companies, which mainly operate in suburban areas, get caught with “deadheading” when they drop off a passenger in Vancouver, having to double-back to Surrey or North Vancouver without a fare because they cannot pick up a passenger in that zone.
However, for Vancouver drivers, removing such restrictions could devalue their taxi licences, which hold their worth based on their scarcity in a certain area. This would potentially hurt companies and drivers that may have borrowed money to purchase or lease part-shares in vehicle licences.
Uber’s Head of Western Canada Michael van Hemmen. Photo by NICK PROCAYLO /PNG
Uber’s announcement on Wednesday followed a similar announcement from Lyft earlier this month.
“We are very excited for the opportunity to provide ride-sharing services in Metro Vancouver,” said Michael van Hemmen, head of Uber’s Western Canada division.
“For years, British Columbians have been clear that they want access to the same, affordable, reliable service they’ve used all over the world. We’re optimistic that Uber will be here for the busy holiday season.”
It’s expected the applications will take about six to eight weeks to process and would allow Uber to begin operating in late 2019.
The Uber app is displayed on an iPhone as taxi drivers wait for passengers at Vancouver International Airport. Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
B.C. Liberals calling for taxi boundaries to be consistent with ride-hailing zones
No fleet-size limits or price surge restrictions for ride-hailing companies in B.C.
Lyft confirms plan to launch ride-hailing service in Vancouver
B.C. government says ride-hailing services can operate starting Sept. 16
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Māngere Markets at the Māngere Town Centre in South Auckland makes close to half a million a year. (IMAGE: JUSTIN LATIF/TINA TILLER)
Locals quiz South Auckland charity over its $1.5 million cash reserve
Justin Latif | Staff writer
The charity running the Māngere Markets makes close to half a million a year from a business centred on a publicly owned carpark, but distributes less than a third of its income in grants. That’s left some locals wondering whether the trust could be doing more to support the community, writes Justin Latif.
Nothing quite beats the sensory overload at Māngere’s Saturday morning markets. Pungent aromas of fresh fruit and vegetables combine with whiffs of hot coffee and deliciously oily donuts, while sound systems blare Pacific beats and stallholders holler out their best deals.
A weekly trip to the Māngere Town Centre car park is a much-loved ritual for many in the community, not only as a time to stock up the pantry, but to also catch up on the latest gossip. And it’s all made possible by The Māngere Market Trust, which, according to its website, distributes “all profits” in order to help the “people of Māngere to achieve more”.
And yet the trust has accumulated unspent funds of more than $1.5 million since it was established in 2008, predominantly from the rental of sites to market sellers, according to documents published on the charity services website. Over the last five years, the trust has brought in $2.2 million, and spent $1.7 million, giving out almost $550,000 in grants, roughly a quarter of its income.
The trust’s chairperson is Sylvia Taylor, who is well known to many in the area, having served as both a Manukau City councillor, and Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board member. She also received a Queen’s Service Medal in 2014 for her services to the community.
I give her a call to get a clearer picture. When I reach her, she’s actually in the car and can only provide a brief overview, but she’s clear – the majority of the money received goes to locals.
“Our main aim of the market is to look after our area,” she says. “And the money we get from the market predominantly goes to the Māngere region. People spend it there and we give it back. We assist schools in a lot of areas, with sporting equipment, iPads for schools.”
What other examples does she have?
“We just bought an ambulance and we were really pleased about that. It’s a state-of-the-art, top-notch vehicle. Māngere doesn’t get much in the way of the best of everything. We’d prefer for it to be stationed in Māngere, but it could be stationed anywhere and it can get called out anywhere. We’ve also given a lot of money to groups like Auckland City Mission, Salvation Army, Red Cross, Starship. Over the years we’ve contributed a lot to support our community.”
That’s five large charities with a nationwide or Auckland-wide focus. Local? She does go on to mention that a key part of the trust is to support the Māngere Town Centre. If you’re not familiar with this place, it’s 49 years old, and it’s definitely seen better days.
The Māngere Markets provides a beautiful menagerie of sights, sounds and smells every Saturday morning in the heart of South Auckland. (Photo: Supplied)
My daughters and I often go for a stroll through the town centre it after I pick them from school. There’s a library, takeaway joints selling ice cream and deep-fried foods, a stage for the zumba classes, a plethora of $2 shops touting flimsy imported goods, butcheries where you can buy a whole pig and vege shops selling popular staples like taro and green bananas. Faded friezes of flowers adorn chipped pillars around the centre, while lichen seems to be building up on sections of the clear roofing overhead, yet the rain still seems to get through to the centre’s flooring tiles, making them dangerously slippery.
Taylor says the trust’s role includes keeping the town centre looking good.
“Part of our work is to support our BID [business improvement district], which is the Māngere Town Centre, so keeping the area in a good condition. On the whole, most of the money that we get from the markets goes back into the community, and that’s rare for that to happen.”
I ask about the accumulated funds, which totals $1,597,804, according to the 2019 audited performance report.
“We don’t throw our money willy-nilly around,” she says. “There may come a time that we need money for the community, and so at least we will have an investment that we can still supply the community, rather than flog it all off every time it comes in. Even though this money is there, it doesn’t mean we have to get rid of it. We’re a private trust. It’s saved for a rainy day. We plan ahead, we think seriously about every donation that we make.”
And the expenses? I ask why the trust spends between 70 and 75% of its income on running the markets.
“Nearly all of the expenses are actually for Auckland Council,” she explains. “It’s part and parcel of what you do when running a business.”
In 2019, rent for using the Māngere Town Centre car park was $79,500, but they also spend not insignificant chunks on wages for security ($20,672), salaries for staff ($41,190), cleaning ($24,038) and $18,900 for accountancy and secretarial services, which according to the auditor’s report, was provided by Kensyl Holdings Limited, a company owned by Ken and Sylvia Taylor, who are the secretary and chairperson respectively.
Given Taylor was in the car when I first made contact, I follow up with an email so she could clarify who the local organisations that the trust has funded are, but I got this response:
This is a private trust and how we distribute our funds are the sole responsibility of the trustees as prescribed in our constitution.
Information of who we make donations to are private to the Trust and the groups we make grants to. We will not compromise this confidentiality.
Regards, Ken Taylor
That will be little comfort, however, to community groups and schools struggling to fund their essential activities, for whom a slice of the $1.5 million currently sitting in the trust’s bank account could make a real difference.
A spokesperson for the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board said that while the local board does not have a say on how the markets are run, it would like to see more money given to locals. “Our local board’s preference is to see more of these funds invested in our local organisations who largely serve and support the communities of Māngere-Ōtāhuhu.”
Councillor Fa’anana Efeso Collins, who was last year named as a liaison between the council-controlled organisation Panuku Development and the Auckland Council, said he would like to see operating licences to run markets granted to groups that can show they are providing optimal benefit to their local community.
“Our markets provide an essential service in our communities as a place to shop and socialise. While I realise the commercial licences for these markets don’t specify how operators use their profits, perhaps Panuku should consider how these council-owned car parks are used, so our local communities get the maximum benefit from them.”
According to Panuku, a new commercial operating licence to run this market is set to be negotiated and it is open to any organisation to apply.
“Panuku had planned to commence discussions with the local board this year re the terms of the new licence, however this was significantly disrupted due to Covid-19, which means we are not yet in a position to commence the new market licence process,” a Panuku spokesperson said. “However, in the interim if anyone was interested in obtaining further information they are welcome to contact Panuku’s property portfolio department through our website.”
Toni Helleur and Mia King run the Māngere Cultural Markets on Thursday nights during the summer. (Photo: Supplied)
There is certainly interest. Māngere residents Mia King and Toni Helleur have run the Māngere Cultural markets on Thursday nights over the last two summers and are very interested in the possibility of bringing their unique approach to the Saturday slot. The pair who run a local charitable trust, along with their own respective businesses, say they really respect what the current operators of the Saturday markets have been able to achieve but would love to see the markets used more creatively to encourage budding entrepreneurs.
“We love markets and we would love to know how we could be a part of the process,” said King. “As soon as we heard, which was a year and half ago, that it may be up for tender we were looking out for any advertising but council hasn’t been forthcoming about what that process would look like.”
Helleur said one key area they would like to see the market focus on is developing the local entrepreneurs in the area.
“We’d love to bring our expertise, our skillset, and our community nous and swag to develop this market to benefit everyone inside our whole community. Over the last two years we’ve seen many of the stallholders who use our market as a way to test run their products and through that they’ve been able to develop their businesses. So we’d love to see these Saturday markets used for the economic development of our community.”
Collins believes there could be a real opportunity here for Panuku to think more creatively how council-owned spaces are utilised to support communities like Māngere weather the oncoming economic headwinds.
“In these uncertain times, maybe markets like these can play a bigger part in empowering our community as a space for new entrepreneurs and creative enterprises to be developed, so they aren’t just about selling fruit and veges, but also showcasing the best of South Auckland’s burgeoning business talent,” he said.
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Walmart Highlights Progress on Sustainability Index
Outlines key initiatives in recycling, chemicals, fertilizers and energy efficiency
Broadens Index to international markets
Index projected to include 300 product categories, engage up to 5,000 suppliers by end of year
Bentonville, Arkansas – In front of an audience of associates, suppliers and non-profit organizations at its Global Sustainability Milestone Meeting in September, Walmart highlighted its progress with the Sustainability Index, a measurement system used to track the environmental impact of products. The company also outlined key initiatives where it can use its size and scale to help address “hot spots” and accelerate progress in supply chain sustainability.
“We’ve reached an acceleration point where we are moving from measurement to results. We’re starting to really drive progress with the Index,” Walmart president and CEO Mike Duke said. “This is about trust and value. Using less energy, greener chemicals, fewer fertilizers and more recycled materials – all of this – is the right thing to do for the planet and its right for our customers and our business.”
As of September 12, the Index was rolled out across 200 product categories, and to more than 1,000 suppliers. By the end of this year, the company expects that the Index will expand to include more than 300 product categories and as many as 5,000 suppliers.
Since the Index rolled out broadly to Walmart product categories in August 2012, it has shown a consistent trend of improved product sustainability. For example, Walmart’s general merchandise department has improved its Index product sustainability score by an average of 20 percent; grocery department by an average of 12 percent; and consumables and health and wellness by an average of 6 percent.
“With the Sustainability Index, Walmart is applying the science and research that we’ve developed to create a more sustainable supply chain globally,” said Kara Hurst, CEO of The Sustainability Consortium. “We’re excited about the significant progress Walmart and its suppliers are making and value their partnership with us to address big issues and drive real social and environmental change.”
Based on the insights and data from the Index, Walmart has been working with suppliers, non-profits, industry experts and government to develop and implement solutions that address critical “hot spots” and opportunities across the global supply chain. As part of the progress update at the meeting, executives, merchants and suppliers shared progress on five major initiatives underway:
Increasing the Use of Recycled Materials. More than 29 million tons of valuable plastics are sent to landfills every year in the U.S. at a cost of about $ 6.6 billion annually. Walmart aims to grow both the supply and demand for recycled plastics so they can be diverted from landfill and get a second life. The company is working with cities to increase plastic recycling and with suppliers to increase the use of recycled content and make packaging more recyclable. Changes in packaging are already being implemented in product categories such as beverage, over-the-counter drugs, dairy creamers and berry containers.
Earlier, Walmart and Sam’s Club also announced a smartphone trade-in program in the U.S. that went into effect on September 21. The company will not send these trade-ins to landfills, domestically or internationally, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of smartphones from landfills annually.
Offering Products with Greener Chemicals. Walmart provided an overview of its new Consumables Chemicals initiative, describing how it is working with suppliers to reduce or eliminate the use of priority chemicals used in consumables products in favor of greener alternatives. It will begin with household cleaning, personal care, beauty and cosmetic products, asking suppliers to transition to greener substitutes for priority chemicals.
In addition, starting in January 2014, Walmart will begin to label its private brand cleaning products in accordance with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended Design for the Environment (DfE) Safer Product Labeling program, and will continue to assess the applicability of DfE as Walmart expands it to broader product areas.
Reducing Fertilizer Use in Agriculture. Walmart is requiring suppliers who use commodity grains, such as corn, wheat and soy in their products, to develop a fertilizer optimization plan that outlines clear goals to improve performance based on Index research. Through this program, the company and its suppliers have the potential to reduce fertilizer use on 14 million acres of farmland in the U.S. by 2020.
Expanding the Sustainability Index to International Markets. Walmart will expand the Sustainability Index and measurement to international markets with the goal of improving product sustainability at the global level. Walmart Chile and Walmart Mexico will launch the Index in their respective markets in 2014. In addition, South Africa’s Massmart has begun to include key Index questions in its supplier sustainability surveys.
Improving Energy Efficiency. The Index has uncovered the importance of energy efficiency in several product categories, such as televisions, plastic toys, small appliances and greeting cards. By working with suppliers to improve energy efficiency through the supply chain of these products, Index energy scores have already improved 23 percent in general merchandise categories. Walmart is now providing tools for suppliers to help track and reduce the energy used to produce these products.
The company also announced a light-emitting diode (LED) lightbulb available in stores now under its Great Value label. A 40 watt equivalent bulb, which last more than twice as long as a compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL), typically retails for $ 8.48 and the 60 watt equivalent $ 9.88. By selling 500,000 LED lightbulbs, the company projects customers can save more than $ 67 million over the lifetime of those bulbs.
Source: Walmart.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is an American multinational retail corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. Walmart helps people around the world save money and live better in retail stores, online, and through their mobile devices. Each week, more than 245 million customers and members visit their 10,955 stores under 69 banners in 27 countries and e-commerce websites in 10 countries. With fiscal year 2013 sales of approximately $ 466 billion, Walmart employs more than 2 million associates worldwide. For more information, visit www.walmart.com.
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ThinktoSustain - Jan 6, 2014
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Family influence to improve Kimi form
Date: 15th December 2015 at 10:29am
Written by: Red5
Can the influence of family see a new and improved Kimi Raikkonen for Ferrari in 2016?
Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne certainly thinks so.
The 2007 Formula One World Champion was not guaranteed a race seat with Ferrari for 2016, but the Finn eventually went on to earn a new deal to continue his partnership with four-time Formula One World Champion Sebastian Vettel.
In 2016, Ferrari believe they will have the beating of Mercedes, giving both Raikkonen and Vettel a shot at winning another drivers world title.
The 36-year-old finished the season 4th in the drivers standings, 128 points behind his team-mate.
Whilst Vettel enjoyed three Grand Prix victories, Raikkonen’s best result was in Bahrain when he finished second.
He stood on the podium a further two times, finishing third in Singapore and the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi.
‘We were talking with some of our colleagues over the past three or four days, and we are beginning to look at a different Kimi.
‘The fact he is married with a kid – he showed me a picture because he is a proud father – is also reflective of the changes in his own life. Marchionne told Ferrari’s traditional Christmas press conference at Maranello.
‘He is becoming a lot more settled, which I think will be helpful in 2016. I think he will be the most engaged we have seen him the last little while.
‘I am delighted he is part of the team. We have two drivers and they do compete.
‘It happened to Seb, he has had a phenomenal year in his first year, and I am expecting that Kimi will rise up to the challenge and have a phenomenal season in 2016.
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70 Illegal Immigrants Apprehended By ICE In Oklahoma And Texas
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swept through Southern Texas and Oklahoma in search of immigrants who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, the Associated Press reports.
The sweep happened Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
According to federal authorities, ICE arrested 70 individuals, nearly all of whom have a history of criminal activity. Immigration agents have made it a priority to target those who have committed crimes in the U.S. or have attempted to re-enter the U.S. after previously being deported.
Some of the histories of those detained include sexual assault, distribution of a controlled substance, prostitution and burglary.
This sweep was one of many operations ICE has conducted this year in Texas and nearby states with high levels of illegal immigration. According to ICE, the federal government arrested 153 illegal aliens in South Texas during the month of April alone.
Since President Donald Trump has taken office, illegal border crossings are down more than 60 percent.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].
Following Comey Testimony, Trump Tells Conservatives ‘We Are Under Siege’
VIDEO: Trump’s Outside Lawyer Accuses James Comey Of Lying Under Oath
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Since 2014, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project provides the largest and most comprehensive global dataset on democracy with some 27 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to present. It includes over 450 disaggregated indicators to measure multiple conceptions of democracy, autocracy, human rights, civil liberties, media and internet freedom, disinformation, civil society, judicial independence, and political development. The V-Dem database enables new ways to study the nature, causes, and consequences of democracy, embracing its multiple meanings of the concept. The V-Dem project involves five Principal Investigators, fifteen Project Managers with individual responsibility for issue areas, more than thirty Regional Managers, about 160 Country Coordinators, and over 3,000 Country Experts. It is headquartered at the V-Dem Institute, Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
In December 2019, the V-Dem Project established a regional center for Eastern Asia (hereafter the Regional Center) in Japan. This is the sixth of the regional centers of V-Dem around the world, which includes centers for Eastern Europe & Russia, Southern Europe, Central Asia, North America, and Southern Africa. The Regional Center’s primary coverage of countries is Northeastern Asia (Japan, China, Mongolia, North and South Korea, Taiwan), but Southeast Asian countries are also included in its scope of studies and activities. The Center is hosted at Keio University in Tokyo.
Objectives of the Regional Center
The East Asia Regional Center has the following objectives:
Produce knowledge about the state of democracy in East Asia using the V-Dem database. Taking advantage of the unique nature of the V-Dem database, research fellows of the Regional Center, together with other scholars who are interested in using the database, will produce working papers, visual graphs, and policy briefs focusing on East Asia. The focal issues include the general state of democracy, the use of the internet for the spread of false information, and the sequencing of democratization and autocratization. At the same time, the Regional Center promotes knowledge production on these matters through hosting conferences and workshops.
Serve as the knowledge hub on the matters concerning democracy and autocratization in East Asia. Through its website, the Regional Center regularly publishes policy briefs, newsletters, and visual graphs based on the V-Dem database. Many of these materials will be translated into Japanese, Korean, and traditional Chinese so that the Center’s findings are more accessible to a broader range of readers. Involving the academics at the first-rated universities in the region, the Regional Center has a unique standing with high credibility.
Support collaboration among scholars, practitioners, and journalists on democracy promotion. By organizing policy-oriented workshops, the Regional Center aims to encourage partnerships among scholars, practitioners (policymakers and civil society groups), and journalists in the region to better investigate the trajectories of democratic development and to find better policy schemes to promote democracy.
Hold academic conferences and policy-oriented workshops on democracy and democracy promotion.
Publish working paper series, policy briefs, newsletters, country reports, thematic reports, and visual graphs concerning the state of democracy in East Asia.
Translate the above–mentioned materials into Japanese, Korean, and traditional Chinese to enhance accessibility.
Maintain the Regional Center website that publishes the above–mentioned materials.
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Library » Teachings of Lord Caitanya
Lord Caitanya, the Original Personality of Godhead
Following in the footsteps of Kavirāja Kṛṣṇadāsa Gosvāmī, we offer our respectful obeisances unto the lotus feet of Lord Caitanya.
Lord Caitanya is described as follows: He is the only shelter for the forlorn, the most fallen, and He is the only hope for those who are completely devoid of spiritual knowledge. Let us try to discuss His great contribution of devotional service.
The supremely powerful Lord Kṛṣṇa becomes manifest in five different features. Although He is one without a second, in order to serve five specific spiritual purposes, He becomes manifest in five ways. Such diversity is eternal and blissful, in contrast to the conception of monotonous oneness. From the Vedic literature we can understand that the Absolute Truth, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, eternally exists with His diverse energies. Lord Caitanya appeared with full diverse energies, and they are five in number; therefore Lord Caitanya is said to be Kṛṣṇa with diverse energies.
There is no difference between the energy and the energetic in regard to the Lord’s appearance as Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and His four associates Nityānanda Prabhu, Advaita Prabhu, Gadādhara Paṇḍita and Śrīvāsa Ṭhākura. Among these five diverse manifestations of the Supreme Lord (as the Lord Himself and His expansion, incarnation, devotional energy and devotee) there is no spiritual difference. They are five in one Absolute Truth. For the sake of relishing transcendental flavors in the Absolute Truth, there are five diverse manifestations. These are called the form of a devotee, the identity of a devotee, the incarnation of a devotee, the devotional energy and the pure devotee.
Out of the five diversities in the Absolute Truth, the form of Lord Caitanya is that of the original Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa. Lord Nityānanda is the manifestation of the first expansion of the Supreme Lord. Similarly, Advaita Prabhu is an incarnation of the Supreme Lord. These three – Caitanya, Nityānanda and Advaita – belong to the category of viṣṇu-tattva, or the Supreme Absolute Truth. Śrīvāsa represents the pure devotee, and Gadādhara represents the internal energy of the Lord for the advancement of pure devotion. Therefore Gadādhara and Śrīvāsa, although on the Viṣṇu platform, are dependent, diverse energies of the Supreme Lord. In other words, they are not different from the energetic, but they are manifested diversely for the sake of relishing transcendental relationships. The whole process of devotional service involves a transcendental reciprocation of the flavors of relationship between the worshiper and the worshiped. Without such a diverse exchange of transcendental flavors, devotional service has no meaning.
In the Vedic literature (Kaṭha Upaniṣad) it is stated that the Supreme Lord is the supreme living entity among all living entities. There are innumerable living entities, but there is one living entity who is the Supreme Absolute Godhead. The difference between the singular living entity and the plural living entities is that the singular living entity is the Lord of all. Lord Caitanya is that supreme living entity, and He descended to reclaim the innumerable fallen living entities. In other words, the specific purpose of Lord Caitanya’s advent was to establish in the present age the Vedic fact that there is one Supreme Personality of Godhead predominating and maintaining all the other innumerable living entities. Because the impersonalist (Māyāvādī) philosophers cannot understand this, Lord Caitanya advented Himself to enlighten the people in general about the real nature of the relationship between the Supreme and the many dependent living entities.
In the Bhagavad-gītā Kṛṣṇa’s last instruction is that everyone should give up all other engagements and render devotional service unto Him. But after Kṛṣṇa’s disappearance, less intelligent people misunderstood Him. They became contaminated with the Māyāvāda philosophy, which produced so many mental speculators that people forgot the actual position of the Absolute Truth and the living entity. Therefore Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa Himself, as Lord Caitanya, again appeared in order to teach the fallen souls of this material world the way to approach Lord Kṛṣṇa. The Bhagavad-gītā teaches that one should give up everything and be done with this world of material attachment. A pure devotee of Lord Kṛṣṇa and one who follows the philosophy of Lord Caitanya are one and the same. Caitanya’s philosophy is that one should give up everything and worship God, Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa, as the Supreme Lord, the Personality of Godhead, spoke the same words, indicating Himself as the Supreme Lord. But the Māyāvādī philosophers misunderstood Him. Therefore Lord Caitanya, to clarify the situation, reiterated Lord Kṛṣṇa’s message: One should not declare himself to be as good as Kṛṣṇa but should worship Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Lord.
We make a great mistake if we think Lord Caitanya is a conditioned soul. He is to be understood as the Supreme Absolute Truth, the Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa Himself. In the Caitanya-caritāmṛta it is therefore said of Lord Caitanya: “Kṛṣṇa is now present in His five diverse manifestations.” Unless one is situated in uncontaminated goodness, it is very difficult to understand Lord Caitanya as the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself. Thus in order to understand Lord Caitanya, one has to follow the direct disciples of Lord Caitanya – the Six Gosvāmīs – and especially the path chalked out by Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī.
The most astonishing fact is that Lord Caitanya, although the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa, never displayed Himself as Kṛṣṇa. Rather, whenever intelligent devotees detected that He was Lord Kṛṣṇa and addressed Him as Lord Kṛṣṇa, He denied it. Indeed, He sometimes placed His hands over His ears, protesting that a human being should not be addressed as the Supreme Lord. Indirectly, He was teaching the Māyāvādī philosophers that one should never falsely pose himself as the Supreme Lord and thereby misguide his followers. Nor should the followers be foolish enough to accept anyone and everyone as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. One should test by consulting scriptures and by seeing the activities of the person in question. One should not, however, mistake Lord Caitanya and His five diverse manifestations for ordinary human beings. Lord Caitanya is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa Himself. The beauty of Lord Caitanya is that although He is the Supreme Lord, He came as a great devotee to teach all conditioned souls how devotional service should be rendered. Conditioned souls who are interested in devotional service should follow in the exemplary footsteps of Lord Caitanya to learn how Kṛṣṇa can be attained by devotional service. Thus the Supreme Lord Himself teaches the conditioned soul how He should be approached by devotional service.
By analytically studying the five diverse manifestations of the Supreme Lord, we can come to know that Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu is the Supreme Absolute Truth and that Lord Nityānanda is His immediate expansion. We can also come to understand that Advaita Prabhu is also in the category of the Supreme Personality of Godhead but is subordinate to Lord Caitanya and Nityānanda Prabhu. The Supreme Personality of Godhead and His immediate and subordinate expansion are worshipable by the other two – namely, the representation of the internal potency and the representation of the marginal potency. The representation of the internal potency, Gadādhara, represents the confidential devotee, and the representation of the marginal potency, Śrīvāsa, represents the pure devotee. Both of these are worshipers of the other three. But all four of the Lord’s expansions – whether in the worshipable category (Nityānanda and Advaita) or the worshiper category (Gadādhara and Śrīvāsa) – are engaged in the transcendental loving service of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu.
There is a specific difference between the pure devotee and the confidential devotee. The different potencies of the Lord are engaged in serving the Supreme Lord in different transcendental relationships. They are situated in conjugal love, in parental affection, in friendship or in servitude. By judging impartially, one can find that the internal potencies of the Supreme Lord who are engaged in conjugal love with the Lord are the best of all devotees. Thus both internal devotees and confidential devotees are attracted by the conjugal love of the Supreme Absolute Truth. These are the most confidential devotees of Lord Caitanya. Other pure devotees, who are more or less attached to Śrī Nityānanda Prabhu and Advaita Prabhu, are attracted by other transcendental relationships, such as parental affection, friendship and servitorship. When such devotees are very much attached to the activities of Lord Caitanya, they at once become confidential devotees in conjugal love with the Supreme Lord.
There is a very nice song sung by Śrī Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura, a great devotee and ācārya in the disciplic succession from Lord Caitanya. Narottama dāsa sings: “When will there be transcendental eruptions all over my body simply by my hearing the name of Gaurāṅga? When will tears incessantly flow from my eyes simply by my uttering the names of the Lord? When will Lord Nityānanda have mercy upon me and make all my desires for material enjoyment insignificant? When shall I be purified by giving up all contaminations of material enjoyment? And when shall I be able to see the transcendental abode, Vṛndāvana? When shall I be eager to accept the Six Gosvāmīs as my prime guides? And when will I be able to understand the conjugal love of Kṛṣṇa?” No one should be eager to understand the conjugal love of Kṛṣṇa without undergoing disciplinary training under the Six Gosvāmīs of Vṛndāvana.
The saṅkīrtana movement inaugurated by Lord Caitanya is a transcendental pastime of the Lord. “By it I live simultaneously to preach and popularize this movement in the material world.” In that saṅkīrtana movement of Lord Caitanya, Nityānanda and Advaita are His expansions and Gadādhara and Śrīvāsa are His internal and marginal potencies, respectively. The living entities are also called marginal potency because they have either of two attitudes – namely, the tendency to surrender unto Kṛṣṇa or the tendency to become independent of Him and try for material enjoyment. Due to this propensity for material enjoyment, the living entity becomes contaminated by the material world. When a living entity is dominated by a desire for material enjoyment and becomes entangled in material life, he is subjected to the threefold miseries of material existence.
There is a nice example showing how Lord Caitanya’s saṅkīrtana movement can save one from the miseries of material existence. The desire for material enjoyment is just like a seed sown in the earth. If a seed is inundated by too much water, there is no possibility of its fructifying. Similarly, if a conditioned soul is captivated by material enjoyment because the seed of such enjoyment is within his heart, he can be overwhelmed and overpowered by a flood of transcendental activities performed in love of God. In this way his seed of material enjoyment cannot fructify into a conditioned life of material existence. The conditioned living entities in the present Age of Kali are being overpowered by the flood of love of God inaugurated by Lord Caitanya and His associates.
In this connection there is a verse written by His Holiness Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī in his book Śrī Caitanya-candrāmṛta. This verse states that materialistic persons are very enthusiastic to maintain their family members, wife and children, and that there are also many mystic speculators who are engaged in speculating about liberation from the miseries of material life and who therefore undergo various austerities and penances. But those who have discovered the greatest transcendental flavor in the movement of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu no longer have a taste for such activities.
Those who are under the impression that there is material contamination in the form of the Supreme Personality of Godhead and in His devotional service are called Māyāvādīs. According to their imperfect speculation, the impersonal Brahman is the only existence in the cosmic manifestation. As soon as the Supreme Personality of Godhead is introduced, they consider that His personality arises from māyā, or the external material energy. Such persons consider all incarnations of the Supreme Lord to be contaminated by this material nature. According to them, the material body and the activities of matter are all that give a living being an individual identity. According to them, liberation means the end of an individual identity for the pure living being. In other words, the Māyāvādīs maintain that when a living entity is liberated he becomes one with the supreme, impersonal Brahman. According to such Māyāvāda philosophy, the Personality of Godhead, His abode, His devotional service and His emotional devotees are all under the spell of māyā and are consequently subjected to the material condition. Those who forget the transcendental nature of the Supreme Lord, His abode, His devotional service and His devotees consider all these to be but manifestations of material activity. One who thinks that there is a possibility of arguing about transcendence is called an agnostic, and one who thinks that there is a possibility of criticizing transcendence is called an atheist. Lord Caitanya wanted to accept all kinds of agnostics, atheists, skeptics and unfaithfuls and swallow them in the flood of love of God. Therefore He accepted the renounced order of life to attract all these forces.
Lord Caitanya remained a householder until His twenty-fourth year, and in the twenty-fifth year of His life He accepted the renounced order. After accepting the renounced order (sannyāsa), He attracted many other sannyāsīs. When He had been spreading the saṅkīrtana movement as a family man, many Māyāvādī sannyāsīs did not take His movement very seriously, but after the Lord accepted the sannyāsa order of life, He delivered not only Māyāvādī sannyāsīs but speculative students, atheists and those who were attached to fruitive activities and unnecessary criticism. The Lord was so kind that He accepted all these people and delivered to them the most important factor in life: love of God.
To fulfill His mission of bestowing love of God upon the conditioned souls, Lord Caitanya devised many methods to attract those who were uninterested in love of God. After He accepted the renounced order, all the agnostics, critics, atheists and mental speculators became His students and followers. Even many who were not Hindus and who did not follow the Vedic principles accepted Lord Caitanya as the supreme teacher. The only persons who avoided the mercy of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu were those sannyāsīs who were known as the Māyāvādī philosophers of Benares. Their plight is described by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī: “The Māyāvādī philosophers of Benares were less intelligent because they wanted to measure everything by direct perception. On this basis they calculated that whatever is perceived by material means is māyā, or illusion. Since māyā is full of variegatedness and the Absolute Truth is transcendental to māyā, they concluded that there is no variegatedness in the Absolute Truth.”
During Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s time there were also other impersonalist philosophers known as the Māyāvādī philosophers of Saranātha. Saranātha is a place near Benares where Buddhist philosophers used to reside, and even today many stūpas of the Buddhist Māyāvādīs can be seen. The Māyāvādī philosophers of Saranātha are different from the impersonalists who believe in the impersonal manifestation of Brahman. According to the Saranātha philosophers, there is no spiritual existence at all. The fact is that both the Māyāvādī philosophers of Benares and the philosophers of Saranātha are entrapped by material nature. None of them actually know the nature of the absolute transcendence. Although superficially accepting the Vedic principles and considering themselves transcendentalists, the philosophers of Benares do not accept spiritual variegatedness. Because they have no information about devotional service, they are called nondevotees, or those who are against the devotional service of Lord Kṛṣṇa.
The impersonalists speculate on the Supreme Personality of Godhead and His devotees and subject them to the tests of direct perception. But the Lord, His devotees and His devotional service are not subject to direct perception. In other words, spiritual variegatedness is unknown to the Māyāvādī philosophy; therefore all the Māyāvādī philosophers and sannyāsīs criticized Lord Caitanya when He was conducting His saṅkīrtana movement. They were surprised to see Lord Caitanya chanting and dancing after He accepted His sannyāsa order from Keśava Bhāratī, for Keśava Bhāratī belonged to the Māyāvādī school. Since Lord Caitanya therefore also belonged to the Māyāvādī sect of sannyāsīs, the Māyāvādīs were surprised to see Him engaged in chanting and dancing instead of hearing or reading the Vedānta-sūtras, as is the custom. The Māyāvādī philosophers are very fond of the Vedānta, and they misinterpret it in their own way. Misunderstanding their own position, they criticized Lord Caitanya as an unauthorized sannyāsī, arguing that because He was a sentimentalist He was not actually a bona fide sannyāsī.
All these criticisms were carried to Lord Caitanya when He was at Benares, and He was not at all surprised at them. He even smiled when the news was carried to Him. He did not associate with the Māyāvādī sannyāsīs but remained alone and executed His own mission. After staying for some days in Benares, He started for Mathurā.
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American Idol is heartless
By Larry Putzgerald October 31, 2008
Josiah Leming was a homeless teenager living out of his car when he auditioned for American Idol. Simon Cowell called his audition one of the most memorable of the season. Regardless, he didn’t make it to the top 24 and was flown home. Now Josiah has recorded an album which is set to be released in late January ’09 and because Idol and Simon Fuller’s 19 entertainment are greedy corporate machines, they’re threatening legal action against Josiah.
“Idol” contestants must sign strict contracts with the show’s producer, Simon Fuller’s 19 Entertainment, promising to record only with the label chosen by “Idol” – Sony/BMG. The 19 Entertainment shop also retains exclusive right of refusal for management and merchandising.
When the smash-hit show began in 2002, only finalists had to sign the contract – but now it’s mandatory for all contestants.
A rep for Leming, who grew up in Tennessee as one of eight siblings, said, “Josiah was the only ‘Idol’ contestant ever to get a record deal who didn’t make the top 24, and one of only four contestants to get a deal this year. He has personal reasons for getting his music out, threat or not.”
Did I mention his personal reason was to release an album before his terminally ill mother died and that no one from Idol expressed any interest in working with him when they sent him back home to his car? Leming’s lawyer has since sent a letter to Idol producers but has not yet heard back.
Idol should just sue him and stop the album from being released. Then afterward they can celebrate by kicking some puppies and pushing a few old people down the stairs. Oh hey, I hear there are a lot of homeless people around too. They might also enjoy to grabbing a handful of quarters and pegging them in the face with about $100 worth.
#american idol
#josiah leming
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LATASHA
i think they are wrong for what they are doing the show is supposed to be to help people not bring them down it has made me look at the show really different i really dont think i will be watching the show anymore because i dont want to support anything like that
dreamerinreality
This article should be published somewhere more people can take notice of this. I dissed AI after Josiah got booted, now I shudder at the even thought of the AI megalomaniac ways they are bestowing upon such a talented singer and artist.
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The Boston Sun
Boston Massachusetts Newspaper
Locations to find the Boston Sun
News from the South End Landmarks District Commission
by Lauren Bennett • February 8, 2019 • 0 Comments
The South End Landmark District Commission showed compassion to a homeowner on Tuesday night when he came before them with a proposal to rebuild his deck that was destroyed in a fire in 2016. The Commission unanimously allowed him to rebuild the deck as-is, even though it does not completely comply with the current guidelines.
Michael Gauthier, owner of 73 Rutland St., Unit 5, told the Commission that there was a “serious fire” on September 13, 2016 that destroyed his deck and apartment. The fire began on the abutting roof and spread to Gauthier’s apartment.
Gauthier said that he is asking for approval to rebuild the pre-existing roof-deck using the same materials, elevation, and dimensions as the deck that was destroyed. He said the deck originally had a red cedar railing, but the new one would have a black metal railing that is preferred by the Commission.
Gauthier said that this project appeared before the Zoning Board of Appeal in November of last year, and they determined that the deck “doesn’t alter, relocate, or enlarge prior roof deck in any manner,” according to Gauthier.
A PowerPoint presentation made by Gauthier at the Landmarks hearing on Tuesday states that there is “support from Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services and the City Councilor Ed Flynn; no opposition voiced or filed to date.”
The proposed deck would be visible from a public way, but “every effort will be made to build the deck platform and railing to the minimum height required by Code to minimize view from public way,” the presentation reads.
Commissioner John Freeman said that since this deck is to be rebuilt, it comes under the new regulations, not the ones from 1987. He told Gauthier that he needs to make the deck less visible if he wants it approved.
Commissioner Catherine Hunt agreed that it “would be helpful to get a little bit of reduction in visibility,” but she also showed sympathy for Gauthier’s situation.
“I’ve been displaced for two and a half years and I just want what I had,” Gauthier said.
“We’re totally sympathetic,” Freeman responded, but he stuck by his statement that the regulations require that roof-decks are not visible from a public way.
Commissioner Peter Sanborn tried to offer a compromise by asking if the deck could be slid back without decreasing the size, but Gauthier said that there is nowhere else for it to go as there is no more flat surface on the roof behind the deck.
“I move that we accept the application as-is, and it’s only because this fire destroyed his property,” Hunt said. “It’s not a case where someone tore down the deck and wants to rebuild it. This gentleman lost it through no fault of his own.”
“We support the homeowner here,” said several gentlemen in the audience. The Commission unanimously voted to allow Gauthier to rebuild his roof deck as it was before the fire.
439-441 TREMONT ST.
The outdated signs for the Masa restaurant on Tremont Street are about to get a face lift. Mark Conserva of Metro Sign Awning came before the Commission to propose the new signs. The proposed signs for the marquee have a red background with black lettering that says “Masa” with “Latin Kitchen and Tequila Bar” underneath. There is also an existing blade sign that would be changed to read the same thing, and is proposed to be internally illuminated.
Commissioner John Freeman said that internally illuminated signs are not allowed in the district, but “if It’s reflected like a halo sign it is allowed,” he said.
The applicants said that there is a wire to the existing blade sign, but it does not light up. Conserva said that the framing of the new sign would remain the same; it would just be filled with the new logo.
Freeman added that the proposed signs are “much nicer” than the previous signs, which feature an outdated yellow and coral logo on a white background.
“I personally think maybe the signage is overdone here,” said Commissioner Peter Sanborn. Hunt agreed with hum, saying that “I just worry that it’s too much.”
Staff preservationist Nick Armata said that the purpose of the blade sign is to advertise the restaurant to people traveling north and south, while the marquee advertises to people coming towards the building. He wondered if signs on either side of the center sign of the marquee were needed.
One of the applicants stated that she wanted to draw people in who were walking up and down Tremont St. with the marquee sides.
Catherine Hunt suggested that the lettering on the sides of the marquee be smaller than the one in the middle. The South End Landmark District Commission guidelines state that “Trade-marks will be limited to approximately 25 percent of the total allowable sign area.”
“Given the regulations I think it’s okay to ask for that,” Hunt said.
The Commission agreed to approve everything except the marquee, which will be sent to staff. Staff will then consult with the Commission and report back to the applicant; there is no need for them to come back before the Commission. They told the applicants that the “size of the sides is what’s in question here.” Overall, the Commission really liked the signs, and look forward to coming to a compromise on the size of the lettering on the sides of the marquee.
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Comics Cradled in History
February 10, 2019 tashoffNo CommentsPresent: Place and People
Lewisburg Opera House
The Opera House post fire
In 1868, Henry G. Schwartz, the architect responsible for many of the houses lining South Third Street in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, drew up designs for, and subsequently went about building, the Lewisburg Opera House, known at its birth by the simple moniker The Music Hall. From the group of local businessmen who came to own the building, investor H. Eyer Spyker rose to prominence, assuming control of the Opera House amidst his improvements to the House between 1894 and 1907. The recent development of railroads allowed theatrical performing companies to tour the country’s selection of theatres and draw in spectators, and the Opera House was no exception. Thirty-nine years after its original construction, however, the Opera House was the site of a terrible blaze. On December 27th, 1907, The Lewisburg Opera House burned to the ground. All that remains now of the once beautiful building is a single brick cornerstone, standing alone next to the municipal parking lot on South Third Street.
The street is home to a number of modern attractions. Just across from the remains of the Opera House, located at 26 South Third Street, is Comics Metropolis LLC, a comics shop opened in 2016. It’s a quaint building, and unless you know it’s there, you may very well miss it. It looks just like the houses further down the street, because that is exactly what it was before owners Albert and Laura Payne purchased it, and refashioned it as the welcoming nerd haven it now is. Nearby, there exists a particular location that seems as though it would offer a rather large clientele base for the store in question: Bucknell University. Bucknell is a mere four-minute drive, or, for those finding themselves bereft of a car, or merely seeking to get in a little exercise, a fifteen-minute walk, from Comics Metropolis. The “official” Bucknell Barnes and Noble branch exists much closer to the comics shop, and the shop may serve as a welcome nearby distraction from the rigor of shopping for college textbooks (and may also be a little more forgiving on the wallet).
The presence of Bucknell offers another layer to the identity of Comics Metropolis’s space. Later in his book, Cresswell examines the ideas of Doreen Massey. The third point of her’s that Cresswell highlights is the most pertinent: Massey states “a need for a clear sense of boundaries around the place separating it from the world outside” as an issue with reactionary definitions of place (Cresswell, 72). Massey, in the essay sampled by Cresswell, challenges readers to reexamine the way they think about globalization. Boundaries are an intensely present aspect of humans identifying their place in the world, both physically and situationally. States and countries have borders to physically allocate each territory particular allotments of space; that space in turn becomes synonymous with a particular place identity. Bucknell helps define the place of Lewisburg, helps define the space within which Comics Metropolis is contained, and offers an interesting factor to the identity of Lewisburg’s and Comics Metropolis’s places. According to Data USA, and as of 2016, 2,336 of the 5,757 person population of Lewisburg (40.6% of the population!) is within 18-24 years old. Of course, not all of these individuals are attending university, and indeed, many of those that are may not even be attending college at Bucknell or in the Lewisburg area, but the fact stands that almost half of the population of Lewisburg falls within the age range stereotypically assumed to be the main demographic consuming comics-related paraphernalia.
A 2012 survey taken to examine the consumer base of DC Comics (courtesy of comicsbeat.com) highlights a discrepancy in the argument I allowed: based on the survey’s findings, the two age groups that afforded the largest procurement of DC Comics releases were 25-34 years old and 35-44 years old (37%-42% and 27%-35%, respectively). College-age consumers come in at third place. Perhaps it is too large an allowance to say that Comics Metropolis is playing to the demographics of Lewisburg, as nearly sixty percent of Lewisburg’s population (58.3% to be precise) falls within these top three age ranges, but then again, its entirely possible that this is exactly what was aimed for. With such a large percentage of the population falling within the targeted demographic for one of the world’s leading comics publishers, there certainly is no shortage of business opportunity.
The final important idea of place to discuss is brought forward by Laura J. Miller in her book Reluctant Capitalists. In the chapter four section “The Critique of Standardization”, Miller uses the example of 1920’s ‘book-of-the-month’ clubs, which were critiqued for “driving Americans to read the same works, perpetuating literary standardization, and sapping the population’s individuality” (Miller, 106). I find that this “sapping of the population’s individuality” is not present in Comics Metropolis’s neighborhood. The uniqueness of building a bookstore in a house adds to the personality and individualism of the store, and makes it a perhaps welcome alternative to Bucknell’s Barnes and Noble, which is a product of standardization and capitalism. The lack of ‘retailization’ (I just made that word up I think) of the surrounding area lends Comics Metropolis an air of homeyness/personality. It makes it more welcoming, like you’re stepping into someone’s house rather than a place of business (helped, of course, by the physical location of the business itself). The fact that the bookstore is kind of removed from the commercial hub of Lewisburg makes casual browsers feel less like they are there to spend money, and makes the atmosphere more relaxing.
Comics Metropolis’s place is, at its core, a space for people to have a small escape from the consumerism of even just the main street of Lewisburg by stepping down a smaller street into a residential area populated by colorful houses (follow the street view above to the right and you’ll see what I’m talking about) and the churches mentioned earlier. Itself a house, Comics Metropolis holds the strength of the independent bookstore that standardized chains bookstores can never hope to compete with: a unique environment present only in this very particular store, and that alone is an intensely powerful draw.
“Article 17.” Union County Historical Society, www.unioncountyhistoricalsociety.org/OnceUpon/Article17.pdf.
Miller, Laura J. Reluctant Capitalists Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. University of Chicago Press, 2014.
Cresswell, Tim. Place: a Short Introduction. Blackwell, 2010.
MacDonald, Heidi. “DC Retailer Survey Results: Older, Male, Middle-Class, Avid.” The Beat, 10 Feb. 2012, www.comicsbeat.com/dc-retailer-survey-results-older-male-middle-class-avid/.
“Lewisburg, PA.” Data USA, datausa.io/profile/geo/lewisburg-pa/.
BooksbookstoreBucknellBucknell UniversityComicsComics MetropolisHistoryIndependent BookstoreLaura J. MillerLewisburgLewisburg Opera HouseSusquehanna UniversityTim Cresswell
Literature in Stacks at Mondragon (March 27, 2019)
The Magnificent Mondragon (March 27, 2019)
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We are daughters, granddaughters, & great-granddaughters of the South Pacific, of mixed heritage living in the Pacific capital of the world – Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. We specialise in custom-built destination weddings which celebrate the unification of families coming together in marriage, creating memorable life-changing and inclusive celebrations with a focus on destination and remote weddings across New Zealand & the Pacific Islands. We derive from large Pacific families, so we understand the importance of cross-cultural and social communication and the importance of working together.
With a strong desire to make a difference in our communities by creating unique wedding experiences, everything we do is personalised. We are committed to working meaningfully with couples, and their families to unearth the inspiration for their special day. We manifest their dreams into an on-the-day reality, by minimising the stress factor and allowing you to live in the moment, without having to worry about the mechanics of putting together a memorable and well-planned celebration.
Founder & Creative Director, Teuila Benioni has a long association with community events from a young age through her mother who is a passionate arts professional & her grandfather, who has been an exemplary member of the Pacific community through his service to his village and family. Strengthened by her diploma in Creative Enterprise received in 2011 from MAINZ (Music Audio Institute New Zealand), these living examples have laid a strong foundation for the Wedding She Wrote founder’s approach towards creating and organising monumental life-changing events which bring together families, cultures & communities in celebration.
Co-Founder & Wedding Stylist, Teresa Fau, is inspired by the tropical landscapes of the Pacific, the oceanic views and the warmth of Pacific culture. Her design contributions are a blend of the natural environment and classic contemporary design elements which inform her contributions as part of Wedding She Wrote’ signature design style.
Travel & Tourism professional, Tasi Fepuleai is an invaluable source of knowledge and expertise when planning the logistics of destination weddings. Her contribution and guidance with travel, accommodation and hospitality provides that added assurance of not leaving critical details such as this to chance and remaining in budget.
Our unique foundations provide us with a cross-cultural perspective across the social spectrum. We have a clear understanding of family and community dynamics and ensure clarity throughout the journey whilst allowing your imagination to soar as we collaborate with you to create your dream wedding experience.
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4/2017, In English
Opportunities in Cleantech Education Export to Kazakhstan
11.12.2017, 10:24 11.12.2017 Kommentit pois päältä artikkelissa Opportunities in Cleantech Education Export to Kazakhstan 2090
Authors: Katerina Medkova, Kati Manskinen, Harri Mattila.
Figure: Cleantech Education VIP Day organised by KFEIG, Finnish Pavilion, EXPO 2017 Astana, Kazakhstan, photo taken by Timur Mukanov.
Green Economy Concept – Environmental Challenges Identified
According to the Central Asia Research Forum series (2017), Kazakhstan as the ninth largest country in the world is a large emitter of the greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, Kazakhstan is regarded as one of the five carbon-intensive countries with 70 to 75% of the electric power generated by using coal. The world’s average carbon intensity is about 0.58 kg of CO2 emitted per USD 1000 of economic activity, in comparison with 2.59 kg in Kazakhstan. Table 1 shows some interesting facts about Kazakhstan.
Table 1. Facts about geography and economy of Kazakhstan.
In 2013, President N. Nazarbayev approved a National Concept for Transition to a Green Economy, an ambitious sustainable development paradigm. The Concept aims at an economy of increased wellbeing of the Kazakhstani people while it alleviates the impact on the environment and degradation of scarce resources. By adopting the principles and goals of the green economy concept, Kazakhstan may become one of the 30 developed countries in the world. At the same time, it is expected to increase the GDP of the country by 3% and create over 500 000 new jobs by 2050. The reasons behind the need of “greening” the economy is the overall deterioration of natural resources noticed in every sector in Kazakhstan, leading into potential yearly economic losses of USD 7 billion by 2030. (CONCEPT 2013)
The transition toward a green economy is implemented through several strategic program documents, such as the Strategy Kazakhstan 2050 with bold targets:
Power sector – to reach 50% share of alternative and renewable energy in electricity generation by 2050
Energy efficiency – to reduce energy intensity of GDP by 10% by 2015 and by 25% by 2020 compared to 2008 baseline
Water sector – drinking water supply to be determined by 2020 and agricultural water supply by 2040
Agriculture sector – to enhance the productivity of the agricultural land by factor of 1.5 by 2020
(CONCEPT 2013, 6)
The Concept also identifies six main principles in the transition to a green economy:
Resource productivity improvements as a central economic indicator to indicate the value creation ability along with the environmental footprint minimization
Resource use responsibility including increased monitoring and controlling of the resource use and the state of the environment
Use of the most efficient technologies to modernize the economy
Attractive investment measures for efficient use of resources – tariff and price setting
Prioritization of profitable measures to improve the environmental situation and economic benefits
Education and culture to support environmental awareness among the population of Kazakhstan
(CONCEPT 2013, 8-9)
In the Concept (2013), Kazakhstan acknowledged education as a powerful driver of the transition and environmental culture development of its nation. It promotes education reforms and development of a new modern education system and vocational training (CONCEPT 2013, 9). Due to Kazakhstan’s resource-intensiveness, it is essential to educate a substantial number of professionals with expertise in environmental protection and resource productivity. Therefore, these lacking areas of expertise should be included in the curriculum of all engineering education. For thousands of existing engineers, and other involved parties, such as authorities and farmers, on-the-job training and further education could develop their skills. Furthermore, the environmental awareness and education of the general public is fundamental for creating a new eco-culture concerning the consumption of energy, water and other resources, as well as waste separation. Here, it is vital to spread information on resource usage and environmental problems. Finally, “greening” the curricula of the primary and pre-school education will contribute to increased environmental awareness. (CONCEPT 2013, 48)
Finland’s Opportunities
Finnish education is regarded to be one of the best in the world and a pioneer in the Cleantech and environmental sectors, both in know-how and education, as well as technologies. These facts, well recognized in Kazakhstan, give Finnish education institutions and companies, immense business opportunities in developing curricula at all levels, pedagogical education, and learning environments (Finpro 2017).
The uniqueness of the Finnish education was also presented at the international exposition EXPO 2017 in Astana, Kazakhstan from June 10 to September 10. Finland was the only Nordic country exhibited in Astana. Altogether, there were 3.8 million visitors at the world exhibition, and 300 000 of them explored the Finnish pavilion. The Finnish pavilion, Sharing Pure Energy, was designed by Ateljé Sotamaa and was awarded with a gold medal for theme development in the category of pavilion with less than 400 m2 (Finpro 2017; Garton 2017). At EXPO 2017, the Kazakstani-Finnish Education and Innovation Group, shortly KFEIG, represented Finnish higher and vocational education.
Who Is KFEIG?
KFEIG is a consortium of four Finnish educational institutions: Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK), Lahti University of Applied Sciences (LAMK), Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences (JAMK) and Tampere Adult Education Centre (TAKK).
The KFEIG Consortium offers a wide range of education related services, from Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes, open studies, continuing education, competence-based vocational secondary education to teacher training and consultation. KFEIG also cooperates with one of the largest global education financiers, the World Bank, in international education projects in developing countries. JAMK and LAMK have been cooperating with the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development of Kazakhstan and providing its expertise and development in the healthcare education already since 2012. (LAMK 2016; Malinen et al. 2017)
KFEIG aims to strengthen its position in Kazakhstan and extend the cooperation to other areas of education, such as environmental education and teacher training (Malinen et al. 2017). During EXPO 2017, KFEIG organised a series of three VIP Days in the Finnish Pavilion. The themes of these VIP Days were healthcare (21.8.2017), teacher education (25.8.2017) and Cleantech education (29.8.2017).
Figure 1 is a photo taken during the Cleantech Education VIP Day in Astana on 29 August 2017.
During the EXPO 2017, the VIP events enabled meaningful discussions with local education authorities and decision-makers. Positive visibility to Finnish education know-how was reinforced. Furthermore, the advanced results in environmental protection received a lot of interest from the Kazakhstani media and press. An example of this is the fact that in the region of Lahti in Finland, 97% of the waste is utilized and only 3% of the waste is landfilled. In comparison, in Kazakhstan, 97% of the waste is landfilled.
Finland as a pioneer in Cleantech expertise has an enormous opportunity to share knowledge with Kazakhstan and other developing countries. In Finland, the progress in environmental issues has taken over 20 years. Due to education export in these fields, developing countries may reach a high environmental performance level quickly. However, it requires a tailor-made cooperation to fulfill the specific goals.
Currently, Finland is paying attention to resource preservation and circular economy. It is important to acknowledge that these terms might not yet be recognized in other countries. Therefore, it is worthwhile to point out challenges related to national and cultural differences. For instance, when exporting Cleantech education to Kazakhstan, it is better to talk about green economy rather than circular economy. After all, we would like to point out, that due to a success in healthcare education in Kazakhstan, as well as good reputation of Finnish education and environmental performance, Finland has a huge opportunity to begin education export in the Cleantech sector.
Katerina Medkova, MSc., Environmental Project Coordinator, Lahti University of Applied Sciences, katerina.medkova(at)lamk.fi
Kati Manskinen, DSc., RDI Director in Cleantech, Lahti University of Applied Sciences, kati.manskinen(at)lamk.fi
Harri Mattila, Adjunct Professor, DSc. (tech.), Principal Lecturer (Research), Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK), harri.mattila(at)hamk.fi
Central Asia Research Forum. (2017). Sustainable Energy in Kazakhstan: Moving to cleaner energy in a resource-rich country. Edit. Kalyuzhnova, Y. & Pomfret, R. Routledge.
CONCEPT for transition of the Republic of Kazakhstan to Green Economy. (2013). Decree of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan approved on May 30, 2013. Astana. Kazakhstan [referenced 29 September 2017]. Available at: www.legislationline.org/documents/id/18322.
Finpro. (2017). Kazakhstan reforms its education system – strong demand for Finnish offering. Team Finland [referenced 27 September 2017]. Available at: https://www.marketopportunities.fi/kazakhstan-reforms-its-education-system-strong-demand-for-finnish-offering.
Garton, A. R. (2017). Finland’s pavilion wins gold medal in Astana Expo. Daily Finland. Finnish News Network. Rovaniemi. Finland [referenced 29 September 2017]. Available at: http://www.dailyfinland.fi/business/2192/Finlands-pavilion-wins-gold-medal-in-Astana-Expo.
LAMK. (2016). Developing the nursing education in Kazakhstan. LAMK. Lahti. Finland [referenced 26 September 2017]. Available at: http://www.lamk.fi/english/news/Sivut/developing-the-nursing-education-in-kazakhstan.aspx.
Malinen, H., Paloniemi, A. & Pusa, H. (2017). How to Gain Visibility for Universities of Applied Sciences. in Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences on the Verge of a New Era: Value, Viability and Visibility of International Education. Eds. Vanhanen R., Kitinoja H., Holappa J., JAMK University of Applied Sciences: Jyväskylä, Finland [referenced 11 October 2017]. Available at: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-830-464-0.
PISA 2015. (2015). Results in Focus. OECD 2016 [referenced 29 September 2017]. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf.
Cleantecheducation exportFaculty of TechnologyKazakhstanKFEIG
Edellinen artikkeliTAMKin Suomi 100 vuotta -lahjaviikko BrasilialleSeuraava artikkeliChat – the Future Platform of Finnish Education Exports?
Call for papers: UAS Journal 2/2021, Open RDI activities and open education in universities of applied sciences
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About the VAST Service (current)
What Is VAST?
The Viewer Access Satellite Television service, or VAST, is a satellite television platform in Australia, providing digital television and radio services to remote and black spot areas using the Optus C1 and Optus D3 satellites. It is partly funded by the Australian Government and managed through a joint-venture between Southern Cross Media and Imparja Television. It is a replacement for the Optus Aurora service and provides channels which have been absent on free-to-view satellite until now, such as a Network Ten affiliate, and the digital multichannels. Viewers accessing the service must use a VAST certified satellite decoder/receiver (set-top box) and smart card, and go through the necessary application process.
More details on the VAST application process: http://www.myvast.com.au
Looking for VAST support?
VAST For Travellers
If you plan on traveling through regional or remote Australia, you will need suitable equipment to receive the VAST service. You will need a portable satellite dish kit and a VAST receiver (set-top box) with a smart-card (comes married with the receiver). As a traveller, you are catered for as a special category that can be granted an initial six-month period of VAST access. You can apply for an extension of this period during the four weeks before its expiry. Once you have your equipment, you will need to register your new VAST receiver (set-top box) before you receive all your services.
To fully register you’ll be asked for the VAST receiver (set-top box) model number, the serial number and the smart-card number inside the receiver (set-top box).
myVAST
Traveller’s Application Form: https://www.mysattv.com.au/travellers.aspx
Is My Current Dish Still Capable of Receiving VAST Services?
Most dishes are still capable of receiving the VAST services, and as long as they are free from dirt and corrosion should still work fine. However, the “LNB” (the receiver in the middle of the dish that the cable is connected to) needs to be updated to the “10.7” or “10700” type. If you are still using the old “11.3” or “11300” type, some services (ABC/SBS so far) will be inaccessible. Fortunately, new LNBs (or LNBFs) are much cheaper and more readily available than they used to be. Please check the markings on your LNB or check with your local satellite antenna installer if you have any doubts, or if you need help updating your LNB.
What Channels Are Available on VAST?
VAST provides a minimum of 16 digital television channels and 14 digital radio channels, the same number of channels available in metropolitan terrestrial areas. All ABC and SBS television channels are available in separate state feeds. The commercial channels are provided by Southern Cross Media, Imparja Television, Golden West Network and WIN Television.
Southern Cross Media and Imparja are broadcasting the full range of digital commercial television channels in standard definition (with programming from the 7, 9 and 10 networks) and the high definition channels One HD, 7mate and GEM. VAST also provides all the standard and high definition channels from ABC and SBS. The local news content from regional broadcasters is also available on a dedicated local news channels exclusive to VAST.
Rural health and Weslink channels are now available on VAST.
More information on available channels: http://www.digitalready.gov.au/what-is-the-switch/digital-tv/viewer-access-satellite-television-vast
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What does your Culture say about your Company? - WITI Webinars
Webinars & Coaching Circles
Past Recordings
WITI Membership
Network Events
Service Express Presents:
What does your Culture say about your Company?
5-6pm EST / 2-3pm PST
Join us as we explore the ever-changing and evolving needs of personal and professional lives. We'll learn how leaders strengthen their teams, despite modern challenges, to retain and attract talent.
Lauren Tuppeny is a Senior Account Executive with Service Express.
She has been a professional salesperson and leader for her entire career covering travel, insurance and IT industries. After graduating from Southern Connecticut State University in 2012, Lauren spent the first 6 years of her career working for a Fortune 100 company in sales and leadership roles. Lauren is an advocate of women in leadership and volunteers her time in various outreach and mentorship programs.
Ron Alvesteffer is Chief Executive Officer at Service Express.
Ron joined Service Express in 1997 as the company's first manager-three years later he was promoted from Sales Manager to Vice President of Sales before becoming Service Express's President and CEO. Under his leadership, Service Express has averaged double-digit revenue growth year over year and has expanded the geographic footprint nationally. Ron Alvesteffer has also helped Service Express define its market and create a unique performance-driven culture for employees. Service Express's Core Value "to work with our employees to help them achieve their personal, professional and financial goals" creates opportunities for employee achievement and has led to outstanding individual and team performances resulting in individual and company success. Ron is a member of World 50, a private community for CEOs and C-level executives at highly respected organizations to discover better ideas, share valuable experiences, and build relationships that make a lasting impact.
Tara Bucchi is Executive Director at Enterprise Technology Shared Services, CVS Health.
Tara's career began at Aetna in 2005 as part of the Information Technology Leadership Development Program. Her experience over the past 15 years spans multiple IT disciplines including release management, development, program management/PMO, quality assurance, IT governance, security, and infrastructure.One of Tara's major accomplishments was leading the integration with CVS Health for infrastructure, the largest health insurance M&A deal in history. In her current role, she is the head of Shared Services and Chief of Staff to the SVP of Enterprise Technology Services, delivering best-in-class services across IT. Her diverse set of experiences has positioned her to successfully run the business of Infrastructure. This includes driving the strategy for IT service management and self-service solutions as the platform owner of Service Now, ensuring compliance and risk reduction through audit and vulnerability management, mergers & acquisitions, planning, infrastructure portfolio management, financial management, and asset management. Tara assists in driving the talent strategy for the IT organization and strives to promote a culture of inclusion with the aim of eliminating barriers and helping others achieve their goals.
Tara is a dedicated advocate for programs that support girls in STEM. She is the chair of Women in Technology at CVS Health, a Hartford network director for Women in Technology International (WITI) and is on the Board of Directors for the Petit Family Foundation. Tara received Bachelors' degrees in both Information Science and Technology and Criminal Justice from the University at Albany in 2004.
Subha Elumalai is the CIO of Middle and Large Commercial(MLC) and leader for Agile center of Enablement. She has been with The Hartford for more than a decade. Prior to MLC, Subha has experience in Group Benefits & Specialty Commercial.
Subha is an Electronics and Communication Engineer who grew up in India. She started her career as a Software Engineer and played a variety of roles across Software Development, Architecture, Program Delivery, IT Operations. Subha has traveled across the US, Australia, Singapore and Europe. Prior to joining The Hartford Subha worked at GE and Satyam.
Subha is passionate about D&I, Women in Technology. Subha enjoys cooking, gardening, traveling, and reading.
Gretchen Murphy is Service Express's Chief Human Resources Officer.
Since 2012, Gretchen has helped foster strong relationships throughout the organization and has transitioned Service Express' HR department from a small-company grassroots effort to a "Hire to Retire" talent management operation. She leads the Talent Acquisition, Learning & Development and HR General teams which includes compensation/Payroll, Benefits, Employee Engagement and Employee Relations roles. Gretchen serves on the HR Advisory Committee at the YWCA, the HR Advisory Board for Grand ValleyState University's Seidman College of Business and is an adjunct professor of HR at GVSU.
Rina Leonard Sr. Director, Global Business Systems, Otis Elevator
Rina leads the Global Business Systems organization, including ERP, CRM, shared services and key corporate systems supporting Finance, Treasury, HR, Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, Legal and Communications. She led the Otis corporate application strategy during stand up of an independent Otis in 2020. Rina formed and leads a new functional organization built on expanded digital capabilities, including intelligent automation (RPA), platform and integration tools and Scaled Agile practitioners. In addition, she is a sponsor of the Women in Technology employee engagement team at Otis.
Rina has over 25 years of IT experience, primarily from UTC Aerospace Systems, where she served as Director, Business Applications, leading the Engineering, Operations, Supply Chain, Customer Service, and Enterprise Reporting initiatives inside of the Digital Technology organization.
Rina holds a bachelor's degree in Journalism from Boston University, and a master's in Business Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.She serves on the board of directors for IngenuityNE, an organization operating FIRST Robotic programs across New England and providing STEM experiences to young people through team competitions.
This event will be held online.
Free for WITI Members
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Cocky (album)
! (album)
+ (disambiguation)
Cocky (mascot)
Cocky is Kid Rock's second album released with Atlantic Records, his fifth studio album overall, released in 2001. This is Kid Rock's first album on country music. The release of "Picture" featuring Sheryl Crow revived the struggling album in 2003, and in May 2011 it was certified 5× platinum by the RIAA. It has sold 5,344,000 copies in the US as of December 2013.
According to his official website that made a timeline for his 45th birthday in January of 2016, Cocky was certified 6 X platinum on August 26,2008. A picture of a plaque of a star with picture of he and band members over the 6 disc are shown. However RIAA only certified the album at 5 X platinum.
The album was dedicated to Joe C who died the year before. 75 songs written for the album, but only 30 of them were recorded as a song for the album. One of the recorded songs that did not make the album was "If I Was President", a standard blues song that Rock plays frequently in concert. Another song left off the album was "In Your Lifetime", which was a eulogy to Joe C. "Picture" received a CMA nomination in 2003 for Vocal Event of the Year and would go on to be Rock's first gold single.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Cocky_(album)
! is an album by The Dismemberment Plan. It was released on October 2, 1995, on DeSoto Records. The band's original drummer, Steve Cummings, played on this album but left shortly after its release.
"Survey Says" – 2:08
"The Things That Matter" – 2:25
"The Small Stuff" – 3:02
"OK Jokes Over" – 4:27
"Soon to Be Ex Quaker" – 1:26
"I'm Going to Buy You a Gun" – 3:06
"If I Don't Write" – 4:28
"Wouldn't You Like to Know?" – 2:50
"13th and Euclid" – 2:18
"Fantastic!" – 4:14
"Onward, Fat Girl" – 2:46
"Rusty" – 4:29
The following people were involved in the making of !:
Eric Axelson – bass
Jason Caddell – guitar
Steve Cummings – drums
Travis Morrison – vocals, guitar
Andy Charneco and Don Zientara – recording
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/!_(album)
Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century, first as books of individual 78rpm records, then from 1948 as vinyl LP records played at 33 1⁄3 rpm. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though in the 21st century albums sales have mostly focused on compact disc (CD) and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used in the late 1970s through to the 1990s alongside vinyl.
An album may be recorded in a recording studio (fixed or mobile), in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. Recording may take a few hours to several years to complete, usually in several takes with different parts recorded separately, and then brought or "mixed" together. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed "live", even when done in a studio. Studios are built to absorb sound, eliminating reverberation, so as to assist in mixing different takes; other locations, such as concert venues and some "live rooms", allow for reverberation, which creates a "live" sound. The majority of studio recordings contain an abundance of editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at separate times while listening to the other parts using headphones; with each part recorded as a separate track.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Album
+ (the plus sign) is a binary operator that indicates addition, with 43 in ASCII.
+ may also refer to:
+ (Ed Sheeran album) (pronounced "Plus"), 2011 album
+ (Justice album) (pronounced "Cross"), 2007 album
"+", a song by Ayumi Hamasaki from her album Rainbow
+, the international call prefix
+, positive charge (chemistry)
Plus (disambiguation)
Cross (disambiguation)
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/+_(disambiguation)
Cocky is the costumed mascot of the University of South Carolina athletics teams. He represents a cartoon version of a gamecock (a fighting rooster).
The current version of Cocky made his debut, by Robert Lane, at the Homecoming game of 1980. He was portrayed as the son of Big Spur, a large, gangly barn yard rooster that had been attending games since 1978 as a mascot of the university. Big Spur had been introduced as a fraternity pledge class project headed by student Chuck Eaton. Eaton served as the mascot from 1978 until 1980 when the role was taken over by USC students Robert Lane and John Routh. Big Spur was seen as too large and unwieldy with limited mobility. Therefore, Cocky, Big Spur's "son", was brought in to replace Big Spur. At the introduction of Cocky, he was originally booed off the field by students and fans who thought he was not "dignified enough".
After spending a year as the mascot for the women's teams as a female Cocky, he gained general acceptance primarily during the baseball season, and he slowly took over for Big Spur. in 1981 and 1982 Cocky was invited to be the official mascot of the NCAA Baseball College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. He was chosen in a nationwide contest in 1986 as America's First 'National Mascot' - by the Universal Cheerleading Association, Ford Motor Company, and American Airlines. He was mascot champion in 1986 and again in 1994, and the Capital One mascot championship in 2003. Cocky, portrayed by Blake Edmunds, has picked up another national title in April '09 by winning the 2009 NCA Mascot National Title. Cocky was a member of the Capital One Bowl All-America Mascot Team in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2008.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Cocky_(mascot)
The Jacksonville State Gamecocks are the intercollegiate athletic teams of Jacksonville State University (JSU) located in Jacksonville, Alabama, United States. The Gamecocks athletic program is a member of the Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) and competes at the NCAA Division I level including the Football Championship Subdivision. The JSU mascot is Cocky the Gamecock, and the school colors are red and white. Gamecock teams have won six NCAA national championships in four sports, and, along with Wisconsin–Whitewater, is one of only two schools to win titles in baseball, basketball, and football.
Jacksonville State athletics began with the 1903 State Normal School (SNS) football team and was the domain of men only until women's sports were added in 1982. The SNS teams were known as the Eagle Owls, and the school colors were blue and gold. In 1946, the school's name was changed to Jacksonville Teachers College, and the team name and colors were also changed to the current Gamecocks and red and white.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Jacksonville_State_Gamecocks
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Rihanna and A$AP Rocky reportedly became an official couple last month. While 2020 has seemingly kept many people apart, it seems like Rihanna and A$AP Rocky have luckily only grown closer ... Read More ... Read More ... Rihanna and Rocky first collaborated together on her hit song “Cockiness (Love It) Remix”, from her 2011 album, Talk That Talk ... ....
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He doesn’t break a sweat on “Boomer” — instead, he sounds cocky, assured, and absolutely unstoppable. Live Forever, his debut album under the Bartees Strange name, is invigorating and inspirational ... The album ends on a love song that’s afraid to commit to any one thing ... Other albums of note out this week.....
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KSI: “A YouTuber wanting to do music? It leaves a sour taste in people’s mouths. ...
NME 01 Jun 2020
You see, it’s not his own album that KSI is promoting ... There’s plenty of the cocky ‘KSI’ side on the album (‘Domain’, in particular, sees KSI paint himself as the Don of the Internet), but there are some pretty personal ‘JJ’ moments too....
The 5 Best Songs Of The Week
Stereogum 10 Apr 2020
Mike Haliechuk and Jonah Falco haven’t even gotten around to releasing the debut album from their new band Jade Hairpins — it comes out next month — but they’ve already fucked around and started another band ... What a blessing the new Laura Marling album is....
JoJo says she ‘should be dead’ as she speaks out over substance abuse issues
The Independent 26 Feb 2020
JoJo revealed that after contractual issues with her record label prevented her from releasing a third album, she turned to drugs and alcohol as a way to feel “pretty” and “worthy” ... The 35 best debut albums of all time ... The 35 best debut albums of all time ... “The album will last ... But Hill’s reggae influences are what drive the album’s spirit....
Whitney Houston hologram tour branded a ‘mind-f***’ that inspires ‘overwhelming guilt’
The 35 best debut albums of all time ... The 35 best debut albums of all time ... Songs like “Twist and Shout” and “I Saw Her Standing There” have an energy that reflects the youthful vim of the band themselves, who were raring to go following the number one single from which the album takes its name ... “The album will last ... “The album will last....
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List of Dance Academy episodes
Dance (Disco Heat)
Dance (surname)
Academy 360
Flight dynamics
List auf Sylt
Dance Academy is an Australian children's television drama. The show airs on ABC1 and ABC3 in Australia, and on ZDF in Germany. Series one premiered in Australia on 31 May 2010, the second series began on 12 March 2012, and series three began on 8 July 2013.
Series one (2010)
Dance Academy features Tara Webster (Xenia Goodwin), a new student at Australia's National Academy of Dance. The show presents the students at the Academy learning the intricacies of ballet and dance, and is primarily shown from Tara's perspective, along with fellow first year students Kat Karamakov (Alicia Banit), Abigail Armstrong (Dena Kaplan), Sammy Lieberman (Tom Green), Christian Reed (Jordan Rodrigues), and third year student Ethan Karamakov (Tim Pocock).
Series two (2012)
Dance Academy was announced as having been renewed for a second series of 26 episodes on 15 July 2010. Casting calls were issued on 14 September 2010, and filming took place between 31 January and 4 August 2011 in and around Sydney. The series premiered on ABC3 on 12 March 2012, and concluded on 24 April 2012. The series was again executive produced by Joanna Werner. Series two featured Tara and the other students' second year at the Academy, and their efforts to make it through to represent Australia at a major ballet competition, the Prix de Fonteyn.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/List_of_Dance_Academy_episodes
Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last label of every fully qualified domain name. They are called generic for historic reasons; initially, they were contrasted with country-specific TLDs in RFC 920.
The core group of generic top-level domains consists of the com, info, net, and org domains. In addition, the domains biz, name, and pro are also considered generic; however, these are designated as restricted, because registrations within them require proof of eligibility within the guidelines set for each.
Historically, the group of generic top-level domains included domains, created in the early development of the domain name system, that are now sponsored by designated agencies or organizations and are restricted to specific types of registrants. Thus, domains edu, gov, int, and mil are now considered sponsored top-level domains, much like the themed top-level domains (e.g., jobs). The entire group of domains that do not have a geographic or country designation (see country-code top-level domain) is still often referred to by the term generic TLDs.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Generic_top-level_domain
"Dance (Disco Heat)" is the title of a 1978 single by American disco singer Sylvester James, who performed using just his first name, Sylvester. The song became Sylvester's first Top 40 hit in the US, where it peaked at #19 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the fall of 1978; it also reached #29 on the UK Singles Chart. The song appears on his 1978 album, Step II.
A 12" single was released in 1978, with "Dance (Disco Heat)" as the A-side and "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" as the B-side, and these two extended dance mixes proved to be very popular in the dance clubs at the time. The two songs held down the top spot on the Billboard Dance/Disco chart for six weeks in August and September of that year and helped to establish Sylvester's career as a noted disco and dance music performer, both in the U.S. and abroad.
"Dance (Disco Heat)" / "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" 12" single info Discogs.com.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Dance_(Disco_Heat)
Dance is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Bill Dance (television host) (born 1940), American fisherman
Charles Dance (born 1946), British actor
George Dance the Elder (1695–1768), English architect
George Dance the Younger (1741-1825), English architect and surveyor
George Dance (politician), politician and political activist
James Dance (politician) (1907-1981), British Conservative Party politician
Nathaniel Dance, (1748-1827), English sailor and commodore
William Dance (1755-1840), English pianist and violinist
Dallas Dance (Born 1979) Superintendent of Baltimore County Schools
Nathaniel Dance-Holland (1735–1811), English portrait painter and politician
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Dance_(surname)
Academy 360 (formerly Pennywell Comprehensive School) is a coeducational all-through school for pupils aged 4 to 16. The school is located in the Pennywell area of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England.
Pennywell Comprehensive School was built in 1967, however in 2008 the school converted to academy status and was renamed Academy 360. In the same year the school relocated to a new building on the same site, with the old building being demolished. Academy is sponsored by Sunderland City Council, Sir Bob Murray and the Gentoo social housing group.
Academy 360 offers GCSEs and BTECs as programmes of study for pupils. Most graduating students go on to attend Sunderland College which acts as the school’s partner further education provider. Academy 360 also operates 'The Achievement Centre' which offers alternative education for small numbers of pupils from across Sunderland.
Academy 360 official website
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Academy_360
Flight dynamics is the study of the performance, stability, and control of vehicles flying through the air or in outer space. It is concerned with how forces acting on the vehicle influence its speed and attitude with respect to time.
In fixed-wing aircraft, the changing orientation of the vehicle with respect to the local air flow is represented by two critical parameters, angle of attack ("alpha") and angle of sideslip ("beta"). These angles describe the vector direction of airspeed, important because it is the principal source of modulations in the aerodynamic forces and moments applied to the aircraft.
Spacecraft flight dynamics involve three forces: propulsive (rocket engine), gravitational, and lift and drag (when traveling through the earths or any other celestial atmosphere). Because aerodynamic forces involved with spacecraft flight are very small, this leaves gravity as the dominant force.
Aircraft and spacecraft share a critical interest in their orientation with respect to the earth horizon and heading, and this is represented by another set of angles, "yaw," "pitch" and "roll" which angles match their colloquial meaning, but also have formal definition as an Euler sequence. These angles are the product of the rotational equations of motion, where orientation responds to torque, just as the velocity of a vehicle responds to forces. For all flight vehicles, these two sets of dynamics, rotational and translational, operate simultaneously and in a coupled fashion to evolve the vehicle's state (orientation and velocity) trajectory.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Flight_dynamics
List auf Sylt (known as List until 31 December 2008) is the northernmost municipality in Germany, located on the North Sea island of Sylt close to Denmark in the district of Nordfriesland in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.
List derived from the Middle Low German Liste (ledge, bar or edge).
List was originally a Danish settlement. It was first mentioned in 1292 (Lystum). The original village was destroyed by the great flood of 1364. The settlement was rebuilt further east from the previous location. In the mid-15th century, a church named St. Jürgen was mentioned. In a treaty of 1460, Schleswig and Holstein were linked to the Danish crown, but List remained part of the royal enclaves, small areas of the Kingdom of Denmark situated within the Duchy of Schleswig, but directly controlled by the Danish king.
From the 16th century, the people of List mostly made a living from Oyster farming, raising sheep and collecting and selling gull eggs. At the time, List was an important protective anchorage. In 1644, a Swedish-Dutch fleet of 26 ships commanded by Admiral Thijssen was attacked in the Lister Tief and defeated by Danish ships commanded by king Christian IV of Denmark. The anchorage north of today's town was named Königshafen to honour this event.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/List_auf_Sylt
westafricadanceacademy.com
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officeofsecretaryofstate.com
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Nick Tyler
Nick started working as an accompanist during high school and continued to pursue performance opportunities after school throughout QLD studying at the Queensland University of Technology, majoring in Composition.
In 2014, he moved to Montreal where he opened a music school with five instructors on assorted instruments. As Head Instructor, Nick charted their professional development plan and continued to grow the student cohort. In 2015, he was appointed as a Music Director where he led over 100 creatives for weekly music engagements and annual drama and music spectaculars, both secular and sacred. He founded and directed a vocal ensemble called Vocal Arts and continues to write and arrange for vocal ensembles as part of his passion for the art of singing.
In 2018 he returned to Brisbane to continue post-graduate studies in Theology. He continues to perform as a piano soloist and has recently joined 2ballerinas as the piano accompanist for their ballet classes.
He returned to teaching in the online space and recently has returned to teaching in person and is regularly working as music director with some of Brisbane’s best musical talent.
Nick’s website: nicktylermusic.com.
Jean Tally
Lizzie Vilmanis
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IDEAcademy Inspires Audience to “Think. Again.”
Leadership Development Event Features Dr. Clayton Christensen
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.@eastmanchemco, IDEAcademy Inspires Audience to “Think. Again." at leadership event featuring Dr. Clayton Christensen
Multimedia from this Release
The world's foremost authority on disruptive innovation, Dr. Clayton Christensen, at IDEAcademy 2017.
Following his keynote address, Dr. Clayton Christensen opened the floor for questions, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for IDEAcademy attendees.
IDEAcademy featured several thought leaders, ranging from professors and business leaders to storytellers and coaches.
NEWSROOM: Eastman Chemical Company
CAMPAIGN: Eastman Corporate Responsibility
CONTENT: Article
“Disruption matters to innovation.” Those were the words from the world's foremost authority on disruptive innovation, Dr. Clayton Christensen, as he inspired attendees to “Think. Again.” at the second annual IDEAcademy. Hosted by Eastman and East Tennessee State University’s College of Business and Technology, the event featured several thought leaders in the world of innovation and leadership.
Dr. Christensen shared his insights and business expertise with a crowd of more than 500 attendees at Eastman’s Toy F. Reid Employee Center. Sharing his theory that customers don’t buy products or services, but they “hire” products and services to do a job, Dr. Christensen emphasized that understanding the job to be completed is the key to driving innovation success.
“As you are looking for opportunities to develop new products and drive growth, first the product must be disruptive and secondly it must fulfill a job that people need…You’re not only competing against similar products, you are competing against anything that can do that job for the customer,” shared Christensen.
Dr. Christensen is consistently ranked as one of the world’s most influential management thinkers. As the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, his ideas have been widely used in industries and organizations throughout the world. He is the best-selling author of nine books and more than 100 articles. He is a five-time recipient of the McKinsey Award, given each year to the two best articles published in the Harvard Business Review, and has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tribeca Films Festival.
In addition to Dr. Christensen, attendees heard from regional speakers ranging from educators and business leaders to storytellers and coaches. The line-up included Shawn Bergman, Appalachian State University; Heather Cook, director of Marketing and Public Relations for the City of Kingsport; Brant DeBow, cofounder and chief technology officer at BiTE Interactive; Brittney Ezell, ETSU women’s basketball coach; Jeff Little, associate professor, department head of Entertainment Technology Program at Northeast State Community College; Clay Prewitt, vice president and creative director at The Tombras Group; Sydney Ross, ETSU Roan Scholar; and Wynne Tyree, founder and president of Smarty Pants.
IDEAcademy is a free leadership development event established by Eastman and East Tennessee State University’s College of Business and Technology to provide unprecedented professional development opportunities to residents in our community by bringing world-class experts on innovation and growth to the region.
You can view photos and a replay of the live feed on the IDEAcademy Facebook page. Click the “Like” button while you are there to get future updates and be the first to know about IDEAcademy 2018.
CATEGORY: Events, Media & Communications
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Eastman Again Named One of America's Most Just Companies in 2017 by Forbes and JUST Capital
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49ers Trade for OL Shon Coleman, Cut 12 Players
The San Francisco 49ers announced on Friday that the team has acquired T Shon Coleman from the Cleveland Browns in exchange for a 2019 seventh round draft pick. Coleman must pass a physical for the trade to be executed. The team also released 12 players.
Coleman (6-5, 310), was originally drafted by the Browns in the third round (76th overall) of the 2016 NFL Draft. Over the past two seasons (2016-17), he appeared in 23 games (16 starts) along the offensive line. In 2017, he started all 16 games at right tackle for Cleveland.
A 26-year-old native of Olive Branch, MS, Coleman appeared in 32 games (25 starts) in five years (2011-15) at Auburn University. As a senior in 2015, he earned Second-Team All-SEC honors after starting 12 games at left tackle.
The following 12 players have been released:
OL - JP Flynn
RB - Ja'Quan Gardner
G - Chris Gonzalez
QB - Jack Heneghan
DL - Chris Jones
P - Jeff Locke
T - Pace Murphy
WR - Aldrick Robinson
TE - Wes Saxton
DL - Will Sutton
OL - Darrell Williams
RB - Joe Williams
The 49ers roster must be trimmed to 53 by 1:00 p.m. PT on Saturday, Sept. 1.
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49ers Support Child Abuse Prevention
Hedge Funds Care will sponsor the 9th Annual West Coast "Open Your Heart to the Children Benefit" at The Bently Reserve in San Francisco on Wednesday, April 28th at 4:30 p.m. The event will feature a silent auction, raffle, and wine tasting from premier Napa and Sonoma Valley vineyards.
San Francisco 49ers Owner John York will be accompanied by several 49ers players, along with 500 people from the West Coast hedge fund industry at this year's dinner.
Funds raised by the event will be used to distribute grants to existing organizations that address child abuse treatment and prevention in the Bay Area.
"The 49ers Foundation's mission is to keep kids safe, on track and in school," said 49ers Owner John York. "The goal of Hedge Funds Care is to quell domestic violence and eradicate child abuse which fits directly with our mission. We have been a part of this event for the past nine years and are looking forward to continuing to raise money and awareness for our youth in need."
After last year's event, Dr. Bart Grossman from the University of California at Berkeley School of Social Welfare provided guidance to help Hedge Funds Care allocate funds raised to the following designated agencies: APA Family Support Services, CALICO Center, Community Violence Solutions, Compass Community Services, Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services Department, Edgewood Center for Children and Families, FamiliesFirst, First Place for Youth, La Casa de Las Madres, La Clínica de La Raza, Inc., The Link to Children, San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center, San Francisco Court Appointed Advocates, Shelter Network, The University of California - San Francisco, Child Trauma Research Project.
The co-chairs of this year's West Coast Committee of Hearts, who plan the "Open Your Heart to the Children Benefit," are Angela Osborne from Blackrock, Elisabeth MacKnight from Conifer Securities, and Todd Goldman from Rothstein Kass.
"We are excited to host this event in San Francisco and to partner with the 49ers Foundation for the ninth time," Osborne said. "Last year's event was a tremendous success, raising more than $650,000. We look forward to the continued support of the hedge fund industry for this very worthy cause."
Hedge Funds Care is an industry alliance formed in 1998 with the sole mission of raising funds to prevent and treat child abuse. To date, the group has distributed over $21 million internationally through local agencies. In addition to the dinner in San Francisco, Hedge Funds Care also holds events in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, London, Toronto, Cayman Islands, and New York.
Money will be raised through ticket sales, a golf raffle, and a silent auction. Tables for 10 guests may be purchased for $15,000. Individual tickets are available for $1,750. There are also event corporate sponsorship opportunities. For more information, please call Dan Butchko at 212-991-9600 ext. 336.
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7 Takeaways: Cowboys 40 - 49ers 10 in Week 7
Game Photos: 49ers vs. Cowboys
View photos from the 49ers Week 7 matchup against the Dallas Cowboys.
The San Francisco 49ers are still winless after being dismantled by the Dallas Cowboys, 40-10, in Week 7. It was a comprehensive showing from the Cowboys as Dallas dominated the game from wire to wire.
Here's what we learned on Sunday at Levi's® Stadium.
1.** The 49ers didn't have an answer for Ezekiel Elliott. Dallas' star running back racked up a gaudy 219 total yards (147 rushing, 72 receiving) and three touchdowns. After scoring twice in the first half, Elliott took a short screen pass all the way for a 72-yard touchdown. San Francisco had shown well against the run in previous weeks, but Sunday was clearly a step backwards as Dallas posted 265 rushing yards.
Dak Prescott threw for 234 yards and three touchdowns. Jason Witten had a highlight-reel, one-handed touchdown grab and Dez Bryant scored on a 2-yard touchdown catch. All Cowboys starters were pulled in the fourth quarter with the game well in hand. Dallas posted 501 total yards.
2. C.J. Beathard completed 22-of-38 passes for 235 yards, no touchdowns and no interceptions in his first-career start. The 49ers didn't find the end zone until the game was well out of reach. Beathard's 4-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter marked San Francisco's lone trip to the end zone. Marquise Goodwin led the 49ers with 80 receiving yards on four receptions. Beathard carried the ball five times for 30 yards.
3. Reuben Foster made his return to action. He had one tackle for loss in the first half but was relatively quiet otherwise. Foster left the game in the second half with a rib injury and did not return. He finished with five total tackles.
4.** Trent Brown left the game early with a head injury and was replaced at right tackle by Garry Gilliam. Rashard Robinson and K'Waun Williams each left the game briefly, but both corners returned.
5. Dallas' pass rush was dominant. The Cowboys sacked Beathard five times and delivered several more big hits to the rookie quarterback. Two of the sacks resulted in lost fumbles. Five different players accounted for the sacks. Alternatively, the 49ers defense failed to register a sack.
6. After the 49ers forced a three-and-out on the game's opening possession, Trent Taylor fumbled the ensuing punt to kill San Francisco's momentum. Dallas scored shortly thereafter and never looked back.
7. Pierre Garçon dominated touches at running back, carrying the ball 14 times for 68 yards. Matt Breida had just three carries for five yards.
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Harbaugh contract will average $5 mil per year with Michigan
Dec 30, 2014 at 7:56 AM • --
Former San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh will average about $5 million per year with the University of Michigan, not the previously reported $8 million per year.
He will be able to earn more based on incentives. So it is basically nearly the same contract that he had with the 49ers.
This is information comes from Jim Hackett, the University of Michigan athletic director.
BREAKING NEWS: Straight from UM AD Jim Hackett. Harbaugh's salary will be roughly $5M a year, plus incentives, same basic contract as 49ers.
— John U. Bacon (@Johnubacon) December 30, 2014
49ers had 'extensive' contract talks with Trent Williams last week, per report
According to Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, the San Francisco 49ers engaged in contract discussions with left tackle Trent Williams last week. The writer describes the talks as "extensive," explaining that coming to an agreement before the regular season's final weekend would have helped the 49ers' salary cap situation. While the discussions didn't result in a new contract for the eight-time Pro Bowl selection, it sends a clear message that re-signing Williams is among the team's top priorities. #49ers and Pro Bowl LT Trent
49ers signing safety Obi Melifonwu, per Schefter
The San Francisco 49ers are signing free-agent safety Obi Melifonwu, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter and the player's agent. Free-agent S Obi Melifonwu, the Raiders' second-round pick in 2017, is signing with the San Francisco 49ers, per his rep @seanstellato.— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 4, 2021 The
Katie Sowers won't return to the 49ers in 2021, per report
Cam Inman of Bay Area News Group reports that San Francisco 49ers offensive assistant Katie Sowers' time with the team has ended. It is unclear what prompted the separation. Although, her contract expired, and the coach is free to explore other opportunities. "I will sadly not be back," Sowers confirmed in a text message to Inman without offering further clarification. Sowers initially joined Kyle Shanahan's staff in 2017 as an intern under the Bill Walsh NFL Diversity Coaching Fellowship and was later retained as a full-time coach, helping in several areas, including working with the team's receivers. Sowers previously
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Facebook, Google ‘Zones Without Human Rights’ in Vietnam, Amnesty Says
2020-12-01 by WPit Leave a Comment
Facebook and Google are becoming “zones without human rights” in Vietnam, Amnesty International warned Tuesday, accusing the tech giants of helping to censor peaceful opposition and political freedom in the country. Amnesty warned that although they were “once the great hope for the rise of freedom of expression in the country, social media platforms are rapidly becoming areas without human rights.” Information Minister Nguyen Manh Hung said last month that tech companies were complying with demands to remove “bad news, propaganda against the party and the state” at a faster rate than ever before, according to state media. FILE – Vietnam’s then-acting Minister of Information and Communication Nguyen Manh Hung attends the World Economic Forum on ASEAN at the Convention Center in Hanoi, Vietnam, Sept. 12, 2018.The same article states that this year Facebook complied with 95% of government requests and YouTube, 90%. A Facebook spokesperson told AFP that the platform is working hard to defend freedom of expression around the world. “Over the past few months, we have experienced additional pressure from the Vietnamese government to limit more content, however we will do our best to ensure that our services remain accessible, so that people can continue to express themselves,” he clarified. Google and the Vietnamese authorities did not respond to AFP’s requests. Communist Vietnam has long imprisoned its dissidents but has been criticized in recent years for targeting users of Facebook, a social network popular with activists in the country where independent media is banned. The social network admitted earlier this year that it was blocking content deemed illegal by the authorities, while its latest transparency report reveals an increase in six months of nearly 1,000% of content censored by order of the government. Amnesty International said in a report published Tuesday that it had collected the testimonies of 11 activists whose publications were banned by Facebook in Vietnam this year. The human rights organization also said that three other people have suffered similar censorship of their content on YouTube, owned by Google. One of them, Nguyen Van Trang, who fled an arrest warrant in Vietnam for his involvement in a pro-democracy group, said that Facebook had since May restricted the visibility of all its publications about Communist Party boss Nguyen Phu Trong and senior member Tran Quoc Vuong. Trang also said that some of his posts on controversial issues such as the land dispute have been made inaccessible by YouTube in Vietnam. Obstruction of ‘the progress of a nation’ “I am angry,” he told AFP. “For activists, these platforms play an important role in influencing people on progressive values like democracy, human rights, civil society.” “The compromise of Facebook and Google is not only to block information, but also to hamper the progress of a nation, where the inhabitants do not have many opportunities to participate in political activities,” he added. Vietnam is now the country that generates the most revenue for Facebook and Google in Southeast Asia, according to industry experts. More than 53 million people use Facebook in Vietnam, more than half of the population. The platform is also an important marketing tool for the local economy.
Posted in: Business, News, Silicon
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Philosophical Differences – In America (of all places)
10 Great American Philosophers
When one thinks of great philosophers (which probably isn’t too often), one most likely thinks of dead Europeans. Almost all writers studied in a philosophy class will be European, and in some classes there will be absolutely no mention of American philosophers at all. There are good reasons for this —
America really hasn’t existed for all that long, and there perhaps hasn’t been as much general emphasis on philosophy as in some other countries like the big three of France, Germany and Great Britain. But in its relatively short life span America has produced some great thinkers, including…
10. John Dewey
John Dewey was a leading scholar in the American philosophical school of pragmatism. This isn’t the same pragmatism spoken of by politicians, but is instead a rejection of the notion that thought is meant mainly to describe or mirror reality. It could be described as a realist point of view — essentially, it claims that most philosophical topics should be viewed in terms of their usefulness, as opposed to purely on their representative accuracy.
Although he made contributions to philosophy and psychology, perhaps Dewey’s greatest impact was as an educational reformer. In Dewey’s view, it’s vital that classroom activities focus on meaningful activity in place of rote learning. Students should be invested in what they are learning and the curriculum should seem relevant to their lives. He viewed learning by doing to be an important factor missing from American education. In the early days of American education there was a great focus on memorization, such as remembering all the state capitals. But the influence of Dewey and others started to move education towards focusing on teaching children how to think critically.
9. John Rawls
John Rawls was one of the most important political thinkers of the 20th century. After serving in the Pacific during World War Two, he came back and got a PhD in moral philosophy from Princeton, and would go on to teach there and atCornell, MIT and Harvard. Rawls is best known for his defense of egalitarian liberalism in his work A Theory of Justice.
In the book, he attempts to find common ground between the two seemingly conflicting concepts of liberty and equality. Rawls ultimately concludes that it’s important that we define justice as fairness. He states that “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty,” meaning freedom of thought, freedom of expression, etc. In Rawls’ view, we have certain basic rights that should not be infringed upon. He also claims that we should have a “fair equality of opportunity.” This means society and government should be set up to give equal opportunities to each person, as best as can be done. Because of these two requirements, Rawls views both strict communism and laissez-faire capitalism as unjust. And so, we as a society must strive for a middle ground, trying our best to find a balance between liberty and equality.
8. Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards was one of the greatest influences on American protestant theology. Born in Connecticut in 1703, Edwards was one of the leaders of the Puritan movement, which seeked to distance Protestantism from Catholicism. Puritans believed that the Bible itself should be the final word on what we should do, and disliked the Catholic traditions that didn’t come from the Bible directly.
Because of this focus on the Bible, education and literacy was emphasized. Edwards himself attended Yale University at age 13, and would go on to write extensively on religious topics ranging from metaphysics to ethics. Perhaps Edwards’ most influential idea was his defense of theological determinism, within which he stated that God is the ultimate and final cause of everything that happens. This has had both positive and negative effects — if people believe God is the ultimate cause, then they will believe it vital to do what God has ordained. This could vary from something as noble as feeding poor children to something as stupid as “witch” burning. So, for both good and ill, Edwards had a huge impact on American religion and, by extension, society.
7. Cornel West
Cornel West is one of the most publicly known philosophers today, and perhaps the most well known African American philosopher. While West has taught at Harvard, Princeton and Yale, he is also a very active social commentator and political activist. His writings tend to deal with relevant real world issues — in his books, he has analyzed wide ranging social problems having to do with race, class and justice.
Many of his main beliefs stem from his Christian background, which he mixes with his belief in democratic socialism, a somewhat rare combination. Growing up he was influenced largely by the church his family attended, but also by the Black Panther Party and the writings of Karl Marx. West has sometimes come into conflict with administrators because of his activism, which eventually led to his resignation at Harvard. His most famous and influential book was Race Matters, a series of essays that came out soon after the Rodney King beating. In it, he discussed the problem of African American poverty, and argued against recommendations from black leaders that he felt were unlikely to solve the problem.
6. Michael Sandel
Michael Sandel, a professor of government at Harvard, is most likely the most popular living political philosopher. He is very well known for his lectures and books, even outside academia. His class on justice at Harvard routinely has more than 1000 students, and he has taken an adapted lecture version on the road, speaking in America, India and countries in East Asia. The entire course can also be viewed on Harvard’s website for free.
Sandel believes that in order for us to be good citizens we must first grapple with hard ethical choices. In his lectures he acts somewhat like Socrates did, asking questions of his audience and expecting answers. In this way, he engages the audience and encourages them to question why they believe what they believe. Sandel thinks this is especially important considering the modern emphasis on being neutral. He argues that we can’t really be neutral, and will always make value judgments of some kind. Because of this, it’s vital that we confront our beliefs and engage in deep reflection over what it means to be good.
5. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was the leading figure of American Transcendentalism, and had a great influence on later thinkers. Transcendentalism was largely a reaction against rationalism and Calvinism. In his book Nature, Emerson argues that nature acts as an intermediary between man and the divine. Emerson thought that it’s possible to legitimately have beliefs that are not falsifiable. He believed we should look within ourselves to gain “transcendental” knowledge, or intuitive belief we derive from our inner mentality.
Because of this, Emerson was a great believer in the supremacy of the individual over the group, a viewpoint rarely held throughout history. Transcendentalists like Emerson believed that groups corrupt the individual, and thus it’s crucial to decide for ourselves what’s important. This focus on the individual would greatly influence the thought of American intellectuals and the public.
4. Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce was a mathematician, chemist, and geodist (a mixture of applied math and earth science), but he considered scientific philosophy, particularly the study of logic, to be his calling. He had an extraordinary range of interests, writing on subjects as different as astronomy and economics. In his most well known writings, he argued that the scientific method was the superior method for determining truth. Pierce is known as the founder of pragmatism, but he disliked the way others used the term. In fact, he was so concerned about misuse he relabeled his own method as pragmaticism, to distinguish it from pragmatism’s new meanings.
He also argued against determinism, the idea that all events are ultimately decided outside of will. He believed that the universe displays degrees of habit, but even with the same input there is variation. Because of his greatly varied contributions, Pierce is something different to different people. A psychologist, a logician, a physical scientist and a philosopher will all have something to learn by studying different aspects of his writing.
3. Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson is of course best known for being one of the founding fathers of the United States. He wrote much of the Declaration of Independence and served as the third President. He was a politician, but his political actions and beliefs were greatly influenced by his basic philosophical beliefs. In fact, Jefferson was a member and, for a time, the president of the American Philosophical Association.
Much of his writing described abstract principles as opposed to concrete political doctrines. Jefferson was a defender of democracy, and he argued for a will of the people. But he also realized that the majority could abuse those not in agreement with them, and so he was one of the first defenders of civil rights in America. Unfortunately, his belief that “all men are created equal” didn’t extend to non-white men, as he was a slave owner all his life. Despite this hypocrisy, his philosophical arguments for freedom put forth in the Declaration were eventually used by others in various human rights movements that extended civil rights farther than they had ever been. Because of his wide ranging influence, Jefferson is certainly one of the most important political philosophers in American history.
2. Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau held many occupations during his life — teacher, lecturer, surveyor, naturalist, head of a pencil company (seriously, his family sold pencils) — but he always thought of himself as a writer. He probably began writing poetry while in school at Harvard, but his most influential writings would be his philosophical essays and nonfiction. He is often grouped with Transcendentalism, a religious movement that promoted individualism and believed in the inherent goodness of people.
The subject of individualism is perhaps where Thoreau did his greatest writing. In an essay on civil disobedience, Thoreau argued that individuals have an obligation to determine what is right and what is wrong for themselves — just because society says something is correct doesn’t make it so. This applies both to laws and unwritten mainstream beliefs. He believed it critically important for individuals to think for themselves. Part of what differentiated Thoreau from many other philosophers is that he didn’t prescribe one form of the good life; he believed that each person had to figure it out for themselves. He told people not to emulate him, but to search inside themselves to discover what was important to them. This made him a unique modern philosopher, and one of the most important influences on American thought.
1. William James
William James made important early contributions to both psychology and physiology. Those two fields were where he focused much of his life, but he always threw in some philosophical analysis and would turn increasingly towards philosophy as he aged. His 1,200 page book The Principles of Psychologylaid much of the groundwork for modern psychology, and greatly influenced both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. But it included not only pure psychology, but also philosophy and personal reflection that influenced many important later philosophers, including Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
James also wrote much about religion from a relativist position, discussing the commonalities of all religions and whether or not religion and science can coexist. He argued against extremism on both sides, coming to conclusions on his own as opposed to always agreeing with one side or the other. Because of the great diversity of subjects that he wrote about, and the ways he mixed them together, William James was one of the most influential thinkers in American history.
But what about>>>>
Categories: Blogging, Education, History, Life, Top Ten, Wisdom, Writing and Grammar Tags: American Philosophical Society, Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, Jonathan Edwards, Michael Sandel, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Jefferson, William James
“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
― Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
― George Orwell, 1984
“The best secrets are the most twisted”
― Sara Shepard, Twisted
“Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.”
― James Joyce
Categories: Blogging, Humor, Quotes, Wisdom Tags: 1984, Benjamin Franklin, George Orwell, James Joyce, Poor Richard's Almanack, secrets
Un-Fortune
“A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune”
― William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
“Great minds have purpose, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.”
― Washington Irving
“If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.”
― Solon
Categories: Life, Quotes, Wisdom, Writing and Grammar Tags: Quotes, Solon, The Sound and the Fury, unfortunate, Washington Irving, William Faulkner
Puns, Puns # 1
Be sure to search out the continuing numbered PUNS series here at WIF… #2 #3 #4, etc… in the Pun Central Catalog.
A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France
— would result in Linoleum Blownaparte.
Puns, Puns #1
Punny Problems #21
Categories: Blogging, Entertainment, Puns for Intelligent People, Wisdom, Writing and Grammar Tags: France, grenade, Gwendolyn Hoff, Puns for Intelligent People, WRITING IS FUN-DAMENTAL
Freud Facts
Top 10 Insane Facts About Sigmund Freud
You may ask why an entire list is dedicated to Sigmund Freud, but the man is famous the world over. He is renowned for his theories on the unconscious and for essentially pioneering psychotherapy, even if there is some argument as to whether he was the first to actually invent it. Freud is also infamous for his theories on psychosexual development, and the fact that his worldview was fairly misogynistic even for his time.
While some of his theories may seem quite wild, the field of psychology today would not be what it is without his influence and early work. Sigmund Freud is proof positive that you can be both a genius who essentially creates an entire field and a complete quack, both at the same time.
10. Drug Abuse
Sigmund Freud abused drugs, and when we say that, what we mean is that Freud really, really, really liked cocaine. Freud loved cocaine so much that he discussed it openly with his fiancé, and performed experiments centered on cocaine with himself as the subject. While that may be the greatest excuse for drug use ever, he also did write several papers on the wonders of this drug, touting its use in all sorts of things, including anesthesia. However, he did enjoy the high that the drug gave him, and definitely used it for more than just medicinal reasons.
9. Misogyny
Freud had a bit of a problem with the ladies, which is a bit of an understatement. A better question would probably be what problem he didn’t have with women. Freud believed that women’s problems stemmed essentially from them not having a male sex organ, and felt that women didn’t have a good sense of justice. He also considered women to be weak socially, to have a jealous nature, and to be exceedingly vain. Freud was also known to believe women to be the problem in society, especially when it came to sexual tension between the genders.
8. Psychosexual Theories
Freud had a collection of very strange theories, many of which are pretty much discredited today. His main belief was that young children, even infants, had unconscious sexual feelings. Among these were various stages of fixation, such as oral, anal and phallic. Someone with an oral fixation gained in this early stage may end up constantly needing to chew on something, or have something in their mouth, while someone who wasn’t raised properly during the anal stage could be anal-retentive, which is where the expression comes from. He also had theories involving the Oedipus Complex, which had young boys attracted to their mothers, and the Elektra Complex, which had young girls attracted to their fathers.
Many people may not realize that Freud had a very long running battle with cancer. This was mainly due to his constant habit of smoking cigars, leading to mouth cancer later in life. At one point Freud managed to actually quit for over a year, but eventually went back to the habit again full-time. According to some, he smoked as many as twenty cigars in a typical day and had to go through 34 operations, still eventually succumbing to cancer. Despite Freud’s knowledge of psychology, he was unable to ever truly break the habit.
6. Father Of Psychoanalysis
Freud is famous for being the inventor of psychoanalysis, though some argue whether he was the first to use the method. Freud, though, was unquestionably the first to popularize the method, and influenced many great psychologists such as Carl Jung. Psychoanalysis often involves attempting to understand a patient through their childhood development and greatly involves the unconscious. His psychoanalysis has been criticized, and still enjoys a certain controversy among the psychology community today. His beliefs have always been considered controversial, but his contribution to the field of psychology and his influence cannot be denied.
5. Womb Envy
Some of Freud’s contemporaries were women, and a bit more feminist than he was (then again, it sounds like just about everybody is more feminist than Freud.) In response to his belief that many of women’s ills belonged to the fact that they did not have a penis and were jealous of men for having one, a female contemporary came up with the alternate theory of womb envy. Also known as vagina envy, this is an alternate theory that states men are actually jealous of women, because they do not have a womb and thus cannot create life. To make up for this jealousy, men try to construct businesses instead so it feels like they are creating something. One feminist even makes the argument that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is essentially a story about a man with womb envy.
4. Dream Theories
Sigmund Freud placed a lot of importance on the unconscious, so perhaps not all too surprisingly he had quite a hang up on dreams. Freud believed that dreams had parts that you remember, and those that you did not. His theory was that what you actually remembered was just something that represented what you were actually thinking during the dream, and that it was meant to disguise the true thought. Freud even wrote a book on dreams called, creatively titled “The Interpretation of Dreams.” His main belief at the time was that dreams are a way of fulfilling things we wish we could do while conscious, but were unable.
3. The Unconscious
Freud was one of the first to really propose serious theories on the unconscious, and it was truly a cornerstone of nearly all of what he believed. The unconscious, for our purposes, is supposed to be all of the processes in our brain that we perform without really thinking. However, Freud saw it as much more than this. He believed that the unconscious drives how we behave, often acting on feelings that have been repressed inside us since he were very young. He believed very strongly that nearly all actions that people performed were the result of unconscious processes, which would mean that our free will does not perform quite the way we first thought. While it is certain that we do have an unconscious mind, it is hard to say just how many of Freud’s theories regarding it are actually true, or even have elements of truth to them.
2. Oral Fixation
There is a popular story that Freud was once with a class smoking one of his favorite cigars when one of his students suggested that perhaps his constant need to have something in his mouth meant that he had an oral fixation, basically pinning him with his own made-up disorder. To this, Freud famously replied “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Funnily enough, it turns out that some people have investigated this quote and discovered that the entire thing probably never even happened. However, as we mentioned earlier, Freud did indeed love his cigars. He was been quoted as saying that cigars were essential to his life, and he believed that they improved his work. In short, if oral fixation is real, he clearly had it, sassy comeback or none.
1. Polyglot
A polyglot is someone who can speak many languages, basically a super linguist. And Sigmund Freud was a serious polyglot, with a strong knowledge of German, Italian, Greek, English, Spanish, Hebrew and Latin. For those of who aren’t counting, that is a grand total of seven languages, which makes us look bad as most people are lucky to be proficient in their own language. Freud was also quite the little genius, already reading Shakespeare at the tender age of eight. He was also accepted into a prestigious high school and graduated with honors, eventually proving himself as the kookiest psychologist ever to walk the Earth.
Categories: Blogging, Education, Non-fiction, Top Ten, Wisdom Tags: frailties, Freud, polygot, Psychosexual Theories, psycoanalysis, Top Ten List, Unconscious mind
The Devil Made Me Do It
In my last book, CONSTANCE CARAWAY ~FOREVER MASTADON~ , I give Satan a new name ( in literature, he was overdue) and it is PENTATEUCH. Personally, I believe one of the biggest reason that world is in moral free-fall, is because they do not think the devil exists.
My PENTATEUCH is no more oddly gruesome than those below, but his goals and motivations are still clearly present and stated.
The devil is real and he seeks to steal your humanity, at least the good parts. If you are having a hard time convincing your family & friends that Jesus is the way, the truth, the life, go ahead a pull out the Satan card (and do it with all the enthusiasm you can muster!).
During the Middle Ages, Demons were everywhere. Blamed for everything from hoarse speaking voices to public nudity, demons were once an omnipresent force and a viable culprit for all ill-favored aspects of human nature. Medieval demonologists wrote entire encyclopedias, including, The Lesser Key of Solomon, Compendium Maleficarum, Admirable History and Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, dedicated to the classification of demons and their contributions to mortal affectations. As people have drifted from belief in these malevolent forces, we have admitted responsibility for our own bad behavior. Here is a list of demons responsible for various maladies in the human condition, if you ever feel that burden of responsibility is too much to bear on your own.
10. Ardad
Demon who leads travelers astray
If you have ever taken a vacation and had trouble finding your hotel, car, map, anxiety medication or the rest of your family, you’ve probably had an encounter or two with Ardad, the demon who leads travelers astray. Ardad is not that powerful of a demon, which is why his job is seducing, a behavior that most mortals have no trouble doing on their own. He most often possesses men into being adamantly against asking for directions, and responsible for GPS malfunction in major cities.
9. Agares
Earthquakes, Foul Language, and Destroying Dignity
It’s 9 am and you are walking into your business meeting with a fresh cup of coffee from the break room. The room is still bustling with the conversations of your peers, which you would engage in if you hadn’t just started last week and were still acquainting yourself with folks around the office. You sit down, and just as the fervor of communication dies down to near silent, you spill hot coffee all over your new suit and yell out a loud and audible #*$@! You look up and are met with dead silence, and disgust in the eyes of your new workmates at your lack of professionalism. You want nothing more than to run right out of the room, but your feet are frozen to the floor. Fortunately, you can tell them all you are battling with the demon Agares, and that should make it all okay.
Agares is a grand duke of Hell and presides over 31 legions of demons. He particularly enjoys destroying dignities, teaching foul language, and makes those who run stand still. Agares can also cause earthquakes. Surprising that, with such power, he took the time to ruin your morning meeting and your chances of upward mobility.
8. Astaroth
Vanity, Laziness, and Rationalization
After waking up at 11:30, to lazilyto walk to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal, you flip open the laptop at your bedside and order breakfast for delivery on Grubhub. Awaiting delivery, you proceed to watch Grey’s Anatomy on Hulu, only to be disturbed by the delivery of your Chinese food. As you continue to watch the doctors of Seattle Grace for the next seven hours, grazing at your General Tsao’s chicken, you can’t help but imagine if you were on staff there, you would definitely be labeled as Dr. McHottiepants, and verify it to yourself by a giving a long and loving glance to the compact mirror by your bedside. When six o’clock rolls around and the day is over, you tell yourself that was a perfectly appropriate way to spend your day, since you’ve been working so hard lately, and barely get a chance to rest. You wake up the next day and do the same thing, only this time with Dexter.
If you’ve found yourself in this situation before, you are most likely being plagued by the demon Astaroth, who provokes laziness, vanity and rationalization. He does, however, give power over serpents, which is good news for the slovenly owners of boa constrictors. Best remedy to an Astaroth infection is a solid helping of prayer to his arch nemesis St Bartholomew, who will teach how not to succumb to Astaroth’s temptations.
7. Ose
You have real particular problems if the night demon Ose possesses you, in that you will truly believe you are a King, Pope or creature. Most people would label this sort of behavior as insanity, which is exactly what Ose plans to keep his cover. Others just believe the game, which is exactly why Ose seems to have a pretty strong hold on many political figures, and probably some of your former bosses.
Ose is a president of Hell and rules thirty legions of demons. If you do have a problem with this demon you most likely don’t know it, as he even transforms the thoughts of inflicted mortals to believe they are the shape he chooses, but I would say it is a pretty good bet if you are a ferret using the Internet.
6. Sitri
Makes people reveal themselves naked
Sitri makes men and women reveal themselves naked, and mockingly reveals the secrets of women. Sitri’s presence is found lurking in most fraternities and sorority houses around America, and his power is particularly strong in Daytona Beach around Spring Break, especially if Girls Gone Wild is in town. For those who commonly make a public mockery of himself, or herself, when inebriation is involved, or every girl who has taken a walk of shame after an embarrassing one night stand, it may be comforting to know you have someone to blame besides your own poor life choices.
In The Lesser Key of Solomon, he is a great prince of Hell, reigning over 60 legions of demons. A good remedy for Sitri’s possession is leaving the house wearing plenty of layers and abstaining from alcohol.
5. Pruflas
Discord, Quarrels, and Falsehood
You are in one of those relationships. You know, the one where you are absolutely so passionately in love, but no one can spend even five minutes with the two of you because you fight incessantly over everything. First, it was deciding where to eat lunch, then it was deciding where to put the cello when you two moved in together, you eat too fast, they talk too loud, you spend too much time with your friends, they leave food in the sink. The petty quarrels and disharmony are never ending. Everyone tells you that the two of you need to break up, which you just cannot understand because you love them so much, even if he or she may sometimes inch you towards committing homicide. The truth is, your relationship needs a good old-fashioned exorcism.
Pruflas, as told by the demonology of Johann Weyer in Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, is a Duke of Hell with 26 legions of demons under his rule. He promotes discord, quarrels and falsehood. Bear in mind, the infidelities and lies cannot be blamed on either party, its Pruflas’ fault.
4. Beelzebub
You know you are battling Beezelbub when, after your third trip up to the all you can eat buffet, returning to a table of full friends with an equally full plate of food, you can’t help but think about how great it will be to go get a triple banana split with whipped cream and nuts when you’re finished feasting on your macaroni and cheese covered chicken leg. After all of this, you probably still don’t realize why it’s impossible for you to lose weight. Pregnancy is possible, but more likely is the presence of the patron demon of gluttony feasting on your soul. And you should be flattered. Beezelbub is a big deal demon. In fact, he is one of the three most prominent and powerful of the fallen angels, next to only Satan and Leviathan, and made strong showing during the Salem witch trials. But, when he’s not causing jealous murders and enticing war, he’s making you eat more Cheetos with your Denny’s Grand Slam.
3. Asmodeus
Demon of Lust
The new bartender at the place across from your office is starting to look pretty sexy, and it isn’t just the alcohol. You find yourself tipping this bartender extra cash with a wink and a seductive smile, hoping for a chance to really do a number on them in the bathroom. The problem is, you are married, or at least involved. Images of the bartender scantily clad plague your entire afternoons, and sometimes leaking into the evening with strange fantasies of you, the bartender, and a collection of Russian nesting dolls. These strange sexual desires and your near demise by the overpowering nature of your own lust is easily pinned on Asmodeus, the patron demon of that lethal sin.
Keep your pants on, however, for those who fall for the seduction of Asmodeus spend eternity banished to the second level of hell. He is King of hell, and responsible for Lust of the seven deadly sins, his power strongest in November. He can easily be shooed away by the smell generated from placing a fish’s heart and liver on burning cinders, as proven in the Book of Tobit.
2. Verrine
On the way to your car, which is annoyingly parked a block away, you are accosted by some environmentalist trying to convince you to save the whales, but as you have no time for the salvation of aquatic animals, and less patience for whiny do-gooders, you grab the pamphlet which is practically shoved into your throat and make a point to rip it up right in front of the irritating activist, and openly littering. Once you are in your car you are lambasted with an unwelcome turn of an elderly gentleman in front of your car. After much honking, which is only making the confused grandpa, who is probably dealing with the beginnings of senility, go slower, you cross into the lane of opposite traffic to make a point of passing him, your middle finger out the window screaming about how there needs to be a maximum driving age to prevent assholes like him from getting in your way. Finally parked, and almost to your destination, you stop for a latte at the Starbucks nearby. Huge mistake. You wait over five minutes for your latte, which you specifically ordered at 172 degrees with no foam, receiving a beverage, which is clearly 168 degrees and topped with a foam mountain. Livid, you throw your drink at the barista, who is still in training, and remove two dollars from the tip jar exclaiming that people like them do not deserve the charity of others.
Everyone you’ve seen today might already suspect you are inflicted with a demonic presence, and its name is Verrine, responsible for impatience. Verrine is a prince of thrones, and is listed in the first hierarchy of demons, as explained by Sebastien Michaelis in Admirable History, with a demon classification apparently shared with him by the demon Berith during an exorcism on a nun. Praying to St Dominic may help you rid this Demon; of course it would probably help if everyone around you weren’t an idiot.
1. Lucifer
All that is Evil
As far as the seven deadly sins are concerned, Lucifer is responsible for pride in mortals. This sin comes from Lucifer’s own pride resulting in his downfall from Heaven. Lucifer loved himself above anything, and without ignorance as an excuse. Ranked highest of angels, with his seat in Heaven next to God, God allowed him power over earth. When God left his seat, however, Lucifer sat himself on the heavenly throne. This outlandish display of Lucifer’s pride started a war among Angels, and when Michael finally succeeded in banishing Lucifer from heaven he was cast down to Earth and called Satan. The angels that followed him in the fall became the demons currently causing all the afflictions of human nature, with Lucifer as the reigning King.
Mere plebeians need not to worry too much about Lucifer’s strong hold on Earth, as he targets more prominent figures to be victims of his direct company. Historically his presence has been seen in the prideful tyrannical rulers of Rome, but some could make arguments that his charisma is making a resurgence in more recent world leaders.
Categories: Blogging, Education, Entertainment, Religion, Top Ten, Wisdom Tags: Ardad, Asmodeus, Astaroth, Beezelbub, Lucifer, The Devil Made Me Do It
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15 Feb — 5 May 2019 at the Menil in Houston, United States
Roni Horn. Courtesy of Menil
For over thirty years drawing has been fundamental to the practice of contemporary American artist Roni Horn (b. 1955), whose work revolves around the mutability of identity and the fragility of place, time, and language. Roni Horn: When I Breathe, I Draw presents a selected survey of the artist’s drawings from the early 1980s to her most recent work on paper. The presentation explores her unique technical approach of mark-marking with dense hues of pure pigment and her dynamic process of cutting and reassembling images and language. It will include a selection of large-scale and compositionally-complex works on paper, her series of saturated cadmium red drawings and an extensive group of cut photography, text and maps. This two-part exhibition will be the first museum exhibition devoted to Horn’s drawings in the United States.
The first part of the show, on view February 15–May 5, 2019, will feature Horn’s encompassing drawings, some over ten feet tall. They belie their scale through the artist’s intricate passages of jotted notes. Marking time and consciousness, the personal notations maintain the intimacy of a whisper, pushing and pulling the viewer into and out of the large work.
The exhibition’s title evokes the integral place of drawing within Horn’s artistic practice. It is derived from the artist’s understanding that drawing is akin to “a kind of breathing activity on a daily level.”
This exhibition is organized by Senior Curator Michelle White for the Menil Drawing Institute.
Roni Horn lives and works in New York and Reykjavik. Her work has been the subject of numerous major exhibitions including Roni Horn at the Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2016); Roni Horn a.k.a Roni Horn, organized by the Tate Modern, London, which travelled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2009-2010). Horn received her MFA from Yale University in 1978 and her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975. Her work is held in major collections around the world.
Major funding for the publication is provided by Hauser & Wirth.
Major funding for this exhibition is provided by The National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from Suzanne Deal Booth; Clare Casademont and Michael Metz; Barbara and Michael Gamson; Diane and Michael Cannon; Christina and Norman Diekman; Gary Mercer; Scott and Judy Nyquist; Ellen and Steve Susman; the Mathew and Ann Wolf Drawings Exhibition Fund; Eddie and Chinhui Allen; Janet and Paul Hobby; Caroline Huber; the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Linda and George Kelly; Adelaide de Menil; Franci Neely; Susanne and William E. Pritchard III; Leslie and Shannon Sasser; Anne Schlumberger; Michael Zilkha; and the City of Houston.
The Menil Collection is an art museum located in Houston, Texas, USA, in a 30-acre neighborhood of art. The main building houses special exhibitions and the permanent collection, and it anchors a campus with three other museum buildings: two are dedicated to single artists (Cy Twombly and Dan Flavin) and another to year-long installation projects; a fourth building is under construction for a drawing institute.
More from Menil
Outdoor Sculpture at the Menil
Cy Twombly Gallery
Menil Drawing Institute
More in Houston, United States
Contemplation Room & Library of Love
8 Oct 2017 — 11 Dec 2021 at Contemporary Arts Museum
North American B-25 Mitchell
Permanent event at Lone Star Flight Museum
Chance Vought F4U-5N Corsair
Cobra Gunship TAH-1P
More in United States
Helmut Federle. Basics on Composition
16 Jan — 13 Mar 2021 at Peter Blum Gallery in New York
16 Jan — 6 Feb 2021 at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York
22 Jan — 21 Feb 2021 at New River Fine Art in Fort Lauderdale
Martin Kline: Allover
23 Jan — 6 Mar 2021 at Heather Gaudio Fine Art in New Canaan
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Lakshmi Manchu’s next titled Dongaata
Published on Feb 12, 2015 5:04 pm IST
It is quite evident that Lakshmi Manchu has earned a reputation as a talented and a daring producer. Recently, she launched a crime comedy thriller in the direction of Vamsi Krishna where she will be paired opposite the handsome Adavi Sesh.
According to the latest update, this film has been titled Dongaata. Regular shooting of this film will kick start in summer 2015 and Lakshmi herself produces this film on her own banner Manchu Entertainment. Keep watching this space for more updates on this project.
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Sampoornesh Babu croons for his next
Published on Feb 7, 2015 6:09 pm IST
Social networking star Sampoornesh Babu, is making positive strides in the industry. He has a host of films lined up and one among them is Kobbari Matta. This satirical film is nearing completion and according to the latest update, Sampoornesh has crooned for a number titled ‘Kobbari Pullalu Kalagalipe’ which is going to be released next week.
Sampu is also busy doing comedy roles in other films as well. He will next be seen in Allari Naresh’s Bandipotu and as a main lead in Singham123 which is produced by Vishnu Manchu. Kobbari Matta is produced by Adi Kumbhagiri and directed by Rupak Ronaldson.
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Employee HIPAA Privacy Policy
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Federal regulations, known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy law, generally prohibit the use and disclosure of health information without written permission from the patient.
Use and Disclosure of Health Information
The Adelphi University Health and Welfare Plan (“the Health Plan”) and for purposes of this HIPAA Privacy Policies and Procedures, the Health Care Flexible Spending account may use your health information, that is, information that constitutes protected health information as defined in the Privacy Rule of the Administrative Simplification provision of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”), for purposes of making or obtaining payment for your care and conducting health care operations. The Health Plan has established a policy to guard against unnecessary disclosure of your health information. The Health Plan includes Cigna Health plan and the Health Care Flexible Spending account.
The following is a summary of the circumstances under which and purposes for which your health information may be used and disclosed:
To Make or Obtain Payment
The Health Plan may use or disclose your health information to make payment to or collect payment from third parties, such as other health plans or providers, for the care you receive. For example, the Health Plan may provide information regarding your coverage or health care treatment to other health plans to coordinate payment of benefits.
To Conduct Health Care Operations
The Health Plan may use or disclose health information for its own operations to facilitate the administration of the Health Plan and as necessary to provide coverage and services to all of the Health Plan’s participants. Health care operations includes such activities as:
Quality assessment and improvement activities.
Activities designed to improve health or reduce health care costs.
Clinical guideline and protocol development, case management and care coordination.
Contacting health care providers and participants with information about treatment alternatives and other related functions.
Health care professional competence or qualifications review and performance evaluation.
Accreditation, certification, licensing or credentialing activities.
Underwriting, premium rating or related functions to create, renew or replace health insurance or health benefits.
Review and auditing, including compliance reviews, medical reviews, legal services and compliance programs.
Business planning and development including cost management and planning related analyses and formulary development.
Business management and general administrative activities of the Health Plan, including customer service and resolution of internal grievances.
For example, the Health Plan may use your health information to conduct case management, quality improvement and utilization review, and provider credentialing activities or to engage in customer service and grievance resolution activities.
For Treatment Alternatives
The Health Plan may use and disclose your health information to tell you about or recommend possible treatment options or alternatives that may be of interest to you.
For Distribution of Health-Related Benefits and Services
The Health Plan may use or disclose your health information to provide to you information on health-related benefits and services that may be of interest to you.
To Individuals Involved in Your Care or Payment for Your Care
The Health Plan may release medical information about you to a friend or family member who is involved in your medical care. The Health Plan may also give information to someone who helps pay for your care. In addition, the Health Plan may disclose medical information about you to an entity assisting in a disaster relief effort so that your family can be notified about your condition, status, and location.
For Disclosure to the Plan Sponsor
The Health Plan may disclose your health information to the plan sponsor for plan administration functions performed by the plan sponsor on behalf of the Health Plan. In addition, the Health Plan may provide summary health information to the plan sponsor so that the plan sponsor may solicit premium bids from health insurers or modify, amend or terminate the plan. The Health Plan also may disclose to the plan sponsor information on whether you are participating in the Health Plan.
When Legally Required
The Health Plan will disclose your health information when it is required to do so by any federal, state or local law.
To Conduct Health Oversight Activities
The Health Plan may disclose your health information to a health oversight agency for authorized activities including audits, civil administrative or criminal investigations, inspections, licensure or disciplinary action. The Health Plan, however, may not disclose your health information if you are the subject of an investigation and the investigation does not arise out of or is not directly related to your receipt of health care or public benefits.
In Connection With Judicial and Administrative Proceedings
As permitted or required by state law, the Health Plan may disclose your health information in the course of any judicial or administrative proceeding in response to an order of a court or administrative tribunal as expressly authorized by such order or in response to a subpoena, discovery request or other lawful process, but only when the Health Plan makes reasonable efforts to either notify you about the request or to obtain an order protecting your health information.
For Law Enforcement Purposes
As permitted or required by state law, the Health Plan may disclose your health information to a law enforcement official for certain law enforcement purposes, including, but not limited to, if the Health Plan has a suspicion that your death was the result of criminal conduct or in an emergency to report a crime.
In the Event of a Serious Threat to Health or Safety
The Health Plan may, consistent with applicable law and ethical standards of conduct, disclose your health information if the Health Plan, in good faith, believes that such disclosure is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to your health or safety or to the health and safety of the public.
For Specified Government Functions
In certain circumstances, federal regulations require the Health Plan to use or disclose your health information to facilitate specified government functions related to the military and veterans, national security and intelligence activities, protective services for the president and others, and correctional institutions and inmates.
For Workers’ Compensation
The Health Plan may release your health information to the extent necessary to comply with laws related to workers’ compensation or similar programs.
Authorization to Use or Disclose Health Information
Other than as stated above, the Health Plan will not disclose your health information other than with your written authorization. If you authorize the Health Plan to use or disclose your health information, you may revoke that authorization in writing at any time.
Your Rights With Respect to Your Health Information
You have the following rights regarding your health information that the Health Plan maintains:
Right to Request Restrictions
You may request restrictions on certain uses and disclosures of your health information. You have the right to request a limit on the Health Plan’s disclosure of your health information to someone involved in the payment of your care. However, the Health Plan is not required to agree to your request. If you wish to make a request for restrictions, please make your request in writing to the Privacy Officer.
Right to Receive Confidential Communications
You have the right to request that the Health Plan communicate with you in a certain way if you feel the disclosure of your health information could endanger you. For example, you may ask that the Health Plan only communicate with you at a certain telephone number or by email. If you wish to receive confidential communications, please make your request in writing to the Privacy Officer. The Health Plan will attempt to honor your reasonable requests for confidential communications.
Right to Inspect and Copy Your Health Information
You have the right to inspect and copy your health information. A request to inspect and copy records containing your health information must be made in writing to the Privacy Officer. If you request a copy of your health information, the Health Plan may charge a reasonable fee for copying, assembling costs and postage, if applicable, associated with your request.
Right to Amend Your Health Information
If you believe that your health information records are inaccurate or incomplete, you may request that the Health Plan amend the records. That request may be made as long as the information is maintained by the Health Plan. A request for an amendment of records must be made in writing to the Privacy Officer. The Health Plan may deny the request if it does not include a reason to support the amendment. The request also may be denied if your health information records were not created by the Health Plan, if the health information you are requesting to amend is not part of the Health Plan’s records, if the health information you wish to amend falls within an exception to the health information you are permitted to inspect and copy, or if the Health Plan determines the records containing your health information are accurate and complete.
Right to an Accounting
You have the right to request a list of certain disclosures of your health information that the Health Plan is required to keep a record of under the Privacy Rule, such as disclosures for public purposes authorized by law or disclosures that are not in accordance with the Plan’s privacy policies and applicable law. The request must be made in writing to the Privacy Officer. The request should specify the time period for which you are requesting the information, but may not start earlier than April 14, 2003. Accounting requests may not be made for periods of time going back more than six (6) years. The Health Plan will provide the first accounting you request during any 12-month period without charge. Subsequent accounting requests may be subject to a reasonable cost-based fee. The Health Plan will inform you in advance of the fee, if applicable.
Right to a Paper Copy of this Notice
You have a right to request and receive a paper copy of this Notice at any time, even if you have received this Notice previously or agreed to receive the Notice electronically. To obtain a paper copy, please contact the Privacy Officer.
Duties of the Health Plan
The Health Plan is required by law to maintain the privacy of your health information as set forth in this Notice and to provide to you this Notice of its duties and privacy practices. The Health Plan is required to abide by the terms of this Notice, which may be amended from time to time. The Health Plan reserves the right to change the terms of this Notice and to make the new Notice provisions effective for all health information that it maintains. If the Health Plan changes its policies and procedures, the Health Plan will revise the Notice and will provide a copy of the revised Notice to you within 60 days of the change. You have the right to express complaints to the Health Plan and to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services if you believe that your privacy rights have been violated. Any complaints to the Health Plan should be made in writing to the Health Plan’s Privacy Officer. The Health Plan encourages you to express any concerns you may have regarding the privacy of your information. You will not be retaliated against in any way for filing a complaint.
Business Associate means a person or entity who, on behalf of a group health plan (i) performs or assists in the performance of a function or activity involving the use or disclosure of Protected Health Information (“PHI”) (including claims processing or administrative instruction or data analysis) or (ii) provides legal, actuarial, accounting, consulting, data aggregation, management, accreditation or financial services, where the performance of such services gives the service provider access to PHI. A Business Associate is not a member of a group health plan’s workforce.
Business Associate Contract (BAC) means a written agreement between the Business Associate and a group health plan that provides reasonable assurance to the group health plan that the Business Associate will safeguard the Protected Health Information of the group health plan’s participants.
Designated Record Set means a group of records maintained by or for a group health plan that includes: (i) the enrollment, payment and claims adjudication records of a participant maintained by or for a group health plan; or (ii) other Protected Health Information used by or for a group health plan to make coverage decisions about a participant.
Disclosure means, with respect to Protected Health Information, any release, transfer, provision, access to, or divulging in any manner of information to persons not employed by or working within or for a group health plan.
Health Care Operations means any of the following activities to the extent that they are related to group health plan administration: conducting quality assessment and improvement activities; reviewing flexible spending accounts; conducting or arranging for legal services and auditing functions; business planning and development; and business management and general administrative activities.
HIPAA Tracking Log means the log maintained by Adelphi University for tracking of all HIPAA disclosures, complaints, training and training related activities.
Participant means an individual that is enrolled in applicable portions of the self-insured benefits of Adelphi University
Payment includes activities undertaken to obtain a group health plans contributions or to determine or fulfill a group health plan’s responsibility for provision of benefits under a group health plan, or to obtain reimbursement of health care.
Protected Health Information (“PHI”) means individually identifiable information that: (i) is created or received by a group health plan relating to the past, present, or future physical or mental health condition of a participant, provision of health care to a participant, or the past, present or future payment of health care provided to a participant; and (ii) identifies the participant or for which there is a reasonable basis to believe the information can be used to identify the participant. Protected Health Information includes information of persons living or deceased. Protected Health Information does not include employment records held by the employer.
Use means with respect to individually identifiable health information, the sharing, employment, application, utilization, examination, or analysis of such information within an entity that maintains such information.
Procedure for Authorized Access of PHI
If you are authorized to perform a Plan function, you may use or disclose PHI if the function relates to the Payment or Health Care Operations of the Plan if such action is necessary to the performance of that function.
If you perform services that relate to both the health care flexible spending accounts and the other non-health benefits provided by Adelphi University , you must not use PHI to perform payment or operation activities for those non-health benefits unless a valid authorization to do so by the Participant is received.
If while performing your functions for the non-health benefits, you believe that you require a Participant’s PHI, you must first contact the Privacy Officer to verify that a signed authorization from the Participant permitting us to use PHI has been obtained.
The Plan has in place appropriate safeguards to protect the privacy of the PHI.
If you have any uncertainty as to whether you are performing a service that classifies as a Payment or Health Care Operation, contact the Privacy Officer.
Authorized Access To Participant PHI
We have examined our workforce to identify those persons or classes of persons who require access to PHI to perform Plan functions. The classes of persons and their responsibilities with respect to the Plan are set forth below.
The Human Resources Department has the primary responsibility of oversight and administration of the health care flexible spending accounts. The Human Resources Department may use PHI to perform the following activities:
Process enrollment forms
Process claims for payment
Process appeals
Assist with appeals determinations
A designated attorney may assist with the review of Participant claim questions, respond to subpoenas, governmental and regulatory body requests, and court orders or litigation related requests. In performing these functions, the attorney may have access to PHI.
Members of the Controller’s team may assist in the administration of the health care flexible spending accounts and therefore may have access to PHI.
Last Reviewed Date: September 17, 2018
Last Revised Date: September 17, 2018
Karen Loiacono, Director of Total Rewards
Karen Loiacono
Director of Total Rewards
loiacono@adelphi.edu
Levermore Hall 203
Joanna Ocampo
Human Resources Specialist of Benefits and Human Resources Information System Projects
ocampo1@adelphi.edu
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Society - Southern Africa - Mauritius - Zimbabwe - Humanitarian
Mauritius deeply concerned by Zimbabwe crisis
Ramgoolam wants Zimbabwe to allow the Elders in
Tuesday 2 December 2008
Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Ramgoola has expressed serious concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe, which has been compounded by the outbreak of cholera in the Southern African nation.
The Prime Minister expressed the concern Tuesday morning while addressing parliament.
Replying to a parliamentary question over the situation in Zimbabwe, Ramgoolam expressed the hope that the authorities in Zimbabwe would take steps to make possible the proposed visit of the high-level Elders Group to the country.
’’Such a visit will naturally pave the way for the international community to bring much needed humanitarian assistance to the suffering (people) of Zimbabwe,’’ he said..
The Prime Minister condemned the denial of visas to the Group of Elders, whose mission to Zimbabwe was intended particularly to make an assessment of the humanitarian situation in the country.
’’It is a matter of deep concern and regret that they have been denied visas to enter Zimbabwe,’’ he said.
The Group of Elders comprises former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former US President Jimmy Carter and the international advocate for women’s and children’s rights Graca Machel.
The Prime Minister also expressed concern at the deadlock in the implementation of the power-sharing agreement signed by the Zimbabwean parties to break the political logjam in the country.
• Discovering Africa from its Coast Line
• Mauritius: where they don’t kill the geese that lay the golden eggs
• Africa: Where are the jobs?
• All articles related to Mauritius
• Thabo Mbeki: “The relationship between African and its ex-colonizers is illegal!”
• AIDS deaths are declining, reports UN
• Economic Prowess Dominates Diplomatic Precision: An Overview of King Mohammed VI’s Tour of Africa South of the Sahara
• All articles related to Society
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Garth Graham, MD, MPH, FACP, FACC
by Jasmine Phiri
Vice President, Community Health,
Dr. Garth Graham, MD, MPH, FACP, FACC, is a Vice President of Community Health & Impact for CVS Health and President of the Aetna Foundation. Dr. Graham oversees community health initiatives, helping to drive the company’s efforts to address social determinants of health through innovative partnerships and evidence-based grant programs with leading organizations.
A cardiologist and professor of medicine, Dr. Graham previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under both the Obama and Bush Administrations, where he also ran the Office of Minority Health. He directed the development of the federal government’s first National Health Disparities Plan released under the Obama administration. Dr. Graham was also the assistant dean for health policy at the University of Florida School of Medicine, where he led several research initiatives looking at how to improve outcomes and readmission rates in cardiac patients in underserved populations. He contributes to several boards including the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Advisory Council, the Institute of Medicine Board on Population Health, the American Heart Association/American Stroke Associational National Quality Oversight Committee, the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Clinical Data Standards, the Harvard Medical School Diversity Fund (chair) and was named by the President to the U.S. Federal Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research many others.
Dr. Graham has been featured in media outlets including Fortune, USA Today, The Hill, The Chicago Tribune, Essence, U.S. News & World Report, Quartz and Ebony. Dr. Graham holds a medical degree from Yale School of Medicine, an MPH from Yale School of Public Health and a bachelor of science in biology from Florida International University. He completed clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Johns Hopkins where he trained in cardiology and interventional cardiology. He holds three board certifications including internal medicine, cardiology and interventional cardiology.
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Dear Emuna
Q&A for Teens
Home » Current Issues » Science & Medicine
https://www.aish.com/ci/sam/The-Great-Ocean-of-Truth.html
The Great Ocean of Truth
by Rabbi Adam Jacobs
Despite the staggering discoveries made by science, the universe is still shrouded in awesome mystery.
“A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day’s unity.” – Charles Ives
In the not too distant past it was considered an obvious truth that the universe, nature and their respective details were the handiwork of a conscious designing intelligence. People simply observed their surroundings and noted the beauty, the ingenuity and the orchestrated harmony of the massive multiplicity of its parts – and stood awed by it. This view was perhaps most artfully expressed by the English philosopher William Paley in his well-known watchmaker analogy:
“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there … There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use… Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.” – William Paley, Natural Theology (1802)
In the course of the two centuries since Paley wrote these iconic words, the mystery of life was seemingly eroded by the march of science. For example, in 1828, Friedrich Wöhler synthesized urea, destroying the concept of Vitalism – the idea that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things. In 1833, Anselme Payen isolated the first enzyme, diastase. Most significantly, for social and political purposes, was the 1859 introduction by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace of the theory of evolution by natural selection. For the first time, it became possible to imagine that the mechanized complexity of life as we know it is the result of purely material and wholly unguided processes. This new possibility electrified the scientific community and had a profound effect on public consciousness. As Dr. James Le Fanu wrote in his engaging work on this topic, “Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves,” science was triumphant – almost.
A funny thing happened on the way to materialist hegemony: the more scientists discovered, the less explicable certain facets of the natural world became. For instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, biologist Earnst Haeckel conceived of the cell as “a simple little lump of albuminous carbon,” easily produced from inanimate material. The invention of the electron microscope in 1931 laid that quaint notion to rest. The subsequent decades have piled us high with new understandings of the staggering complexity of the functional nano-machines that rule the world of the cell. These machines are capable of producing thousands of proteins (highly complex, task-oriented biological compounds) per second, per cell. Some scientific thinkers wonder whether or not Darwin’s theory is equal to the task of generating an object of this sort in the time frame that it arose.
“Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe” (Nobel laureate Christian de Duve, Tour of a Living Cell).
The Human Genome
The Human Genome Project was undertaken to uncover the blueprints of life. It was thought that if the genomic information was “unpacked” and cataloged we would be able to articulate an adequate scientific explanation of the human experience. It didn’t work out that way. One surprise was the discovery that humans share 98 percent of their genome with the humble field mouse. What, then, accounts for the rather severe physiological and cognitive differences between us and our rodent companions? We don’t know. It seems as though opening one box has simply revealed another. This is how science historian Evelyn Fox Keller put it:
“We lulled ourselves into believing that in discovering the basis for genetic information we had found the ‘secret of life’; we were confident that if we could only decode the message in the sequence of chemicals, we would understand the ‘program’ that makes an organism what it is. But now there is at least tacit acknowledgement of how large that gap between genetic ‘information’ and biological meaning really is.”
A very recent addendum to these discoveries is that science has now essentially laid to rest the idea of “Junk DNA” – the assumption that the bulk of the human genome contains mostly useless fragments of non-coding DNA sequencing produced by eons of Darwinian action. As this is not an expected outcome of the classical Darwinian model, this new development seems to have struck a nerve in the anti-Paley community.
One would do well to stand silently awed by the intellectual achievement of the likes of Newton, Maxwell, Einstein and others. They succeeded, as precious few have, in describing crucial, fundamental properties of existence – their force of mind piercing though layers of shroud. Einstein was especially eager to simplify all of these forces into a single “unified field theory,” a goal which eluded his genius and all those who have subsequently attempted it. Once again, in the wake of cognitive achievements of immense proportions, when (some) physicists walked proudly, confident that all but the finishing touches on a complete grasp of the workings of our universe were on the cusp of discovery, the universe took a step back, retreated to obscurity and thwarted the materialists expectations. The more that was discovered, the stranger matters became. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle was one obvious example. It was also soon noted that the properties that allow for life’s development seemed uncannily precise – “fine-tuned,” as they were later described. If gravitation, or the strong or weak nuclear force or the electromagnetic force were any different than they are, life could never have arisen. Physicist John Polkinghorne has estimated that they had to be accurate to within one part in a trillion trillion – a degree of accuracy equivalent to hitting an inch wide target on the other side of the universe.
Jewish tradition teaches that the Creator of the universe is infinite and that the study of Him or his works must, perforce, be infinite as well. One who has dipped his or her foot into the sea of spiritual exploration is familiar with the feeling that we will never get ourselves on top of the pile – that no matter how far we go there will always be an infinity stretched out before us, waiting to be discovered. Perhaps that is why despite its unassailable achievement, science has not (nor will it ever) bring us to anything like a full understanding of the beautiful yet ever elusive reality laid before us.
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” – Isaac Newton
The Song of the Ocean
Science and God
Reminded By Science
Rabbi Adam Jacobs
Rabbi Adam Jacobs is the Managing Director of the Aish Center in Manhattan. He was born and raised in New York and has lived in Boston and Jerusalem, where he received his rabbinic ordination. He completed his B.A. in music from Brandeis University and has a Masters of Jazz Performance from the New England Conservatory. He is a blogger for the Huffington Post’s religion section and has a penchant for writing and teaching about the uplifting, beautiful and unexpected aspects of the Jewish tradition. He is the founder of a unique character development program called Internal Achievement and has recently published a collection of essays called The Forgotten Light. Rabbi Jacobs now lives in “the burbs” with his wife Penina and their five children.
(3) victoria anderson-throop, January 10, 2013 5:06 PM
the element of time
there is a certain futility in the ceaseless seeking of a finite universe without a REASON other than to disprove presence of the watchmaker. it seems that an equal amount of time need be spent on the preservation of the known--ie the fragile environment of man and concern for the welfare of the suffering. Intellectual curiosity is a gift--however life needs to be lived in perspective to appreciate its fullest joys.
(2) Anonymous, October 17, 2012 8:11 AM
I enjoyed your article, but nothing in the article supports your assertion: "Perhaps that is why despite its unassailable achievement, science has not (nor will it ever) bring us to anything like a full understanding of the beautiful yet ever elusive reality laid before us." I'm especially intrigued by your "nor will it ever" certainty. What is the basis of that particular certainty? If you are implying that it is because the world HaShem created is infinite, wouldn't the discovery that the world is "really" finite (as some mathematical physicists have asserted) remove one's certainty? Why couldn't it be that HaShem's universe is ultimately knowable? Maybe that's what Olam HaBa has to offer!
(1) Ben Holmes, October 17, 2012 4:51 AM
Nature, God's Creation, is so magnificent. I simply don't understand in atheism or materialistic culture. Simply sojourning along a beaten path through the woods, standing at the base in awe of the eternal mountains, should and can convert even the most stubborn hearts to God.
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Why London doesn’t need the Garden Bridge
Gavin Stamp
A digital rendering showing Thomas Heatherwick's proposed Garden Bridge across the Thames from the South Bank. Image: courtesy Arup
From the February issue of Apollo: preview and subscribe here
From old London Bridge to the Ponte Vecchio, bridges have often owed their architectural interest to unorthodox secondary functions. But the proposed Garden Bridge over the Thames is impractical as a park and misguided as a river crossing.
When Antonio Canova visited London in 1815, he reported that the new Strand Bridge across the Thames, then nearing completion, was ‘the noblest bridge in the world, worth a visit from the remotest corners of the earth’. The bridge had been promoted by a public company and was designed by John Rennie. Built of granite, with nine elliptical arches and pairs of tough Greek Doric columns buttressing the piers, it was certainly a noble structure and by the time it was opened by the Prince Regent on the second anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo it had been renamed after that great victory. But this Waterloo Bridge has gone, replaced in the 1930s by the London County Council after much controversy. It seems typical of the way things are done in London that so beautiful a bridge should have been demolished, while the Hungerford Bridge carrying the railway into Charing Cross is still there, despite it being regarded as hideous and offensive ever since it was opened in 1864 (although Claude Monet found it a worthy subject in the London fog).
Old Waterloo Bridge, London, designed by John Rennie and opened in 1817. Photo: Sims & Co., c. 1925–34
For the first four decades of the 20th century, architects and planners endlessly debated what to do about the Hungerford Bridge. Innumerable schemes were produced to draw the railway back to Waterloo and replace the iron lattice girder structure with a fine new bridge from a replanned South Bank to Trafalgar Square. Had a Charing Cross Road Bridge been built, old Waterloo Bridge might have been spared, but despite all the reports and endearing perspective drawings nothing was done. The manifest inadequacy of the Hungerford Bridge as a pedestrian crossing was only solved by the addition of the admirable flanking cable-stayed bridges designed by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands and completed in 2002.
With this in mind, it seems extraordinary that the scheme for a new and unconventional pedestrian crossing should have been granted planning permission by both Westminster and Lambeth Councils in just a couple of years and after little public debate. This is the proposed Garden Bridge, which will run from Temple to the South Bank between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges. Costing some £175 million and designed by the Heatherwick Studio with Arup and garden designer Dan Pearson, its copper-clad structure will fan out from just two piers in the Thames.
Good bridges are dynamic as they connect two sides of a river and are intended for movement, but this Garden Bridge is conceived as a sort of park for people to linger in. The least satisfactory part of the design is that it fails properly to engage with either bank of the Thames; it is suspended in the air at each end, with stairs and a lift shaft for access coming down on top of Temple underground station on the north side and on top of a new building on the southern embankment.
This very expensive but not very elegant bridge, described by its promoter Joanna Lumley as being ‘like a tiara on the head of our fabulous city’, is really no more than a tourist attraction. Yet £60 million of public money has already been promised towards it at a time of cuts and austerity. Perhaps this is because the idea came from a glamorous actress and is supported by a flamboyant and ambitious Mayor of London, while Thomas Heatherwick has a deserved reputation as an imaginative designer (his new London double-decker bus is terrific).
But this money would surely be better spent on a new bridge that is actually needed in London, such as the proposed pedestrian crossing from Nine Elms to Pimlico between Vauxhall and Chelsea Bridges, for which a competition has recently been announced by Wandsworth Council. Furthermore, Westminster planners considered that ‘there can be little doubt that the garden bridge will cause significant harm to established views of importance’, namely those of St Paul’s Cathedral, especially as trees are intended to rise from the wider areas over the piers (surely improbably in windswept mid-river). Westminster also insists that the bridge remains free, although it may be closed at times for private functions to generate income towards the estimated annual £3.5 million maintenance cost. And if the Garden Bridge Trust should fail, maintenance will become the responsibility of Transport for London, i.e. the taxpayer. The precedents are not auspicious: the tolls on old Waterloo Bridge never generated enough to recoup the huge building costs and in 1877 the Metropolitan Board of Works bought the bridge to open it free of toll.
Khaju Bridge in Isfahan, Iran, constructed in c. 1650 for Shah Abbas II. Photo: the author, 1974
All this said, the idea of an unorthodox river crossing remains appealing. There are bridges that thrillingly combine road and rail, such as those taking the Métro across the Seine in Paris and the amazing gothic Oberbaumbrücke for the U-Bahn crossing the Spree in Berlin. The principal example is Robert Stephenson’s High Level Bridge in Newcastle, which opened in 1850 and is one of several dramatic crossings of the Tyne from Newcastle to Gateshead. Then there are the ‘inhabited’ bridges, which combine a thoroughfare with shops and houses. There is the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, where, above the three stone arches crossing the Arno, there is a building with a continuous roof, with houses hanging from the sides. More coherent is the superb Khaju Bridge in Isfahan, a masterpiece of Persian Safavid architecture. Both bridge and weir, it crosses the wide Zayandeh river and supports a continuous arcaded building with a pavilion for Shah Abbas in the centre. But the principal and most wonderful example must be old London Bridge, the medieval arched structure that supported buildings of up to seven stories – houses and shops – along most of its length, with further interest given by a midstream chapel and gate towers at either end.
The idea of the inhabited bridge has often appealed to architects when an orderly composition of colonnades and arches could be made to rise above a structural arch. The obvious example is the Rialto in Venice, and then there are all those Palladian bridges – following a model not by Palladio – to be found in country estates in Britain, Russia and elsewhere. But most of these designs remained on paper. John Soane won the Royal Academy’s Gold Medal in 1776 with his drawings for a Triumphal Bridge, all domed temples and colonnades – a fantastic design which, to judge by Joseph Gandy’s later perspectives of it, was never intended for the Thames. More realistic was the serious scheme by Edwin Lutyens, abandoned in 1913, for a municipal art gallery in Dublin. Clearly inspired by Palladio, this envisaged two galleries containing the art collection offered by Sir Hugh Lane, separated by colonnades over a bridge crossing the river Liffey.
On a larger scale, such structures crossing the Thames would of course affect views of St Paul’s, but would be more appropriate both to the cathedral and the setting than the silly and surely impractical clumps of trees and bushes on the Garden Bridge. And, given the modern British mania for shopping, a bridge lined with shops – like Robert Adam’s Pulteney Bridge across the Avon in Bath – would be more useful, more enjoyable and certainly more profitable than a pointless cross-river park. Oddly enough, a scheme of 1908 by Thomas Collcutt, architect of the Imperial Institute and the Palace Theatre, for a new Charing Cross Bridge, with the roadway lined with covered colonnades and shops, envisaged a second, identical new crossing on the other side of Waterloo Bridge, almost exactly where the Garden Bridge is proposed. Collcutt, a century ago, had a stronger grasp of the character of London and the Thames than Joanna Lumley and the Mayor.
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Catherine Hodgkinson May 2 2015 at 1:33 pm
I am very much against the proposed Garden Bridge. I think it is a vanity project and is both ridiculous and pointless. I am surprised that it seems to be gathering support. I believe we have more parks and green spaces in London than any major city in the world so this bridge is superfluous.
If we really need another bridge the money would be better spent on a conventional bridge (road or rail + pedestrian). London is a rapidly growing city and we need to concentrate on our infrastructure. Would you be willing to set up a petition for those who are not in favour of the Garden bridge?
Paul W Jul 24 2015 at 10:48 am
For those of us living in or near the Northern (horse)Powerhouse spending £175M on, as you correctly state, a vanity project is sickening. A fraction of that money would go a long way to improving our transport systems.
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The work is central to the identity of the cash-strapped school
All the evidence suggests that the real challenge for historic properties is to present a much fuller and more complex account of the past
The meaning of tens of thousands of recently discovered rock paintings in Colombia will be a hotly debated topic for many years to come
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‘Night Stalker: the Hunt for a Serial Killer’ is fraught with blood and gore
Kashmiris raise alarm over land purchase law
Kashmiris raise alarm over land purchase law /node/1755586/world
Kashmiris at a damaged house after a gunbattle in Srinagar on Wednesday. Two suspected rebels were killed during a gunfight with security forces. (AP)
https://arab.news/4nf75
New Delhi amendment ‘leaves region up for sale,’ critics warn
NEW DELHI: Jammu and Kashmir residents have voiced concerns over the future of the region after New Delhi pushed through a new controversial change in the region’s land laws.
The move was labeled an “attack” on the Kashmiri identity and an attempt to confiscate land in the disputed territory.
“Unacceptable amendments to the land ownership laws of Jammu and Kashmir. The region is now up for sale and the poorer landowners will suffer,” former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah tweeted on Tuesday.
It follows a statement by the Ministry of Home Affairs, which said that the Union Territory (UT) of “Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization (Adaptation of Central Laws) Third Order, 2020 shall come into force with immediate effect, and will encourage development.”
Under the new law, non-Kashmiris can buy land in the territory — a first for the region — for residential, industrial or educational purposes, but not for agricultural use. The move has sparked anxiety among residents in the valley and across Jammu.
“I am speechless,” Srinagar-based lawyer Deeba Ashraf told Arab News.
“Kashmir has been different from other parts of India because we had certain exclusive constitutional rights, but this new land law feels like one more assault on our unique identity,” Ashraf said.
However, federally appointed Lt. Gov. of Jammu and Kashmir, Manoj Sinha, said on Tuesday that the new law will ensure “progress, development and employment” in the region.
“On the areas identified as industrial areas, we want good industries to come up here, like in the rest of the country, so that there is progress, development and employment,” Sinha said.
Tuesday’s announcement comes a year after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government abrogated the special status of the constitution and nullified Article 370 and 35A of the statute, which gave Kashmiris limited autonomy and protected their domicile and employment rights.
After the repeal of Kashmir’s special status, the state was divided into two territories, Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir, with all democratic and political activities suspended for several months.
“These changes in land laws are the natural consequences after the abrogation of the special status of Kashmir and change in the constitution,” Jammu-based advocate Subhash Chander Gupta told Arab News.
He added that the central government is “apprehensive,” and thinks that “unless we do like this we would not be succeeding in
our efforts.”
Gupta said: “New Delhi is not allowing things to happen naturally. It is thrusting upon and creating more anger among the people of Kashmir. I don’t think these new laws are appreciable.”
He added that the change in land law is also creating an “element of fear” among the people of Jammu.
“Earlier, the people of Jammu felt that it is a fight between New Delhi and Srinagar, but now they realize that the promises made by New Delhi are not coming true. Ultimately, if the land has to go, the land of the non-Muslim area will also go,” Gupta warned.
The move was met with a strong reaction from several political quarters in Kashmir, with some terming the latest change as “unacceptable.”
Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister of Kashmir before it transitioned into two federally administered units, labeled the decision “nefarious.”
Mufti tweeted: “Another step that’s part of the government’s nefarious designs to disempower and disenfranchise the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”
Meanwhile, a displaced Kashmiri Pandit from the valley’s Hindu community, who migrated to another part of the country when the security situation worsened in the 1990s, told Arab News that he felt “betrayed” by the new land law.
“I feel betrayed. The government wants to snatch our land to give to outsiders and leave people like us in limbo. This is inconceivable,” New Delhi-based Satish Mahaldar, said.
However, the BJP said the decision was “welcome change” that would strengthen the unity of the country.
“Not only would there be investors coming to the region, but also a strengthening of the unity and integrity of the nation,” Jammu-based BJP leader and former deputy chief minister Kavindra Gupta told Arab News.
He added that “the leaders in the valley who are opposing the move speak the language of Pakistan and China.”
But political experts have said the new laws will “mean nothing” if the Kashmir dispute is left ignored.
The region is divided between India and Pakistan, who have fought two conflicts over the disputed territory.
“The dispute involves India, China and Pakistan. We have to rise above, see the reason, address the dispute, find a way out and ensure stability in the region, rather than make laws which mean nothing as far as the dispute is concerned,” Prof. Abdul Gani Bhat, former leader of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, told Arab News.
He added that there was an immediate need to preserve “a sense of history.”
Bhat said: “Kashmir is a dispute which needs a solution in the interests of international stability. Unless you do that you will not serve your own country and your own interests.”
Srinagar-based political analyst Gowhar Geelani compared the situation in the valley to the conditions Gaza residents face.
“People in Kashmir are already feeling what the people in Gaza feel: No resources, choking of resources, tightening of opinion, barricading at every stage and securitization. Once we go out of home even for a short drive, we have to cross multiple checkpoints and it feels like you are in a prison,” he told Arab News.
Topics: kashmiris New delhi
Kashmiris reject India’s militant rehab plan
Anti-India clashes after troops kill 2 rebels in Kashmir
Emirates stops flights to three major Australian cities /node/1793666/world
Updated 2 min 11 sec ago
DUBAI: Emirates has suspended flights to Australia’s three largest cities as the country further restricts international arrivals over fears of new virus strains.
The Dubai-based carrier was one of the last to maintain routes into and out of the country’s east coast throughout most of the pandemic but on Friday evening told travelers a handful of planned flights next week would be the last.
“Due to operational reasons, Emirates flights to/from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne will be suspended until further notice,” Emirates said on its website.
The airline will still run two flights a week to Perth, but the cuts are another barrier for tens of thousands of stranded Australians still attempting to return home.
The Australian government responded by announcing more repatriation flights and said other carriers still flying services to the cities could fill the gap.
“The capacity that Emirates was able to use within the cap will be allocated to other airlines, ensuring that there are still as many tickets, as many seats available into Australia,” Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said.
A small number of airlines — including Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines — are still running services to Australia but local media were already reporting delays and cancelations among returning travelers.
Australia’s borders have effectively been closed since March to curb the spread of the virus, with the government even limiting the number of citizens allowed to return.
Last week travel restrictions were further tightened, with arrival numbers slashed and all travelers into the country requiring a negative Covid-19 test before flying.
In making the changes, Prime Minister Scott Morrison cited a growing number of people in quarantine testing positive for new strains of Covid-19.
Fears that a variant of the virus from Britain, believed to be more contagious, had leaked into Brisbane from hotel quarantine triggered a snap lockdown in the city last week.
“There are many unknowns and uncertainties in relation to the new strain, and so that’s why this precautionary approach, we believe, is very sensible,” Morrison said.
Australia continues to deal relatively well with the virus, having recorded about 28,600 cases and 909 deaths linked to Covid-19 in a population of 25 million.
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Benefit Dinner 2012 Awardees
John F. W. Rogers
Executive Vice President, Goldman Sachs
John F.W. Rogers serves as executive vice president, the firm’s chief of staff and secretary to the Board of Directors. He oversees executive administration and is responsible for the firm’s corporate affairs functions, including public, investor and government relations, as well as corporate engagement. Rogers is a member of the Management Committee and the Client and Business Standards Committee. He is also chairman of the Goldman Sachs Foundation and Goldman Sachs Gives. Rogers joined Goldman Sachs in 1994. He was named managing director in 1997 and partner in 2000. Rogers’ career began in public service with roles in the White House and Treasury and as an under secretary of state at the U.S. Department of State from 1991 to 1993. In 1985, Rogers was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal — the second highest civilian award in the United States. Since the inception of 10,000 Women in 2008, Rogers has been intimately involved in overseeing the development and implementation of this program. He has traveled to Egypt a number of times, most recently as the commencement speaker at a 10,000 Women graduation ceremony.
Perihan Abou-Zeid ’09
Co-founder and Communications Director, Qabila Media Productions
Perihan Abou-Zeid ’09 is the co-founder and communications director of Qabila Media Productions, a media content creator that capitalizes on crowdsourcing and digital media to produce content that bridges the gap between entertainment and the intellectual needs of target audiences. She also works with Google as an account strategist, where she builds and optimizes online advertising strategies for clients in Saudi Arabia. A few months after her graduation, she founded the first online supermarket in Egypt, which will be relaunched by the end of 2012. She also worked at the Canadian Embassy in the commercial section, and at TE Data, a leading Internet service provider in Egypt, as human resource communications supervisor, managing employer branding and internal communications.
Holder of a bachelor’s in business administration from AUC, Abou-Zeid has four years of experience in online marketing and communication. She won several awards in academic excellence, leadership and entrepreneurship. Most recently, she received the Best Female Entrepreneur Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum – Pan Arab Region, where her venture, Qabila Media Productions, won the first runner-up award. Outside of the professional world, Abou-Zeid loves nothing more than adventurous traveling. She has been to more than 40 cities around the world, where she participated in various activities including skydiving, bungee jumping and hiking. A professional basketball player for eight years, Abou-Zeid also enjoys telling stories through writing. She published several articles in local Egyptian magazines.
Mustafa Abdel-Wadood ’91
Chief Executive Officer, Abraaj Group Limited
Mustafa Abdel-Wadood ’91 is chief executive officer, member of the board of directors and vice chair of the executive committee at Abraaj Group Limited.
He is responsible for overseeing firm investments and teams spanning across several industries and regions, including the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Abdel-Wadood has 20 years of experience in the fields of investment management, corporate finance and business development throughout emerging markets, particularly in the Middle East. In 2002, he was selected by the World Economic Forum as one of the 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow, and as a Young Global Leader in 2007. Holder of a bachelor’s in business administration from AUC and an MBA from Georgetown University, Abdel-Wadood received an Alumni Achievement Award from AUC in 2008. Demonstrating his commitment to his alma mater, he established the Mustafa Abdel-Wadood Public School Scholarship at AUC.
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Home > Press/Journalists > Press Releases > 2000 > Films at the National Archives in September
Films at the National Archives in September
Press Release · Friday, August 11, 2000
In September, the National Archives and Records Administration presents a film screening relating to the current exhibition "Picturing the Century" and three special screenings as part of its Constitution Week celebration.
The screenings will be held in the theater of the National Archives Building, Pennsylvania Avenue between 7th and 9th Streets, NW, and in the auditorium at the National Archives at College Park, located at 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD. All programs are free and open to the public. Free parking is available at the National Archives at College Park.
Washington, DC Films
Friday, September 8-Picturing the Century
Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, released in 1963. Produced by Robert Drew for ABC News, this landmark documentary shows the confrontation between the Kennedy administration and Governor George Wallace over the integration of the University of Alabama. Crisis was one of the earliest films in the cinema verité movement of documentary filmmaking, made possible by the increasing mobility of 16mm camera and sound equipment. (60 minutes.) Noon. Theater.
Thursday, September 21-Constitution Week
Thomas Jefferson, released in 1997 (part 1). In conjunction with Constitution Week activities, NARA presents this two-part documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns. Part 1 portrays the young Jefferson from the Virginia wilderness, transformed by the philosophic fire of the American Revolution. Torn between his career and family life at Monticello, he suffers heartrending personal loss even as he pens a new concept in democratic government. (90 minutes.) Noon. Theater.
1776, released in 1972. America's first Congress and the struggle for independence from Britain form the framework for this film version of the Tony Award-winning stage musical by Sherman Adams and Peter Stone. The film stars most of the original Broadway cast, including William Daniels as John Adams and Howard da Silva as Benjamin Franklin. Directed by Peter H. Hunt. (141 minutes.) 6:30 p.m. Theater.
Friday, September 22-Constitution Week
Thomas Jefferson, released in 1997 (part 2). Follow Jefferson's rising star as he becomes U.S. Minister to France, enters national politics, fulfills his destiny as President, and begins his busy retirement years. (90 minutes.) Noon. Theater.
College Park, MD Film
(For a description of the College Park film, see September 8 listing)
Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (60 minutes.) Noon. Auditorium.
For press information contact the National Archives Public and Media Communications Staff at 202-357-5300.
Connect with the National Archives on:
Twitter: @USNatArchives
Facebook: USNationalArchives
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Instagram: usnatarchives
This page was last reviewed on October 16, 2019.
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Argus Leader staff
South Dakota State men's basketball took care of business Sunday at Frost Arena, downing the University of Mary, 78-54, in front of 1,248 fans.
The Jackrabbits (2-0) shot 42.9 percent from the field and got to the line 32 times, hitting 22 free throws as a team.
SDSU's defense forced 14 turnovers and limited Mary to 28.3 percent shooting from the field. The Marauders did not hit a field goal in the final 5:46 of the game.
State went plus-14 on the boards and scored 18 second-chance points off of 13 offensive rebounds.
Mike Daum led the way with a 22-point, 13-rebound double-double, adding a career-high three blocks in the effort. It was his 12th career double-double and 33rd game with 20 or more points.
David Jenkins Jr. dropped 13 points for his second-consecutive double-figure scoring performance, hitting two 3-pointers while Ian Theisen put up 10 points and five rebounds in 15 minutes off the bench.
Reed Tellinghuisen just missed a double-double of his own, adding nine points and nine boards on the day.
Brandon Key dished four assists with five points while Tevin King grabbed seven boards, dished two assists and came up with two steals.
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Arnold Henry, (February 11, 1985), former NCAA Division I basketball player, is now a proud father, a children's author, an entrepreneur, a social media influencer, a motivational speaker and a skill development basketball trainer. He is currently residing in Canada with his wife and their two sons. Growing up on the rough streets in Saint Lucia, he excelled in Track and Field, representing the island at numerous regional sports meet. Later, he grew a desire for basketball, becoming an island champion at the 2000 Inter-Secondary Basketball Tournament. Just before graduating from High School, Mr. Henry was a recipient of the 2001 National Junior Male Basketball Player of the Year award. After only spending one year at a Community College (2002-2003), Mr. Henry accepted a basketball scholarship at Massanutten Military Academy, a prep-school located in Woodstock, Virginia USA. In 2004, he accepted an offer from the University of Vermont, where Mr. Henry became the first Saint Lucian to earn a full basketball scholarship at the NCAA Division I level.
In spring 2009, Mr. Henry obtained his bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems. It was then he started chasing his passion for writing and transforming his journals into a memoir. His debut publication, Hanging On To My Dreams, was published in 2011, followed by the sequel, Rebirth, which was published in 2015—two books that caters to youth empowerment and rising against all odds. Before becoming a published children's author in 2018, Mr. Henry had to face a harsh rejection letter that stated, “…stories on African-American fathers is a tough sell.” Today, he is living his dreams while promoting fatherhood with his publications: Daddy's Mini-Me and Patiently Waiting for Hope. When he’s not writing, Mr. Henry spends most of his time visiting schools and reading to children, as well as sharing his joy as a family man on Instagram. He has held multiple book signings and motivational speaking engagements in cities across Canada, England, USA, Mexico, India and Saint Lucia. He was one of the featured authors of Calgary’s 16th annual Wordfest. He also enjoys volunteering his time using his words of empowerment to motivate at risk youths of selected programs.
© 2020 Arnold Henry | Privacy Policy | Conditions of Use
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PRINT December 2016
Left: Master of Buafle, gu (beautiful woman) mask, southern Guro region (Ivory Coast), nineteenth century. Right: Bo nun amuin (bush gods) helmet mask, Baule region (Ivory Coast), early twentieth century.
THREE AMBITIOUS EXHIBITIONS and their equally ambitious catalogues (all published by Scheidegger & Spiess) appeared in Europe and New York in this centenary year of Dada—along with a little companion publication from just before. One stood out because it brought the usual sprawling cast of characters into sharp focus and unexpected conversations: “Dada Africa: Dialogue with the Other” at the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, and the Berlinische Galerie. Not that that cast isn’t all over the rest: “Dadaglobe Reconstructed” (at the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Museum of Modern Art, New York), “Genesis Dada: 100 Years of Dada Zurich” (at the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Remagen, Germany), and Dada Hand Book, which was based on the exhibition “Dada in Nuce” at the Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich. All over, and today scattered in pieces. As I write, the New York Times reports on tours of the Berlin apartment of the singular Dada poet Walter Serner, murdered with his wife by the Nazis in Latvia in 1942.
In 1924, the Marxist sociologist Henri Lefebvre, then in his early twenties, published his first piece, which he called “a portrait of dada.” “It brought me a lasting friendship with Tristan Tzara,” he recalled in 1975, speaking of the man who, along with Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Hans Arp, Marcel Janco, and Richard Huelsenbeck, had launched a proof, in the Cabaret Voltaire in the first months of 1916, that delight and rage could be the same thing. Trumpeting the word dada as both the offer of and the answer to all questions, Tzara had arrived in Paris in 1920 to spread the word all over the world. “I had written, ‘Dada smashes the world, but the pieces are fine,’” Lefebvre went on. “Each time I ran into Tristan Tzara, he’d say to me: ‘So? You’re picking up the pieces! Do you plan to put them back together?’ I always answered: ‘No—I’m going to finish smashing them.’”
But Tzara was already picking up the pieces. In 1921, following Huelsenbeck’s Dada Almanach (1920)—a blazing international anthology that kicked off with Tzara’s own “Chronique Zurichoise, 1915–1919”—Tzara conceived Dadaglobe. He invited contributions—poetry, manifestos, drawings, comic dialogues, self-portraits, artworks of every sort, anything that could go on a page or three—including Arp and Max Ernst’s prophetic Physiomythologisches Diluvialbild (FATAGAGA), a cut-up that pictured a bird, a man with a bird for a head flexing his right bicep, and a woman with her right arm raised to the frame. Apparently because of an intervention by Huelsenbeck, who was feuding with Tzara over the discovery of the magic word dada, Francis Picabia withdrew his backing and the book was never published. Tzara died in 1963 at sixty-seven.
Now his Dadaglobe has been reconstructed as an exhibition and a 160-page scrapbook (edited by Adrian Sudhalter, Cathérine Hug, Martina Pfister, and Franziska Lentzsch), with contributions in their original languages and 143 poorly designed and crowded sans-serif pages of scholarly apparatus and commentary. It’s hard to imagine it landing in 1921 with less of a thud than it does now. Unlike Huelsenbeck, who searched for the best stuff he could find to the point that a reader could barely encounter a dull entry, Tzara opened a field of self-promotion, of art-world name making, and people from Louis Aragon to Fried-Hardy Worm (as the alphabetical opening page would have it) came up with cutely elaborate jokes, collages, photographs, drawings, and puerile shouts that sit flatly on the page. There’s an air of desperation to the whole show—a sense of be-there-or-be-square combined with a sense that most of those who showed up had spent ten minutes rummaging around for something to send in. The notion of Dada as a force, a spirit, a haunt that Huelsenbeck declared in 1920 “stood head and shoulders above all present”—even if, as he put it, “no one had yet found out exactly what Dada was”—is altogether missing. Dada, Huelsenbeck said after the cabaret was shuttered and the more genteel, professional Zurich Galerie Dada had opened and closed, “could no longer be arranged with the precision demanded by a businesslike conduct of the Dadaist movement in art.” But that was precisely what Dadaglobe would have been: a big book of oversize business cards.
As if taking their cue from Huelsenbeck’s happy failure to say what Dada was, many of the essays in Genesis Dada (edited by Astrid von Asten, Sylvie Kyeck, and Adrian Notz) sing with a heady affirmation of Dada’s own incomprehensibility: a desire less to answer questions than to dramatize them (often with diagrams by Notz, the head of the present-day Cabaret Voltaire, that are so strict they are, no doubt on purpose, almost impossible to follow). There is Hayat Erdoğan’s “Critique of Impractical Reason” (“Kant—he is the archenemy,” Ball wrote), with a startling line about European intellectuals from the Austrian critic Rudolf Kassner that Ball took as a testament to the necessity of Dada: “As if they thought because they did not love.” There is Astrid von Asten’s determinedly sober essay on Arp, with an openness to anything signaled by its title: “Arp and Dada—A ‘Win-Win Situation.’” There is the tunnel back to paganism in Jutta Mattern’s “Arcadia—The Longing That Stays: Monte Verità and the Life Reform Movement,” about a utopian cult, beginning in the late nineteenth century, that the Dadaists saw as a mirror of their own obsessions, and ending with an excavation of the dance theorist Rudolf Laban’s 1917 Song to the Sun, in which the artist and Cabaret Voltaire performer Sophie Taeuber-Arp took part while Ball, Arp, and Janco watched: a twelve-hour torchlight dance that began at sunset, finished at dawn, and covered miles, with the dancers in body masks made by Janco out of grass and twigs. There is the philosopher-curator Stefan Zweifel’s bumper-car disquisition, “Nefer-Kheperu-Wa-En-Re: The Solar Sail of Black Madness,” in which, after dating the origins of Dada sound poetry to Pharaoh Akhenaten in 1350 BCE, he catches the essence of Dadaist ambitions in a gloss on Nietzsche—“Joy should not last for an eternity but rather be so intense for a moment that for its own sake one wishes the return of all of life’s moments,” a thought that really should not be separated from the speed with which Zweifel plays with it:
Nietzsche’s eternal return heralds: all joy wants eternity. But this was not a sentence intended to decorate the sugar sachets of Sprüngli, whose chocolate he critically compared to that of Van Houten; it was an impertinence. Joy should not last for an eternity but rather be so intense for a moment that for its own sake one wishes the return of all of life’s moments, up to the eternal return of the anti-Semitic goose Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, for him the worst possible argument against the principle of return, because, as he realised in his final moments before his mental breakdown or break out: “I am just now having all anti-Semites shot.”
Oops, the anti-Semite Hugo Ball barely missed getting hit by one of Nietzsche’s bullets and read his work in Zurich, along with the writings of the Marquis de Sade, in June 1916 in order to psych himself up for his performance as a sound poet.
Like the other essayists in Genesis Dada, Zweifel can take a deep breath, calm down, and make the oldest Dada commentary sound fresh. If the masks Janco made for performances in the Cabaret Voltaire ultimately led the Dadaists to question their own identities, in its most frenzied moments the “dialectic of this negation led to self-dissolution. They had reported for duty in the name of the Enlightenment and in the name of Voltaire to protest against the madness of the war. But the ‘yes’ directed at Voltaire and the Enlightenment is reversed mirror-imaged in three steps to a great ‘no’ to the whole of Western civilisation.”
Dada throws down the baton; Dada picks it up. “Dada Africa: Dialogue with the Other” in Zurich at the Museum Rietberg was a serpentine show, stunningly re-created in its gorgeous catalogue, where you could get lost navigating between an African sculpture and a Hannah Höch collage. It was less a travelogue of originals and appropriations, inspirations and results, than a dance of auras, where what came across most of all was a delirium of creativity—a play of transformation, disguise, imposture, the living and the named speaking to the dead and the unknown, who weren’t listening. Nothing held still. Faces in artworks looked, at each other. As a visitor, one looked too, and then the faces smiled, as if in acknowledgment, as the visitor tried to keep up with the game.
The numerous strong essays in the catalogue don’t miss this sense of adventure. They are modest in attitude and persistent in trying to get inside both the motives and the cross-cultural fantasies of the Dada artists—especially Höch, Taeuber-Arp, and, to a lesser extent, Janco—and the art they threw themselves into (and that, you feel, threw itself into them). There is so much here that few will know: Roger van Wyk and Kathryn Smith’s “Dada South? Experimentation, Radicalism and Resistance: The Anatomy of an Exhibition in South Africa” is only one surprise. The illustrations glow.
It’s too bad that, presumably for trademark reasons, the nicely sketchy, effectively instructional, and happily noisy Dada Hand Book, compiled by Adrian Notz and Yael Wicki and published by Cabaret Voltaire in 2015, can’t call itself what it is: “Dada for Beginners.” Then it could have ended with one of Dada’s best slogans: “With Dada, we are all beginners.” No one knows who said it first.
“Dada Africa: Dialogue with the Other” was organized by Ralf Burmeister, Michaela Oberhofer, and Esther Tisa Francini; the catalogue was edited by the curators and published by Scheidegger & Spiess.
Greil Marcus is a contributing editor of Artforum.
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General Publications September 1, 2020
“PE Credit Considerations After IntegraMed Ch. 7 Ruling,” Law360, September 1, 2020
Michael G. Parisi
Jonathan T. Edwards
Adam R. Monich
Extracted from Law360.
In recent years, medical practices have increasingly attracted private equity investors seeking to consolidate various specialty practices, which typically borrow money to effectuate their strategy.
A controversial ruling in a recent Chapter 7 case in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, In re: IntegraMed Holding Corp.,[1] has caused both private equity investors and secured lenders to reexamine the perceived collateral packages securing such credit facilities.
The IntegraMed Case
IntegraMed, a private equity-backed manager of physician clinics and specialty outpatient health care facilities, routinely entered into management service agreements, or MSAs, with medical practices whereby the physicians associated with the practice would practice medicine and IntegraMed would manage billing and collections, long-term strategy, budgeting, marketing, hiring and business development.
IntegraMed filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on May 20. With the intent to liquidate assets for the benefit of IntegraMed's creditors, the Chapter 7 trustee filed a motion to sell substantially all of IntegraMed's assets free and clear of liens, claims and encumbrances under Section 363(f) of the Bankruptcy Code.
As part of the sale motion, the trustee sought to assume and assign the MSAs to a prospective third-party purchaser. Nine medical practices counterparty to MSAs with IntegraMed objected to the sale, arguing that Section 365(c)(1) barred the trustee from assuming and assigning the MSAs without their consent. The IntegraMed court held that Section 365(c)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code barred the trustee from assuming and assigning certain of the MSAs as part of an upcoming auction of IntegraMed's assets.
As a general rule, when a debtor files for bankruptcy, the trustee, or debtor-in-possession, has the option of assuming, assuming and assigning, or rejecting the debtor's executory contracts, despite any provision in the contract that limits its assignability. This is a valuable tool for a debtor or trustee, especially in a sale of substantially all the debtor's assets.
Section 365(c)(1), however, provides one of the few limitations on the debtor's ability to assume and assign its executory contracts. Specifically, the trustee may not assume or assign an executory contract, whether or not the contract prohibits or restricts assignment of rights or delegation of duties, if applicable nonbankruptcy law excuses a nondebtor party to the contract from accepting performance from or rendering performance to an entity other than the debtor or debtor-in-possession.
The classic example of a type of contract that falls within the Section 365(c)(1) exception is a personal service contract, which is a contract unique to the performer.
In a July 10 bench ruling, the Delaware bankruptcy court held that the debtor's MSAs fell within the scope of Section 365(c)(1) and therefore could not be assumed and assigned as part of the trustee's sale of IntegraMed's assets.
In particular, the court opined that the MSAs "involve relationships of personal trust in which the character, reputation, skill and discretion of [the debtor] is necessary to render performance" and were therefore barred from assignment under Section 365(c)(1). In other words, the court held that the MSAs were personal service contracts.
MSO Structural Overview
To protect the public from perceived dangers of layperson influence, many states prohibit nonphysicians from owning medical practices or controlling the practice of medicine.
Private equity firms, however, may establish management services organizations, or MSOs — sometimes referred to as a physician practice management company or an administrative services organization — to execute on their investment strategy, in part, in those states.
An MSO generally refers to an entity that provides nonclinical practice management services to a medical practice, e.g., billing and collections, payroll, and IT services. In exchange for the ongoing provision of management and administrative services, the MSO receives a management fee.
The extent of the relationship between the medical practice and the MSO has traditionally varied depending on the type of MSO arrangement. On one end of the spectrum, an MSO might provide a limited set of services, such as revenue cycle management and IT — a vendor-like MSO structure. In this arrangement, the MSO relationship is similar to a vendor or other outsourced service provider, and the management fees are priced accordingly.
On the other end of the spectrum, an MSO might provide all services necessary to operate a medical practice short of employing professionals and overseeing the clinical operations — a comprehensive MSO structure. In this arrangement, the MSO relationship is similar to the relationship a medical practice may have with its parent companies in a vertically integrated platform (e.g., a medical practice owned by a hospital system or insurance company) in states where nonphysician ownership of a medical practice is permitted.
In each case, the medical practice enters into an MSA with the MSO. Under most comprehensive MSO structures, the medical practice, the physicians that own the medical practice and the MSO also enter into a stock transfer restriction agreement, or STRA, which is a crucial agreement governing the relationship among them.
Upon the occurrence of a triggering event (e.g., any breaches of obligations owed by the physician to the MSO or the medical practice), STRAs permit the MSO to require the transfer of a breaching physician's equity in the medical practice to another physician that is acceptable to the MSO.[2] Many MSOs and their lenders and equity investors view these additional agreements as necessary for the MSO to invest substantial resources into the practice.
Private equity firms often seek financing from banks or alternative lenders to fund (1) a portion of the initial investment by their MSO portfolio company into a platform medical practice; and (2) a growth strategy of providing management services to other medical practices in the sector.
Within the typical universe of assets pledged to a lender as collateral to secure its loans to an MSO are the rights and interests of the MSO under the MSAs and, in the case of comprehensive MSO structures, the STRAs and other additional agreements among the medical practice, physician owners and MSO.
A key underwriting assumption of most lenders that finance MSO structures is that, in a restructuring, the lenders will have the ability, whether in or out of a bankruptcy proceeding, to foreclose on the MSO's assets (including the MSO's rights in the MSAs, any STRAs and other related agreements), sell the MSO business, and in the case of comprehensive MSO structures, potentially require the medical practice to replace the existing physician owner with another physician owner approved by the lender or buyer.
Given the indirect relationship between an MSO's lenders and the medical practices, this collateral assignment to the lenders of the MSO's rights under the MSAs, STRAs and any other related agreements is critical.
A fundamental consideration of investing in MSO structures, whether through a debt or equity investment, is the need to retain the physicians at the various medical practices to continue the revenue generation and maintain the enterprise value. Restructuring MSOs presents unique challenges, and managing and incentivizing the physicians during financial distress is often a key objective.
The IntegraMed case illustrates just how delicate MSO restructurings can be and highlights why MSO lenders must understand the structure and contracts underpinning their loan.
Distinguishing IntegraMed
At first blush, the IntegraMed ruling appears to be problematic for private equity firms and lenders making equity and debt investments, respectively, in MSO structures. The court did not elaborate on how it might analyze other MSAs in MSO structures.
Any general proposition that MSAs cannot be freely assigned in a bankruptcy sale would eliminate one restructuring approach lenders rely on in a downside case. But certain aspects of the IntegraMed business distinguish it from the comprehensive MSO structures, which likely mitigate concern stemming from the IntegraMed ruling.
First, the IntegraMed business model appeared to resemble a vendor-like MSO structure. The medical practices subject to vendor-like MSO structures are owned by one or more physicians who are not subject to STRAs and, in a distressed scenario, often seek to repurchase their practice or otherwise terminate the MSAs.
In contrast, comprehensive MSO structures greatly reduce the risk that physician owners will attempt to terminate the MSA or object to an assignment of the MSA to a third party because the MSO — and, derivatively under the collateral assignment of the MSA and STRA, a lender — may remove and replace the physicians that own the practice.
It is also customary for the existing physician owners to receive equity in the MSO under comprehensive MSO structures, which naturally aligns interests between the existing physician owners and the MSO.
Second, all but one of the IntegraMed MSAs prohibited assignment. Although it is unclear from the ruling what impact, if any, that fact had on the court's ruling, free assignability is a standard feature of MSAs under comprehensive MSO structures and one that lenders generally require in MSO financings.
At a minimum, assignment provisions of MSAs and STRAs should clearly permit assignment. Going forward, it would be advisable to bolster the assignment provisions to expressly acknowledge that: (1) assignability is intended to apply to a sale under Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code; and (2) the contracting parties do not intend such agreements to be considered personal service contracts under Section 365(c).
Third, the court's ruling reflects that the trustee submitted little evidence to support his contention that the IntegraMed MSAs were not personal service contracts. Nor did the court have a record it could rely on to understand the market impact of MSAs.
Armed with testimony, declarations and perhaps expert testimony for how MSAs are critical to MSOs and the financing of these structures, future courts may limit Section 365(c)(1) in MSAs to its normally narrow interpretation.
Fourth, the court stated that the: "equal voice in management of the medical practice ... imbues the management company with the ability to control, through its persuasive powers or by obstruction, the destiny of the practice making the management company, in essence, like a partner or joint venture party even though the contracts say it is expressly not."
In many comprehensive MSO structures, the MSO may have the right to participate on physician advisory committees or policy boards and deliberate and assist the medical practice in making strategic decisions affecting the medical practice, including decisions about budgets, expansion, capital expenditures, long-term strategic plans, and recommendations on recruiting and staffing.
The court noted that IntegraMed, through its participation in the practice management board, had "an equal voice in all or virtually all of the non-medical aspects of the medical practices."
The court's ruling appears to suggest that participation in the medical practice's decision making can position the MSO in the role of a partner whose "singular judgment" and "discretion," as cited by the court, rise to the level of a partner providing personal services to the medical practice. These details and IntegraMed's role in the practice management board may be distinguished from other MSO arrangements.
Following the court ruling, MSOs with participation in practice management boards should revisit participation in any formal advisory committees or policymaking boards of medical practices. Similarly, MSOs should consider whether any power-of-attorney or similar rights in favor of the MSO give the MSO the ability to obstruct a medical practice's operations.
The court's ruling has not yet been appealed. But the private equity community, lenders and health care restructuring advisers are paying close attention to this ruling, and the outcome of any appeal, due to the potential impact on availability of credit, valuations and restructuring strategy.
[1] No. 1:20-bk-11169.
[2] In certain states subject to heightened regulatory scrutiny (e.g., New York), option agreements are used in lieu of STRAs, and the right to replace the "friendly physician" is held by another physician rather than the MSO itself.
Email: mike.parisi@alston.com
Email: jonathan.edwards@alston.com
Email: adam.monich@alston.com
Corporate Debt Finance
Financial Restructuring & Reorganization
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Members Treated Like Guests
Prospera CU has taken its "be our guest" philosophy and crafted an entire branch-and a brand new job position-around it.
"We have an invited guest philosophy," explained Keith Puiu, CEO of Prospera CU. "The idea is that you treat members as you would treat a guest in your home."
The credit union, like any number of CUs here in the U.S., has long had meeter/greeters in place at its branches to help smooth the way for members coming to a branch to do business.
But when Prospera embarked on putting a new branch in the upscale, artsy South Granville locale, Puiu decided to take it up a notch and created what he believes is the first full-service concierge at a credit union branch.
"We looked at some of the best hotels in the world to see how they treat their clients," he told The Credit Union Journal. "We thought the idea of a concierge was a way to enhance our 'be our guest' philosophy."
While the concierge at the South Granville location still serves as that meeter/greeter-a member's first contact upon arriving at the branch-Vicky Amyot's job description goes well beyond just pointing people in the right direction if they're looking for a loan.
"It's really a totally new concept," Amyot suggested. "This is a very funky, artsy, unique area. A big part of my job is keeping up with what's happening in the area."
That's because Amyot is as likely to make a reservation for you at the hottest new restaurant in town as she is to help you find the collections department.
"This meshes in with what we've done at all our branches-warm interiors with a fireplace, a TV, water features, it's all part of creating a comfortable and inviting environment. The concierge just takes this to another level. This is about providing excellence in service," Puiu related. "I came from the banking industry, and I don't believe banks do this very well. Many branches are so cold. I have horrible memories of what it was like in the banks in London. They were virtual fortresses. You were almost afraid to walk in with your cap in your hand. As a credit union, we can only survive if we provide service and a comfort zone that banks cannot because banks will always beat us on marketing dollars. We want our credit union to be warm. There's a fridge up front so we have bottled water and coffee on hand for members when they walk in the door. We know if they are comfortable here, they'll come back."
As concierge, Amyot has to have some basic knowledge of financial transactions, and since she came to Prospera with about 13 years of banking experience, she already had that. What was more important, she said, was learning the non-banking aspect of her job.
"I walk by the theatre every day so I know what's there. I've got all the bus schedules. I've got menus to all the new fancy restaurants," she related. "I've made sure that all the hip and happening places know who I am so they send me updates and tips about what's going on."
To get the word out to the restaurants and merchants in the area, Amayot has prepared gift bags that she distributes when she's walking up and down the street, on the prowl for news about special events coming up in the area.
Ready To Check In?
In fact, it would seem a good portion of her job is giving things away. "I have a silver snack tray with chocolates, energy bars, bottled water with the Prospera logo, chips," she noted. "Our waiting area really looks like a hotel, and it's my job to take care of you."
Because the job was a new position with a new concept behind it, it's still a work in process.
"We keep figuring out what things I can and can't do," Amyot explained. "What we've learned is that it can't be anything that takes me away from that front desk. It totally defeats the purpose if I'm not there. So, we'll try certain things, and then when we realize it's something that might take me away from my area, we drop it and try something else."
When she's not working with a member, Amyot manages the stationery ordering and making sure the water cooler is stocked and the brochures are all lined up.
She handles a lot of e-mail correspondence and does some outbound calling to members whose loan or CD terms are coming up.
Amyot also handles the applications for corporate sponsorships.
After having taken the time to create a singular branch for a singular area, Puiu knew he had to back it up with a singular person for this singular job.
"It's about having the right person. She has to be a good listener and very presentable in every way, the way she looks, talks, acts, and it has to be someone who will listen more than talk," he related. "It has to be someone who can diffuse a problem when someone has a complaint."
And that means the concierge position is not an entry-evel job.
"This is not a training position for someone who wants to move into a different position," he explained. "We want someone who can make a career in that role. We are very careful about who we put in that role. This is not an entry-level position, it's a position you work toward."
Amyot, who was hired specifically for this position as she brought 13 years of experience as manager of customer service at a bank, agreed.
"The banking knowledge is still something you need, but at the end of the day, it's all about service," she noted. "I'd look for someone with experience as a hotel concierge or in retail or a server in a restaurant. A strong service background and the right personality for the job is the key. We can train you on the financial side."
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Vol 41, Issue 6 (July-August 2020)
States Move to Shield LTC Facilities from Civil Liability
By Samuel Brooks, Robyn Grant and Michael F. Bonamarte
Will families be able to sue nursing homes after loved ones died from COVID-19?
The novel coronavirus has swept through U.S. nursing homes like a three-alarm blaze, causing mass fatalities as officials struggled to contain it. To date, more than 50,000 residents of long-term care facilities have died from COVID-19 since January 2020.[1] In 42 states, as many as 45 percent of all COVID-19 deaths were in long-term care facilities. In six states -- Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Utah -- deaths in long-term care facilities accounted for over 50 percent of all COVID-19 fatalities.[2]
At the Life Care Center nursing home in Kirkland, Washington, at least 35 residents died from COVID-19 in March after the facility held a Mardi Gras party, despite that many residents exhibited severe respiratory illness symptoms and temperatures that registered off the charts. In Richmond, Virginia, a facility with a history of twice as many health deficiencies as other homes in the state reported 35 deaths by April 8, 2020. These fatalities continued to climb for months in facilities all around the country.
Despite these horrific deaths, states are increasingly moving to allow long-term care facilities to escape accountability from civil and, in a few states, criminal liability for negligent acts resulting in the death or harm to a resident. The effort to escape liability, spearheaded by the long-term care industry, took hold even before it became clear that residents of long-term care facilities would suffer most from the COVID-19 outbreak.
To date, over 26 states have granted some degree of immunity from civil liability to long-term care facilities and health care providers.[3] Three states have granted facilities and providers immunity from criminal and civil liability.[4] Initially, the majority of states that granted immunity did so through executive orders signed by governors, but increasingly, state legislatures have passed such laws. Although many of the executive orders and laws contain similar language, the breadth and length of immunity varies from state to state. Most of the orders and laws with immunity provisions bar actions alleging ordinary negligence. Those immunity provisions require that the resident or family prove that the facility acted recklessly, willfully or wantonly, or was grossly negligent, with those terms sometimes used interchangeably.
Pandemic as Cover
For the most part, the executive orders and laws contain language that limits the immunity to the period in which the governor for the state declared a public health emergency due to the coronavirus. However, this period of time could prove to be years, and would only end when a state’s governor declared the emergency to be over. Further, there are concerns that the industry will use the pandemic as cover to push for future immunity from liability for negligent care. For years, the industry sought to limit or remove liability for substandard care. Now it is clear that the industry has seized on this public health crisis to pursue that objective. Advocates for nursing home residents say they are greatly concerned that the industry will seek to make permanent temporary immunity provisions to escape accountability for negligent care that occurs after the COVID-19 crisis ends. For instance, in Ohio, the legislature is considering a bill providing blanket immunity to long-term care facilities for all periods of times when the governor declared an emergency, not just COVID-19.
Congress seems poised to take up the issue. A sweeping bill introduced in May by Tennessee Rep. Phil Roe, M.D., would grant long-term care facilities broad blanket immunity from both state and federal claims of negligence. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled that any future COVID-19-related relief bill must contain broad immunity provisions for businesses, including long-term care facilities.
Potential federal legislation raises the prospect of precluding federal and state tort actions and also raises concerns that Congress may bar residents and families from bringing lawsuits regarding discrimination based on a resident’s race or disability. These suits, which generally seek injunctive or declaratory relief, often lead to systemic changes that cannot be addressed in individual tort claims. Although the House bill does not mention these types of claims, many advocates for residents of long-term care facilities are gravely concerned about this issue.
In its push for immunity, the long-term care industry has sought to portray COVID-19 as an unforeseeable catastrophe that excuses them from their basic standards of care. However, early data show a strong correlation between facilities with a history of poor quality of care and infection control procedures and COVID-19 outbreaks, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).[5] For decades, residents and advocates have seen a steady decline in quality of care as more homes are bought up by for-profit corporations, which, through cost-cutting measures, seek to maximize profits from long-term care facilities. An analysis of federal and state data by The New York Times found that for-profit homes trail non-profit homes in many quality of care measures.[6] The report also said that for-profit facilities were cited for violations at a higher rate than their nonprofit counterparts. Another study directly ties the purchase of nursing homes by investment organizations to decreases in staff hours and staff quality[7]. In May, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report showed that prior to Covid-19, as many as 82 percent of nursing homes in the United States were cited for infection prevention and control deficiencies, with half of those homes having persistent problems.[8]
Profits Vs. Care
Older adults and their families are now seeing the direct result of what happens when profits are put in front of patients’ and residents’ care and wellbeing. The coronavirus has illuminated the devastation of these practices on our nation’s most vulnerable elders. Nevertheless, the industry is now seeking to be excused from its years of cost-cutting and inadequate care by urging states and the federal government to shield them from accountability while residents die alone by the tens of thousands.
Allowing long-term care facilities to escape accountability for their negligent actions means that residents and families will have no recourse for egregious harm that happens during the COVID-19 emergency. Consider the impact of these laws and requests in the following two scenarios:
Scenario 1: A resident with dementia, diabetes, incontinence and limited mobility does not receive the care she needs. She is at risk of pressure ulcers. The facility fails to assist her with eating and drinking, does not keep her clean and dry, and does not reposition her regularly. She becomes malnourished, dehydrated and develops severe pressure ulcers, which become infected, resulting in sepsis. She is hospitalized and dies from the infection.
Even though this resident’s death is not coronavirus-related, in most states the facility may be able to avoid liability because the death occurred during the COVID-19 emergency. For instance, the New York law makes a superficial attempt to tie immunity to providers responding to the COVID-19 emergency. To avoid liability, the facility could tie its negligent act to its COVID-19 response, however robust or lacking that response was.
Scenario 2: A resident is living in a facility that has failed to properly train staff in infection control techniques. As a result, staff do not follow appropriate hand hygiene protocols and improperly don and doff personal protective equipment. In addition, the facility does not adequately screen staff for the virus. The resident contracts COVID-19 and dies.
Even though infection control practices, training and screening are completely in the facility’s control, the facility may avoid liability once again if it is able to make a connection to its response to COVID-19 and demonstrate that it was acting in good faith. These elements -- requiring negligent actions to be tied to a facility’s COVID-19 response and good faith -- are common in many state immunity laws and executive orders.
State immunity provisions create yet another significant barrier to pursuing legal action: For residents or families to prevail in court, it is likely that they would have to show that the facility’s actions or inactions were grossly negligent or reckless misconduct. This heightened standard of proof allows facilities to escape accountability for acting carelessly and may have the terrible effect of deterring some residents and families from seeking to hold them accountable. All 26 states that have granted immunity to facilities from liability have included this heightened requirement of proof.
Discovery and fact-finding will be necessary to determine whether a facility’s actions or omissions, resulting in the death or harm of a resident, stemmed from its response to COVID-19. Further, determinations of good faith, recklessness or gross negligence will have to be made as part of any trial. All of this must be done in addition to the normal work that goes into prosecuting these incredibly difficult and time-consuming cases. These additional elements may have a chilling effect on the decision of residents, their families, and attorneys to take legal action.
Since the outset of the pandemic, hospitals, nursing homes, and other health facilities have complained of shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and sanitation supplies. The long-term care industry says facilities should not be held accountable for their negligence due in part due to PPE shortages. However, long-term care facilities are already afforded civil or criminal liability protections where shortages or other events outside of their control prevent them from obtaining necessary equipment. Facilities that made good faith efforts to comply with standard practices and to obtain necessary equipment, but were unable to do so due to shortages, will already be protected from liability in court. Instead, the industry is asking that all facilities -- whether or not they made good faith efforts to follow accepted practices and obtain equipment -- be excused from the harm their acts or omissions resulted in.
Civil Liability as a Tool
Immunity would impact residents in other extremely serious ways. Liability for inadequate care is not just about money. Civil liability has always functioned as a tool to incentivize long-term care facilities to comply with laws and regulations. For years, federal and state oversight of long-term care facilities has decreased. Often, facilities will choose to pay a federal or state fine in lieu of compliance because it costs them less. However, facilities have long known that care that departs from the accepted standards and results in the harm or death of a resident may result in civil liability, and this knowledge has served as a tool for residents to try and obtain better quality care. To deprive residents of this during this deadly crisis will inevitably lead to facilities’ failed compliance.
Additionally, the need for civil liability is heightened by the pandemic. In pre-coronavirus times, residents were visited by loved ones who paid close attention to the resident’s condition and spoke up when they had concerns. Entities such as the long-term care ombudsman program were able to meet with residents, observe conditions, and advocate on their behalf. And importantly, state survey agencies conducted inspections of homes on a regular basis and responded to complaints. Now, due to the pandemic, CMS has barred families and ombudsmen from entering facilities, and state survey agencies are rarely onsite. Consequently, there is little to no oversight in nursing homes.
The sad reality for many people who have lost loved ones in long-term care facilities during the pandemic is that by not being able to hold facilities accountable for their negligence, they will likely never know how their loved one died. Litigation is a vehicle to discover exactly what happened to residents in long-term care facilities. As a country, we have an interest in this information coming to light in part to be better prepared for a future pandemic.
Allowing facilities to escape accountability for their negligence also places nursing home workers at risk, and as a result, the communities in which they live. In its efforts to convince states to grant long-term care facilities immunity from liability for their negligent acts, the industry has disingenuously tried to make immunity about protecting health care workers from such suits. However, these workers are rarely sued for negligence. It is the facility that most plaintiffs seek to hold accountable, not underpaid and over-burdened workers. Granting immunity for long-term care facilities makes workers unsafe because facility owners see fewer reasons to comply with regulations to curb infection risk.
It has also become clear that COVID-19 is having a disproportionate impact on communities of color. A study from Yale found that black people were 3.5 times more likely to die than white people. [9] A recent New York Times article found that the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on non-whites is true for nursing homes as well. It said that homes with a significant portion of minority residents were twice as likely to be hit by the coronavirus than homes made up mostly of white residents.[10] Experts have attributed these stark numbers, in part, to racial inequalities in access to healthcare[11]. Consequently, people of color are being harmed more than others in long-term care facilities, and it likely will be people of color who are most impacted by executive orders and laws that prevent nursing home residents from holding facilities accountable for their negligent actions. The result: immunity laws and executive orders perpetuate racial disparities in health care.
Many lawmakers apparently fail to understand that granting immunity to long-term care facilities eliminates rights and protections of residents who have been seriously injured or killed. To-date, industry lobbyists have dominated the conversation. Lawmakers need to hear directly from long-term care facility residents, their family members and advocates about the critical need to preserve the only remaining avenue available to consumers to purse justice and accountability.
All of us must urge our lawmakers to reject immunity, and instead send a message that our country will not tolerate negligent care of our parents, grandparents, friends, and neighbors. They deserve better.
Samuel Brooks is a project manager at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care.
Robyn Grant is director of public policy and advocacy at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care.
Michael F. Bonamarte is a partner at Levin & Perconti, Chicago, Illinois, and a supporter of the National Consumer Voice.
[1] As of June 18, 2020: https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/state-data-and-policy-actions-to-address-coronavirus/?utm_source=web&utm_medium=trending&utm_campaign=covid-19
[2] https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/state-data-and-policy-actions-to-address-coronavirus/; https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/state-reporting-of-cases-and-deaths-due-to-covid-19-in-long-term-care-facilities/
[3] These states are: AK, AL, AR, AZ, CT, GA, HI, IL, KS, KY, MA, MD, MI, MS, MT, NC, NJ, NV, NY, OK, PA, RI, UT, VA, VT, and WI.
[4] These states are: NC, NJ, and NY.
[5] https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/trump-administration-unveils-enhanced-enforcement-actions-based-nursing-home-covid-19-data-and
[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/business/coronavirus-nursing-homes.html
[7] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3537612
[8] https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-20-576R
[9] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.20094250v1.full.pdf
[10] https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-nursing-homes-racial-disparity.html
[11] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/racial-inequalities-in-covid-19-the-impact-on-black-communities#What-explains-the-disparities?-And-how-does-racism-play-into-it?-
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Lisa Levin , Benzinga Staff Writer
December 04, 2020 5:08am 1400 Comments
Ever-Glory International Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVK) shares climbed 150% to close at $5.25 on Thursday after gaining 7% on Wednesday. The company released quarterly results last month.
Lizhi Inc. (NASDAQ: LIZI) surged 103% to close at $4.79 after the company entered into in-car audio collaboration with Xpeng Motors.
Waddell & Reed Financial, Inc. (NYSE: WDR) climbed 50.4% to close at $25.59. Macquarie Group announced plans to acquire Waddell & Reed Financial for $1.7 billion.
Nesco Holdings, Inc.. (NYSE: NSCO) shares gained 38% to close at $6.00 after the company announced plans to acquire Custom Truck One Source for $1.475 billion. Platinum Equity Affiliate will also invest over $850 million into Nesco in exchange for newly-issued common stock at $5 per share.
Enlivex Therapeutics Ltd. (NASDAQ: ENLV) gained 37.9% to close at $11.40 after the company reported "positive" interim results of an investigator-initiated Phase II clinical trial evaluating Allocetra in severe COVID-19 patients.
Iterum Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ: ITRM) shares rose 29.4% to close at $0.8410 after RA Capital Management disclosed a 18.9% passive stake in the company.
Luminar Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: LAZR) climbed 27.7% to close at $22.98.
Aemetis, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMTX) rose 27.1% to close at $2.8850 after HC Wainwright & Co. initiated coverage on the stock with a Buy rating and announced a $10 price target.
Zscaler Inc (NASDAQ: ZS) surged 26.5% to close at $185.61 after the company reported better-than-expected Q1 results. The company also issued upbeat guidance for FY21.
Jiayin Group Inc. (NASDAQ: JFIN) shares rose 23.9% to close at $4.10. Jiayin Group, on Monday, reported mixed quarterly results.
Kubient, Inc. (NASDAQ: KBNT) gained 22.6% to close at $4.88.
Arlo Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: ARLO) shares rose 20.6% to close at $6.79.
Michaels Companies Inc (NASDAQ: MIK) surged 20.3% to close at $12.33 after the company reported better-than-expected Q3 results.
Lemonade, Inc. (NYSE: LMND) gained 20.2% to close at $80.35 as Motley Fool newsletter recommended buying Lemonade shares.
Allied Healthcare Products, Inc. (NASDAQ: AHPI) rose 19.4% to close at $5.72 after the company was granted European patent.
Kirkland's, Inc. (NASDAQ: KIRK) climbed 19.3% to close at $18.57 after reporting Q3 results.
Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: ARCT) shares gained 19.2% to close at $99.31.
Meten EdtechX Education Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: METX) climbed 19.2% to close at $3.35. Meten EdtechX Education is expected to release quarterly earnings today.
Revlon, Inc. (NYSE: REV) climbed 19.1% to close at $15.36.
Nano Dimension Ltd. (NASDAQ: NNDM) rose 18.4% to close at $7.58. Nano Dimension closed the earlier announced registered direct offering of 11,960,160 of its ADSs at a price of $5.00 per ADS.
Priority Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRTH) gained 18.3% to close at $6.30 on above-average volume.
KBS Fashion Group Limited (NASDAQ: KBSF) surged 17.7% to close at $3.20.
Everi Holdings Inc. (NYSE: EVRI) shares jumped 17% to close at $13.34. Roth Capital maintained Everi with a Buy and raised the price target from $20 to $21.
Avid Bioservices, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDMO) surged 16.4% to close at $11.06 as the company posted upbeat quarterly results.
Future FinTech Group Inc. (NASDAQ: FTFT) climbed 16.2% to close at $3.08.
Snowflake Inc. (NYSE: SNOW) gained 16.1% to close at $339.89 after the company reported strong quarterly sales. Various analysts raised their price targets in the stock.
1847 Goedeker Inc. (NYSE: GOED) surged 15.8% to close at $7.18. 1847 Goedeker reported a 71% year-over-year surge in orders during Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
Foghorn Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: FHTX) gained 15.6% to close at $19.82.
Ozon Holdings PLC (NASDAQ: OZON) climbed 15.2% to close at $49.33. Ozon, last month, priced its IPO at $30 per ADS.
Monaker Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MKGI) gained15.1% to close at $3.35.
Omeros Corporation (NASDAQ: OMER) shares rose 14.7% to close at $14.26. Omeros, last month, reported submission of its Biologics License Application to the FDA for narsoplimab in hematopoietic stem cell transplant-associated thrombotic microangiopathy.
WisdomTree Investments, Inc. (NASDAQ: WETF) rose 14.6% to close at $5.14.
Cohu, Inc. (NASDAQ: COHU) gained 14.6% to close at $34.97. Needham maintained Cohu with a Buy and raised the price target from $30 to $50.
Trxade Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MEDS) climbed 14% to close at $5.62. National Securities initiated coverage on Trxade Group with a Buy rating and announced a price target of $15.
Crowdstrike Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: CRWD) gained 13.6% to close at $161.19 after the company reported better-than-expected Q3 results and issued strong Q4 and FY21 guidance.
Vision Marine Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: VMAR) gained 13.6% to close at $13.09.
Ashford Hospitality Trust, Inc. (NYSE: AHT) climbed 13.4% to close at $2.62 after gaining over 9% on Wednesday. Ashford Hospitality Trust, last week, said approximately 30% of the preferred stock eligible for exchange were tendered, resulting in issuance of approximately 38,388,760 shares of stock.
Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc (NYSE: BBW) gained 13.1% to close at $4.65 after reporting upbeat Q3 results.
Elastic NV (NYSE: ESTC) gained 12.6% to close at $135.00 after the company reported better-than-expected Q2 results.
Embraer S.A. (NYSE: ERJ) shares gained 12.4% to close at $7.28.
Guess', Inc. (NYSE: GES) climbed 10.8% to close at $18.72 after reporting a rise in quarterly earnings.
Oramed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ORMP) shares climbed 10.5% to close at $4.31. Oramed Pharma, on Wednesday, reported initiation of Phase 2 NASH trial of oral insulin.
CIIG Merger Corp. (NASDAQ: CIIC) climbed 9.6% to close at $21.55. Arrival, last month, announced a definitive business combination agreement with CIIG Merger via a SPAC deal.
Landcadia Holdings II, Inc. (NASDAQ: LCA) rose 9.5% to close at $19.81 after declining around 7% on Wednesday.
Naked Brand Group Limited (NASDAQ: NAKD) shares gained 9.5% to close at $0.2021 after declining over 8% on Wednesday. Naked Brand Group, last week, was granted 180-day extension by Nasdaq to regain compliance with minimum bid price rule.
Cyanotech Corporation (NASDAQ: CYAN) rose 8.2% to close at $3.03. Cyanotech reported lower quarterly earnings last month.
Hibbett Sports, Inc. (NASDAQ: HIBB) gained 6.9% to close at $46.45.
Longview Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: LGVW) gained 5.9% to close at $15.50. Butterfly Network, last month, announced it will go public through a SPAC merger with Longview.
XPO Logistics Inc (NYSE: XPO) gained 5.8% to close at $116.40 after the company announced plans to spin off its logistics segment into a separate publicly-traded company.
Okta Inc (NASDAQ: OKTA) gained 5.3% to close at $242.35 after the company reported better-than-expected Q3 results. The company also issued strong FY21 estimates.
Check out these big penny stock gainers and losers
Express, Inc. (NYSE: EXPR) shares climbed 26% to close at $1.17 on Thursday after the company reported downbeat Q3 results.
Cinemark Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CNK) fell 22% to close at $13.30. Shares of movie theaters dropped sharply after AT&T announced a 2021 film distribution on HBO Max.
Splunk Inc. (NASDAQ: SPLK) shares dipped 23.2% to close at $158.03 after the company reported a wider loss for the third quarter and issued weak sales guidance for the current quarter. Stifel downgraded Splunk from Buy to Hold and announced a $160 price target.
Lands' End, Inc. (NASDAQ: LE) fell 17.5% to close at $20.68 after the company reported Q3 results and issued a weak forecast for the fourth quarter.
Dada Nexus Limited (NASDAQ: DADA) dipped 15.7% to close at $45.21 as the company reported pricing of follow-on public offering of American Depositary Shares.
Duluth Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: DLTH) fell 14.9% to close at $11.94 after the company reported downbeat quarterly sales.
Scholar Rock Holding Corporation (NASDAQ: SRRK) declined 13.2% to close at $43.34.
The Marcus Corporation (NYSE: MCS) shares dropped 13.1% to close at $11.22.
Precision BioSciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: DTIL) fell 11.9% to close at $10.23.
iHuman Inc. (NYSE: IH) shares dropped 11.7% to close at $22.59. iHuman, on Wednesday, released results for its third quarter.
SPI Energy Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ: SPI) dropped 11.7% to close at $8.92 as the company priced its 3.5 million unit registered direct offering at $10.02 per share.
Funko, Inc. (NASDAQ: FNKO) shares dropped 11% to close at $8.46 after BMO Capital downgraded the stock from Market Perform to Underperform and lowered its price target from $6.5 to $5.
Codexis, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDXS) shares fell 9.8% to close at $17.04 after the company announced a common stock offering.
InVivo Therapeutics Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: NVIV) shares declined 8.6% to close at $0.64.
Ovid Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: OVID) shares fell 8.4% to close at $ 2.69 Ovid Therapeutics shares tumbled 56% on Wednesday after the company announced topline results from the Phase 3 NEPTUNE study of OV101 for the treatment of Angelman syndrome, showing the study did not meet the primary endpoint of change in overall score on the Clinical Global Impression-Improvement-Angelman syndrome.
Catabasis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: CATB) fell 7.7% to close at $1.93 after jumping 28% on Wednesday. The company, last month, posted a loss for its third quarter.
Sundial Growers Inc. (NASDAQ: SNDL) fell 6.2% to $0.7581 after jumping over 23% on Wednesday. Sundial recently reported elimination of senior secured second lien convertible notes.
India Globalization Capital, Inc. (NYSE: IGC) fell 7.2% to close at $2.07 after climbing 23% on Wednesday.
Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: MACK) dropped 6% to close at $6.10. Merrimack Pharmaceuticals shares jumped 59% on Wednesday following a timeline announcement for a potential Onivyde milestone payment which was announced at a corporate presentation by Ipsen S.A.
Achieve Life Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACHV) shares fell 5.3% to close at $ 7.18 after the company reported pricing of $15 million public offering.
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How much do you pay in ATM fees?
By Allison Ross Allison Ross's Twitter profile
Jan. 24, 2014 /
Quick: How much do you spend on ATM fees every year?
If you’re like the average consumer, the number you have in your head right now is lower than the actual amount you’re spending on these ATM fees, according to a recent report from Personetics.
When Personetics asked consumers to estimate how much they had paid in fees for using out-of-network ATMs, it found that consumers often guessed less than half the actual amount.
It also found that 30 percent of ATM withdrawals that customers were making were from out-of-network ATMs.
Those trips to out-of-network ATMs can really add up, especially since ATM fees are at an all-time high, according to Bankrate’s 2013 Checking Survey.
Banks charge non-customers an average of $2.60 for the privilege to use their ATMs. Plus, customers’ banks also may tack on charges for customers using those out-of-network ATMs; the average fee for that was $1.53, according to Bankrate’s survey.
On average, that means that you could be spending $4.13 every time you use another bank’s ATM. That may not seem like much until you think about how often you use an out-of-network ATM. Personetics found that consumers on average take out cash from an ATM every seven to 10 days.
The story here is about convenience. “When (consumers) need the cash, they simply find the closest ATM and take the money out,” Personetics said in a statement, noting that 75 percent of the people in its research cited convenience as the reason they go to out-of-network ATMs.
Many can’t even be bothered to try and find their bank’s closest ATM. Personetics found that less than 50 percent of people who use their bank’s digital channels have used their bank’s ATM lookup service.
Have you ever looked at how much you spend on ATM fees? Have you ever used your bank’s ATM location lookup offerings? Share your experiences and thoughts in the comments.
Follow me on Twitter: @allisonsross.
Allison Ross was formerly the senior banking analyst/reporter at Bankrate. Before that, she worked at The Palm Beach Post, where she spent three years covering the retail industry, detailing trends and marking changes in the local retail landscape. She also jumped in on other business stories, including the Chinese drywall debacle. She followed the story of the tainted drywall as homeowners fretted about their health, as scientists tried to pinpoint the source of the problem, as lawsuits were filed, and as a burgeoning, multimillion-dollar industry of testers and 'remediators' emerged. Allison and a colleague at the Post shared a second-place Sunshine State Award in consumer reporting for a two-part series on Chinese drywall. She later moved on to cover the nation's 11th-largest school district, as an education reporter for the Post. In that position, she covered the selection of a new superintendent, reported on the district's struggles to balance the budget, and broke news of the arrest of a controversial community activist who had allegedly been trying to extort the superintendent. (The superintendent wore a wire as part of the police investigation.) Allison graduated from the University of Missouri with degrees in journalism and sociology. She is a proud Tigers fan.
Lack of ATM fee awareness
KeyBank offers no-overdraft account
Hate ATM fees? Get your bank to pay
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Dr. Timothy McDonnell named an American Prize choral conducting finalist
Dr. Timothy McDonnell, Assistant Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at AMU has been named an American Prize choral conducting finalist for his work with Ave Maria University's choirs. The American Prize is a series of new, non-profit national competitions in the performing arts providing professional adjudication and regional, national and international recognition for the best recorded performances by ensembles and individuals each year in the United States at the professional, college/university, church, community and secondary school levels. Please follow this link for the full release and to view all finalists.
The American Prize Facebook page
Ave Maria University Joins “Generation #Selfie” on Snapchat
Ave Maria University is now on Snapchat! On July 30th, Ave Maria sent its inaugural “snap”, introducing a brand new way of connecting current and prospective students and giving others an inside look into life at AMU. Snapchat, a social media platform that allows users to connect through sending pictures and videos, is one of the most popular ways in which high school and college-age students communicate with their friends. The premise of Snapchat is simple. Users send a picture or video to a select person or group which is viewed by the recipient for a few seconds before the “snap” disappears.
Snapchat’s ease of use, massive user base, and private-feel makes it perfect for keeping in touch with friends. However, Snapchat is starting to be used by businesses to offer promotions and connect with their customer base on a more personable level. There is also a small group of colleges on Snapchat, using it as a means of connecting with their students and allowing for an intimate look at day-to-day life on campus.
Ave Maria University (avemariau on Snapchat) hopes to do just this. From setting up spontaneous contests and giveaways, to providing students a place to show their school pride, Snapchat will add a fresh and personally engaging part to being a student at Ave Maria. Snapchat is a very new way for us to help connect our current students, prospective students, and alumni. However, with hundreds of followers in just the first week, we are encouraged and excited about the social and creative possibilities that Snapchat offers! Please feel free to add us on Snapchat (avemariau) to see what we’re up to!
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A Night on Broadway in Ave Maria, Florida
What’s the next best thing to experiencing a night on Broadway? Experiencing it without traveling to NYC! Broadway’s bright lights and magic came to life on AMU’s campus during the 2017 run of the Drama Club’s annual Night on Broadway performance.
The group of students who performed in this year’s Night on Broadway showcased songs from a variety of musicals, including Mary Poppins and The Drowsy Chaperone, Evita, and Wicked. Some in the audience were transported back to their childhood by Broadway classics like The Sound of Music and Footloose. Others had the opportunity to hear music from more recent productions, such as Anastasia, or the 2017 Tony Award-Winning musical, Dear Evan Hansen. Throughout it all, the joy and camaraderie of the group of student performers was clearly visible, and the fun they had while sharing their talents overflowed into the audience.
A Night on Broadway was initiated by Ave Maria University students looking to make use of their talents in a joyful experience of the arts on campus. Rachel Wisely, student director of this year’s show comments after the fact, “I was told several times that this was ‘the best Cabaret yet.’” Rachel was joined by students Rebecca Felix (assistant director), Erin Koehler (choreographer), and Zachary Rappley (orchestra director), in addition to the team of singers and dancers who put in hours of rehearsal to pull off the Drama Club’s 2017 Night on Broadway. “I am very proud of the cast and of my work as a director,“ Rachel shares. “It’s amazing how collaborative, artistic work pulls together!”
The AMU Drama Club, which has over 35 active members, is one of the largest clubs on campus. The club organizes and puts on at least one student-run production each semester. If you’re interested in learning more or getting involved, contact the club’s staff advisor, Rachel Flowers.
AMU,Ave Maria University,Broadway,Cabaret,Drama Club,Night on Broadway,Student Life,Students
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4.1 out of 5 (38 ratings / 29 reviews) Saskatoon, Canada
At the heart of Saskatoon, on Treaty 6 territory and the homeland of the Métis, is the University of Saskatchewan, one of Canada’s top research universities. Driven by prairie spirit, we make life better for the people of Saskatchewan and the world.
#301 Ranking
141 Bachelors
B.S.A. Agricultural Economics
B.A. Archaeology
B.Sc. Archaeology
B.A. Archaeology (3 Years)
B.A. Archaeology (Honours)
B.A. Business Economics
B.A. Business Economics (Honours)
B.A. Economics (3 Years)
L.L.B. Economics (Honours)
B.Sc. Environment and Society
B.Sc. Environment and Society (Honours)
B.Sc. Geophysics
B.Sc. Geophysics (Honours)
B.A. Indigenous Studies
B.A. Indigenous Studies (3 Years)
B.A. Indigenous Studies (Honours)
B.A. International Studies
B.A. International Studies (Honours)
B.A. Political Studies
B.A. Political Studies (3 Years)
B.A. Political Studies (Honours)
B.Sc. Psychology
B.A. Psychology
B.A. Psychology (3 Years)
B.A. Psychology (Honours)
B.A. Regional and Urban Planning (Honours)
B.A. Religion & Culture
B.A. Religion & Culture (Honours)
B.A. Sociology
B.A. Sociology (3 Years)
B.A. Sociology (Honours)
B.A. Women's & Gender Studies
B.A. Women's & Gender Studies (3 Years)
B.A. Women's & Gender Studies (Honours)
Natural Sciences & Mathematics (31)
B.S.A. Agricultural Biology
B.S.A. Agricultural Biology (Honours)
B.Sc. Animal Bioscience
B.Sc. Applied Mathematics
B.Sc. Applied Mathematics (3 Years)
B.Sc. Applied Mathematics (Honours)
B.Sc. Bioinformatics
B.Sc. Bioinformatics (Honours)
B.Sc. Biology
B.Sc. Biology (3 Years)
B.Sc. Biology (Honours)
B.Eng. Chemical Engineering: Biochemical
B.Sc. Chemistry
B.Sc. Chemistry (3 Years)
B.Sc. Chemistry (Honours)
B.Eng. Engineering Physics
B.Sc. Environmental Biology
B.Sc. Environmental Biology (Honours)
B.Sc. Mathematical Physics (Honours)
B.Sc. Mathematics
B.Sc. Mathematics (3 Years)
B.Sc. Mathematics (Honours)
B.Sc. Palaeobiology
B.Sc. Palaeobiology (Honours)
B.Sc. Physics
B.Sc. Physics (3 Years)
B.Sc. Physics (Honours)
B.Sc. Statistics
B.Sc. Statistics (Honours)
B.A. Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies
B.A. Classical, Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Honours)
B.A. English
B.A. English (3 Years)
B.A. English (Honours)
B.A. French (3 Years)
B.A. French (Honours)
B.A. History
B.A. History (3 Years)
B.A. History (Honours)
B.A. Linguistics
B.A. Linguistics (3 Years)
B.A. Linguistics (Honours)
B.A. Modern Languages
B.A. Modern Languages (3 Years)
B.A. Philosophy
B.A. Philosophy (3 Years)
B.A. Philosophy (Honours)
B.A. Religion & Culture (3 Years)
Environmental Studies & Earth Sciences (17)
B.S.A. Applied Plant Ecology
B.S.A. Environmental Science
B.Eng. Geological Engineering
B.Eng. Geological Engineering: Mining
B.Sc. Geology
B.Sc. Geology (Honours)
B.Sc. Geology (3 Years)
B.S.A. Soil Science
B.Sc. Toxicology
B.Sc. Toxicology (Honours)
B.F.A. Drama
B.A. Drama (3 Years)
B.A. Drama (Honours)
(B.A.& Sc.) Interactive Systems Design
B.A. Music (3 Years)
B.A. Music (Honours)
B. Mus. Music Education
Mus Ed Music Education
B Mus Music Education (Honours)
B.A. Music: Performance (Honours)
B.A. Regional and Urban Planning
B.A. / B.F.A. Studio Art
B.A. Studio Art (3 Years)
BFA Studio Art (BFA Honours)
Business & Management (13)
B.Sc. Agribusiness
B.Sc. Agribusiness (Honours)
B.Comm. Bachelor of Commerce
Agriculture & Forestry (12)
B.S.A. Agricultural Economics (Honours)
B.S.A. Agronomy
B.S.A. Animal Science
B.S.A. Crop Science
B.S.A. Horticulture Science
Engineering & Technology (12)
B.Eng. Chemical Engineering
B.Eng. Chemical Engineering: Mineral Processing
B.Sc. Civil Engineering
B.Eng. Computer Engineering
B.Eng. Electrical Engineering
B.Eng. Environmental Engineering
B.Eng. Mechanical Engineering
B.Eng. Mechanical Engineering: Mining
B.Sc. Computer Science
B.Sc. Computer Science (3 Years)
B.Sc. Computer Science (Honours)
B.Sc. Computer Science: Software Engineering (Honours)
Medicine & Health (8)
DMD Dentistry
B.A. Health Studies
B.A. Health Studies (Honours)
MD Medicine
B.Sc. Nutrition
B.Sc. Pharmacy
B.Sc. Veterinary Medicine
B.Sc. Food Science
B.Sc. Food Science (Honours)
B.S.A. Food and Bioproduct Sciences
B.Sc. Exercise and Sport Studies
B.Sc. Exercise and Sport Studies (Honours)
JD Law
The University of Saskatchewan (U of S) is a Canadian public research university, founded on March 19, 1907, and located on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. An "Act to establish and incorporate a University for the Province of Saskatchewan" was passed by the provincial legislature in 1907.
USask is one of the top research-intensive, medical doctoral universities in Canada, and is home to world-leading research in areas of global importance, like water and food security. Study and discovery is enhanced by our outstanding facilities, including the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, VIDO-InterVac, the Global Institute for Food Security, the Global Institute for Water Security and the Sylvia Fedoruk Centre for Nuclear Innovation.
The USask researchers work closely with their key community advisor, Tammy Girolami, a principal within the Saskatoon Public School Division (SPSD), which was the original partner for the IYMP in Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan team also works with teachers and students within SPSD, as well as with Indigenous university student volunteers to implement the IYMP in Saskatchewan. Now in its third year, the IYMP has been implemented in 13 communities across Canada.
We offer a competitive wage package reflective of your qualifications with the opportunity for performance-based pay.
Our employees are a part of the fabric of our campus community. We strive to create a supportive, inclusive and enabling community.
Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University
ARWU World University rankings is the first world university ranking. It ranks the world's top 1000 colleges and universities based on objective indicator.
They look at the number of award-winning (Fields Medals and Nobel Prize) scientists who are located there, how much of their research is cited and referenced around the world, and how much they've contributed to different academic fields. After calculating and comparing these criteria, ARWU ranks the universities accordingly.
World University Rankings by Times Higher Education
World University Rankings is a vital resource that provides the definitive list of the world's best universities.
They look at how often they're producing new ideas, what their reputation is around the world, and how much they're contributing to science and academic fields. After calculating and comparing these criteria, THE ranks the universities accordingly.
QS World University Rankings by TopUniversities
QS World University Rankings is one of the top international rankings measuring the popularity and performance of universities all over the world.
They measure university reputation based on the impressions of higher education experts, companies who hire graduates, and teaching quality. QS also considers the ratio of international teachers and students present at universities, as well as the times research papers were mentioned by researchers. After calculating and comparing these criteria, QS ranks the universities accordingly.
Best Global Universities Rankings by U.S. News & World Report
541 -3
Best Global Universities Rankings by U.S. News & World Report presents all the top universities from the U.S. and 60 other countries around the world.
They measure the rate of students going to their second year of studies, as well as the rate of students who graduate. It also asks university representatives on the performance of universities, and evaluates university resources, teacher salaries, graduation rates, student academic achievements and satisfaction. After calculating and comparing these criteria, U.S. News ranks the top international universities accordingly.
Student Services encompasses a number of specific support and information groups including the Office of Student Affairs, the Indigenous Student Services and the Office of Career Advising & Mentorship.Our services provide a safe place for current MD undergraduate students to seek support when they have academic or personal issues. We provide resources and support around mental and physical health, mistreatment and discrimination, disabilities, financial planning, and career advising and mentorship.Mission
To inspire students to achieve their maximum potential in academic and personal growth as a fundamental component of their college training
To assist in a consultant role on student initiatives and projects
Voyageur Place dormitory reservations consist of a single or double room with dresser, desk, desk lamp, closet, and window. Weekly linen service (sheets, blanket, pillow, and towels) as well as soap are provided and washroom facilities are shared and located in the hallways. The following room types are available at Voyageur Place:
Single (not shared) with one bed per room
Double rooms (shared) with two beds per room. Reservations are made per bed space
The library provides year-round and around-the-clock access to an extensive electronic collection. There are seven campus locations.
The Technology Assessment is an all-inclusive approach to evaluating the potential purchase or requests for additions/changes to information systems. Proposals are analyzed for concerns in 4 main areas: risk, compliance, business continuity, and organizational fit with representation from several different disciplines across the institution, including Enterprise Architecture.
At the U of S dental clinics patients are provided up-to-date and evidence-based care by students under the supervision of licensed dentists with state-of-the-art technology.
The Veterinary Medical Centre (VMC) is a state-of-the-art animal health facility that offers a wide range of clinical and referral services to western Canadian animal owners and veterinarians.
Established in 1907, nestled along the banks of the South Saskatchewan River, our historic campus is recognized as one of the most beautiful in Canada.
Physical Activity Complex, Fit Centre, Campus Recreation and community programs including kid's camps, aquatics and dance.
Student Discipline Groups
Chemical Engineering Student Society (ChESS)
Civil Engineering Student Society (CSCE)
Environmental Engineering Student Society (ENVESS)
Geological Engineering Student Society (GESS)
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Usask Student Chapter
Mechanical Engineering Student Association (MESA)
Student Design Teams
Huskie Formula Racing (SAE)
Steel Bridge Design Team
USask Aero Design Team
USask Sled Dogs Quarter-Scale Tractor Team
USask Space Design Team (USST)
Student Professional Associations
Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum (CIM) Usask Student Chapter
Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Usask Student Chapter
Our College of Engineering offers eight undergraduate programs, all accredited by Engineers Canada. It will conduct its next accreditation visit to our college in 2020.
A peaceful, friendly and safe place to study
Actually I am yet to travel to Canada, but from all that I have read about Usask online, I am rest assured it is an environment I want to be in. I am just waiting for my study permit to be approved so I can embark on this new endeavour
Good but Expensive
It's an awesome university but the courses are expensive
My University experience was very good
Saskatoon, Canada
Get More Information About Canada
80 (Pre-)Masters
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University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland
Delémont, Switzerland
With its six faculties and network of schools of higher education, the HES-SO plays a preeminent role in the socio-economic and cultural development of the seven cantons of Western Switzerland and is a recognised player within the Swiss and international landscape of higher education.
2 Bachelors
Public Institution Type
B.Sc. International Business Management
B.Sc. Tourism
The HES-SO is recognised by the Confederation and member of swissuniversities.
With 21,000 students, the HES-SO is the largest UAS in Switzerland. Its study programs and research activities are divided into six faculties: Arts & Design; Business, Management and Services; Engineering & Architecture; Music and Performing Arts; Health Sciences; and Social Work.
With a view to developing a knowledge-based society, scientific research plays a central role; governments devote significant funds to it that are awarded on a competitive basis.
At Swiss level, HES-SO researchers tend to approach the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI). At European level, funds are obtained through the European Union’s Framework Programmes that Switzerland is part of. These projects enable the integration into consortia of partners from many different countries.
The HES-SO is a university of applied sciences and arts that is active in prestigious European and worldwide networks. It also relies on the networks of its schools to meet the new challenges in the development of education and research.
AUF - Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie
EAIE - European Association for International Education
EUA - European University Association
There are several organisations involved in coordination and cooperation in higher education at the national and international levels.
Associations are important because they enable:
More direct participation in the life of applied universities or programmes
Staying in contact with former students
Building of networks
Get More Information About Switzerland
3 (Pre-)Masters
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Home » Microsoft Monolinguist replicates user’s voice in translation
Microsoft Monolinguist replicates user’s voice in translation
A new piece of translation software from Microsoft learns the tone of the user’s voice then mimics it, notes PC Pro.
Reporter Stewart Mitchell explained that the system takes about one hour of training to replicate a voice, which is then combined with a database of words; resulting in the foreign language sounding like the the person’s own voice.
It could be a sign of things to come for people keen to apply for bilingual jobs, as the Microsoft Monolinguist text-to-speech (TTS) essentially allows them to speak in another language.
The developers explained on Microsoft Research: “We have recordings of 26 languages which are used to build our text-to-speech of corresponding languages. By using our new approach, we can synthesise any mixed language pair out of the 26 languages.”
They suggested that this type of translation technology could have various uses; for instance, a person who is not completely comfortable with a language could hear a word said in a manner closer to their own speech.
Mr Mitchell pointed out that TTS software is nothing new, but what separates Monolinguist from competitors is the way it converts a person’s words into another language.
Microsoft has published a series of examples of the technology in action; sharing recordings of a user’s translations into Spanish, Mandarin and Italian.
Previous article: More women in professional jobs, data finds
Next article: What’s going on in market research?
by Boyce Recruitment on March 12th, 2012
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Burren Programme payments commence for Irish farmers
DUBLIN, Ireland - The Irish government has announced it is to commence payments to farmers under the Burren Programme.
The Burren Programme is a locally-led agri-environmental scheme, co-financed by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the EU, which works with farmers to help them to conserve the Burren's environment whilst allowing them to continue producing quality livestock. It was developed in the Burren, for the Burren, by working with local farmers during Burren LIFE and the Burren Farming for Conservation Programme.
"I am delighted to confirm that payments for the Burren Programme are now being made in respect of the 2020 scheme year, and are the first of several batches of payments that will be made, to participating farmers, before the end of 2020. I expect that approximately €750,000 - representing 85% of the total due - will be paid to these farmers, for facilitating and developing these habitats, before the end of the year," Minister of State in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Senator Pippa Hackett said Wednesday.
An evaluation of the Burren Programme has recently been completed by AECOM Ltd., and has been published on the Department's website. The evaluation assesses the environmental, economic and social impacts of the Burren Programme.
"AECOM Ltd found that the Burren Programme has been successful in encouraging sustainable grazing and feeding systems and removing encroaching scrub on over 23,000 hectares, providing space for rare flowers, such as orchids and gentians, to flourish. AECOM Ltd estimates that the value of habitat and landscape improvements delivered amount to €32.8 million since 2010, and highlights that the Burren Programme is an efficient and effective model for delivering environmental improvements," Hackett said.
AECOM Ltd. estimates that the Burren Programme and its predecessor, the Burren Farming for Conservation Programme, have also provided a boost to the local economy and generated €30.3 million in economic activity since 2010. The report also states that the local economic impact has been particularly high, as farmers are encouraged to use local contractors, businesses and crafts people.
AECOM Ltd found that the Burren Programme - and previous iterations of the programme - has resulted in significant social impacts, and has been successful in strengthening ties among farmers in the Burren, as well as fostering a shared Burren farming identity. The Programme has also been successful in strengthening ties between farmers and other stakeholders and organisations outside of the region, including the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
The ethos of the Burren Programme has been the inspiration for many of the EIP Programmes which are proving to be so successful under the current Rural Development Programme. The hybrid model of payment for quality of habitat and for actions to improve that habitat is one that has been taken up by the EIP projects. This model facilitates payments to farmers that reflect their contribution to EU priority habitats and species, carbon sequestration and storage, water quality and other eco-system services, and has resulted in locally-adapted programmes which can be delivered successfully across a broad range of landscapes. The Department will continue to support this results-based model from this Rural Development Programme round to the next.
"The 328 participating farmers in this innovative Programme make a hugely significant contribution to maintaining and conserving the unique landscape of the Burren region. And they do more than that - they have enriched the social and community environment where they live, and they are proud to farm in a way which honours their agricultural heritage and culture. I also welcome the findings of the recent evaluation of the Programme, and I thank AECOM Ltd. for their work in highlighting the important impact this Programme has had on the people, community and environment of one of our truly unique landscapes," the minister said.
Conor Trindle
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THE ROBERT KINNEAR MUSIC SCHOLARSHIP
Students graduating high school who have been accepted to and are enrolling in a music program at a recognized Canadian college or university.
Geographical Qualification
Graduates must be from high schools in the following communities: North Brampton, Caledon, Orangeville, Alliston, Erin and King City.
The value of each scholarship is $500.
In January of 1985, Rob Kinnear appeared at his first rehearsal of the Caledon Concert Band. He had been recruited by a founding member, Arie Kavalaar, to help out in the trombone section and to conduct some pieces. Once the baton was handed over, it was his to keep. In his 31 years with the band, he has honed our talents and lead us to many memorable and award-winning performances.
Rob has made education a primary focus of his music career. Rob began teaching at Harrow District High School where, under his leadership, over 50% of the school population participated in music. In 1984, he moved to Mayfield Secondary School in Brampton where he established their music theatre, jazz band and choir programs. While at Morningstar Secondary School in the late 80's, he set up a keyboard lab, the first classroom in Peel District to combine computers and synthesizers to teach music composition. As Head of Music at Brampton Centennial Secondary School he spent 6 weeks in July and August one year with volunteer parents and students building a special vocal jazz studio in the school. He coordinated multiple fundraising initiatives to equip the room with professional quality sound equipment and took his singers and their band on the road to community events throughout the GTA.
Over the years, there have been countless examples of his dedication to reaching out to individuals through music education and encouraging them to reach beyond whatever notions they held of their own limitations. There was the young percussionist who played with a mallet in her mouth due to a congenital condition that had prevented her limbs from developing to the usual size. Rob designed a device and worked with Erin Oak Foundation to provide her with a mechanism that enabled her to use her arms to master faster and more complicated rhythms. There was also a brilliant math student with autism who increased his vocal range and ability to socially interact in Rob's vocal class. Many students have found an anchor in Rob's classes that has kept them in school and motivated to seek higher education.
As a conductor, Rob inspires his performers to explore their true potential, not only in rehearsals, but in serving their community. In Kingsville, Ontario, Rob lead the Kinnear Clan Singers, a 50 voice SATB chorus that presented annual Spring Variety Shows. Rob has directed choral camps for children, teens and adults for over 25 years with the United Church of Canada at Gesstwood, Lambton Centre and Camp Ganadaoweh. On tour with the Baturin Ukranian Orchestra, Rob brought not only music but also humanitarian medical relief to regions affected by the Chernobyl Disaster. Since his early youth Rob contributed to many community concert bands, as an instrumentalist or a conductor and, in later years, as a Board Member of the Canadian Band Association. He has served as conductor of the Caledon Concert Band for the vast majority of its 40+ year history. He truly has devoted his gifts for music and education to service in his community and we are proud to offer a scholarship in his name.
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People fear a hamlet will be 'destroyed' in a major rail upgrade
Network Rail has no plans to close any level crossings in Queen Adelaide but some people aren't convinced
Tom Pilgrim
Plans to upgrade a major rail junction near Ely will "destroy" a hamlet because its level crossings won't be able to cope, it is feared.
Queen Adelaide are concerned changes to the Ely North junction could lead to the closure of the B1382 Ely Road through the village.
Three level crossings and a railway bridge currently intersect the road carrying trains through Ely to King's Lynn, Norwich and Peterborough.
Businesses and rail operators say the junction upgrade will boost the region's economy through greater passenger and freight train numbers. The government says it will be a high priority from 2019 to 2024.
Network Rail says there are currently "no plans" to close any level crossings and is leading an £8.8million feasibility study into the potential impact of the scheme.
But residents remain unconvinced by the reassurances of Network Rail and Cambridgeshire County Council and have set up a campaign group to highlight their concerns.
Ely North Junction lies to the south of Queen Adelaide (Image: Google Maps)
Queen Adelaide resident Rupert Moss-Eccardt, who helped establish the group, said: "I felt we should come together as a community to make it clear that closure is unacceptable. The response has been strong. Clearly people are very worried."
The former county councillor explained the closure of one or all of the level crossings would severely inconvenience local residents.
He said: "For me, I'm east of the crossings. To get to the west would be a 15 mile drive.
"My neighbour, her son lives west of the crossings, instead of being able to walk to her house in 15 minutes it would be a 15 mile drive.
"People who live between the two crossings would have to be resettled. There's half a dozen houses and a village hall. That would be a terrible intervention into their lives.
'This area of East Cambridgeshire would be destroyed'
"It would destroy this area of East Cambridgeshire."
A statement from the newly formed campaign group said it wanted to raise "serious concerns that the lifeline between Ely and Prickwillow is to be closed".
Mr Moss-Eccardt added that any closures would also affect residents travelling from the new Cathedral View and Ely North developments to the west of the crossings.
"It will change the whole character of the area," he said.
We’ve done it: Cambridge parents win road safety battle
"The MoD has a number of houses in Ely where the old RAF hospital used to be. We do know quite a few airforce personnel go through the village to Mildenhall and Lakenheath.
"An ambulance from Ely would take 20 more minutes to get to me if the crossings were closed."
Residents met with representatives of Network Rail and the county council last month to discuss plans for the area, but Mr Moss-Eccardt said it "raised more questions than it answered".
"They're spending money on something for which they have 'no plans' for," he said. "They are spending £8 million. We don't believe them.
"We were less confident than beforehand. There was no defined view or time scale offered. It was just a lot of chit chat.
"People are worried that the way they live their lives will be significantly altered.
"People who moved into the village recently are saying 'I wouldn't have moved if I'd known'."
Another vehicle gets stuck under Ely's notorious railway bridge
A Network Rail spokesperson emphasised there were no current plans to close level crossings in Queen Adelaide.
She said: "We are currently in the very early stages of looking at the road and rail issues in the Ely area. This is the research phase, which will inform the development of any potential solution to increase the number of trains that pass through the area.
"We do not have any plans to close the crossings but we know that putting more trains over them will mean that they have to be upgraded, which will impact on the road traffic in the area.
"The scheme is not fully funded and any solution would have to demonstrate value for money for the taxpayer, and the statutory process for a scheme of this scale would require public consultation so no decisions will be taken lightly or quickly."
A Cambridgeshire County Council spokesperson said: "We’re working with Network Rail to understand the impact of increasing the number of trains through the level crossings.
"At this early stage we wanted to have a conversation with people about how they use the area. Their feedback will be combined with the traffic study data and this work is due to be finished early next year."
You can keep up to date with all the latest news in and around Cambridge by downloading our free app. It is available for the iPhone and iPad from Apple's App Store , or the Android version can be downloaded from Google Play.
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Campus Reform | VIDEO: Students say offensive speech is not free speech
VIDEO: Students say offensive speech is not free speech
A number of students said that offensive or hateful speech crosses a line.
Campus Reform's Cabot Phillips asked students in Virginia what should be considered free speech and what crosses the line.
The comments come just ahead of President Trump signing an executive order on Thursday that is intended to promote more free speech on campus.
Jon Street | Managing Editor
Thursday, March 21, 2019 10:56 AM
Campus Reform's Cabot Phillips, ahead of President Donald Trump signing an executive order Thursday that is intended to address free speech on college campuses, talked with students at Marymount University in Virginia to ask them their thoughts on what type of speech should be allowed and the type of speech they think crosses a line.
A number of students suggested that hateful, offensive, or rude speech should not be considered free speech.
"I think if it's, like, hateful and disrespectful to specific groups, then that's not OK," one student said.
Another student suggested that "I think that you can be rude but not saying anything discriminatory and...you know..." while another stated, "I understand you have free rights to say what you want about people but when it's, like, negatively impacting our school as a whole and other students around you, that's crossing the line."
Trump, on Thursday, will sign an executive order that will require colleges to certify they are complying with First Amendment protections in order to receive federal research dollars, according to a senior administration official.
The official declined to provide any more details of what exactly is in the order.
[RELATED: Trump to require colleges to support free speech if they want federal funds]
Trump previously stated at CPAC that the order would "require colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research dollars." In anticipation of what the president initially said, Campus Reform compiled a report, based on publicly available data, showing how much colleges and universities receive in federal research funding.
The White House did not respond in time for publication to Campus Reform's request for further comment when asked if the order will, in fact, tie federal research dollars to colleges' support of free speech, as the president initially that said it would.
Follow the authors of this article on Twitter: @JonStreet and @Cabot_Phillips
Jon Street
Jon Street is a news editor for Campus Reform. Six years ago, Jon cut his reporting teeth fresh out of college as an intern at Media Research Center's CNSNews.com, where he interviewed multiple members of Congress and former presidential candidates. From there, he went on to complete a stint at Watchdog.org, where his exclusive, investigative work was picked up or cited by the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News, National Review, and the Dr…
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Civil Air Patrol U.S. Air Force Auxiliary
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Lesson aloft
(Clockwise, from left) Civil Air Patrol Capt. Thomas O’Connor speaks with Air Force Lt. Sedacy Walden as Air Force Capt. Kayla Pipe pilots their CAP Cessna
CAP Helps Train Air Force Officers Aspiring to Fly
Paul South
Civil Air Patrol is one of the four partners in the U.S. Air Force Total Force. Consisting of CAP as the Air Force auxiliary as well as the Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve and active-duty Air Force, each partner has specific missions that often foster collaboration.
For CAP, the collaboration often consists of participation in training exercises as intercept targets straying into restricted airspace, performing search and rescue missions assigned by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, and in this case providing essential preparatory training to active-duty officers who aspire to achieve their goal of earning their Air Force wings.
“CAP is providing a crucial service for the Air Force and our nation,” said Brig. Gen. William Betts, vice commander, First Air Force, AFNORTH. “Some great airmen got their start in CAP, and we are committed to maintaining that tradition.”
Air Force Capt. Alex Johnson and Lt. Kristen Kummen share that aviation dream. Kummen could have spoken for both in just a few words.
“I really want to be a pilot,” she said.
Thanks to the partnership between the Air Force and Civil Air Patrol, Kummen, Johnson and their classmates have the opportunity to soar to their airborne dreams.
Launched in 2019 as an experimental initiative, the Rated Preparatory Program (RPP) provides accelerated instruction that identifies future pilots, navigators and other crew members to help address the Air Force’s potential pilot shortage.
The program aims to provide current active-duty Air Force officers with flying hours and experience to increase their Pilot Candidate Selection Model score and be more likely to qualify for Undergraduate Flight Training boards.
Rated Preparatory Program Video
Nearly 100 officers have participated during the first two years of the program. Forty-one students participated in the program this year. In the first session, 20 students completed 112 sorties, totaling more than 189 hours of flight time. Twelve to 14 planes took to the skies daily, with students under the guidance of CAP flight instructors, several of them retired military pilots. The 21 students in the second session made 112 flights totaling 169.7 hours.
Johnson, a combat systems officer who also works in tactical air control while stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and Kummen, stationed at Kunsan Air Force Base, South Korea, sing the RPP’s praises.
“For me, the RPP has been a great opportunity,” Johnson said. “Just having the ground school and the instruction that you receive from the instructors here … has helped me learn my place in the air and not having to drink so much from a fire hose.”
Johnson, like Kummen, wants to secure a pilot training slot.
Kummen has gained a great deal from supplemental flight time from the military and civilian members. But along with learning the aircraft inside-out, she has gained an understanding of the flying community, which she called “a lot of fun.”
“My motivation comes a lot from that,” she said. “I really want to be a pilot in the flying community more than anything. Everyone I’ve met loves aviation and wants to fly for their whole lives. That’s why I’m here.”
Fifty-two officers went through the program in 2019. The 2020 decrease is due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying travel restrictions.
“It’s a great opportunity for the Air Force to generate more pilots in a time of need,” said CAP Deputy Director of Operations Ron Olienyk. “It also gives the volunteers an opportunity to give back. A lot of our staff are retired military flyers, so they feel like this is kind of paying back for the opportunity they had.”
The program is already impacting the Total Force. The Air Force’s Air Crew Task Force has concluded that the Air Force is thousands of pilots short, Olienyk said. The RPP helps address that need, bolstering national security.
Simulated flying
Air Force Capt. Kayla Pipe practices on a CAP flight simulator. Photo by Maj. Rod Rakic, Michigan Wing
The program also gives a “second-chance” opportunity to Air Force officers who may not have had the means or the opportunity for flight training before testing and submitting application packages to the pilot boards.
“They knew they wanted to be pilots, but they just didn’t have some of the air sense,” Olienyk said. “So what we’re providing here is that air sense for them to go back with that desire and actually test to meet the boards and actually get selected.”
The RPP will help ease the pilot shortage while also increasing diversity, said Air Force Maj. Sean Stumpf, chief of the Air Crew Task Force Talent Management Branch.
“The Air Force is committed to increasing diversity within its rated force—$18.1 million has been designated in fiscal 2021 for various Rated Diversity Initiatives,” Stumpf said. “RPP is one initiative with significant momentum in increasing diversity in aviation—in just one year, the number of under-represented groups participating in RPP has doubled (57% of fiscal 2020’s class is comprised of students from under-represented groups).”
He added, “Diversity in all forms makes our Air Force better. It’s more than race, gender and ethnicity—it’s about leveraging unique strengths, perspectives and experiences. A force made up of various backgrounds inherently brings out new and innovative ideas, which is vital to the Air Force mission. Additionally, when dealing with complex issues, diversity of our force means we’re bringing unique skills, abilities and knowledge to the table to help solve those issues.”
Every one of the 2019 students who completed the program and submitted application packages to the boards received their first or second choice to serve as pilots, system operators or large drone pilots.
Each RPP participant must complete six to eight hours of actual flight time, finish an online ground school and pass a demanding written examination. Candidates also have access to flight simulators that enable them to sharpen their skills.
As with all Air Force pilots, successful RPP candidates must be officers and hold a college degree.
Both Kummen and Johnson say the program has sparked thoughts of a long-term military career.
Lt. Col. Eric Templeton, a senior program manager for CAP, gives Kummen, Johnson and all the students in this year’s RPP high marks. Both of the program’s classes were highly motivated, but this group has more air experience, with some having their private pilot’s certificate.
“The group that’s here for these two weeks are truly here for a second chance at their passion,” Templeton said. “The flying is stellar.”
Video by Maj. Rod Rakic, Michigan Wing
Minn. Members Assist Natl. Guard PPE Mission
Lifesaving Certificate Recognizes Ohio Cadet's Actions After Boating Mishap
'CAP Goes to the Moon' Opportunity Offered
Blood Donation Mission Ends 2020 With 1,500+ Units Collected
Former N.H. Wing Commander Totals 1,000 IP/CP Sorties
Wolff Turns 102; Former U.S. Rep. Flew CAP WWII Coastal Patrol Missions
Supporting America’s communities with emergency response, diverse aviation and ground services, youth development, and promotion of air, space and cyber power.
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Links or references to individuals or companies do not constitute an endorsement of any information, product, or service you may receive from such sources.
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The Hidden Doorway
Thank you for your assistance, traveler! The key is buried deep enough for now, I would say. It will be obvious if we did an insufficient job anyway. The connection between the buried key and the one I wear will be lost if that one is ever unearthed. Thanks to your help, though, I don’t foresee that being an issue.
Before we continue our journey, let us sit a spell and take in the crossroads and the dark of the moon. We will eventually need to determine which way to proceed, but first we must simply be still and…just be. Let’s listen and absorb the energies that are present.
Liminal spaces have been an object of both fascination and unease for humans ever since we developed the desire to categorize and compartmentalize our world. Crossroads are an excellent example of this, as they are the intersection of separate and distinct paths. A decision must be made before leaving the crossroads; however, while in the center of it…prior to any decision being made…you are in an unidentifiable space. For example, you are neither inside nor outside when standing in the front doorway to your home. While contemplating a major life transition, you are neither in your old life nor have you yet embarked on your new journey. You are in the in-between.
Since ancient times, one of the deities ascribed to the crossroads is Hekate. This is fitting, really, because, as demonstrated last week when we dove into her connection with Kore, she has the ability to move freely between the realms. She facilitates transitions and therefore can linger at the crossroads without concern. She is certainly not the only deity associated with the crossroads. In fact, even within the Greek pantheon, liminal spaces are shared with the god Hermes. Other cultures and pantheons have their own deities guarding the crossroads as well, of course, and we have combined elements from our ancestors into the magic that is practiced today.
It is important to note that these guiding deities are not the only entities present at the threshold. Restless spirits congregate at the crossroads as well. Perhaps it is the combined power of the crossroads deities and the restless spirits that made this location a place of intense emotion. Certain crossroads that were known for increased activity were to be feared and/or avoided but also were sought out under particular circumstances. Such circumstances, at least according to the historical record, came about when people were pushed to their limits.
The crossroads have yielded evidence of our ancestors’ beliefs and allowed us to connect with them in ways that would otherwise be lost in time. We have found trinkets, bones, and wax dolls buried in these liminal spaces. We have discovered tablets that call upon Hekate and other deities, their names scratched into sheets of lead that were rolled, bound, and buried into the ground. These have become known as curse tablets and could be found in all manner of transitional spaces, from graves to doorsills.
In some cases, we have records as to how the rituals were carried out. In one instance in particular, after completing the ritual at the crossroads, one must turn around and flee before Hekate makes her appearance. She cannot be seen. Of course, there are ways to know when she is close even if you cannot see her: hearing her hounds, for example, just as we did earlier.
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But, as I said, there are other beings that inhabit the crossroads. It is as much a shared space as it is a transitional one, and it is best to remember that.
How are you feeling? What are your senses perceiving?
Do you feel that chill in your bones?
Tell me, traveler, that you felt the winds rush in from all directions to engulf us here as we sit at the center.
Do you hear that??
Someone...
something…is coming.
Betz, Hans Dieter. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. The University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Foxwood, Orion. The Candle and the Crossroads: A Book of Appalachian Conjure and Southern Root-Work. Weiser Books, 2012.
Gager, John G. Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World. Oxford University Press, 1992.
Johnston, S. I. “Crossroads.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik, vol. 88, 1991, pp. 217–224.
Ogden, Daniel. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook. Oxford University Press, 2009.
A Key to Bind.
Welcome back, traveler! We must get moving as we have a destination to reach before the dark of the moon.
Well…we are headed to a liminal space.
A veil between the worlds.
A sacred place.
You shall see…
There are few deities in myth who have the power to freely traverse between the worlds. The gods are limited in their domains, really, but the ones who have the ability to move between the realms…theirs are the stories most interesting to tell.
In the pantheon of ancient Greece, Hekate is one such deity. She helped the goddess Demeter in her most desperate time of need.
You see, one beautiful day, many moons ago, the beautiful young Kore was joyfully playing in the meadows, gathering and admiring the wildflowers while in the company of some of her friends. She was naïve and unsuspecting that day when the ground suddenly shook beneath her feet, and she was forced to meet a fate which she did not choose.
The earth split and Hades appeared. He ripped Kore from her realm down into his. He retrieved her as his prize. She was to become his new wife--just as he had been promised by his brother, the great god Zeus. Hades had admired her from afar for some time and was unwilling to wait any longer. She was to be his. She was to become his queen.
Kore’s screams were heard by only a few before the earth closed behind her. Her actual abduction was seen by even fewer.
Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, and more importantly (for this story) the mother of Kore, was broken. She searched the earth for days without any luck. Her daughter was gone.
Hekate was one of the deities who heard the moment Kore was stolen away from this realm, and she approached Demeter, offering aide in any way she could.
Demeter, upon discovering that wicked pact which had been formed between Zeus and Hades, threatened to halt the progression, reproduction, and fruitfulness of all the natural world if her daughter was not returned.
It was Hekate who helped her discover this betrayal. She knew that the god Helios would have seen what she could not. It was Hekate who walked with Demeter through the veil to the lower world. It was Hekate who provided her torches, which can burn brightly even in the realm of the dead. It was Hekate who, once Kore was reunited with Demeter, was forever at her side, easing her annual transition from the world of the mortals to that of the darkened realm of her betrothed. Hekate has become Kore's most important companion.
Hades ensured that this cycle must always continue. Kore is bound to him eternally because he fed her pomegranate seeds before she was rescued by Demeter. The seeds were a safeguard for Hades, and her consumption of them means she cannot abandon him for any extended period of time. She must always return to the land of the dead.
When Kore is with her mother, Demeter’s maternal joy rewards us. The world is bright and beautiful. There is abundance. We are fed. We are happy. But we must steady ourselves for the inevitable. Kore must leave; Demeter will mourn her loss. It is during this time, however, we must remind ourselves that Kore will return. Hekate will guide her back to us.
You see, without Hekate, we wouldn’t have the seasons. Demeter is so distraught in the absence of her daughter that she plunges the world into darkness until they are reunited again. Crops will not grow for months. Without proper planning, humans will starve and therefore the gods would, too. For we know life is a cycle. Their power feeds off of our devotion, doesn’t it? Without Hekate helping Demeter find her way to Kore, we would be in an eternal winter. Without Hekate helping Kore traverse the realms, we would all suffer. The cycle would be broken.
That is according to the stories handed down from ancient Greece, at least…
As it is said in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter: “Gods are hard for mortals to see.”
So, we must go by the sounds we recognize and the landmarks we know….
Do you hear it--the hounds baying? We are close!
Ah, yes, there we are. We have arrived at the crossroads. Now, if you excuse me, I have to attend to an important matter. If you wish, you can follow me. In fact….here! Carry this torch for me. I need a free hand for digging, anyway.
Now, as you can see, I need a hand to dig with this here spoon and one to hold these keys. Once…I…get…deep enough…
Yes! That should do! Here…hold this spoon while I bury a key. Keep the torch high, though! I still need to be able to see that it is buried tightly. We can’t have it coming unburied, you know!
Perfect! Now…the other key will remain with me. Keys keep us connected. They are important. So are the crossroads….
Homeric Hymn to Demeter
https://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Persephone.html
https://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Hekate.html
http://hoodoohillrootworksupply.blogspot.com/2013/04/crossroads-keys.html
Look to the Skies...
Welcome back to the Caravan! Last week we discussed the importance of noticing the signs that nature leaves behind…sometimes there are hidden meanings, after all. I entreated you to look up and notice some of the stories the sky may have to tell. Did you listen? Did you note the rising of the full moon last week? That was the Flower Moon (northern hemisphere) or the Hunter’s Moon (southern hemisphere). Each month’s full moon carries a specific name (or names, depending on where you live), and our ancestors relied on these lunar signs to know when to plant, when to harvest, and when to hunt. Perhaps we can still take some knowledge from our predecessors…
For example, Appalachian lore suggests you should plant according to the phases of the moon. That is, above ground crops should be planted under the new of the moon. Below ground should not be planted until closer to the full moon. If planting isn’t of concern to you, perhaps you would be interested to know that Appalachian wisdom dictates wooden shingles should be put on a house during the week around new moon (the ‘dark of the moon’) or they will turn up and be ruined. Likewise, one should cut tobacco near the new moon if you want it to cure well.
According to a tale recounted by Michael Rivers, being aware of the types of full moon can save not only your life but also the life of your hunting companions. The Hunter’s Moon, which is in October in the northern hemisphere, is not always as enticing as it may seem. During the light of this moon, a bear may appear that is so alluring that you will follow it for miles and miles, unwittingly risking your life in the process. It is important, therefore, to not only know the world around you; but also, it is respectful to know the lore native to the area you currently inhabit.
We can look to our ancestors for interpretations of other astronomical phenomena as well. Appalachian lore dictates that the appearance of comets and shooting stars can be prelude to disaster. In similar fashion, history tends to paint the appearance of such wonders as portents of war or doom. My heart, however, has always been attached to the appearance of a comet as a sign that deification has occurred. You see, Julius Caesar was assassinated at Pompey’s Theater (the Senate house was under construction at that time) on the Ides of March in 44 BCE. Aside from his murderers, much of Rome was plunged into great mourning after his passing. A few months later during Caesar’s funeral games, an astronomical wonder shown in the sky that would be unrivaled for millennia. Caesar’s comet, Sidus Iulium, was so bright that it was visible even in the middle of the day, and this brilliant magnificence lasted an entire week. This was a sure sign to the Roman people that Caesar had ascended to the heavens as a god. This event was later used by the first Roman emperor, Augustus, as he won over the populace of Rome by emphasizing his familial connection with a deity. We have evidence of Caesar’s comet on Roman coinage minted under Augustus’ reign, proving that he utilized such an extraordinary event for his own gains.
All of this Roman lore is being mentioned to bring you, dear reader, back to current day events. Right now, if you live in the southern hemisphere, you should be able to step outside during the evening this coming week, look up, and spot the SWAN comet before it breaks into several pieces. If you aren’t able to see this before it fades out of view, or you are on the opposite side of the planet for this spectacle, no worries. In July, the northern hemisphere should see the appearance of Comet С/2020 F3 (NEOWISE). Now we can be left to wonder, based on ancient Roman beliefs, who might be ascending to deification?
Gainer, Patrick. Witches, Ghosts, and Signs: Folklore of the Southern Appalachians.
Montell, William Lynwood. Ghosts Along the Cumberland: Deathlore in the Kentucky Foothills.
Moser, Heather. From Tyranny to Clemency: How Julius Caesar's Memory has Fluctuated over Time as a Reflection of Imperial Sentiment.
https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2012/11/beware-the-hunters-moon.html
https://starwalk.space/en/news/may-2020-comet-swan-c2020-f8
http://aerith.net/comet/weekly/current.html
Have you ever felt like the outside world is trying to tell you something? Nature constantly communicates with us. Don’t feel odd if you haven’t noticed. A lot of us have forgotten the language. We have forgotten how to see the signs. Sometimes we need to be reminded.
As we wind down these old dirt roads here in the caravan, I want you to notice the trees in full bloom. Do you see them? The buds are giving way to new leaves that will unfurl and grow with each passing day. Some of the branches are already overtaken by beautiful blossoms. The dogwood, in particular, shines radiantly amongst the other species in the forest. The bright distinct petals make this type of tree easy to spot from a distance. The color of the petals is important to note, particularly if it is a purple-blossomed dogwood. When you see such a sight, you can be sure that the nearest graveyard is full, even if it doesn’t appear to be…
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Nearly a century ago, the Tennessee River Valley underwent a massive change that ultimately brought electricity to areas that had, until that point, been unable to access such a luxury. During this time, the United States was trying to claw its way out of the Great Depression, farmers were losing the ability to produce crops as desired, and many people were falling ill with malaria. Change was both imminent and needed. Dams and reservoirs were created throughout the region over a span of 11 years in an attempt to address all of these issues.
Life was improved overall, but it wasn’t without sacrifice. Because of the redirection of bodies of water in the Tennessee River Valley, some towns were flooded. Residents were forced to find new homes, but their ancestors could not relocate quite so easily. In preparation for the flooding, bodies had to be dug up and reinterred in new places of rest.
During the relocation phase, a crew of workers came to begin clearing out one of these cemeteries that would soon be submerged. Upon their arrival, the workers noticed a woman standing near the entrance. She was weeping while staring at an empty section beyond the headstones. She was unwilling to communicate with anyone, so the men continued with their work. A short time later, she disappeared only to return with a bouquet of wildflowers. She held the flowers as she wept, staring at the same empty place, still without speaking, and made no attempt to move beyond the entrance. No one recognized the distraught woman, so they felt it best to just let her be. Eventually she vanished.
The woman never appeared at the cemetery again, but on two separate mornings when the crew arrived to resume their work, items were left in that empty corner of the cemetery. One morning, they found a vase of fresh flowers. Another, their tools were placed where the vase had been. This was especially unnerving as the tools had been locked away in a toolbox at the end of the previous workday. After several days, the crew unearthed and relocated the final body, and they returned home with a bit of relief that they had finished their task and would be heading to a different location in the morning.
That night, however, the foreman awoke to see the weeping woman standing in his bedroom. She held wildflowers in her hand, and she spoke for the first time. She begged the foreman, “Please don’t leave my baby there!” before vanishing. It was then that he understood.
The next morning, the foreman, against the wishes of his crew, insisted they return one final time before moving to their new location. He led them to the empty corner of the cemetery and told them to dig. Sure enough, after some time, they unearthed the skeleton of a baby who had been buried a few feet deep in an unmarked grave. The baby was placed in a coffin and sent to another cemetery so that it would not be lost forever under the waters of the soon-to-be-flooded valley.
So, remember, the next time that you see that purple dogwood, Mother Nature just might be trying to let any passersby know that the closest burial grounds are full, even if a lack of headstones might suggest otherwise.
Sometimes it pays to slow down and listen to the world around you. Reconnect with our shared language. You never know what you may learn. Take a moment. Breathe in the fresh air. Memorize the sounds of the leaves blowing in the wind and the birds chirping amongst themselves. Observe the world around you, and always look up…sometimes the sky has its own story to tell…
Jones, James Gay. Haunted Valley and More Folk Tales of Appalachia. McClain Print. Co., 1997.
Montell, William Lynwood. Ghosts along the Cumberland: Deathlore in the Kentucky Foothills. University of Tennessee Press, 2000.
https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/index.html
https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/history-of-the-tva
Author- Heather Moser & Lady Ann
Paranormal Experiencer; Truth Seeker, Spooky Explorer.
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Jenny Slate: Chris Evans’ Ex-Girlfriend’s Net Worth & Why You Should Know Her Name
Becca Bleznak
Actor Chris Evans, aka Captain America, has become a household name since he began his run in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Despite this, he has worked to keep his personal life as private as possible. Though he seems to be single at the moment, we do know a few of Evans’ notable ex-girlfriends, including actress Jenny Slate. If you’re not familiar with her name, here’s what you should know her from, along with her net worth and some details about her relationship with Evans.
Slate and Evans dated on and off for a couple of years
Jenny Slate and Chris Evans | Emma McIntyre/Getty Images
Evans and Slate met on the set of their 2017 film Gifted. They were first spotted together in May 2016, around the time that Slate announced her separation from her husband of three years, Dean Fleischer-Camp. Slate and Evans reportedly separated in February 2017, prior to Gifted’s opening.
Months later, in late 2017, rumors began to circulate that they were back together. They spent the holidays together, and it seemed like things were going very well this time around. However, by March 2018, Slate and Evans had broken up once again.
Here’s why you know her name
Slate herself is an accomplished actress with a very recognizable voice. You may know her from Marcel the Shell, a stop-motion short film which quickly gained popularity in 2010. She also voices Tammy on Bob’s Burgers, Missy on Big Mouth, and Gidget in The Secret Life of Pets movies. But her voice roles are just the beginning.
Slate got her start as a Saturday Night Cast member for one season. She had recurring roles on shows like House of Lies and Married. Many might recognize Slate as Mona-Lisa, Jean-Ralphio Saperstein’s equally obnoxious sister from Parks and Recreation. And her big-screen career has featured notable indie films like Obvious Child, Joshy, and Landline. Oh, and she’s also entered into the comic book movie playing field, with a role in the Sony Marvel blockbuster Venom.
This is what she and Evans have said about one another
A lot of fans were rooting for Slate and Evans, two extremely well-liked and down-to-Earth actors from Massachusetts. And though they aren’t together right now, they’ve only had wonderful things to say about one another in the past.
This is terrifying and exhilarating. Meet me behind the gym after science. I have shark bites.
— jenny slate (@jennyslate) October 22, 2017
After their first breakup, Slate called Evans, “a lovely person,” saying they were friends from the moment they met during auditions for Gifted. “I first really liked Chris as a person because he is so unpretentious…He’s really vulnerable, and he’s really straightforward.” So what lead to their breakup? Slate emphasized their differences, both in personality and in lifestyles due to fame, as well as the fact that things began when she was just recently separated.
Slate hasn’t said much since their second breakup, and though Evans doesn’t mention her by name in his recent profile in The Hollywood Reporter, he does talk about a book of feminist essays that she encouraged him to read at one time. He also talked about how he is “a really autonomous guy,” perhaps suggesting his reasons for being single at this time.
Slate’s net worth
Slate has been in several projects of note, and it’s reflected in her earnings. According to Celebrity Net Worth, she is estimated to be worth around $5 million. With three films on the way in 2019 alone, one of which she was a producer on, there’s no doubt that Slate will continue to increase her earnings in the years to come.
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Virgil Miller
Columbus, Ga.
As Executive Vice President; President of Individual Benefits Division at Aflac, Virgil oversees the strategic leadership and overall direction of operations for Aflac U.S., including IT/Digital Services, Customer Service, Claims and Billing/Payment areas of operations.
He first joined the company in 2004 in the Policy Service department and earned promotions to positions of increasing responsibility including second vice president of Client Services, Policy Service and the Customer Service Center, and vice president of Client Services, Customer Assurance and Aflac’s Transformation Office. In 2015, Virgil was promoted to senior vice president of Internal Operations and later named chief administrative officer, head of Aflac Group. He was promoted to his current position in January 2018 and is responsible for the strategic leadership and overall direction of operations at Aflac Group as well as operations for Aflac U.S. of increasing responsibility.
Virgil served as a U.S. Marine and is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. He holds a master’s degree in business management from Wesleyan College and a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Georgia College. He also holds Six Sigma/PMP certifications from Villanova University.
He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Palmetto Health Foundation, the Board of Trustees for Claflin University, the South Carolina State Chamber Board, the 2017 Group Insurance Executive Council, the Palmetto Business Forum and the Columbia Urban League. He is a former board member for the American Red Cross and the United Way Board of Trustees.
If you are looking to submit press releases or other forms of news for consideration, the best approach is to email [email protected]. That is an actively monitored distribution list.
Virgil's Recent Articles
How the Customer Experience Has Been Altered for Good Jan 12, 2021
3 Customer Experience Strategies to Win Over Consumers Today and Tomorrow Aug 30, 2019
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How We Could Be Bigger
Dr. James Emery White | Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary | Monday, March 24, 2014
Mecklenburg Community Church (Meck), where I have the privilege of serving as senior pastor, has a clear ten-year vision we call our “20/20 Vision”: to be a church of 20,000 active attenders with ministry in 20 countries by the year 2020.
It’s an audacious goal. We call it, borrowing from Jim Collins, a BHAG – a “big, hairy, audacious goal.”
It was first announced in 2010, and now, just about four years later, we are ahead of schedule with nearly 10,000 active attenders and ministry in 16 countries with over seventy percent of our growth coming from the previously unchurched.
We started off in 2010 with half that many active attenders and ministry in only five countries outside of the U.S. The vision propelled us toward a capital campaign to raise money to build (again) on our original campus and launch two new sites (a third is coming this fall) in other parts of the city.
It also led us to initiate what we call “Missions 2.0”, which is an aggressive approach to developing partnerships and sending serving teams locally and around the world to those in need. It’s resulted in such things as building homes for those rescued from sex-trafficking in the Philippines, supporting orphanages in Argentina, and sponsoring children through local churches in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Haiti.
In other words, a clear vision – if it is going to mean anything – will necessarily translate into action. You will do whatever it takes to make the vision a reality.
Well, almost anything.
There are certain things we could have done that would have made us much larger than we are; things that would have exponentially accelerated our growth.
And I am so glad that we didn’t do any of them.
I am so glad that we did not fall into mere rhetoric about reaching the unchurched while, in reality, catered to transfer growth.
I am so glad that we never valued talent or “look” over character in regard to who we platformed or allowed to lead.
I am so glad we took membership seriously, as well as baptism, so that it was never just about adding notches to our belt, but entailed actual vetting.
I am so glad that no one on staff, least of all me, sacrificed their family for the sake of the church.
I am so glad that we didn’t gloss over or simply ignore the most pressing, controversial issues facing the interplay of Christ and culture.
I am so glad that we didn’t present a “lite” gospel that reduced Jesus to a personal life coach and made the radical, sacrificial message of the gospel all about personal peace and affluence.
If we had embraced one or more of these, we would be much, much larger than we are now. Our choices have, without a doubt, cost us growth. Which means that while we are ahead of schedule in terms of our 20/20 Vision, we may not achieve the hoped-for result.
Because there are other things that, I hope, we will not do.
And that’s fine by me.
Because not only do the means seldom justify the end, the means – in so many ways – are the end. At least for a follower of Christ. For us, how we reach our goals matter as much as the goals themselves. Because the “how” is about the way we live our lives.
So for us, the vision isn’t simply about 20,000 active attenders or ministry in 20 countries. It’s more than that.
It’s about who we are as we strive toward achieving it.
James Emery White
James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, The Rise of the Nones, is now available for pre-order. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, visit www.churchandculture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.
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Chicago Bears Kicker Acknowledges Jesus after Making Game-Winning Field Goal
Mikaela Mathews | ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor | Tuesday, September 17, 2019
#NFL
An unlikely kicker for the Chicago Bears is making headlines and thanking God for his success, according to Faithwire.
On Sunday night, 24-year-old Eddy Piñeiro kicked a 53-yard field goal to push the Bears for the win. The Chicago team suffered a rough blow last season after being knocked out of the playoffs with a missed field goal, according to USA Today. The ball ricocheted off of the left upright and bounced off the crossbar, earning the nickname ‘double doink.’ The team became committed to finding a kicker who could bring them back this season.
In his first post-game interview with Fox Sports, Piñeiro said, “For everybody listening, man, if you don’t believe in Jesus Christ, you better start, because he’s real. I promise you that.”
Piñeiro seemed an unusual pick this spring for the Bears. After only two seasons with the Florida Gators, he went undrafted last year. But he’s making up for the lost time.
“All offseason long, the story of Chicago was the inability to find a clutch kicker. Today, the story and the answer is you!” a Fox reporter said.
“It felt great,” Piñeiro, who has earned the nickname “Eddy Dinero” by teammates, said in a later interview. “The first thing that came to my mind was just thanking God. It was an emotional kick. My teammates, everyone, just for them, for Chicago, they deserve it.”
Should Piñeiro have missed the kick, many believe he would have lost his place on the team. “‘If this guy misses this kick, he probably can’t kick in Chicago again. If he makes it, he’s a hero with confidence and momentum.’ So that’s all that’s riding on this one kick at the end of the game,” NFL insider Adam Schefter shared, quoting ESPN analyst John Fox.
The ASA College graduate has practiced his faith throughout his time with the Bears. In late August, he posted a photo of himself pointing upward with the caption: “‘So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’ Matthew 6:34”
He also credits God for being drafted to the NFL team: “I wouldn’t be in this position without my Lord and Savior,” he said.
Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Nuccio DiNuzzo
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For the love of the game: Football Offers New Opportunities for Bakoteh Kids
By Omar Jarju Last updated Feb 18, 2019 178
On a dusty, sandy football pitch in Bakoteh, Momodou Ceesay, a football-obsessed 10-year-old from the neighbourhood runs around with the ball practicing his dribbling skills. Next to him, a dozen other kids line up for shooting practice.
Momodou joined the Bakoteh My Community academy a year ago to fulfil his dream of playing professional football, a dream inspired by his passion for European football leagues he watches on television. “I want to become a professional footballer playing abroad. And I’ll continue to work hard for it.”
But Momodou is aware that making it to foreign leagues he watches on TV is a huge task which he may have to start at home.
“I want to first play for Real De Banjul football club because I like their style of play. I think that will also prepare me to be ready to become a superstar outside the country. That will be nice.”
I want to be a professional footballer in the future.
Momodou Ceesay Young footballer
The next superstar
The football academy is not only developing Momodou to become a good footballer, but it’s also boosting his confidence and communication skills. His mother, Mariama Ceesay, says “he was a very shy boy who would rarely speak to people. But on the football pitch, we notice he talks a lot and communicates with his team mates all the time. He’s so rejuvenated when he’s on the pitch and of late when he’s also off the pitch.”
This is already seen as an achievement for a mother who was initially reluctant to let her son join the academy to play football because of fear that he could get injured and not be able to go to school. She finally let her play after he consistently queried that all other kids have joined the academy.
Momodou has become one of the most popular players in the academy. Among his success stories is being chosen as the captain of the Under-10 team.
“As parents, our role is to support our son in whatever he wants to do. We’re happy that we let him play football,” says Mariama. “He’s healthy and happy, and we’ll give him all the support he needs to achieve his dream.”
House to house campaign
Bakoteh My Community academy was set up by Ebrima Jadama and Baboucarr Sanyang, two football enthusiasts who are passionate about developing young aspiring footballers by helping them to excel on the pitch and grow and develop off the pitch. It took a lot of passion and determination from the duo to make this work.
“I had to go house to house just to convince parents to allow their kids to join the training sessions. It wasn’t easy at the beginning because they believed football was a hindrance to their kids’ education. So to win their hearts, we were compelled to organise educative youth community camps with football matches and social activities as a mean to develop relationship between different communities and also to help the kids with school works,” says Ebrima.
With the parents now on board, the academy offers fun introductory football sessions every Saturday and Sunday to develop both the physical and psychological skills of the youngsters. The hope is to get them to international stardom. But the success of every child is attached to the support he gets from his parents, according to Ebou Jarra, the academy’s Youth Development Coach and former trainer of Ardwick football club in England.
“As a parent, you have to wake your kid up in the morning, prepare breakfast for him, prepare him mentally to go and enjoy what he loves doing. That’s the moral support and it’s valuable,” he says.
“In other parts of the world, parents drive their kids to football training centres and drive them home after sessions which doesn’t happen quite frequent in The Gambia. A parent’s support motivates the kid to be effective both on and off the pitch. Whenever they on the pitch and look around, they should always see their parents cheering them up.”
As Ad Revenue Declines, the Future of Gambia’s Print Media Hangs in the Balance
Fatou Saine Gaye – Founder, Gaye Njorro Skills Academy
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Natural Selection team on the pressure to go free-to-play
2013-02-19 15:00:00by Hamza CTZ Aziz
And the importance of not fracturing players with paid DLC
Right now, the team behind Natural Selection II is focused on making the game better. "No one is working on a new game yet," Unknown World's Hugh Jeremy told me at a recent studio visit. "Charlie (the co-founder and CEO of the company) is sort of maybe thinking about [new game] ideas and talking to us about them but everyone is still working full time on NS2 and will be for the foreseeable future.
"The end result of that is what you're about to see which is this Gorgeous update, so called because one of the units is called a Gorge and our community has kind of rallied around that as the most characterful character that they relate to and love. We've called it Gorgeous and a lot of the stuff going into it is around that character and giving it new things to do.
"We've got the people playing the game, we've got eSports stuff happening, we've got competitive play happening, we've got a healthy public community, this modding community that's taking off -- we just want to keep making it better."
The developers are working on adding new content, all of which will be free, in the same style that games used to be updated back in the day before game companies tried to sell every single piece of content they could.
"The business model, which I guess we're testing, is is it still feasible to do that and continue to sell copies of the game," Hugh told me. "Everyone tells us to go free-to-play, [and] we're kind of not doing that and we have to see if that will work. The old school was just yeah you make a game, and then you patch the game, and people continue to buy your game. But now it's like you launch a service, and you maintain that service. We haven't done that so it's going to be interesting to see where it goes."
There are a few reasons why Unknown Worlds is avoiding the free-to-play route for now, and part of that comes from the pay-to-win scenario. "A lot of games do free-to-play really well but there's a risk with a lot of games that they end up being pay-to-win, to some degree. Even if it's hidden behind layers and layers and layers of game mechanics, eventually at some point, when you get down to it, someone is paying money and getting something before other people. We felt that was icky, for better or worse.
"And there's also the whole infrastructure behind that 'cause if we want to, you know, in two years to have NS2 go into that kind of mode you have to have payment systems, you have to have accounts. I mean when someone loads a game of NS2 they don't even get a splash screen, let alone a login prompt. It's so old-school, you just go in, and you play, and that's it. We don't have any accounts for our users, we have no way to even contact them -- there's no tracking of anything. So yeah, there's barriers there but that Valve idea is so exciting. They're such clever guys. It's great, people do what they love [while] they get benefit out of it, the whole community gets benefit out of it, and the developer can continue to make games and economies for them.
"Personally, I would love it if people could create for NS2 and have that creation be popular and then they get benefit from it. But we don't have the infrastructure for that, so at the moment if you've got a map for NS2, you've made it in the map editor, you just put it up and it goes on the Steam Workshop. The most popular map, Summit, was a community creation. Hopefully he can put it on his resume and say 'Hey look, I made the most popular map for NS2!'"
There's a lot riding on the upcoming Gorgeous downloadable content as it will be a big deciding factor on the company's direction in the future. "We're going to put this [big content update] out, and we're going to look at how it does but we've already got plans for the next one. We're going to put this big content update out where it's got all this new stuff, then continue the maintenance builds for another three months, and then at the end of that do yet another content update.
"It's going to be really interesting to see if people respond to that with 'Hey, that's pretty cool. This game is still being supported. I might have been holding out on buying it and now I might buy it!' And then if they do and we get however many thousands of people choose to do that suddenly we've got a business case for continuing that post-release support for free. It is all of course for free to anyone that's already bought NS2. We're going to find out in the next few weeks what our business model for being able to support the company into the future is going to be, and whether people will still respond to what everyone used to do which was just patch games and continue that.
It was also important for the team to release all their future new content for free as opposed to charging for it. "[People] keep saying why is this not a paid DLC? Endlessly people say to us why don't you take the game free-to-play and then release this as piece mail content? There's multiple reasons, one of them is that we're all PC gamers here. We love PC gaming, and there are examples of games doing it really well but a lot of us have been exposed to games that have gone down that pay-to-win path. And also, it can be a community-fracturing path as well when you monetize everything in the game, and it all becomes about how much have you bought.
"There's that cultural thing, and then there's also the technical side. It's definitely feasible for a team of eight plus offsiters, but there's a lot of backend financial stuff that has to happen. And also if you do a DLC like the Gorgeous update and you have to buy it for $2 or whatever, say we have 3,000 concurrent players and 1,000 of them buy it, then suddenly we've fractured our community down the middle. Suddenly what happens to the competitive scene? Are we playing this in Gorgeous or are we playing this in Vanilla? What if we released another content update? How does that interact? It just becomes messy horrible mess of who owns what and we don't want that."
Natural Selection II was released October 31, 2012 for the PC. You can pick it up right now on Steam for $24.99.
Hamza CTZ AzizShark gamer profile
more + disclosures
Also on Destructoid: Natural Selection II (3) From our database:
How the community helped build Natural Selection II - Hamza CTZ Aziz
Natural Selection team on the pressure to go free-to-play - Hamza CTZ Aziz
The first DLC for Natural Selection II is Gorgeous - Hamza CTZ Aziz
Natural Selection II has sold �well over 300,000� copies - Hamza CTZ Aziz
Natural Selection 2 deserves your attention - Patrick Hancock
Filed under... #Destructoid Originals #First-person shooter #indie #interview #PC #Real Time Strategy #Steam
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7 June 2017 Dispute Resolution Alert
International Arbitration in the Banking Finance Industry – relevance for Africa?
During October 2016, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Commission on Arbitration and ADR published their report on Financial Institutions and International Arbitration. In the report, certain specialist sectors of the banking and finance industry including derivatives, sovereign finance, international financing, Islamic Finance, advisory matters and asset management were investigated, analysed and reported upon. Over 50 financial institutions and 13 international arbitral institutions from across the globe were interviewed during the process.
The report confirms a growing trend in the referral of financial sector disputes to international arbitration for resolution. Importantly, however, the growth in referrals to international arbitration has not been as significant as in areas outside of the financial sectors.
There are a number of possible reasons for this relative slow growth. The report suggests that one of these reasons may be an apparent lack of awareness and understanding of the benefits of international arbitration. Another: the apparent view that international arbitration does not satisfy the needs of specialised financial disputes.
The report concludes that financial institutions perceive international arbitration to be most appropriate when, for example, the transaction out of which the dispute has arisen was “significant” or complex and where confidentiality is important to the parties. The report also suggested that international arbitration may be appropriate where a counter party is a state-owned entity or where enforcement may become problematic.
Both of the last suggestions are particularly relevant to Africa.
Certain institutions indicated that there was often a need to seek interim or urgent relief from state courts which could not easily be obtained through arbitration proceedings. In addition, default procedures are scarce if not totally unavailable. High costs, lack of transparency, an inability to join additional parties to proceedings and the lack of judicial precedent were all raised as further reasons for not resorting to international arbitration. All of these points have merit.
It is interesting that two areas in particular - derivatives and sovereign finance – have seen more referrals to international arbitration than any other banking and finance industry sector.
It is no secret that Africa is witnessing an awakening of sorts in the field of international arbitration. On a continent where sovereignty reigns supreme and civil court judgments are anything but predictable, it makes sense that the use of an independent tribunal to resolve international disputes, is on its way to becoming the first (and often only) choice for both commercial and investment transactions.
There is no reason why this shouldn’t apply to financial disputes. Many of the reasons parties choose a civil court for relief (over arbitral proceedings) appear to be less convincing in the African context. Urgent relief is a relative concept. The intervention of the state is a constant concern, especially in matters in which the state (or an organ of state) is a party to the proceedings.
The above, against the background of some novel innovations in arbitral procedural rules (such as urgent, ex parte, interim and conservatory relief) suggests that Africa may have more to gain from referring financial disputes to international arbitration than one might expect in other regions of the globe.
Then there is the obvious question: how does one actually enforce an arbitral award? Through the courts, of course. Then surely it would make sense to go straight to the courts without incurring the costs of an international arbitration first? Not entirely. By enforcing an arbitral award through a court in a region where the state concerned is a signatory to the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, any court interference in the substance of the award is almost entirely negated. The New York Convention effectively ties the hands of a local court when seized with an application for the enforcement of a foreign arbitral award. More than half of the states in Africa are signatories to the New York Convention. In contrast, a local court will have the fullest discretion to apply the local law, as it sees fit, to the substance of the dispute if the parties choose not to resort to arbitration - a situation which may encourage or at least facilitate outside interference or influence in the proceedings.
And then there is the pesky issue of “public policy” grounds for refusing to recognise an arbitral award. This is not a problem unique to Africa. It is also not a problem unique to arbitral proceedings.
In conclusion, there is clearly scope for the development of referrals of African financial sector disputes to international arbitration. But international arbitration is not a panacea for all problems currently faced. There is, however, no reason why international arbitration cannot evolve and adapt to become the solution required, but this will only happen once parties fully embrace international arbitration as a legitimate alternative to court proceedings.
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https://www.cliffedekkerhofmeyr.com/en/en/news/publications/2017/dispute/dispute-resolution-alert-7-june-International-Arbitration-in-the-Banking-Finance-Industry-relevance-for-Africa.html
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Morocco, France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain Agree to Foster Corporate Trade of...
The 5 countries have signed on December 20, 2018 in Brussels a joint declaration that lays out their plan to facilitate cross-border trade of renewable electricity from producers to corporate consumers. At COP 22, France, Germany, Morocco, Portugal and Spain signed the SET (Sustainable... more
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A Moonshot for the Middle East and North Africa
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The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region needs to reinvent its economic model to meet the aspirations of its people. It needs a new vision – one that’s built around a shift towards a promising future, while being cognizant of the fundamental challenges of today. In recent years, the region... more
Prevention of Violent Extremism Through Education
Nov 19, 2018 / Report/Study
Through this Policy Brief, UNESCO seeks to show, through evidence-based research, that PVE-E works and can contribute to ensuring inclusive and quality education for all. The document also highlights educational activities that are most likely to produce positive results. The aim is to help... more
A New Economy for the Middle East and North Africa
Nov 07, 2018 / Video
Countries in the Middle East and North Africa possess all the ingredients they need to leapfrog into the digital future. Their well-educated youth have already adopted new digital and mobile technologies, but, this is still in its infancy. Seizing the opportunities that the digital economy offers... more
Syrian Refugees and The Schooling Challenge
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In 2017, the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, estimated that globally 68.5 million people had been forcefully displaced—the worst such crisis since World War II. Of these, 40 million were internally displaced peoples (IDPs), 25.4 million were refugees, and 3.1 million were asylum seekers. Over half were... more
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Water scarcity is pervasive throughout the Middle East and North Africa and getting worse. Even before the recent political turmoil, several countries in the Middle East and North Africa were struggling to manage their water resources sustainably and to expand water supply and sanitation services... more
Global Citizenship Education and the Rise of Nationalist Perspectives: Reflections...
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In a globalized and interconnected world, characterized by a technological revolution affecting all countries, and by a landmark event, involving Europe above all, which is linked to the largest migration in the history of mankind, the Universities must discover a new mission, a new role and a new... more
MedYWat Network in the Eyes of its Members
The Mediterranean Youth for Water (MedYWat) brings together young professionals, researchers and civil society members working in the water sector from around the Mediterranean. In this video, MedYWat members explain what the community is and what is in it for them ميديوات في عيون أعضائها تجمع... more
She too is a #WaterHero
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The plans include adding a small holding cell, where they would be able to separate people who are in custody. Currently, the department has a bench where they keep those in custody.
Deputy Mayor Ted Becker said the Capital Projects Committee has been working with an architect to draw up plans, and after that a bidding process will begin.
Becker said they would know the cost and timing for the project after the bidding process.
"Right now we wouldn't be able to become state accredited, but I think with the changes we could do that, and that's something we're looking toward in the not too distant future," said Police Chief Jeffrey Horvath. "They're good, necessary changes we need to make the police department more efficient."
The plans also include turning the detective's office into an interview room. The office would be wired for video as well as audio, which Horvath said will help with prosecution because it will show not only what the person said, but their demeanor at the time.
The new interview room may also serve as an additional holding area, Horvath said.
Juveniles need to be separated from adults, and men and women need to be separated as well, which is impossible with the current setup.
The detective's office will be moved to what is currently the lieutenant's office.
They will convert an attic upstairs into two offices – one for the lieutenant and another for the police chief.
Horvath said his former office will be turned into either a meeting room or it will become the sergeant's office. The current sergeant's office will be turned into a closet and computer room.
City Manager Paul Eckrich said the update was needed to match other buildings.
"City Hall went through a renovation project," Eckrich said. "This is basically a catch-up to what we didn't do four years ago."
The police department is co-located with the city's administrative offices and Board of Public Works.
Jobs Cars Homes Classifieds Education 10Best Reviewed Reach Local
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Commodity Performance Was Mixed In April, Fundamentals Remain Supportive
Commodity performance was mixed in April, despite improving macroeconomic backdrop.
Nelson Louie, Global Head of Commodities in Credit Suisse’s Asset Management division, said, “Over the past month, concerns surrounding China have begun to lift and have been replaced with renewed anxieties over the outlook for Europe, as well as apprehensions that the US recovery is losing steam. However, prospects for global growth this year may be significantly more positive than at this time last year. Leading economic indicators suggest we may be in store for more balanced growth between developed and emerging markets. Stronger than expected global growth would be especially supportive of economically sensitive commodities.”
Christopher Burton, Senior Portfolio Manager for the Credit Suisse Total Commodity Return Strategy, added, “As expected, the Federal Open Market Committee decided to keep policy unchanged in April, but reaffirmed its interest rate guidance. With inflation expectations remaining well anchored, the likelihood of inflation overshooting expectations remains elevated. Monthly IMF data demonstrated that central banks were active buyers of gold in March as they sought diversification away from US Dollar denominated reserves. Commodities have historically tended to outperform during periods of higher than expected inflation. We continue to believe investors will benefit from the inflation protection and diversification benefits of holding broad based commodities exposure within a portfolio of traditional assets.”
The Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index Total Return was down by 0.42% in April. Overall, 14 out of 20 index constituents decreased in value. Livestock was the worst performing sector, down 2.99% for the month. Weaker than expected domestic demand outweighed continued strong exports, further pressuring Lean Hogs. Precious Metals decreased, down 1.46%, led by Silver. Gold decreased slightly as Indian physical demand has been subdued amid a depreciating rupee and higher import duties. Agriculture was also slightly lower, losing 0.34% for the month. Grains were lower following USDA planting data, which showed 17% of Corn and 37% of Spring Wheat crops were planted compared to 5% for each at this time last year. The rapid planting progress in the US can be attributed to warm weather and the early start to the spring planting season. Energy was relatively unchanged, down 0.08%. Natural Gas ended the month in positive territory after the Department of Energy revised downwards its previous four weekly injection estimates, helping to alleviate some of the pressure on bloated inventories. Industrial Metals increased slightly, up 0.31%. Copper was supported by South Korea's announcement that its central bank will buy $300 million of Chinese Copper stocks over the next three months. Meanwhile, Copper inventories in London Metal Exchange-registered warehouses fell to their lowest levels since November 2008. Shanghai Futures Exchange deliverable stocks also fell after building for most of the first quarter. However, Copper ended the month down 0.08% after falling in the first half of the month on macro-economic concerns.
The Credit Suisse Total Commodity Return Strategy group periodically produces updates on relevant industry topics. For a copy of the team’s white paper, “Commodities Outlook: Increased Volatility, Increase Opportunity?” , please contact your Credit Suisse Relationship Manager.
About the Credit Suisse Total Commodity Return Strategy
Credit Suisse’s Total Commodity Return Strategy has been managed for 17 years and seeks to outperform the return of a commodities index, such as the Dow Jones–UBS Commodity Index Total Return or the S&P GSCI Total Return Index, using both a quantitative and qualitative commodity research process. Commodity index total returns are achieved through:
Spot Return: price return on specified commodity futures contracts;
Roll Yield: impact due to migration of futures positions from near to far contracts; and
Collateral Yield: return earned on collateral for the futures.
Credit Suisse AG is one of the world's leading financial services providers and is part of the Credit Suisse group of companies (referred to here as 'Credit Suisse'). As an integrated bank, Credit Suisse offers clients its combined expertise in the areas of private banking, investment banking and asset management. Credit Suisse provides advisory services, comprehensive solutions and innovative products to companies, institutional clients and high-net-worth private clients globally, as well as to retail clients in Switzerland. Credit Suisse is headquartered in Zurich and operates in over 50 countries worldwide. The group employs approximately 48,700 people. The registered shares (CSGN) of Credit Suisse's parent company, Credit Suisse Group AG, are listed in Switzerland and, in the form of American Depositary Shares (CS), in New York. Further information about Credit Suisse can be found at www.credit-suisse.com.
In its Asset Management business, Credit Suisse offers products across a broad spectrum of investment classes, including hedge funds, credit, index, real estate, commodities and private equity products, as well as multi-asset class solutions, which include equities and fixed income products. Credit Suisse’s Asset Management business manages portfolios, mutual funds and other investment vehicles for a broad spectrum of clients ranging from governments, institutions and corporations to private individuals. With offices focused on asset management in 19 countries, Credit Suisse’s Asset Management business is operated as a globally integrated network to deliver the bank’s best investment ideas and capabilities to clients around the world.
All businesses of Credit Suisse are subject to distinct regulatory requirements; certain products and services may not be available in all jurisdictions or to all client types.
This document was produced by and the opinions expressed are those of Credit Suisse as of the date of writing and are subject to change without obligation to update. It has been prepared solely for information purposes and for the use of the recipient. It does not constitute an offer or an invitation by or on behalf of Credit Suisse to any person to buy or sell any security. Any reference to past performance is not a guide to future performance. The information and analysis contained in this publication have been compiled or arrived at from sources believed to be reliable but Credit Suisse does not make any representation as to their accuracy or completeness and does not accept liability for any loss arising from the use hereof.
Certain information contained in this document constitutes “Forward-Looking Statements” (including observations about markets and industry and regulatory trends as of the original date of this document), which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “may”, “will”, “should”, “expect”, “anticipate”, “target”, “project”, “estimate”, “intend”, “continue” or “believe”, or the negatives thereof or other variations thereon or comparable terminology. Due to various risks and uncertainties beyond our control, actual events, results or performance may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated in such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements. Credit Suisse has no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements in this document.
Certain risks relating to investing in Commodities and Commodity-Linked Investments:
Exposure to commodity markets should only form a small part of a diversified portfolio. Investment in commodity markets may not be suitable for all investors. Commodity investments will be affected by changes in overall market movements, commodity volatility, exchange-rate movements, changes in interest rates, and factors affecting a particular industry or commodity, such as drought, floods, weather, livestock disease, embargoes, tariffs and international economic, political and regulatory developments. Commodity markets are highly volatile. The risk of loss in commodities and commodity-linked investments can be substantial. There is generally a high degree of leverage in commodity investing that can significantly magnify losses. Gains or losses from speculative derivative positions may be much greater than the derivative’s original cost. An investment in commodities is not a complete investment program and should represent only a portion of an investor’s portfolio management strategy.
Copyright © 2012, CREDIT SUISSE GROUP AG and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
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Comedian/actress Whitney Cummnings to perform in Ridgefield
Lidia Ryan
Oct. 12, 2020 Updated: Oct. 12, 2020 11:43 a.m.
Comedians Whitney Cummings and Taylor Tomlinson will perform two shows under the tent at the Ridgefield Playhouse on Friday, Oct. 16. The two comics are traveling the country on their Codependent Tour.
Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
Whitney Cummings attends the premiere of IFC Films' 'The Female Brain' at ArcLight Hollywood on February 1, 2018 in Hollywood, California.
Cummings has been on the scene for over a decade. Many might remember her from the E! series "Chelsea Lately" starring Chelsea Handler. She has since starred in her own Netflix special, "Can I Touch It?," and co-created "2 Broke Girls" on NBC. Cummings also starred on her own NBC show called "Whitney."
In 2017, she directed, co-wrote and acted in “The Female Brain," which starred Sofia Vergara, James Marsden and Cecily Strong. That same year, she had a role in a poorly-reviewed thriller called "Unforgettable" starring Connecticut naive Katherine Heigl.
Michael Buckner/Getty Images for ELLE
Actresses Busy Philipps, Ellie Kemper and Whitney Cummings attend ELLE's Annual Women in Television Celebration on January 13, 2015 at Sunset Tower in West Hollywood, California.
Tomlinson was a finalist on season 9 of NBC’s "Last Comic Standing." She has a Netflix special called "Quarter Life Crisis" and has been a guest on the "Tonight Show," "Conan" and "Adam Devine’s House Party."
Rosalind O’Connor / NBC / Getty Images
John Mulaney, left, and Pete Davidson seen here during a bit on “Saturday Night Live."
On Sunday, Oct. 18, the Ridgefield Playhouse will host comedians Pete Davidson and John Mulaney. The pair performed at South Farms in Morris this September. The performance was reviewed by Rolling Stone.
Shows take place under a tent and eating is socially-distanced. Face masks are required at all times.
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Wilton’s Gold
Book 1: Fortune
Book 2: Fulfillment
Book 3: Fate
Border Troubles
Larson Atwood and the Stiletto Bureau of Tourism
Casey on the Juice
Dumb Crime
About Craig W. Turner
by Craig W. Turner (Facebook | Twitter)
I always wondered how anyone could want me to write about them.
Truth be told, if you ended up in my column, it was usually to debase you, ridicule you, and basically tell the world through your story just how stupid mankind can be. But for some reason, many reveled in the fact that they were now “famous.” I guess that saying about there not being any such thing as bad publicity has some merit. Though I think a lack of personal pride has something to do with it.
I’m Jack Warsaw. I write a weekly, nationally-syndicated column called “Dumb Crime.” At least, I used to. You’ve probably seen it. If you haven’t, you’ve undoubtedly read stories similar to the ones that I tell — tales of the dregs of society who try to take advantage of the system, but so miserably fail to think their actions through. Like the guy who attempted to rob the donut shop while his daughter was working the counter. Or the woman who slipped the bank teller a note instructing her to fill a bag with $50s and $100s – through the drive-thru tube. “I have a gun,” she warned from her Datsun.
The American public writes these people off as lunatics. I spent years of my life interviewing them.
I’d determined several years ago, struggling with a “Main Street” column for a local daily, that there was more to life than trying to impress upon readers that the “talk about town” was really that. That was when I met Frank Milliford. A public school teacher in Wichita, Kansas, Frank had attempted a “gas-and-run,” — fill up your vehicle and take off before paying. Unfortunately, Frank, in his haste, forgot to remove the nozzle from his car before speeding away, and ripped the gas pump clear from its foundation, dragging it at least a quarter mile down the road before giving up. I met him in the county holding center the next morning, gave him the floor to tell everyone what in God’s name he was thinking, and the rest is history.
After seven years of writing and thousands of air miles, it is still incomprehensible to me the things people actually do. But the biggest shock is that these miscreants would welcome me, as if their bout of idiocy was an audition, and their inadequacy as a criminal a ticket to fame. Needless to say, I was not dealing with intellectuals.
Which is why I was exceptionally surprised at the uniqueness of Bartlett Reed, a Buffalo-based accountant, and his story of ineptness. Reed was not wealthy, but made a decent buck. He was good-looking, congenial, and had a strong, charismatic personality. Not your typical “Dumb Crime” interviewee.
Bartlett Reed decided one day that he was going to rob the First Bank of New York branch located smack in the middle of downtown Buffalo. He determined that the best time to do this was in the middle of the day, when business traffic was highest. He wore no mask. He carried no weapon. He did nothing to hide his identity.
And he almost got away with it.
That’s not the shocking part, however. The shocking part is that Bartlett Reed, in either his brilliance or his nervousness, made perhaps the most avoidable gaffe that my column had ever seen.
From the top…Bartlett left his downtown office, three blocks from the bank, at11:50 a.m. A brisk walker, he made the trek along the above-ground portion of the subway in seven minutes. He entered the bank, and dutifully waited for one of the tellers to go on her lunch break, leaving four tellers available – the lowest number of the day, with the part-timers beginning at12:30 p.m.
After fiddling with some paperwork at the communal business table, he approached the teller, calmly warned her that he had a weapon – which, of course, he did not – and told her to fill a deposit bag with $100 bills. The woman, a 20-something with a nose ring, did as she was told, and Bartlett left quietly. Just as he reached the door to the bank, however, he tripped over the decorative “mud” carpet lying beneath the door. The teller, noticing the stumble, screamed that she’d just been robbed, and all hell broke loose. Security guards and managers stormed to the scene, the woman’s fellow tellers shrieked, and the patrons scurried in fear. Bartlett, meanwhile, scampered out the front door, and eventually lost himself in the lunchtime business crowd. Within ten minutes, he was back at his desk with an envelope full of cash.
Two hours later, Bartlett Reed was led from his office in handcuffs.
When the Buffalo Police Department contacted me, it became the first story I’d ever done where I made the trip on blind faith. The investigators simply would not tell me what had happened. They wanted me to see for myself.
As I sat watching the security tapes from the bank, I was rewarded for the cost of the flight. As it turns out, Bartlett’s heroic dash through the crowd was insignificant for the simple fact that he’d left a calling card behind.
Literally. He’d left his calling card behind.
On the public business table at First New York was a fishbowl advertisement for a local restaurant, offering a “Free Pizza” each month to a random business person whose name was selected from business cards dropped in the collection. It was an effective way to build a mailing list of clients, and apparently a widely-used strategy among restaurant owners throughoutBuffalo. Bartlett Reed must have thought the idea of a free pizza was an attractive one, and tossed his card into the fishbowl while he waited. The BPD handed me this card after I’d watched Bartlett’s debacle on video, twice. I asked them if I could keep it.
They said no.
When I interviewed Bartlett Reed in the ErieCounty Holding Center the next morning, he was not a proud man. He was neither happy with himself for even attempting the robbery in the first place, nor for his error. He attributed the entire situation to boredom, and the need for something exciting in his life. He knew without a weapon that there really was no possibility of anyone getting hurt, and the couple thousand dollars he’d pulled he’d planned to use for hockey season tickets.
Strangely, as the interview was coming to a close, Bartlett asked me for a seemingly ridiculous favor. He said that his actions had quickly lost him friends, and asked if I would be so kind as to pick up his fiancée, Juliana, from the airport. The request caught me by such great surprise that I actually laughed at him. But he seemed sincere. He went on to explain that she’d been out-of-town for a week-long occupational therapists conference. He’d used his one phone call to leave her a voice-mail at her hotel to let her know what had happened, but hadn’t had the chance to arrange transportation from the airport.
I like to believe that dealing with the Ignorant of the Earth has hardened me from empathizing with these tales of woe, but wouldn’t you know that two hours after leaving the prison, I found myself looking for a parking spot in the Buffalo Niagara International Airport’s short-term lot. I was too intrigued. My willingness to help Bartlett Reed out was due far less to my altruism than to my desire to continue to ride this roller coaster of absurdity. I actually ended up bringing Juliana to the prison to see her intended, and then gave her a ride home. While the conversation was of little substance, the anecdotal addition of her flight home and their reunion was priceless to my column.
In the end, Bartlett Reed was extremely convincing, and I knew immediately that he would not be spending much time in prison. By the time the story printed in media outlets across the country, he’d already served half of his 15-day sentence. Most likely, he suffered more from embarrassment and injury to his reputation than from the actual incarceration, but the story that ran received some of the best reviews I’ve gotten.
One of the benefits of having a following is that many times, the stories, such as the one of Bartlett Reed, come to you. One of the drawbacks of having a themed column, however, was finding things to write when nothing is happening. Much of my workload included scanning police reports and documents from all over the country in the hopes of finding the next big blunder. While every once in a while I would land a gem, it was tedious and tiresome work.
It was while I was researching about six months later that I came across the name First Bank of New York again, specifically the downtown Buffalo location. The report was of a grand larceny, in which a diamond necklace valued at nearly $200,000 had been stolen from a security deposit box within the bank’s vault. The owner of the necklace, a 93-year-old widow of one of the top names from Buffalo’s industrial glory years, had passed away, and her family was recovering the item. When they’d entered the box, they found it empty.
My first thought was that Buffalo’s criminals seemed to have gotten a little bit smarter.
My second thought was that the story of Bartlett Reed should be my first column ever to have a “follow-up.”
Accessing my internet, I searched the Buffalo daily newspaper for a story related to the theft of the necklace. It had been printed two days earlier – one day following the crime itself and the accompanying police report. It stated that the family was distraught over the missing necklace, and one of the woman’s relatives was quoted as saying, “The monetary value of the necklace pales in comparison to the sentimental value it brings to all of us.”
I did a quick double-take when I read the quote – not for what it meant, which was clearly setting the tone for the family to take legal action against First New York – but for the person who actually said it.
Her name was Juliana Bryson.
Now, while I often have to remind myself that I am a journalist and not a private investigator, the notion that this “Juliana” could possibly be the Juliana that I’d chauffeured around Buffal owas too good to ignore. Within an hour, I’d booked tickets for the morning back to Buffalo.
En route to Western New York, I’d reached out to my contact in the Buffalo Police Department, and inquired whether I could see the Bartlett Reed tape again for my follow-up column. He informed me that the tape had been filed as “Evidence,” and he’d have to do some searching to find it, then sign it out. I suggested that I go to the bank for the original, to save him the trouble, but he told me that they’d turned it over to the police.
I saw exactly where this was going.
Heading immediately from the airport to the court building, I had the opportunity to inspect the tape, which contained approximately twenty minutes before Bartlett Reed’s display, and close to fifteen minutes following. Sure enough, moments before Reed entered, as the digital camera switched from angle to angle, I saw a long-haired, petite woman enter the bank’s main-floor vault with a manager.
I watched closely as Bartlett Reed entered, fidgeted, and then approached the teller. He began to leave, tripped, and as the bedlam began, my eyes fixated on the vault entrance. As expected, out came the manager, rushing to the scene of the crime and leaving the woman alone inside the vault. He ran to the door as Bartlett Reed exited, then turned and headed back to his customer, who had now emerged, peeking out at the excitement.
Plenty of time to dip into one of the other security deposit boxes, I thought.
Dutifully, I re-wrapped the video and returned it to the desk clerk, who threw it into a basket to be filed later. The irreverence that was shown to the evidence made me smile. Bartlett Reed knew that his “15 minutes of fame” would be long-forgotten and disregarded, and when the search began for the missing necklace, the only evidence available would be buried in a file closet somewhere.
So, my next stop, of course, was the accounting firm of Schuster, Fleming and Roe, the name that had been featured so prominently on Bartlett Reed’s misplaced business card. The pretty administrative assistant revealed to me that Reed had been dismissed from his job for the embarrassment he’d brought the company, but I used my celebrity to get her to disclose his home address.
After waiting the better part of two hours in my rental car curbside in front of Reed’s house, I noticed a beaten-up Ford pick-up rambling toward me. It pulled into the driveway, and Bartlett, in-the-flesh, stepped out of the driver’s side. I exited my car, and as he saw me he smiled, and waved me inside.
Without a word, he motioned for me to sit on the sofa, and disappeared into another room. The house was in decent shape and nice enough, but not quite as obsessive-compulsively laid out as accountants’ homes generally seemed to be. I scanned the room looking for any focal point I could use either in the conversation or in a column, but most everything was nondescript. A bookshelf. A television sitting on an entertainment stand. Fairly humble for a big-time bank robber.
Reed appeared, carrying a suitcase, and set it on the coffee table, covering up a slew of magazines that I’d noticed just before he’d returned.
“What’s this?” I asked.
He motioned that I should open it. I did, and found layer after layer of $100 bills. Quietly, I closed the case, latched it and sat back on the soft cushions.
“I don’t understand,” I told him.
“I know why you’re here,” he said. “I’m paying you off. A hundred thousand.” Blunt, and to the point.
“You’re offering me half the value of the necklace?” I asked, incredulous. I didn’t understand why it mattered. Why steal a $200,000 piece of jewelry if you were going to give away half of it?
“It’s easier this way.”
I hadn’t even considered the fact that the man was trying to bribe me with a suitcase full of money. I was too busy psychoanalyzing him.
“I can’t take this.”
“It’s payment,” he said.
“For the column you’re going to write, talking about interviewing one of your former subjects, and how he’s paid his price for his crime, and is trying work his way back into his life.” He’d thought this all out. How could he have predicted that I’d come back toBuffalo?
I was beginning to feel very used.
I must have had a confused look on my face, because he continued, “You’re a good journalist. You made the trip here to cover a story. You’re going to get that story, but you’re just going to make out a little bit better.”
“All this for a hundred grand?”
Reed laughed. “Yeah. Pretty crazy, huh?”
“Why did you need me?” I asked, still trying to figure everything out. “You could’ve walked out of that bank and no one would’ve been the wiser.”
“Well, yes, I could’ve,” he agreed. “But Juliana couldn’t have.”
I must’ve smiled broadly when I realized that I’d printed Juliana’s alibi in newspapers all across the country, because when I looked up, he was grinning at me.
“You’re so humble, Jack,” he said, addressing me by name for the first time. “You’re a big shot. The way you captured the emotion of a tired accountant just looking for something more in his life… Perfect. It made sure that one, I wouldn’t spend too many days locked up, and two, that what I did would be pushed to the back burner once the hoopla died.”
“And three, that everyone would know that your lovely fiancée was nowhere near First New York Bank while you were robbing it.”
“But the tape…”
He laughed again. “Do you know that when we threatened the lawsuit, the bank scoured every tape possible to see when someone might have gone into the vault and taken the necklace.”
“But the other tape is downtown,” I pointed out.
Reed continued, “There’s only one person who knows that Juliana was in the vault at that exact moment, and that’s the bank manager. You think he’s going to give up his $60,000 a year job by pointing out to everyone that he knowingly left someone alone in the bank’s vault? No.”
“But I figured it out,” I noted.
“Yes,” he said, nodding his head, “all by yourself.”
All I could do was shake my head, but Bartlett interrupted my disbelief.
“I have to get going,” he said, abruptly. “I look forward to the column.”
Like a trained puppy, I stood and headed for the door. He stopped me and motioned toward the suitcase, which I obediently took. For a moment, I really didn’t understand myself because I was acting purely on confusion and haste.
I didn’t want the money, yet I found myself putting the suitcase into the trunk of my car. He was doing to me the same thing that he’d done to the poor bank manager – putting me into a position where I couldn’t win if I did the right thing. If I went to the police, my journalism career was over: A journalist reports the news – he doesn’t make the news. Over time, I’d lost my credibility as a “serious” journalist to tell Bartlett Reed’s story in total. My only option was to write the story as he had dictated it to me, and then try for the rest of my life to outlive the guilt.
This mild-mannered accountant was a dirty guy.
As I started to pull away, Reed flagged me down. “I forgot to give you these,” he said, handing me a stack of papers that looked like legal documents. “Try to get that column in next week’s papers, so that we can file these.” I knew what the papers would say, but he explained them anyway. “See, the necklace was worth $200,000 back in 1961 when it was put into the safety deposit box. Each of those diamonds is about three carats each. Perfectly cut. We estimate that the necklace is worth about $4 million, which, of course, is what we’re asking the bank for in the lawsuit. With a few million tacked on for the pain and suffering.”
“Don’t you mean Juliana?” I asked, rubbing the bridge of my nose to alleviate stress.
“Well, yes, naturally,” he said, laughing. “She’ll get it, too.”
“Oh, I bet she will.”
With that, I handed the unread papers back to him and drove off. Bartlett Reed, the “dumb criminal,” was smarter than us all.
Tormented on many levels, I found myself trying to ascertain how I could get a suitcase full of cash through the scanner at the airport and home. Forget the shame I felt even possessing the case – I actually imagined pitching the whole thing into a bonfire when I got home – I became so troubled by the idea that I stuck it in a box and shipped it.
By the time I reached home, I was so overcome with emotion that I was confident the column I wrote for Bartlett Reed would be the worst I’d ever done. I felt trapped, and blamed Reed. I saw two options – be a good boy and follow my instructions for which I’d received payment, or risk it all, and tell the true story.
Amazing even myself, I chose the latter.
The next day, I retired from journalism.
As the national news media focused in on the theft, to the credit of Bartlett Reed’s acting ability, he persistently denied any involvement. According to the stories, he and Juliana had split months before, his home was searched without finding a trace of the necklace, and no evidence beyond my two columns could prove that he was involved. Even the now-famous videotape, pulled from storage, contained no proof against him. Still, Bartlett Reed was convicted by a jury of his peers, and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Juliana, I later read, as the named heir to the necklace – naturally – won her lawsuit for a cool $7.5 million.
With writing behind me, I became obsessed with the pursuit of the stolen necklace – an item which, of course, I’d never seen. Knowing that it would have to turn up somewhere, I delved into collecting and the study of antiquities. Perhaps to justify my actions throughout the situation, I basically left all behind to take on the pilgrimage.
It took a full five years, but I was finally rewarded when I read a major New York auction house would be auctioning off a recently recovered necklace that had disappeared in a nationally-renown theft years earlier. In the internet listing, the column I’d written in my former life was even mentioned, with news that the piece had been found somehow in a small jewelry shop in Toms River, New Jersey. It had been returned to Juliana and her family, and was, subsequently, in spite of her “sentimental value,” put up for auction.
After flying to New York, I made sure to secure a front row seat for the bidding. The necklace had become the sole focus of my life, and I had to see it in person, in detail.
It was magnificent. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
When the auction opened, I proudly raised my hand to place the first bid – $100,000. I knew it wouldn’t last – in fact, it was short in the end by $6.3 million – but in case by fluke I’d come out on top, I had a suitcase full of $100 bills in the trunk of my rental car.
After the item was sold to a suave Armenian from North Jersey, I spent a few moments mingling – enjoying the fact that I’d completed my quest, but strangely wary of an emptiness in my life going forward.
As I pondered, I was approached by a bearded man, who I immediately recognized – and only I would know – as a shadow of what was once Bartlett Reed. He’d put on weight – maybe fifty pounds, sported reddish hair, and even carried himself differently.
“I thought I’d see you here,” he said, extending his hand for a shake.
I grasped it, and pulled out a piece of paper he’d been concealing. “What’s this?” I said, holding up what was obviously a check. I didn’t look at it.
“Call it commission,” Reed said, with a confidence that overshadowed even the smugness he’d shown last time I’d seen him. “You’d be surprised how the value of an item increases once everyone knows it’s been stolen. People always pay more for something that comes with a story.”
I laughed. “I was almost going to apologize to you.”
Reed shook his head. “Don’t.” He turned and walked away.
“What am I supposed to do with a check?” I called after him.
He turned and smiled. “You’ll figure something out.”
That was the last I’d ever see of Bartlett Reed. On the flight home, I added the numbers – $7.5 million in the lawsuit and $6.3 million in the auction. Minus, of course, the $100,000 I was paid for the story, and whatever was in the check he’d given me – which, to this day, rests, folded and unseen, behind a framed copy of the original Bartlett Reed “Dumb Crime” column hanging in my den.
Not too dumb, from what I can see. But who am I to judge?
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