pred_label
stringclasses 2
values | pred_label_prob
float64 0.5
1
| wiki_prob
float64 0.25
1
| text
stringlengths 11
1.03M
| source
stringlengths 37
43
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__wiki
| 0.809223
| 0.809223
|
Daniel B. Crabtree
11/13/1974 – 06/08/2006 OIF Ohio Army National Guard's Company B, 2nd Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
Hartville, OH
Sgt. 1st Class Daniel B. Crabtree, 31, was a Special Forces weapons sergeant assigned to the Ohio Army National Guard’s Company B, 2nd Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Columbus, Ohio.
He died June 8, 2006, in Iraq after a roadside bomb exploded next to his vehicle during a combat patrol. He was deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and attached to the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force – Arabian Peninsula.
In civilian life, Crabtree worked as a police officer first in his native hometown of Hartville, and then as a member of the Cuyahoga Falls Police Department Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, unit.
After initially entering military service with the Army Reserve in 1992, Crabtree joined the Army National Guard in 1993 as an administrative specialist. He later retrained as a military policeman and served with the 135th Military Police Company in Brook Park, Ohio. He joined the 19th SFG in March 2002, and in 2003 he was selected to attend the Special Forces Qualification Course at Fort Bragg, N.C. He earned the coveted green beret when he graduated from the course in May 2004.
Crabtree’s military education also includes the Basic Airborne Course, the Primary Leadership Development Course and the Basic Noncommissioned Officer Course.
In Iraq, the work of Crabtree and his Special Forces operational detachment focused primarily on training members of the Al Kut SWAT, an Iraqi police force. Crabtree himself developed and implemented a comprehensive training curriculum for the Iraqi SWAT volunteers, which included advanced marksmanship training, offensive and defensive driving instruction, and urban assault training. As the police force’s lead trainer, Crabtree drew on his own experiences as a police officer and SWAT team member to prepare his Iraqi officers to counter both local criminal and insurgent forces. He also assisted the Al Kut SWAT in more than 35 real-world missions as a combat advisor — including six large-scale air assault operations — which resulted in the capture of over 100 known insurgents.
His awards and decorations include the Army Achievement Medal, the Army Reserve Component Achievement Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Humanitarian Service Medal, the Noncommissioned Officer Professional Development Ribbon, the Army Service Ribbon, the Parachutist Badge, and the Special Forces Tab. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart, Meritorious Service Medal, and Combat Infantryman Badge.
Crabtree is survived by his wife, Kathy, and his daughter, Mallory, of the City of Green. He is also survived by his father, Ronald Crabtree and his mother, Judy Ann Crabtree.
– DE OPPRESSO LIBER –
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538422
|
__label__wiki
| 0.966056
| 0.966056
|
Tag: Bob Strumm
The WHL, Part 5: There was tragedy, lots of movement and marshmallow punches . . .
Here is the fifth and final piece on the WHL’s first 25 years. The five stories were written in the late 1990s, while I was the sports editor at the Regina Leader-Post. I had pretty much forgotten about it until recently when I was asked if I might post it again. So I have done just that over the past couple of weeks. . . . As you read each piece, please remember that I wrote them more than 20 years ago and they cover only the league’s first 25 years. It isn’t an all-encompassing history, but hits on some of the highlights and a few lowlights. . . . The stories are pretty much as originally written. . . . Here, then, is Part 5 of 5. Thanks for reading along. I hope you have enjoyed these stories, and thank you for all of the positive feedback. . . .
The fifth five-year segment was easily the best of the WHL’s first 25 years.
There was success in the stands, particularly in the Pacific Northwest corner of the United States, and in Saskatoon where the Blades welcomed a new facility.
There was stability, too. Recent additions, like the Tri-City Americans and Lethbridge Hurricanes, settled in for what appeared to be long stays.
But the greatest success came on the ice where the WHL won four Memorial Cup championships during the five seasons, opening with three in a row and closing with a victory by the Spokane Chiefs.
The 1986-87 season actually started on something of a strange note. The Regina Pats signed Doug Sauter, who was under contract to the Medicine Hat Tigers, to a two-year deal as general manager/head coach. The result was that the Pats agreed to compensate the Tigers.
The compensation turned into two veteran players — defenceman Kevin Ekdahl and forward Kevin Clemens. It was the first time in WHL history that a coach had, in effect, been traded.
The Pats also welcomed back another familiar face with Dennis Sobchuk, the greatest and most-popular player in franchise history, signing on as assistant coach/assistant manager.
This was a time of great change in the front offices and behind the benches. Barry Trapp left the Moose Jaw Warriors, saying, “I wasn’t fired. It was just a mutual agreement. It was a very friendly parting.”
Medicine Hat signed Bryan Maxwell to replace Sauter, while Peter Esdale was the new coach in Spokane and Wayne Naka took over the Cougars in Victoria. In New Westminster, John Olver was the GM, with Ernie McLean the coach. Harvey Roy was out as the Bruins’ director of marketing, but he would surface in Moose Jaw as the GM and would hire Greg Kvisle to coach the Warriors. In Prince Albert, GM/head coach Terry Simpson left to coach the NHL’s New York Islanders and Rick Wilson took over.
Perhaps the biggest news in the summer of 1986 came on June 2 when the WHL announced it was doing away with round-robin playoff series in the East Division. Instead, the top two teams would get first- round byes.
In the WHL office, Richard Doerksen’s title was upgraded from executive assistant/referee-in-chief to vice-president.
There was trouble in Brandon, where the Bank of Nova Scotia called in a $77,000 demand loan, asking for payment on July 31. This resulted in the Wheat Kings’ board recommending to shareholders that the franchise be sold.
BOB CORNELL (Photo: Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame)
In August, shareholders voted 1,411-404 in favour of selling the Wheat Kings. Offers were received from two groups — one in Edmonton headed by Vic Mah, the other comprising Brandon businessmen Bob Cornell and Stuart Craig, and Winnipeg businessman Dave Laing.
Cornell’s group purchased the Wheat Kings for more than $300,000 and then added a unique twist to the situation by signing a 10-year working agreement with the Keystone Centre. The Keystone took over operation of the club, and hired Bill Shinske to run the front office. Shinske hired Marc Pezzin as coach.
The WHL also welcomed the Swift Current Broncos to the fold. Behind the bench was Graham James, who had recently reached an out-of-court settlement with the Warriors over a lawsuit he had started the previous year.
“If we continue to average close to 2,000, we’ll have a real successful year and we’ll show a profit of about $80,000,” Gary Bollinger, the Broncos’ vice-president and alternate governor, said. “That doesn’t include playoff revenue. We were budgeting for an average of 1,600. If we averaged that, we’d still make a bit of a profit.”
The first coaching change of the 1986-87 season took place on Dec. 8 in Seattle when Sheldon Ferguson gave up the Thunderbirds’ coaching reins, but stayed on as GM. Dan McDonald was the new head coach, with former Portland Winter Hawks star Jim Dobson as the assistant.
When the Swift Current Broncos’ bus crashed on Dec. 30, 1986, the hockey world lost Chris Mantyka (left), Trent Kresse, Scott Kruger and Brent Ruff. (Photo: Swift Current Broncos)
Disaster struck on Dec. 30 when the Broncos, en route to Regina to play the Pats, were involved in a bus accident. Four players — Scott Kruger, Trent Kresse, Brent Ruff and Chris Mantyka — were killed.
ED CHYNOWETH
“There has never been anything more devastating that has happened to me personally,” Ed Chynoweth, the WHL president, said. “The question I keep asking myself is ‘Why?’ My heart goes out to all the parents and the people involved. I wish someone would call and say this is all a mistake.”
John Foster, the Broncos’ publicity director, said: “This team will band together and win it for those guys who died. The (survivors) were absolutely professional under stress. If the people of Swift Current could have seen them, they would have been proud.”
There was never any thought of the team not continuing. As team president John Rittinger said: “It’s up to the players and the fans now. We aren’t ready to throw in the towel.”
Defenceman Ed Brost, talking about the club’s next game, stated: “It will be difficult. To go right back out on the ice would be cheating ourselves emotionally and physically. Right now people have to remember athletes are human beings, not robots.”
Moose Jaw centre Theoren Fleury was in Czechoslovakia with Canada’s national junior team at the time of the accident.
“I just can’t believe it,” Fleury said. “I just sat on the bus all the way to practice today thinking about what’s going on with all those guys on that team right now. It just blows me away. I don’t know what to say. There’s nothing we can do about it and I think being helpless is the most frustrating thing about it.”
As if losing four players in the accident wasn’t enough, Herman Kruger, 67, suffered a fatal heart attack as he entered the church for his great-grandson’s funeral.
And later the same day, Sauter and Regina trainer Stan Szumlak came to the rescue of Keith Giles, a member of the Prince Albert executive, who was choking on some food.
Donations in memory of the players poured into the Broncos’ office and an education fund was set up in their memory. Another fund was started to raise money that would go towards the cost of replacing the bus.
On Feb. 2, a longtime veteran of the WHL’s coaching wars returned for one last fling when John Chapman replaced Wally Kozak behind the bench of the Calgary Wranglers. Chapman also was the Calgary GM.
On Feb. 15, Portland won a game in Spokane and Ken Hodge took over as the winningest coach in WHL history. His 547 victories were one more than Ernie McLean.
BRAD HORNUNG (Photo: University of Regina)
Tragedy struck the WHL again on March 1 when Regina centre Brad Hornung was checked into the end boards at the Agridome and suffered a broken neck.
Dr. Chris Ekong, a neurosurgeon, said Hornung suffered a burst fracture of the third cervical vertebrae and a crushed spinal cord. “Brad has no feelings in his arms and legs,” Dr. Ekong said. “He is completely paralysed from the neck down.”
Hornung would never regain the use of his arms and legs, but that didn’t stop him from going on with his life.
As the WHL completed its 25th season, Hornung was continuing with his education, taking courses at the University of Regina.
Despite the bus accident, Swift Current made the playoffs in its first season. But there wouldn’t be a Cinderella story as the Broncos dropped a best-of-five series to Prince Albert, 3-1.
April was highlighted by three coaching changes — Esdale’s contract wasn’t renewed by Spokane, Kvisle resigned in Moose Jaw and McLean stepped aside in New Westminster.
And Medicine Hat won the WHL championship. The Tigers faced elimination twice in each of their last two series, and dumped visiting Portland 7-2 in the seventh game of the championship final.
The Tigers would win their first of two consecutive Memorial Cup championships, the first under Maxwell, the second under Barry Melrose. Both came with Russ Farwell as general manager.
John Van Horlick took over as coach in New Westminster for 1987-88, with
Butch Goring the coach in Spokane. Jim Harrison was the new head coach in Moose Jaw, with Ed Staniowski his assistant. Harrison and Roy, the GM, were friends from their days in Estevan, while Staniowski was a former all-star goaltender with Regina.
And the WHL was returning to Lethbridge. The Tier One Junior Hockey Club of Lethbridge purchased the Wranglers for about $350,000 from Brian Ekstrom. The Lethbridge franchise would be called the Hurricanes, causing Lethbridge Herald columnist Pat Sullivan to wonder if the logo would be an overturned mobile home.
The sale also meant that there wouldn’t be a franchise in the city in which the WHL office was located. But the office wasn’t about to be moved.
“It was decided that it was certainly the most central location for our league,” Chynoweth said.
Going into the new season, the WHL passed a rule cracking down on checking from behind.
“We do use (NHL) rules and the NHL doesn’t have hitting from behind instituted in its rule book,” Chynoweth said, “but I predict that within two years the NHL will have the same rule.”
That is exactly what happened.
There was change in the WHL’s boardroom, too, as Portland’s Brian Shaw stepped down as chairman of the board and was replaced by Saskatoon’s Rick Brodsky.
On June 5, Swift Current celebrated its first birthday by revealing the franchise was no longer in debt.
Rittinger said: “We bought the franchise and we borrowed money to buy the franchise. So we took the season-ticket money to pay the bank loan off. The bank loan is paid off. We don’t owe the bank anything. And that’s incredible because we just got the franchise last year.”
Maxwell left Medicine Hat, joining the Los Angeles Kings as an assistant coach. Lethbridge named Glen Hawker as its first GM/head coach. Before the season started, Lethbridge reorganized, with Wayne Simpson taking over as GM.
On July 6, Hornung, in his first interview since being injured, told the Regina Leader-Post: “You have to accept it. Life goes on and you do the best with what you have. At first, it was a time of change, shock really, but right now, it’s actually gotten easier because you get used to the adjustments. Like everybody else, I have my good days and bad days. But I don’t have many bad days.”
Separate pregame warmups came to the WHL on Sept. 28.
With Seattle off to a 2-15-0 start, owner Earl Hale told Ferguson, the GM, to take a leave of absence. On Nov. 16, Ferguson was fired. A couple of weeks later, Hawker was fired in Lethbridge, where Blaine Galbraith took over. And on Dec. 8, Moose Jaw fired Harrison and hired Gerry James, the only person to have played in a Grey Cup game and Stanley Cup final in the same season.
On Feb. 2, Saskatoon beat Regina 7-2 before 3,308 fans in the final game at the Saskatoon Arena. Regina coach Doug Sauter, for one, was glad to see the end of the old barn: “I get screwed every time I come in here and I haven’t been kissed yet.”
One week later, on Feb. 9, Saskatoon beat Brandon 4-3 in front of 9,343 fans at Saskatchewan Place. Chynoweth announced prior to the game that the 1989 Memorial Cup would be played in Saskatoon.
On March 11, amidst rumours that the Warriors were on the verge of major financial problems, it was announced that Roy’s contract wouldn’t be renewed.
WHL attendance figures compiled by the Regina Leader-Post showed that Swift Current drew 82,080 fans to 36 home games, which was 99 per cent of capacity. Portland led in total attendance — 200,911. The league drew 1,405,874 fans, an increase of almost 80,000 over the previous season.
For the first time in league history, the scoring race ended in a dead heat.
Two centres — Fleury and Swift Current’s Joe Sakic — finished the regular season with 160 points. Sakic had 78 goals, Fleury 68. But there was nothing in the WHL bylaws to deal with the situation so the scoring race was ruled a tie.
JOE CELENTANO
The rumours were true — there were financial problems in Moose Jaw. The Warriors began sorting things out by separating the hockey side of things from the business side. With an accumulated debt of $234,000, Joe Celentano, a former referee with basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters, was hired as business manager.
On April 17, Medicine Hat beat visiting Saskatoon 3-0 to win its third straight East Division title. The only other team to win three consecutive East titles was the Flin Flon Bombers, beginning in 1968-69.
On May 3, the Tigers beat visiting Kamloops 5-2 to win their second straight WHL title, this one in six games.
The very next day, Bob Vranckaert, who was in the construction business in Alaska, said he would like to put an expansion franchise in Anchorage in time for the 1990-91 season. Born in Drumheller, Alta., and raised in Burnaby, B.C., Vranckaert spent more than 20 years in general commercial construction 800 miles north of Anchorage.
The WHL said it would play two exhibition and four regular-season games in Anchorage and use that, plus the 1989 world junior championship, which was to be held in Anchorage, as a barometer.
On May 8, the Pats announced that Sauter’s contract wouldn’t be renewed.
A week later, Sauter’s old team, the Tigers, beat the Windsor Spitfires 7-6 in Chicoutimi to become the sixth team in the 70-year history of the Memorial Cup to win back-to-back championships.
The board in Moose Jaw put H.J. (Toby) Tobias in charge and then resigned en masse. Tobias was empowered to chair a committee whose immediate responsibility was to carry on a fund-raising campaign aimed at erasing the club’s debt. The immediate goal was to raise $150,000.
Tobias said he would look into the team’s accounting procedures, recommend constitutional changes and appoint an auditor to present a year-end statement at the club’s annual meeting.
“To me it’s a four-stage project,” Tobias said. “Stage 1: Solve the immediate debt crisis and give us some breathing room. Step 2: Have a look at the front office and see if there are some things we can tighten up. Stage 3: Come up with a budget we can live with in years to come. Stage 4: Make sure fund-raising becomes a year-round effort.”
In mid-May, Pezzin resigned as coach in Brandon. He would be replaced by Sauter, who was reunited with Shinske. The two were old friends, going back to the Estevan and New Westminster Bruins. Sobchuk replaced Sauter in Regina.
Celentano resigned in Moose Jaw, saying: “By my staying I become just another liability, one of those accounts payable that they have to make every day, and they don’t have the money.”
On May 31, Tobias announced that the Warriors had reached their goal of $151,800. That figure covered debts accrued up until March 31. Tobias said: “The phoenix has risen from the ashes. The financial health of the club remains fragile . . . but it’s business as usual from here on in.”
Indications were that New Westminster owner Ron Dixon would move the franchise to the Tri-Cities area of Washington State. He just happened to be building an arena, the Tri-Cities Coliseum, there.
TIM SPELTZ
In July, Farwell and Melrose resigned in Medicine Hat. Shortly after, they signed in Seattle. Wes Phillips was named GM in Medicine Hat and hired Ron Kennedy, a former Estevan player, as coach. Before the season started, Phillips quit, citing business and family pressures, and Tim Speltz replaced him.
Peter Anholt was named head coach in Prince Albert, where Wilson quit to join the L.A. Kings as an assistant coach. Brad Tippett was the GM in Prince Albert.
The WHL arrived in Anchorage on the weekend of Sept. 24 and 25, 1988.
Kamloops and Portland played two exhibition games in Anchorage, drawing 2,100 to the first game and 1,750 the next night.
A shakeup occurred in Spokane. It started on Oct. 14 when Spokane GM Bob Strumm acquired six players while giving up four others in trades that involved three other teams. The Chiefs were 1-4-0 and had given up 33 goals in those five games.
Twelve days later, with the Chiefs 2-9-0, Strumm relieved Goring of his duties. Strumm, with a three-year contract extension that would take him through the 1991-92 season, went behind the bench, went 2-4-0 and immediately installed Gary Braun as coach.
On Nov. 11, Moose Jaw dumped Gerry James and installed Kvisle as head coach/director of hockey operations.
Three days later, Regina shook up things. Sobchuk moved from coach to GM, with Bernie Lynch moving up from assistant coach to head coach.
It was announced on Nov. 17 that Vranckaert had purchased the Victoria Cougars from Fraser McColl. Ownership actually had changed hands 10 days after the end of the season.
“Bob has been after me for a long time,” McColl said. “He wants to get into the business with a passion. And, perhaps, that’s the type of enthusiasm this team needs right now.”
On Nov. 20, the Tri-City Americans, having played their first 17 games on the road because the Coliseum wasn’t ready, opened at home with a 4-3 overtime victory over Seattle in front of a sellout crowd of 6,004.
Swift Current started the season with 12 straight victories, and went into the Christmas break at 28-5-0 and on a 10-game winning streak. Referring to the bus accident of two years previous, James said: “I think the bus accident galvanized the spirit of the community. I think that was a catalyst. Since then we’ve had to provide a product that’s been worthy of fans coming, but I think that incident certainly rallied the community.”
Added centre Tim Tisdale: “That’s all anybody in town talks about. It’s hard to believe. You go downtown and you’re eating in a restaurant and everybody at the next table is talking about the Broncos. It definitely helps your hockey.”
There was big news out of Calgary on Jan. 3, 1989, when Petr Nedved, a centre with a midget team from Litvinov, Czechoslovakia, defected after a midget tournament. His WHL rights belonged to Moose Jaw, but the Warriors would deal them to Seattle.
The season wasn’t over when Spokane owner Vic Fitzgerald said that Braun wouldn’t be returning.
On March 14, Chynoweth revealed that the WHL “had an inquiry from Terry Simpson about putting a team in Red Deer. They would have to get a new building.” A conditional franchise was sold to Simpson on Aug. 12, 1991. The Rebels would begin play in the fall of 1992.
Attendance figures compiled by The Regina Leader-Post showed that attendance was up 232,951 over 1987-88. Most of that was attributable to the first-year Americans who attracted 203,532 fans, which was 156,149 more than they drew the previous season in New Westminster.
There was a change in Seattle on April 11 when Medicine Hat businessman Bill Yuill bought the Thunderbirds from Earl Hale of Calgary.
The usual spate of front-office changes began in earnest with the news that: 1. Galbraith would not be back in Lethbridge; 2. Al Patterson, who quit in Victoria after the season ended, had signed as Tri-City’s GM; 3. Ron Byrne had signed as the GM in Victoria; 4. Sobchuk had resigned as GM in Regina; 5. Shinske had resigned in Brandon; and, 6. Tippett had quit in P.A.
Swift Current won 4-1 in Portland on April 30 to sweep the Winter Hawks in the championship final. The Broncos became the first team to sweep its way to the WHL championship — they also got past Moose Jaw and Saskatoon in four games each. The Broncos, just a season and a half after having four players killed in a bus accident, went 55-16-1, the best record in the CHL.
“This is a great accomplishment for our franchise,” James said. “But I don’t want the Memorial Cup to decide if we had a great year.”
Tisdale added: “We have the team to do it this year. If we can’t get up for four games, we don’t belong there. I’ll be disappointed if we don’t win the Memorial Cup.”
On May 14, Tisdale’s goal at 3:25 of the first sudden-death overtime period gave the Broncos a 4-3 victory over Saskatoon in the final game of the Memorial Cup. The game was played in front of 9.078 fans in Saskatchewan Place and brought to an end the most successful Memorial Cup tournament ever played.
Shortly after the Memorial Cup, the changes continued: 1. Lynch found out his contract in Regina wouldn’t be renewed; 2. Rick Kozuback signed a two-year contract as coach with Tri-City; 3. Simpson returned to Prince Albert as GM/head coach; 4. Bill Hicke was named GM in Regina; 5. Tippett signed as Regina’s head coach; 5. Maxwell returned from L.A. to sign as co-coach and director of hockey operations in Spokane; 6. Braun was Spokane’s co-coach and assistant director of hockey operations; 7. Melrose left Seattle to become head coach of the AHL’s Adirondack Red Wings; 8. Marcel Comeau signed a two-year deal in Saskatoon but shortly after resigned to become head coach of the AHL’s New Haven Nighthawks; 9. Anholt quit in P.A. to join Seattle as head coach; 10. Rob Daum signed as assistant coach/assistant manager in P.A.; and, 11. Terry Ruskowski signed to coach the Blades.
On June 14, 1989, Moose Jaw, so close to financial ruin just one year earlier, revealed at its annual meeting that there was a paper profit of $119,722 and that the Warriors had about $40,000 in the bank.
At its annual meeting, the WHL had two major announcements. It had decided for the first time to use full-time referees. “We’re hoping it leads to more consistent, professional refereeing,” Regina governor Ted Knight said. By the time all was said and done, the WHL had hired eight full-time and four part-time referees.
The WHL also said it would no longer allow teams to list 13-year-old players. From that point on, 14-year-olds would count for two spots on a list, players 15 and older for one.
Seattle set a single-game attendance record on Oct. 7 when 12,173 fans showed up to watch the Thunderbirds edge Portland, 4-3. “We could have sold 2,000 more tickets,” Seth Landau, the club’s director of marketing and public relations, said. “We were sold out the day before the game.” The previous attendance record belonged to Portland, which had attracted capacity crowds of 10,437 to Memorial Coliseum on numerous occasions.
The first coaching change came on Oct. 15 when Naka resigned in Victoria. Lyle Moffat replaced him.
On Nov. 1, Ken Hitchcock, 36 years of age and in the neighbourhood of 400 pounds, went public with the news that he was going on a serious diet.
“There comes a time in life when it becomes a case of now or never,” said the popular coach of the Kamloops Blazers. “I look down the road four or five years from now, what do I want to be doing? If that’s what I have to do to move up the ladder, that’s what I have to do.”
Victoria made another coaching change on Nov. 13 with Garry Cunningham becoming the Cougars’ third coach of the season. Moffat stayed on as marketing director.
A lawsuit launched by Hornung was settled out of court in November. Thirteen defendants, including the WHL, were named in the suit launched in July of 1987. Details of the settlement weren’t made public.
At a WHL board of governors’ meeting on Nov. 20, the chair switched bodies again. It was a case of deja vu, with Shaw taking over from Brodsky.
KELLY McCRIMMON (Photo: Brandon Wheat Kings)
On Dec. 17, Sauter was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a disorder that strikes at the central nervous system. He would not return to coaching until late in the 1990-91 season when he finished the winter with the SJHL’s Estevan Bruins. Brandon GM Kelly McCrimmon moved in behind Brandon’s bench.
There was a player revolt in Tri-City when Dixon named Bill LaForge director of player personnel. LaForge said he had a five-year contract.
On Dec. 31, with Portland scheduled to play in Tri-City, the Americans players refused. A statement signed by 19 players read in part: “We will definitely not participate in any further games without the termination of Mr. Bill LaForge from the Americans organization.”
The players ended their holdout the next day, winning 8-4 in Portland. Dixon had contacted players earlier in the day and said LaForge would no longer have any contact with them.
Defenceman Colin Ruck later explained the Tri-City deal: “He came into the dressing room screaming and cutting guys down. To get to us, he said we had to call him Coach. He had (coach) Rick Kozuback picking up pucks during practice. That really upset us. Bill came out and ran a really brutal practice. We felt we had to do something.”
Byrne was gone as Victoria’s GM before January ended, while Cunningham was out as coach on Feb. 5. Moffat went back behind the bench. The Cougars would set a CHL record, losing 29 in a row.
On Feb. 7, Seattle centre Glen Goodall had an assist in a 5-3 victory over visiting Tri-City to break the WHL record for most points in a career. That lifted his point total to 530, one more than Craig Endean, who had played with Seattle and Regina.
Two nights later, Seattle broke the WHL single-game attendance record as 12,253 fans watched a 5-3 victory over Spokane.
Figures compiled by the Regina Leader-Post showed that attendance totalled 1,678,651, up about 40,000 over the previous season. Tri-City, which sold out every home game, led the way with total attendance of 216,360. Saskatoon, in its first full season in Saskatchewan Place, played in front of 209,542 fans. Seattle, which finished with its best-ever record (52-17-3; the best previous was 32-28-12 in 1977-78), drew 181,211 fans, up 66,189 from a year previous.
On March 28, Chynoweth admitted that two groups had applied for an expansion franchise for Tacoma, Wash.
The Spokane franchise changed hands on April 10, with Fitzgerald selling to the Brett brothers — Bobby, George and Ken — for more than $600,000. Bob Brett wouldn’t say what they paid, other than to say it was “too much.”
The postseason changes started in April when Speltz and Kennedy learned that Medicine Hat wouldn’t renew their contracts, and Rick Hopper was named head coach/director of hockey operations in Victoria. Jack Shupe, the Tigers’ first GM/head coach in 1970-71, was the new GM in Medicine Hat. He hired Tim Bothwell as coach.
On April 29, Kamloops scored a 6-5 overtime victory in Lethbridge to win the WHL final in five games. Kamloops lost the opener and then won four straight. The Blazers struck out at the Memorial Cup, though, as the Oshawa Generals, with Eric Lindros, won it all in Hamilton.
There was much expansion talk in the WHL, resulting in this comment from Brodsky: “It’s sort of like being in love. If you have to ask yourself whether you’re in love, you’re probably not. If we’re wondering why we should expand, then maybe we’re forcing the issue a bit. If expansion is right, we’ll know it.”
DENNIS BEYAK
Farwell left Seattle to become GM of the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers. Anholt added the GM’s nameplate to his door, and hired assistant GM Dennis Beyak from Saskatoon. Beyak had been in Saskatoon since 1981 and was the person deemed most responsible for the success of the 1989 Memorial Cup in Saskatoon.
Simpson left Prince Albert again, this time to become an assistant coach with the Winnipeg Jets. Daum was promoted to replace him.
There were shockwaves in Kamloops when Hitchcock resigned after six seasons with the Blazers. He signed as an assistant coach with Philadelphia. Tom Renney replaced Hitchcock, who left with a 291-125-15 regular-season record over six seasons, his .693 winning percentage the highest of any coach in WHL history.
Leaving wasn’t easy for Hitchcock, who said: “I got cold feet a couple of times. I almost went into (GM) Bob Brown’s office and said, ‘Call the whole thing off, I don’t want to go.’ ”
On Sept. 30, Chynoweth chatted about expansion: “There are what I like to call tire-kickers in Boise, Idaho; Eugene, Oregon; and, Tacoma, Washington. The WHL is in good shape and we’re aggressive to expand by one, possibly two teams in the West Division sometime soon. We are coming off our second record-setting attendance season. We’re also proud of the fact that this is the third year in a row we aren’t opening a new site. Believe it or not, but we’re stable.”
Bruce Hamilton, a former player and scout with the Blades, headed a group of Saskatoon and Tacoma investors who were eventually granted a franchise for Tacoma to start with the 1991-92 season.
On Oct. 30, with the 1990-91 season one month old, one night before Halloween, James went wild in Swift Current. Upset with referee Kevin Muench after the Broncos turned a 7-3 second-period lead into a 9-8 loss to visiting Medicine Hat, James went on to the ice in pursuit of Muench, then returned to the bench and threw sticks and water bottles onto the ice. James then removed his jacket, tie, shirt and one shoe and threw them onto the ice before his players escorted him to the dressing room.
Bothwell summed it up: “All I can say is, ‘Wow.’ I don’t know what words can describe what happened out there, from a lot of different aspects.”
James was suspended for six games and fined $2,000. “At least they didn’t ask me for the shirt off my back,” he said. The incident would show up on video on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and the David Letterman Show among others.
There was some silliness in Spokane, too. On Dec. 6, with Tri-City visiting Spokane, Maxwell and Americans assistant Gerry Johannson got into it after first period.
Here’s Maxwell: “He was waiting for me. He was yapping at me. He challenged me and I accepted the challenge.” Maxwell was said to have out-punched his opponent, 4-0.
Here’s Johansson: “He throws punches like marshmallows.”
Maxwell was suspended for three games and fined $500. Johansson got hit for $1,000 and four games.
Remember that $1 parking fee in Regina? Well, on Dec. 17, Regina Exhibition Park announced it was doubling it to $2. “I don’t think our fans will take very kindly to it if it does happen,” said co-owner/GM Bill Hicke. “If that’s the case it’ll drive another nail in the coffin.”
The Pats’ lease would expire after the 1990-91 season and Hicke had already made at least one trip into the Pacific Northwest to scout buildings.
A change in Prince Albert had Dale Engel move in as GM, with Rob Daum giving up that title but staying on as coach. It was no surprise when Daum left P.A. for Swift Current at season’s end.
On Feb. 4, Saskatoon fired head coach Terry Ruskowski, replacing him with former Blades defenceman Bob Hoffmeyer.
On March 17, Seattle was awarded the 1992 Memorial Cup.
The Leader-Post’s attendance figures showed that Tri-City, with 36 sellouts, again topped the WHL with 216,360 fans. Seattle was next at 215,248, up 34,037 from the season previous. But overall attendance was down 22,861 to 1,655,790.
LORNE FREY
On April 17, Marcel Comeau was named the first head coach of the Tacoma Rockets. Hamilton would be the GM, with Lorne Frey, most recently with Swift Current, as director of player personnel.
Spokane scored a 7-2 victory over home-town Lethbridge to sweep the WHL final. The Chiefs would go on to win the Memorial Cup, with goaltender Trevor Kidd and right-winger Pat Falloon wrapping up dream seasons. Both played for the Canadian junior team that won the gold medal in Saskatoon.
One thing more than any other summed up the WHL as it headed into its second 25 years. When the 1991-92 season opened, the league not only had the same 14 teams for the fourth consecutive season, but it had welcomed the Tacoma Rockets to the fold.
Author greggdrinnanPosted on November 28, 2020 Tags Al Patterson, Barry Melrose, Barry Trapp, Bernie Lynch, Bill Hicke, Bill LaForge, Bill Shinske, Bill Yuill, Blaine Galbraith, Bob Brown, Bob Cornell, Bob Hoffmeyer, Bob Strumm, Bob Vranckaert, Bobby Brett, Brad Hornung, Brad Tippett, Brandon Wheat Kings, Brent Ruff, Brian Ekstrom, Brian Shaw, Bruce Hamilton, Bryan Maxwell, Butch Goring, Calgary Wranglers, Chris Mantyka, Colin Ruck, Craig Endean, Dale Engel, Dan McDonald, Dave Laing, Dennis Beyak, Dennis Sobchuk, Doug Sauter, Dr. Chris Ekong, Earl Hale, Ed Brost, Ed Chynoweth, Ed Staniwoski, Ernie McLean, Fraser McColl, Garry Cunningham, Gary Bollinger, Gary Braun, George Brett, Gerry James, Gerry Johansson, Glen Goodall, Glen Hawker, Graham James, Greg Kvisle, Gregg Drinnan, Harvey Roy, Jack Shupe, Jim Dobson, Jim Harrison, Joe Celentano, John Chapman, John Olver, John Rittinger, John Van Horlick, Kamloops Blazers, Kelly McCrimmon, Ken Brett, Ken Hitchcock, Ken Hodge, Kevin Clemens, Kevin Ekdahl, Kevin Muench, Lethbridge Hurricanes, Lorne Frey, Lyle Moffat, Marc Pezzin, Marcel Comeau, Medicine Hat Tigers, Moose Jaw Warriors, New Westminster Bruins, Pat Falloon, Pat Sullivan, Peter Anholt, Petr Nedved, Portland Winter Hawks, Prince Albert Raiders, Regina Pats, Richard Doerksen, Rick Brodsky, Rick Hopper, Rick Kozuback, Rick Wilson, Rob Daum, Ron Byrne, Ron Dixon, Ron Kennedy, Russ Farwell, Saskatoon Blades, Scott Kruger, Seattle Thunderbirds, Seth Landau, Sheldon Ferguson, Spokane Chiefs, Stan Szumlak, Stuart Craig, Swift Current Broncos, Tacoma Rockets, Ted Knight, Terry Ruskowski, Terry Simpson, Theoren Fleury, Tim Bothwell, Tim Speltz, Tim Tisdale, Toby Tobias, Tom Renney, Trent Kresse, Trevor Kidd, Tri-City Americans, Vic Fitzgerald, Vic Mah, Victoria Cougars, Wally Kozak, Wayne Simpson, Wes Phillips, WHL, WHL historyLeave a comment on The WHL, Part 5: There was tragedy, lots of movement and marshmallow punches . . .
The WHL, Part 4: Winds of change, Ferraro lights it up, and a player for a bus . . .
At some point in the late 1990s, while I was the sports editor at the Regina Leader-Post, I put together a brief history of the Western Hockey League. I had pretty much forgotten about it until recently when I was asked if I might post it again. So I am doing just that. . . . As you read each piece, please remember that I wrote them more than 20 years ago and they cover only the league’s first 25 years. It isn’t an all-encompassing history, but hits on some of the highlights and a few lowlights. . . . The stories are pretty much as originally written. . . . Here is Part 4 of 5, and it’s a long one (but not as long as Part 5). I hope you enjoy it. . . .
When the WHL headed into the 1981-82 season, which was the beginning of its fourth five-year segment, stability was not exactly a strong suit.
For example, of the 13 teams that came out of the gate in the fall of 1981, only two — the Portland Winter Hawks and Saskatoon Blades — wouldn’t undergo a change in ownership or location over the next 10 years.
But had you predicted the WHL would be as healthy and as stable as any league in existence just 10 years later, well, not many people wouldn’t have scoffed.
Hockey in the early 1980s was fighting to leave its fightin’ image behind.
The WHL was no different. The days of the Broad Street Bullies were coming to an end. Unfortunately for the WHL, it took some people longer than others to realize that.
BILL LaFORGE
For starters, the Regina Pats hired Bill LaForge as their head coach on May 20, 1981. At the time, he was under an OHL-imposed suspension that was to last until Jan. 1, 1982. LaForge, while with the Oshawa Generals, had become physically involved with Peterborough coach Dave Dryden and then with Petes player Doug Evans in a pregame brawl.
Neither the suspension nor LaForge’s reputation scared off Regina general manager Bob Strumm, who gave LaForge a two-year contract.
Of his OHL suspension, LaForge said: “I’ve never been suspended in 12 years of coaching and I have no intention of it ever happening again.”
Before the 1981-82 season ended, LaForge would be suspended three times. And he would also be in a Lethbridge courtroom, facing an assault charge.
RUSS FARWELL
At the same time, there were other changes that would mean a lot to this league as its history continued. For starters, Russ Farwell moved into
Calgary as the Wranglers assistant coach and assistant GM. He would later prove to be as astute as any hockey man who has ever sat behind a WHL desk.
An NHL team also became involved in the WHL at the ownership level. Peter Pocklington, the owner of the Edmonton Oilers, purchased the New Westminster franchise and moved it to Kamloops as the Junior Oilers.
Pocklington owned 70 per cent, with 35 shareholders holding the rest.
“They seem to be an enthusiastic group,” WHL president Ed Chynoweth said. “And a new building there in the future would be a plus for us. I know the franchise moved out of Kamloops in the past. But I think that was a case of people looking for greener pastures after seeing the success that was achieved in Portland.”
On Aug. 19, the WHL began shaping its office for the future when Richard Doerksen, the league statistician for three seasons who was named referee-in-chief midway in the 1980-81 season, was given the title of executive assistant.
There was an ugly incident in Medicine Hat on Oct. 14 when, during a bench-clearing brawl against the Lethbridge Broncos, Tigers general manager/coach Pat Ginnell got into it with linesman Gary Patzer. According to The Canadian Press, Ginnell “exchanged blows” with Patzer.
The next day, Medicine Hat RCMP laid an assault charge against Ginnell. One day later, Ginnell and Patzer were suspended indefinitely. Ginnell would later charge Patzer with assault, and both would plead not guilty. Ginnell eventually pleaded guilty and was fined $350, while the charge against Patzer was withdrawn by the Crown. Ginnell ended up serving a 36-game suspension.
There were serious problems in Spokane. And on Dec. 2, the WHL suspended the franchise. A proposed sale fell through and the 3-23-1 Flyers were done for the season.
One of the WHL’s great success stories began on Jan. 19, 1982, when, during meetings at the all-star game in Winnipeg, an expansion application from Prince Albert was accepted.
It was a sad night, March 23 was, in Regina. It was Fan Appreciation Night and by the time the ice chips cleared, the Pats and Calgary had done it up right. When the WHL office got through, the teams were hit with $1,250 in fines and 36 games in suspensions. Regina got 27 games and $1,000.
On April 8, it was revealed that Bill Zeitlin of Chicago, a minority owner with baseball’s White Sox, had bought the Billings Bighorns from Joe Sample for $300,000. Zeitlin promptly moved the team to Nanaimo.
Regina brawled its way into the WHL final, but not before LaForge landed in a Lethbridge courtroom.
LaForge became physically involved with Alfred Gurr, a fan, while players brawled on the ice during the first period of Game 1 of the East final.
LaForge was charged with assault causing bodily harm. Ultimately, LaForge was acquitted as the judge ruled it was hard to convict a person of assault for hitting “an obnoxious person trying to get into the coach’s area.”
Charges against the fan were dropped on June 22 when LaForge, the chief witness, didn’t appear in Lethbridge Provincial Court.
On April 29, Farwell was named GM of the Tigers and, just like that, the foundation was laid for back-to-back Memorial Cups.
Portland defeated visiting Regina 9-2, at home on May 2, to take the WHL final, 4-1. Regina was without Brent Pascal, Al Tuer and Dale Derkatch, who were suspended after a Game 4 brawl, the third time in the playoffs that the Pats were involved in a donnybrook.
Four days later, LaForge resigned. He later signed as GM/head coach in Kamloops.
Kelowna got into the league when Kelowna Sports Enterprises Ltd., headed up by Chris Parker, was sold an expansion franchise. Parker had operated the BCJHL’s Penticton Knights. The Wings named Marc Pezzin coach and Joe Arling GM. The Wings were bad — really bad. They were 1-26-2 at the Christmas break.
On June 22, the WHL approved the sale of the Wranglers to Wilf Richard and Jim Kerr from Pat Shimbashi and the Calgary Flames.
Regina landed defenceman Rick Herbert, 15, one of the most-wanted players in WHL history on Sept. 20, 1982, but it cost the Pats seven players. It happened during a draft that was held as teams cut their lists from 60 to 50 players. Regina traded Byron Lomow, Tim Brown and Kevin Pylypow to Kamloops for the draft’s third pick. Darryl Watts, Scott Wilson, Peter Hayden and Scott Gerla were given to Kelowna and the Wings agreed to pass on Herbert with the first pick. Due to draft rules, Prince Albert, with the second pick, couldn’t take Herbert. The Pats held pick No. 4.
Seattle picked up a 12-year-old from Thompson, Man., in that draft. His name? Glen Goodall.
On Oct. 18, the WHL admitted it had on file franchise applications from Moose Jaw, Edmonton, Red Deer and New Westminster. The Moose Jaw group included Lorne Humphreys, Bill Kelly, Jim Little, Barry Webster and Emmett Reidy. Other groups were headed by: Bill Burton and Ron Dixon, New Westminster; Vic Mah, Edmonton; and, Alf Cadman, Red Deer.
On Jan. 19, 1983, newspaper headlines everywhere read: Player swapped for bus.
Here’s what happened: The Seattle Breakers dealt the rights to left-winger Tom Martin to the Victoria Cougars for a used bus. “Actually, just the down payment,” said Breakers’ owner John Hamilton. “It might have been the best deal I ever made.”
At the time, Martin was playing at Denver University but said he wanted to play in his home town. The bus in question was purchased by the defunct Spokane Flyers from Trailways in 1981 for $60,000. The Flyers spent $15,000 on inside renovations. When that franchise folded, the Cougars bought the bus but it was sitting in the U.S., because Victoria was not prepared to pay customs, excise and sales taxes. Hamilton said he got the bus for Martin and $35,000.
Brandon owner Jack Brockest pulled the plug in March, selling the Wheat Kings to a group of local businessmen. “I simply, as an individual, could not have survived much longer,” said Brockest, who sold just four years after buying the franchise. Average attendance had fallen below the 1,500-mark.
Calgary lost out to Lethbridge in the East final, and Wranglers coach Doug Sauter resigned. He later signed with the AHL’s Springfield Indians.
Lethbridge went on to beat Portland in the WHL final. Both teams advanced to the Memorial Cup, the Winter Hawks getting in as host team. And, lo and behold, the Winter Hawks became the first host team to win the tournament.
On June 14, Bill Burton and Ron Dixon announced they had bought the Nanaimo franchise. They moved it to New Westminster. Yes, major junior hockey was back in Queen’s Park Arena.
On Aug. 28, Brandon traded centre Blaine Chrest to Portland for five players — centre Ray Ferraro, defenceman Brad Duggan, right-winger Derek Laxdal, and left-wingers Dave Thomlinson and Tony Horacek. Ferraro would set a WHL record with 108 goals and, in the process, may have saved the Brandon franchise.
As the 1983-84 season opened, it was revealed that a familiar face had returned to New Westminster. Bill Shinske was back as vice-president of operations.
Early in the season, Kamloops coach Bill LaForge, after beating Kelowna 7-5, said he was tired of facing little opposition: “It’s no fun taking two points off a team that gives you no resistance. They have no breakout, no forechecking, no system, nothing. The only adjustment you have to make is to duck.”
RAY FERRARO
Meanwhile, out east, Ferraro was having a glorious season. He scored his 50th goal in his 32nd game, the second fastest 50 goals in WHL history. Bill Derlago had 50 in 27 games with Brandon in 1977-78. “The trade was the best thing that could have happened to me,” Ferraro said. “I wasn’t going to play that much in Portland. At the start of the season, we wrote down our goals and I wanted to have 35 goals by Christmas.”
It was a Merry Christmas in Moose Jaw as it was announced that Moose Jaw Tier One Inc. had purchased the Winnipeg Warriors Hockey Club Inc., and that the franchise would move for the 1984-85 season. Winnipeg would go on to finish with a 9-63-0 record, losing its last game 14-1 to visiting Regina on March 21.
LES JACKSON
Brawls were few and far between, but there was one with a difference in Regina on March 7. Brandon GM Les Jackson was fined $1,000 and suspended indefinitely for leaving the press box and attacking Strumm, Regina’s GM/coach, at the Pats’ bench, all this while players were fighting on the ice.
“I just wanted to let him know that if the kids are going to fight, I’m going to stick up for the guys, too,” Jackson said.
On March 12, Ferraro became the first player in WHL history to score 100 goals in a season when he scored twice in an 11-9 victory over visiting Winnipeg.
Swift Current was hot on the heels of another franchise, this time offering $360,000 to the Edmonton Oilers for Kamloops. Local businessmen rode to the rescue and kept junior hockey in Kamloops.
The story in the playoffs had to do with the failure of the Pats. It’s doubtful any team has ever been so close to the Memorial Cup and then not made it. Regina was 12 seconds away from eliminating Kamloops in the sixth game of the final. But Dean Evason tied the game 3-3 at 19:48 of the third period in Kamloops and Ryan Stewart won it at 13:03 of overtime. One night later, the Oilers won 4-2 and were off to the Memorial Cup.
Brian Ekstrom, president of Oakwood Petroleum, headed a group that purchased the Wranglers from Jim Kerr for $300,000. Kerr bought the team from Shimbashi in 1982 but still owed $200,000 to the former owner. Ekstrom didn’t renew Marcel Comeau’s contract as coach (Comeau went to Saskatoon), and named Hank Bassen as GM and Sandy Hucul as coach.
Another franchise changed hands in late May when Dennis Kjeldgaard and Al Foder bought Lethbridge from Ross McKibbon of Taber.
And in mid-June, Sauter returned to the WHL, this time as head coach in Medicine Hat.
In Regina, Herb Pinder Jr. assumed controlling interest of the Pats.
Before the 1984-85 season started, LaForge left Kamloops for the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks. Kamloops dipped into the midget coaching ranks in Sherwood Park, Alta., and signed Ken Hitchcock.
GLEN GOODALL (Photo: Seattle Thunderbirds)
Goodall, just 14, played his first game with the Seattle Breakers on Oct. 10, 1984. It was a 12-3 loss in Regina. “My parents were here tonight,” Goodall said, “and they’ll follow us around on the rest of our eastern swing, and they might take a trip out to Seattle and I’ll see them at Christmas, so it won’t be too bad.”
As for his first game, he said: “I thought I played OK in the third period. When you’re down by a lot of goals, it’s hard to keep it up.”
He would play 399 regular season games by the time his career ended.
A rivalry was born on Nov. 13, 1984, when Moose Jaw scored its first victory over Regina, winning 6-4 in Moose Jaw. But referee Darren Loraas was forced to call the game with 26 seconds left.
“I was surprised and disappointed,” Moose Jaw head coach Graham James said. “I thought the league was past that. It’s not necessary to play like that. The whole thing was disgusting. If Bob (Strumm) really wants to do battle like that, let the generals do the fighting and let’s leave the troops on the bench. We’re trying to sell the game here and I don’t think this helps it.”
The Pats were fined $1,500 and hit with 21 games in suspension; Moose Jaw got $200 and four games.
The under-age draft was playing havoc in Portland, where the Winter Hawks were missing a few players. Here’s Portland co-owner/GM Brian Shaw: “We should have had 11 returning players this year from the team that won the Memorial Cup. We have one — John Kordic — and that’s through no fault of our own.” Ken Yaremchuk, Richard Kromm, Alfie Turcotte and Cam Neely were in the NHL, while five other players walked away from the game.
The Winter Hawks gained some publicity, too, when their policy on drug and alcohol use was revealed. Here’s Shaw, again: “Everybody says there’s drugs in sport and nobody does anything about it. We are trying to do something about it. We take urine tests approximately every two weeks, and we also take spot tests, to assure ourselves that there’s no alcohol or drug involvement.”
Shaw said parents were fully aware of all of this: “We sent them a letter saying: “For the benefit of your boy and our organization each boy takes a urine test.” If he wants to refuse to take the test, he can do it. Nobody refuses . . . why would they want to refuse?” And, according to Shaw, no parents objected.
On Dec. 3, Prince Albert, in its third season, moved into first place in the East for the first time. The Raiders got into the WHL for $100,000 and then paid $75,000 for what was left of Spokane’s player list. You see, when the dispersal draft of the Flyers was held on Dec. 3, 1981, WHL teams were allowed to select only players on the active roster. The Raiders, then, bought the list and got three future stars — centre Dan Hodgson, right-winger Dave Pasin and defenceman Manny Viveiros.
CLIFF RONNING
On Dec. 12, New Westminster’s Cliff Ronning set a WHL record with a goal in his 16th consecutive game, a 3-2 home-ice victory over Medicine Hat.
It was revealed in January that Seattle owner John Hamilton was having financial problems and — surprise, surprise — Swift Current made him an offer.
“When I got into the hockey business, I was $60,000 short of being a millionaire,” Hamilton said. “Now I’d take the $60,000.” He said he had lost $500,000 since getting involved in 1979.
Swift Current struck out, again, on Jan. 14 when the WHL board of governors, not wanting to lose a West Division team, voted against the sale of the Breakers.
Hallelujah! On Jan. 22, 1985, the WHL did away with round-robin series in the playoffs, choosing to go strictly with best-of-five/seven series in the East, and best-of-nines in the West.
Rumours involving Swift Current surfaced in late March when the Bank of Nova Scotia asked the Wheat Kings for a written financial plan. Swift Current would strike out again when three Brandon businessmen bought the team.
TERRY SIMPSON
The Raiders, 16-55-1 and last in their first season, were 41-29-2 and fifth the next season. In their third season, though, they went 58-11-3 and went on to win the WHL championship, sweeping Kamloops in the final.
“Winning the world championship was a thrill, but winning the WHL title is more satisfying,” said Terry Simpson, the Prince Albert GM/head coach who had led Canada to a world junior gold medal earlier in the year. The Raiders then won the Memorial Cup, cruising past the Shawinigan Cataractes 6-1 in the final game.
New Westminster beat Victoria 5-4 on March 22 and Ronning had four assists, giving him 197 points, one more than the WHL record set by Brandon’s Brian Propp in 1978-79.
In April, the WHL announced 12-year-olds were no longer eligible for its player lists. The league also decided to allow its teams to use three 20-year-olds, rather than two, in the 1985-86 season.
On April 2, the WHL took over the Seattle franchise, later selling it to Calgary businessman Earl Hale.
HERB PINDER JR.
The end of Pinder’s association with the Pats began on May 1 with a story in the Regina Leader-Post. The May 1 story began: “Regina Pats fans are going to have to dip into their pockets for an extra dollar to cover parking charges announced by the Pats’ landlord, the Regina Exhibition Association.”
Pinder said he was “very disappointed and very concerned” by the decision. “We’re disappointed because they made a policy and then came and told us after it was in place.”
On May 6, Strumm resigned as GM/head coach in Regina, ending a six-year association with the Pats. He later accepted an offer to join the Sudbury Wolves but changed his mind before leaving for the Ontario city.
And there was trouble brewing in Moose Jaw where James was offered a position as co-coach and assistant GM by general manager Barry Trapp. Here’s James: “The bottom line is they took away my head-coaching position and that is a breach of contract. I can’t work with Barry Trapp anymore.”
James resigned shortly thereafter, saying: “I didn’t quit as head coach. They took that away from me.” He later sued the Warriors for breach of contract, a suit that was settled before it got to court.
For the first time since the fall of 1975, the WHL was ready to open a season with the same teams that finished the previous season.
But before 1985-86 could begin Vic Fitzgerald, now the majority owner in Kelowna, moved to Spokane.
Pat Ginnell was back in the WHL, this time as head coach in New Westminster. On Sept. 11, in their first exhibition game, the Bruins brawled with Seattle in Chilliwack. Ginnell was suspended for five games and fined $500. He was also told that another bench-clearing incident would cost him 25 games and $2,500.
On Oct. 10, the WHL made half-visors mandatory for all players.
As the season began there were ominous signs in Regina. In 1984-85, there were only four (of 36) regular-season crowds under 2,000. In October of 1985, there had already been five crowds under that figure.
BILL HICKE
Regina businessman Bill Hicke, a former NHL and WHA player, admitted he almost bought the Pats in June for $450,000. But he said he wouldn’t pay that for the team in November with its apparent problems.
Hicke said the Pats were faring poorly at the gate because of poor marketing strategy and low season-ticket sales.
“I think the Pats have to get more aggressive in marketing,” he explained. “They don’t have enough people to do the marketing now. You have to go knocking on doors. I know, for a fact, that they’ve sold only 600 season tickets. I have three partners who would sell 500 season tickets apiece.”
On Nov. 21, John Chapman was fired as head coach in Lethbridge. He was in his sixth season with the Broncos. Earl Jessiman replaced him.
In New Westminster, there was a changing of the dinosaurs — Ginnell was out, replaced by Ernie McLean who said hockey has “gone too much European . . . and I don’t agree with it. I still believe in the Boston style of hockey.”
Things really started to happen in Regina in mid-December. First, GM/head coach Bill Moores confirmed that the Pats had informed their landlord, in writing, that they intended to vacate the Agridome by Jan. 6. By this stage, the team and the Regina Exhibition Association were embroiled in a messy lease negotiation, not the least of which concerned paid parking.
It was evident that Pinder intended to sell the franchise to Swift Current. Moores scheduled practice ice at various Regina arenas and made plans to move to Swift Current in mid-January.
On Dec. 30, Pinder ordered the postponement of the Pats’ first home game of 1986. Chynoweth agreed with the decision: “We thought it would be in the best interests of everyone to cancel the game until the situation is settled.”
But on Jan. 13 the WHL’s board of governors rejected Pinder’s sale of the Pats to Swift Current, choosing instead to purchase the franchise itself.
Hicke, still interested in buying the Pats, said he felt sorry for the people of Swift Current: “I believe down the line that Swift Current deserves a team, but they don’t deserve the oldest team in the league.”
By now, the Swift Current people had at one time or another tried to buy Winnipeg, Brandon, Kamloops, Kelowna, Seattle and Regina.
Ironically, on Jan. 14, about 12 hours after Pinder announced the sale of the Pats to the WHL, the exhibition association said it was dropping its controversial $1 parking fee for Pats games. Mike Kelly, REA general manager, explained: “We feel this is a positive step. While the Pats are in this transition period, we’d like to help out.”
To which Pinder responded: “I think the paid parking has ruined our business and I’ve had to relinquish our business.”
In late February, the WHL sold the Pats to four Regina businessmen — Hicke, Morley Gusway, Ted Knight and Jack Nicolle.
KEN HITCHCOCK (Photo: Kamloops Daily News)
Meanwhile, it was business as usual around the league. In Queen’s Park Arena, for example, Kamloops head coach Ken Hitchcock was seen, according to The Canadian Press, “holding a hand over his eye to mock New Westminster’s one-eyed mentor, Ernie McLean, while McLean brandished a sign depicting the heavy-set Hitchcock as a pig eating hotdogs.” They were later fined $250 each.
And still the Swift Current people weren’t done because on Feb. 23, 1986, Dennis Kjeldgaard revealed the Broncos were for sale.
Guess what! Yes, the WHL brought back the round-robin format, this time deciding that the East’s top six teams would play in a home-and-home round-robin with the top four teams moving on. This would prove to be a disaster, and last just one season.
On March 25, Chynoweth suffered a mild heart attack and was in intensive care in a Calgary hospital. He would return to work, on a part-time basis, early in May.
Finally, Swift Current was in. On April 11, the WHL returned to Swift Current when a group headed by Rittinger purchased the Broncos from Kjeldgaard and Foder.
And Strumm was back in the WHL, this time as the GM in Spokane. Chapman was back, too, as GM in Calgary.
But Lethbridge wasn’t done. By May 1, city officials had contacted Chynoweth, stating their desire for another franchise.
Swift Current moved quickly to get its organization moving. Rittinger announced on May 1 that James would be the club’s GM/head coach.
The WHL final featured Kamloops and Medicine Hat, the latter making the first of what would be three straight trips to the final. This time, Kamloops lost the opener and then won four straight, taking the last one 7-2 on May 5.
There wouldn’t be a WHL team in the Memorial Cup final — the OHL’s Guelph Platers beat the QMJHL’s Hull Olympiques, 6-2 — but Medicine Hat would solve that problem next season. And the season after that.
NEXT: Part 5 of 5.
Author greggdrinnanPosted on November 26, 2020 November 26, 2020 Tags Al Foder, Alf Cadman, Barry Trapp, Barry Webster, Bill Burton, Bill Hicke, Bill Kelly, Bill LaForge, Bill Moores, Bill Shinske, Bill Zeitlin, Blaine Chrest, Bob Strumm, Brian Ekstrom, Brian Propp, Brian Shaw, Chris Parker, Cliff Ronning, Darren Loraas, Dean Evason, Dennis Kjeldgaard, Doug Sauter, Earl Hale, Earl Jessiman, Ed Chynoweth, Emmett Reidy, Ernie McLean, Glen Goodall, Graham James, Hank Bassen, Herb Pinder Jr., Jack Brockest, Jack Nicolle, Jim Kerr, Jim Little, Joe Arling, Joe Sample, John Chapman, John Hamilton, John Rittinger, Kamloops Blazers, Kelowna Wings, Ken Hitchcock, Les Jackson, Lorne Humphreys, Marc Pezzin, Marcel Comeau, Medicine Hat Tigers, New Westminster Bruins, Pat Ginnell, Pat Shimbashi, Peter Pocklington, Portland Winter Hawks, Prince Albert Raiders, Ray Ferraro, Regina Pats, Richard Doerksen, Rick Herbert, Ron Dixon, Ross McKibbon, Russ Farwell, Sandy Hucul, Seattle Breakes, Spokane Flyers, Ted Knight, Terry Simpson, Tom Martin, Vic Fitzgerald, Vic Mah, Wilf RichardLeave a comment on The WHL, Part 4: Winds of change, Ferraro lights it up, and a player for a bus . . .
The WHL, Part 3: Bruins’ dynasty ends, franchises on the move and more mayhem . . .
At some point in the late 1990s, while I was the sports editor at the Regina Leader-Post, I put together a brief history of the Western Hockey League. I had pretty much forgotten about it until recently when I was asked if I might post it again. So I am doing just that. . . . As you read each piece, please remember that I wrote them more than 20 years ago and they cover only the league’s first 25 years. It isn’t an all-encompassing history, but hits on some of the highlights and a few lowlights. . . . The stories are pretty much as originally written. . . . Here is Part 3. . . .
The mid-1970s belonged to the Ernie McLean-coached New Westminster Bruins. They were the Western Canada Hockey League’s most-dominant team.
If you didn’t believe that, well, they would convince you of it. And they’d do that any way they felt like it.
The legendary Ernie McLean. (Photo: The Coaches Site)
The Bruins ran their string of WCHL titles to four, and won the Memorial Cup the last two seasons, in 1976-77 and 1977-78. But by the time the 1980-81 season ended, the bloom was off the rose in New Westminster. Little did anyone know that it never would return.
Prior to the start of the 1976-77 season, the WCHL instituted a rule calling for an automatic game misconduct to any player who initiated a fight. Ironically, the first player stung was Brandon Wheat Kings starry centre Bill Derlago. He got the heave-ho after starting a scrap with Brian Schnitzler of the Saskatoon Blades in a season-opening 3-0 Brandon victory.
Two coaches felt WCHL president Ed Chynoweth’s wrath on Nov. 2. Ivan Prediger of the Kamloops Chiefs was suspended for 20 games, while Ken Hodge of the Portland Winter Hawks got 10 games. Prediger apparently struck Hodge during an altercation between the benches on Oct. 24.
There was joy in Regina on Jan. 27 when the Pats scored a 3-2 victory over visiting Portland. It ended a 36- game Regina winless streak that covered 96 days. “I hope the players don’t become satisfied with the win,” said Lorne Davis, who had taken over as GM/head coach from Del Wilson and Bob Turner with the Pats at 2-32-5.
A nine-hour meeting in Calgary resulted in a new playoff format. Under the original format, the Flin Flon Bombers, third in the East, were 20 points ahead of Regina and all but had a playoff spot locked up. Suddenly, there was a new format and the Bombers were fighting for a spot. Oh yes, they were also on a 15-game West Coast road trip.
“In this league, you need two pieces of equipment,” said Flin Flon boss Mickey Keating. “You need a face-guard when you play some of the teams on the ice and a back protector for the committee room. I had inklings that there may be changes in the playoffs but I had confidence there were intelligent hockey men in this league. I was shown different.”
In Portland, the Winter Hawks were beginning to carve out a niche, which resulted in this March 1 comment from GM Brian Shaw: “We’re selling the all-American boy image. Our players are all properly dressed in public. They all have respectable hair lengths. We feel image is important. Our players have become our outstanding selling point, and they have actually played much better because of the great acceptance which now is blossoming in Portland.”
In mid-April, Kamloops majority owner Ephram Steinke admitted the franchise would likely move to Spokane over the summer. The reasons? Steinke blamed almost $500,000 in losses over four years, and the city’s refusal to construct a new arena.
The often-emotional Bob Strumm. (Photo: Regina Leader-Post)
On May 12, the Calgary Centennials signed Bob Strumm as general manager. One of Strumm’s first moves was to confirm that a move to Billings was being contemplated.
Strumm, who had been Chynoweth’s executive assistant, was, at 29, the WCHL’s youngest GM. He would be one of the league’s most-prominent figures through the mid-1980s.
The Calgary move became official on May 19. Eleven days later, Kamloops moved to Seattle and became the Breakers under new owner John Hamilton.
On July 19, at the annual meeting in Calgary, the transfer of the Winnipeg Monarchs to Calgary was approved. Del Wilson, president and governor of the Pats, was named chairman of the board, replacing Bill Burton.
When Winnipeg moved to Calgary and became the Wranglers, owner Gerry Brisson named Doug Barkley as GM. The coach? It was Brisson. Would the GM be able to fire the owner/coach.
The 1977-78 regular season hadn’t even started when McLean was in trouble. It stemmed from an exhibition game against the host Victoria Cougars when midway in the second period he ventured into the stands to tangle with a fan who was taunting him. For his troubles, McLean got a gash on his forehead and, later, a $250 fine. This would serve as an omen.
A fierce rivalry was building between Regina and the Brandon Wheat Kings. After one early-season game, Davis had this to say: “If (Dave) Semenko would have been close enough to the box I would have swung at him . . . he came over by our bench trying to intimidate us.” To which Brandon coach Dunc McCallum responded: “How can a 220-pound man be held back by a stick boy?”
A few days later, Semenko joined the WHA’s Edmonton Oilers. A couple of years later, Davis joined the Oilers as a scout.
BILL DERLAGO
Derlago, perhaps the best pure offensive talent this league has seen, had a 40-game point streak end on Nov. 9 when he left a game with a thigh injury during his first shift. One month later, he blew out a knee in an exhibition game against the Moscow Selects. Had Derlago not been hurt, who knows what kind of numbers he would have put up? When he was injured, he had 48 goals and 80 points in 26 games. He was on pace for 133 goals, three more than the then-CMJHL record of 130 held by Guy Lafleur.
On Feb. 3, Jack McLeod resigned as coach of the Saskatoon Blades. He stayed on as GM, but put Garry Peters behind the bench. In Calgary, Barkley, the GM, took over as coach from Brisson, the owner.
More bad ink, and lots of it, in early February when McLean was slapped with a 25-game suspension for allegedly hitting an official. He returned for the playoffs.
“Our league has long been accused of protecting either our coaches or, more particularly, owner/coaches, but there is no way one coach or one franchise is bigger than the league,” Chynoweth said. “I can live with the so-called violence on ice, as projected by the media, but when it comes to our officials, qualified or unqualified, I look at things much differently.”
More bad ink in the first round of the playoffs. Yes, it emerged from a round-robin series. This one featured Brandon, Flin Flon and Regina in a double home-and-home series. When it got to the final game, Flin Flon at Regina, the Pats had to beat the Bombers by at least six goals to eliminate Brandon and set up a Regina-Flin Flon division final. Regina won 10-4 and the high-powered Wheat Kings, led by the likes of Derlago, Brian Propp, Laurie Boschman and Ray Allison, were done like so much burnt toast.
“For us to say anything is stupid. You saw what happened,” Flin Flon defenceman Ray Markham said after the game.
Ultimately, Flin Flon, New Westminster and Billings advanced to the WCHL’s round-robin semi-final to eliminate one team and put the other two in the championship final. Out went Flin Flon. New Westminster then swept Billings in the final. It was the Bruins’ fourth straight WCHL title and they would win their second consecutive Memorial Cup.
The Bruins, a power for oh, so long, would rarely be heard from in a positive light again.
On May 22, Flin Flon governor Gord Mitchell revealed that the community-owned team would cease operations. “I hate to see it go,” Mitchell said. “It’s certainly not the fault of the league. The league’s not kicking us out. But there comes a time when something like this seems to be the most reasonable thing to do. We’re a small centre and it got to the point where the league had outgrown us.”
A week later, Chynoweth, who had threatened to resign, announced he would remain as president, thanks to a promise from the governors that an executive assistant would be provided to help with such things as discipline. Wilson, the part-owner of the Pats, filled the bill as vice-president and referee-in-chief. Shaw replaced Wilson as chairman of the board.
On June 1, Gregg Pilling was named GM/coach in Regina, replacing Davis who, in a surprise move, was fired. Davis professed sadness, saying he had worked awfully hard and that all of that work would bear fruit in two years. Which is exactly what happened — two years later the Pats were in the Memorial Cup. But Pilling was gone by that point.
It was during the summer of 1978 when Chynoweth began talking of an education program. On July 4, he announced a program whereby teams would provide a year’s tuition and books at a recognized post-secondary institution for every season a player was in the league.
On Aug. 16, Chynoweth announced an Edmonton group headed by Bill Hunter had purchased the Flin Flon franchise from the league. Hunter would be president and governor, Vic Mah would be first vice-president.
The 1978-79 season began with news of a name change and ended with a new champion for the first time since the spring of ’74.
With three of 12 teams situated in the U.S., the WCHL was no more. Now it was the Western Hockey League.
GREGG PILLING
The goofiness started on Oct. 22 when Pilling went into the penalty box at the start of the third period of a game in Calgary. He said he would serve a bench minor handed him for delay of game at the end of the second period in what would be an 8-1 loss. Pilling also alternated goaltenders Jeff Lastiwka and Gregg Dumba every shift change after a brawl at 2:52 of the second. Changing goalies ended 30 seconds into the third period when, with the faceoff outside Regina’s blueline, Dumba lined up behind his net. He was given a gross misconduct.
Chynoweth, who fined Pilling $1,000, said: “I thought it was a circus. I wouldn’t blame anybody if they didn’t go back.”
This was to be the season of McCallum’s Wheat Kings. That much was evident when Brandon ran its two-season unbeaten streak to a WHL-record 49 games and its single-season streak to 29 games. Brandon finally lost, going down 9-4 in Edmonton on Dec. 13 with the Oil Kings scoring all nine goals with the man advantage.
There was more news from Brandon on Jan. 11 when GM Jack Brockest, one of the WHL’s most likeable people, bought the team.
If any team could match Brandon it was Portland. The Winter Hawks had a 19-game unbeaten streak ended when visiting Brandon won 7-4 to go to 42-3-7.
In mid-March, rumours had the Edmonton franchise, which was averaging about 500 fans a game, moving to Great Falls, Montana, or Red Deer.
Things got ugly on March 22 in New Westminster when an incident involving the Bruins and Portland resulted in McLean’s being suspended indefinitely and seven of his players being charged by police. A game-ending brawl broke out, but this one was different because, while the Bruins left their bench, Hodge managed to keep his players under control.
On March 27, Wilson said McLean would not be allowed to coach during the playoffs, nor would he be allowed to communicate with the bench from the press box as he had done during previous suspensions.
McLean apologized for the brawl at a Vancouver press conference: “I have to take the full load, the full responsibility for what happened . . . when I look at it, maybe the game has gone by me. Maybe my coaching style isn’t what’s needed anymore. I’m an old horse that’s been at it for 25 years and it’s tough to change your thinking. The game is changing — maybe I haven’t changed with it.”
On April 4, GM Bill Shinske and McLean announced the Bruins were for sale, for $350,000.
The Winter Hawks got a small measure of revenge, beating the visiting Bruins 5-3 on April 8 to eliminate them from post-season play.
But this sad episode would drag on through the summer.
Meanwhile, Brandon was finishing with a 58-5-9 record, setting or tying 19 records.
The Oil Kings were sold on April 10, with ownership handed over to a Portland group headed by Bob Cooper and Tom Gauthier, who said they would move the franchise to Great Falls. “I guess sports is not my bowl of rice,” said Mah, an Edmonton restauranteur. It was Mah’s second go-round as an owner in Edmonton, and he wouldn’t give up. He would try and try again and again to get another franchise for the Alberta capital.
On April 20, charges of common assault were filed against seven Bruins — J.P. Kelly, Terry Kirkham, Bruce Howes, Rick Amann, Boris Fistric, Rob Roflik and Bill Hobbins. In August, the seven pleaded guilty. Judge James Shaw — no relation to the Portland general manager — granted conditional discharges to all seven, then banned them from league games at any level until Dec. 1. McLean said Shaw was “trying to be the judge who is going to clean up hockey. I’m worried about the affect on the game because the judge’s ruling makes a hip-check a criminal offence.”
Portland and Brandon ended up in the final, with Brandon winning in six games.
And, on May 28, Chynoweth resigned, effective June 30. This time he would leave, becoming part-owner of the Wranglers. “It’s more than 25 per cent and less than 50,” said majority-owner Jim Morley.
In late May, Pat Ginnell, who had been with the Lethbridge Broncos, moved north to take over the Medicine Hat Tigers. Mike Sauter would replace him in Lethbridge. Dave King left as coach in Billings to become head coach at the University of Saskatchewan.
The Pats were sold on June 8, with Wilson, Bill Patton, Gord Wicijowski, D.K. MacPherson, Wilf Degelman and Bob Babchuk selling to the Pinders — father Dick and sons Herb, Gerry and Tom. The price was believed to be near $300,000. Strumm was named GM, governor and part-owner.
Strumm later signed Bryan Murray as head coach and one of the great turnarounds in WHL history was under way.
But before that got started, Dave Descent was chosen to run the WHL. In his third season with the Canadian Amateur Wrestling Association at the time, Descent had lots of hockey experience at various levels in the OHA. “This job is an opportunity to get back into hockey, which is my chosen sport, and advance my sporting career,” he said.
Regina, which finished 18-47-7 (last in the East, second-worst in the league) in 1978-79, would go 47-24-1 in 1979-80 to win the division.
It was obvious early that the Bruins were going to pay a steep price for the brawl against Portland. They got their first point, after 13 losses, with a 5-5 tie in Great Falls on Oct. 31.
And on Nov. 16 McLean was at it again. And again it involved Portland.
McLean got tangled up with a fan at a game in Portland and was charged with fourth-degree assault. In one of the most ironical situations in WHL history, McLean was in jail until Brian Shaw posted his bail of $525. Charges were later reduced to harassment and it was all cleared up when a civil compromise was signed, ending the criminal case.
In mid-December, Descent’s title was changed from executive director to president. And concern was being shown about Great Falls, which was 2-22-1 and hurtin’ at the gate. The Americans folded on Dec. 13.
On March 2, McLean threw a 30-gallon garbage can onto the ice to protest the work of referee Ken Wheler during a game against visiting Portland.
The next day, Descent announced his resignation. Said Descent: “Speaking honestly, I’ve enjoyed my stay and feel it was a positive experience. But for personal reasons I’ve decided to take a different career path which is something I’m not at liberty to discuss now.”
Shaw said a five-man board would run the league, and that McLean would be suspended for three games for throwing the can. Oh yes, McLean was later named acting chairman of the management committee.
On March 24, McLean said he was leaving the Bruins. “I’ve made up my mind,” he said. “I’ve worn out my welcome. I will not be in New Westminster next year. We built a dynasty here but it’s time to move on.” All this after the Bruins set a WHL record with 61 losses. It was the first time in 18 seasons that McLean had missed playoffs.
On April 17, Vancouver businessman Nelson Skalbania bought out McLean and Shinske for slightly more than $300,000.
A week later, the WHL announced that Winnipeg would have an expansion team for 1980-81 and that the owners were former Pats star Fran Huck, his law partner Gerald Gunn and Winnipeg businessmen Harry Buekert, Arnold DeFehr and Marsdon Fenwick. Buekert would be GM, with Huck as coach.
On April 27, Regina beat visiting Victoria, 5-4, to win the WHL final, 4-1. The 1980 Memorial Cup, which would be won by the Cornwall Royals, opened in Brandon and closed in Regina.
During the Memorial Cup it became apparent the major juniors were terribly concerned with NHL’s practice of drafting 18-year-olds.
Chynoweth said: “I understand the legal problems the NHL has, although I don’t sympathize with it . . . at this rate, the pros will be scouting midgets soon.”
McLeod remembered the 1979 draft: “Back in June one NHL general manager said there was nothing to worry about, that only seven or eight under-ages would be taken. When they took 58, we were a little disturbed. Once they got into it, they just kept going.”
Junior teams were to be paid $50,000 to $65,000 for under-age players who stuck in the NHL.
Some NHL people said they weren’t in favour of the 18-year-old draft, either.
“The general managers unanimously fought to the 11th hour to avoid drafting under-ages,” said Washington GM Max McNab. “We were going to get caught in a lawsuit. But the NHL is like the government in the eyes of the public here. We’re going to get shot at in any decision.”
On May 15, the WHL announced that the dormant Great Falls franchise would relocate to Spokane with Cooper remaining as majority owner.
NELSON SKALBANIA
On June 26, Skalbania, already the owner of New Westminster and the NHL’s Calgary Flames, bought 50 per cent of the Wranglers. Skalbania explained: “It’s a sympathetic thing. I said when we bought the Flames that we’d support junior hockey in Calgary and I can’t think of a way we’d be supporting it any more than owning the team. I just hope we don’t lose that much money with them.”
Pat Shimbashi, a minority owner in Lethbridge, bought the other 50 per cent of the Wranglers from Jim Morley and Chynoweth, which meant that the latter would return as WHL president.
ROZANDA SKALBANIA (Photo: archives.newwestcity.ca)
On June 27, Skalbania completed his purchase of the Bruins, buying 100 per cent for $325,000. McLean stayed as GM, while Skalbania’s 20-year-old daughter, Rozanda, was named president.
McLean resigned a couple of weeks later and Tracy Pratt was named GM. “I’d like to forget about the big bad Bruins of the past,” Pratt said, “and I’d like to think of them as the scrappy Bruins in the future. My concern is putting families back in the building. There was a shade too much violence in past years and many people became very bitter about what happened at Queen’s Park Arena.”
The league lost its referee-in-chief on Aug. 8 when Wilson announced he would scout for the Montreal Canadiens, a team with which he had long been associated.
The 1980-81 season opened quietly enough, but the silence was shattered on Dec. 1 with a shakeup in Saskatoon. McLeod and coach Lorne Frey ended their association with the Blades. Majority owner Nate Brodsky bought McLeod’s share (20 per cent) and named Daryl Lubiniecki GM and coach.
Lubiniecki began shaking things up when, on Jan. 15, he traded one player — centre Rocky Trottier — to Billings for six players — Pat Rabbitt, Dave Brown, Brad Duggan, Dave Chartier, Lyndon Byers and Al Acton.
Fighting was still a concern and on Dec. 17 Chynoweth announced that teams would be fined $2,500 if their players fought before games or between periods. Players who started the fights or were main combatants would get a minimum of five games.
A black cloud continued to follow the Bruins. A labour dispute forced them to play their last 29 games on the road. Their last 13 home games were played in such places as Bellingham, Wash., Kamloops, Trail, Duncan, B.C., and Coleman, Alta. The Bruins set a WHL record by losing 25 in a row and had to give season-ticket holders a refund for the 13 home games that were moved.
There were rumblings out of Swift Current that the locals were interested in a WHL franchise. John Rittinger, president of the SJHL team there, was trying to raise money for the venture. “I can’t give you a figure at this time,” he said on April 1, “but, personally, I feel there has been insufficient support.”
The juniors were beginning to realize they were going to have to live with the 18-year-old draft. Said Chynoweth: “The under-age situation is a problem but also a fact of life. The law of the land says at 18 you can fight for your country, drink and get married. Consequently, they’re also eligible to be drafted and play for NHL teams.”
The WHL had a new referee-in-chief — Richard Doerksen — and he was in the news in the playoffs after Strumm grabbed him in the press box during a game. Strumm was slapped with a two-game suspension and a $1,000 fine.
Victoria, under coach Jack Shupe, would win the WHL championship in 1980-81. Trailing Calgary 3-1, the Cougars bounced back and wrapped it up on May 1, beating the visiting Wranglers, 4-2, in Game 7.
Singing a song that would become popular in NHL circles in years to come, Calgary coach Doug Sauter explained: “(Goaltender Grant) Fuhr was the difference.”
Author greggdrinnanPosted on November 23, 2020 Tags Arnold DeFehr, Bill Burton, Bill Derlago, Bill Hunter, Bill Shinske, Billings Bighorns, Bob Cooper, Bob Strumm, Brandon Wheat Kings, Brian Shaw, Bryan Murray, Calgary Wranglers, Daryl Lubiniecki, Dave King, David Descent, Del Wilson, Doug Barkley, Doug Sauter, Dunc McCallum, Ed Chynoweth, Edmonton Oil Kings, Ephram Steinke, Ernie McLean, Flin Flon Bombers, Frank Huck, Garry Peters, Gerald Gunn, Gerry Brisson, Gord Mitchell, Grant Fuhr, Gregg Pilling, Harry Buekert, Ivan Prediger, Jack Brockest, Jack McLeod, Jack Shupe, Jim Morley, John Hamilton, John Rittinger, Kamloops Chiefs, Ken Hodge, Ken Wheler, Lethbridge Broncos, Lorne Davis, Lorne Frey, Marsdon Benwick, Medicine Hat Tigers, Mike Sauter, Nate Brodsky, New Westminster Bruins, Pat Ginnell, Pat Shimbashi, Portland Winter Hawks, Regina Pats, Richard Doerksen, Rozanda Skalbania, Tom Gauthier, Tracy Pratt, Vic Mah, Victoria Cougars, Winnipeg WarriorsLeave a comment on The WHL, Part 3: Bruins’ dynasty ends, franchises on the move and more mayhem . . .
Scattershooting on a Monday night while waiting for pitchers and catchers to report . . .
Here’s Pete Blackburn of CBS Sports, following news that New York Giants QB Eli Manning was about to announce his retirement: “So, I’ll ask you . . do you think he’s a Hall of Famer? You can let me know by tweeting me your thoughts, but just know that I don’t care what you think because I’m a Patriots fan and Eli Manning has been dead to me for years.”
Larry Walker, the pride of Maple Ridge, B.C., is going into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., later this year. But how close was he to becoming a goaltender? . . . Legend has it that he was in camp with the WHL’s Regina Pats and ended up being cut — twice! — by general manager Bob Strumm, who is one of the most popular figures in WHL history. . . . Anyway, Rob Vanstone of the Regina Leader-Post chatted with Strumm for a column that is right here.
With KC heading to the SB, spare a good thought for the late Wilbert "Kansas City" Harrison. BTW, 12th Street and Vine no longer exists in KC. But Wilbert is still stand on the corner.
— Scott Ostler (@scottostler) January 21, 2020
Here’s Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle on the Baseball Hall of Fame: “The truth is, (Barry) Bonds deserves to be in the Hall. Not for his hitting — the PED business makes it hard to fairly evaluate Bonds’ hitting — but because baseball is the rudest sport, and Bonds should be in the Hall representing that aspect of our national pastime.”
Ostler, again: “If I had a HOF vote, I’d write in Mike Fiers.”
The Bosa family doesn’t talk about it a whole lot, but it’s a story you are going to hear about as Super Bowl LIV (54) approaches. . . . It seems the great-grandfather of San Francisco 49ers DL Nick Bosa was a Chicago mobster who worked with Al Capone. Seriously! . . . Ron Kroichick of the San Francisco Chronicle has more right here.
Congrats to Kelly Kisio, who is to be honoured by the WHL’s Calgary Hitmen on March 1. Kisio will become the third person to be saluted as Forever A Hitmen, after players Ryan Getzlaf, who was honoured in 2015 and Andrew Ladd (2017). . . . In 18 seasons with Calgary, Kisio filled various roles, including stints as general manager, head coach and president of hockey operations. He twice was named the WHL’s executive of the year. . . . My favourite Kisio story doesn’t involve the Hitmen. In 1982-83, he was playing with HC Davos in Switzerland. He had eight goals and two assists in a 19-7 victory over HC Lugano. That was Kisio’s second-last game with Davos; three days later he was with the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings. . . . He finished that season with Davos with 87 points, 49 of them goals, in 38 games. . . . Now a scout with the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights, Kisio will be honoured prior to an afternoon game against the visiting Lethbridge Hurricanes.
The NFL’s 2020 draft is to be held in Las Vegas, which now has its own franchise — the Raiders. . . . As Jack Finarelli, aka The Sports Curmudgeon, points out, “The NFL has come a long way in just a few years. About five years ago, the league would not allow Tony Romo to be a part of a Fantasy Football Convention in Las Vegas because of ‘close ties to gambling’. This year, the league will be part of a show that will close The Strip for three days.”
Mike Leach, the new head coach of the Mississippi State football team, tweeted the other day: “Love being out in the great state of Mississippi recruiting some absolute studs! Any restaurant advice for me throughout the state?”
That was enough for The Sports Curmudgeon to come up with this response: “There was a time early in my career when I was in the Research, Development and Engineering business and I had reason to travel very extensively in the U.S. That tweet made me realize that Mike Leach’s wanderings as a head coach for the last couple of decades have taken him to places that would make him relish the idea of traveling around Mississippi. I have been to Lubbock TX and to Pullman WA and to Starkville MS. Let me just say that none of those venues can claim to be as close to the Garden of Eden as exists on Earth. If you spent a lot of time lobbying me, you might get me to concede that Pullman is a ‘bustling burb’ — but it won’t be easy. That will not be possible regarding either Lubbock or Starkville.
“Given where he has had to live for the last 20 years or so, I think I now understand why he is obsessed with pirates and aliens. There are not a lot of things to prevent his mind from wandering through the cosmos.
“As for restaurant advice, let me suggest to Coach Leach that he have some fun with his dining events. I have always wanted to go into a Denny’s for dinner and to ask the waiter to see the wine list.”
You may have been watching when RB Raheem Mostert of the San Francisco 49ers ran for 220 yards and four touchdowns against the Green Bay Packers’ defence in the NFC final. As Mike Hart of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel put it: “There hasn’t been anything carved up like that since Emeril Lagasse was introduced to his first turkey.”
You think you're having a bad day at work. How'd you like to be director of marketing for Corona beer? #CoronaVirus
— Janice Hough (@leftcoastbabe) January 24, 2020
Prior to a recent NBA game between the Washington Wizards and Cleveland Cavaliers, StubHub was listing tickets for as low as $4. The Left Coast Sports Babe wondered: “Are they asking or paying?”
Sportsbetting.ag, an offshore site, has listed a whole lot of prop bets for the Super Bowl. . . . Here’s one: “Which will be higher? (Tweets and retweets count). Donald Trump total tweets on 2/3/20 or the 49ers point total?” . . . Yes, Trump’s total will come from the day after the Super Bowl. . . . BTW, the over/under for Demi Lovato’s version of the U.S. anthem is two minutes one second. Take the over.
You know how an NHL team now might fire its head coach and then hire a head coach who recently had been fired as the head coach of a different team? Well, it seems that trend has reached the junior A ranks. . . . The AJHL’s Olds Grizzlys have hired Scott Atkinson as general manager and head coach, replacing Joe Murphy, who resigned on Jan. 15. The BCHL’s Salmon Arm Silverbacks had ousted Atkinson on Dec. 30.
The Kamloops Blazers beat the host Prince George Cougars, 3-0, on Friday night, the first time in franchise history that its goaltenders have put up three consecutive shutouts. The Blazers had beaten the visiting Tri-City Americans, 9-0, on Jan. 18 and the host Vancouver Giants, 4-0, on Jan. 19. . . . G Dylan Garand stopped 27 shots on Friday night. He blocked 21 against Vancouver, with G Rayce Ramsay turning aside 24 against the Americans. . . . The Cougars got a split on Saturday night, beating the Blazers, 3-1, and ending Kamloops’ shutout streak at a franchise-record 233 minutes 30 seconds. . . . The Blazers also put together back-to-back shutouts on Oct. 15 and 18, beating the visiting Swift Current Broncos, 4-0, and Vancouver, 6-0. Ramsay had 23 saves against the Broncos, with Garand stopping 23 in the victory over the Giants. . . .
Kamloops first posted back-to-back shutouts in 1991-92 when Corey Hirsch made 20 and 21 saves respectively in home-ice victories — 13-0 over the Tacoma Rockets and 9-0 over the Seattle Thunderbirds — on Feb. 7 and 9. . . . Kamloops scored 11 times in the second period against Tacoma. . . . Those two shutouts came in a seven-game stretch during which Hirsch put up four shutouts. . . .
Back-to-back shutouts didn’t occur again until 2006-07 when Dustin Butler did it on Jan. 10 and 13. He stopped 20 shots in a 3-0 victory over the Chiefs in Spokane, then turned aside 18 in beating the visiting Prince George Cougars, 6-0. . . .
In 2011-12, Cole Cheveldave did it on Jan. 1 and 6, blocking 22 shots in blanking the visiting Cougars, 5-0, then turning aside 32 shots in a 2-0 triumph in Prince George. . . . Cheveldave did it again in 2012-13, on March 3 and 5. He kicked out 25 shots in a 3-0 victory over the Kelowna Rockets, then stopped 14 in a 6-0 beating of Victoria. Both games were in Kamloops. . . .
It was Connor Ingram’s turn in 2016-17, when he made 28 stops in a 3-0 victory over the visiting Cougars on Feb. 19, then blocked 23 shots in a 7-0 triumph over the Edmonton Oil Kings in Kamloops on Feb. 21. . . .
One other shutout-related note involving Kamloops: In 2004-05, 19 of the Blazers’ 72 games ended in a shutout. Unfortunately for Kamloops, it was on the wrong end in 13 of those.
“Just wondering,” ponders the always deep-thinking Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times, “if Wheaties is the Breakfast of Champions, what is the Breakfast of Upsets, Coco Gauffs?”
Two things the NHL cannot do:
All-Star games and awards shows.
Maybe just give up?
— Jack Todd (@jacktodd46) January 26, 2020
JUST NOTES: If you watched Serena Williams lose a third-setter to China’s Qiang Wang in the third round of the Aussie Open the other night/morning, you have to wonder if we are watching the end of an era. Serena, who was the No. 8 seed, certainly seemed to be suffering from fatigue near the end of her loss to the No. 27 seed. . . . Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if Williams just once would give some credit to her opponent? . . . The NHL all-star stuff on Friday and Saturday evenings? Not in my home. The Aussie Open was on my TV. . . . One of the best things about the Aussie Open, and other tennis tournaments, is the lack of commentary while the ball is in play. . . . I did find time to watch The Irishman during the week. If you like gangster movies and know at least a bit about Jimmy Hoffa, you should like this one. If you aren’t aware, though, it’s three hours and 20 minutes long. . . . The book with the movie tie-in — The Irishman: Frank Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa — is rather good, too. . . . Sheesh! If only some people would learn the difference between cancelled and postponed!
Author greggdrinnanPosted on January 27, 2020 Tags Bob Strumm, Calgary Hitmen, Cole Cheveldave, Connor Ingram, Corey Hirsch, Dustin Butler, Dylan Garand, Jack Finarelli, Jack Todd, Janice Hough, Kamloops Blazers, Kelly Kisio, Larry Walker, Left Coast Sports Babe, Mike Hart, Pete Blackburn, Rayce Ramsay, Rob Vanstone, Ron Kroichick, Scott Ostler, The Sports CurmudgeonLeave a comment on Scattershooting on a Monday night while waiting for pitchers and catchers to report . . .
Scattershooting on a Tuesday night while waiting for Meghan and Harry to arrive for tea . . .
Me: 2 playoff tickets, please.
Patriots Ticket Office: The Patriots are out of the playoffs.
2 min later:
2 mins later:
Patriots Ticket Office: Stop Calling!
Me: Sorry, I like hearing it.
— SEA TEA (@Tierno158) January 11, 2020
Tyler Kepner of The New York Times, writing about the MLB sign-stealing scandal and the Houston Astros:
“It was clear the Astros were doing something unusually effective. While power hitters generally strike out frequently — a trade-off for swinging aggressively — the Astros’ lineup has an extraordinary knack for slugging without whiffing. From 1910 through 2016, only two teams — the 1948 Yankees and the 1995 Cleveland Indians — led the majors in slugging percentage while also recording the fewest strikeouts. The Astros did it in both 2017 and 2019.”
Just got off the phone with Bob Strumm, once the head coach of the Regina Pats, who twice cut Larry Walker the junior hockey goalie. "I’m in tears here. I’m so proud and happy for him." His decisions set Walker on the path to Cooperstown.
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) January 22, 2020
@HuskiesMHKY Taran Kozun with two shutouts on the weekend and a goal!!!! Huskies sweep the weekend. pic.twitter.com/LGqOsYoUqe
— U of S Men's Hockey (@HuskiesMHKY) January 19, 2020
G Taran Kozun, who played in the WHL with the Kamloops Blazers and Seattle Thunderbirds, now is with the U of Saskatchewan Huskies in Saskatoon. On Saturday night, he posted a shutout as the Huskies beat the host Calgary Dinos, 3-0. Oh, Kozun also scored a goal. . . . That also was Kozun’s second straight shutout, as the Huskies had beaten the Dinos, 4-0, on Friday night.
Kozun is the second goaltender in Canada West to be credited with scoring a goal, but the first to actually shoot the puck into the opposing team’s goal.
On Oct. 26, 2012, Kurtis Mucha of the Alberta Golden Bears
As Neate Sager reported for Yahoo! Sports at the time: “It was the standard opposing-goalie-off-on-a-delayed-penalty, errant-pass-goes-in-the-net scenario. Mucha . . . was credited with the goal since he was the last U of A man to touch the puck after stopping a long shot. The one twist is that the Lethbridge Pronghorns’ off-the-mark pass from out of the corner to the goaltender’s left banked off the boards in the neutral zone and rolled into the net.”
That night, Mucha, like so many snipers before him, was talking about the points that got away. He was quoted in a U of Alberta news release: “The funny thing is, I almost had a couple of assists that night, too. I moved the puck up ice a couple of times and was the third assist on a couple of goals, so I was pretty close to a two- or three-point night.”
For those wondering about Taran Kozun's goal last night in @CanadaWest play for @HuskieAthletics, he's the 2nd CW goalie ever to score joining @KurtisMuchaGC.
I think even Kurtis would agree, Kozun's was better 😏
More on Mucha's goal here: https://t.co/MWVEiSCLnR
— Evan Daum (@evandaum) January 19, 2020
There is good news for followers of the Winnipeg Ice. F Matt Savoie, who turned 16 on New Year’s Day, is captaining Team Canada at the Winter Youth Olympic Games, Lausanne, Switzerland. . . . Savoie hasn’t played for the Ice since Dec. 28 when he was KO’d on a fierce open-ice hit during a 3-2 victory over the visiting Brandon Wheat Kings. . . . The first selection in the WHL’s 2019 bantam draft, Savoie has five assists in 12 games with the Ice. When he isn’t with the Ice, he is with the Rink Hockey Academy Prep team in Winnipeg. He’s got 16 goals and 26 assists in 17 games with RHA. . . . Savoie had a shorthanded goal and an assist on Sunday as Canada beat Denmark, 6-0, outshooting the Danes, 44-8, in the process. That left Canada at 1-1 as it earlier had dropped a 6-2 decision to Russia. . . . Canada then lost 2-1 to the U.S. in a semifinal game played on Tuesday.
“They did what?” pic.twitter.com/sEFP5FLVg2
— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) January 17, 2020
Baseball facing a new day. No more being part of the herd. You either cheat and cover and lie, or you make it clear to manager and teammates you don't, and will blow whistle. Uncivil War.
“Hey,” writes Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times, “if Clint Eastwood can talk to an empty chair, why not this? Philadelphia’s WTXF-TV ‘interviewed’ T.C., the Astros’ dugout trash can, as part of its coverage of MLB’s sign-stealing scandal. ‘I was beat over and over and over,’ T.C. revealed to the Good Morning Philadelphia show. ‘It took me two years to get all the dents out. It’s the worst job in sports.’ ”
Perry spent some time on the NFL crime beat recently . . .
“New Orleans police issued an arrest warrant for Odell Beckham Jr. after the Browns receiver slapped the butt of a Superdome security guard following LSU’s championship-game win. Though he hopes to get the simple-battery charge reduced to illegal use of hands.
New England receiver Julian Edelman jumped on the hood of a car in Beverly Hills, Calif., apparently damaging it and earning himself a police citation for vandalism. Or as Patriots apologists tried to spin it, he got flagged for piling on.”
I would suggest that Perry should be flagged for being offside.
Thank you for all the kind words of support.
Read our full statement here: https://t.co/HnqFqADjtp pic.twitter.com/yOM28wc7EZ
— Lee Child (@LeeChildReacher) January 18, 2020
The Kamloops Blazers lit up the visiting Tri-City Americans for a dozen goals in a 12-3 victory on Friday night. . . . If you were wondering — and I know you were — that was the 27th time in franchise history that Kamloops scored at least 12 times in one game. The franchise’s single-game record is 16 — the Jr. Oilers beat the visiting Kelowna Wings, 16-1, on March 11, 1983; the Blazers whipped the visiting Victoria Cougars, 16-4, on Jan. 19, 1990. . . . The last time the Blazers had struck for 12 goals in one game was on March 13, 1994, in a 12-4 victory over the host Americans. . . . Interesting note: The Blazers have scored in double figures twice this season — they beat the visiting Seattle Thunderbirds, 10-1, on Nov. 20. Prior to Nov. 20, Kamloops last scored at least 10 goals in a game on Sept. 20, 2002, in a 10-2 victory over visiting Seattle. . . . Interesting note No. 2: Kamloops once scored 10 goals in a game and lost. On March 6, 1984, the host Seattle Breakers scored an 11-10 victory. . . .
On Saturday night, the Blazers romped to a 9-0 home-ice victory over the Americans behind G Rayce Ramsay, who made 24 saves. . . . On Sunday, the Blazers went into Langley and beat the Vancouver Giants, 4-0, with G Dylan Garand stopping 21 shots. . . . The Blazers have put up six shutouts this season, with Garand and Ramsay each earning three. . . . The last time Kamloops blanked the opposition six times in one season? That would be 2012-13 when the total was seven (Cole Cheveldave, 6; Taran Kozun 1). . . . The franchise record is nine from 2003-04 (Devan Dubnyk, 6; Dustin Slade, 2; Geoff McIntosh, 1). . . .
BTW, Garand now has four shutouts in his WHL career, putting him into a tie with Kenric Exner for 10th on Kamloops’ career list. Ramsay has three and is tied for 12th with Dylan Ferguson, Jeff Bosch and Daryl Reaugh. . . . Dubnyk is the franchise’s career record holder, with 15, one more than Corey Hirsch. . . . Prior to Saturday, the Blazers last won a game by a 9-0 count on Jan. 11, 1995 when they beat the host Thunderbirds behind 21 saves by G Rod Branch. . . . Kamloops now has eight 9-0 victories in its regular-season history.
NOOOOOOOOO!!! NOT BIG AL!! pic.twitter.com/H8z4r38LIj
— Tylercito (@tylerdrewscott) January 17, 2020
Think about this. A player has 8 goals in 3 games and has passed one of the greatest players to ever play on the all-time goal list. Is this player gonna continue the hot streak in the next game? No, the league suspended him for skipping the all-star game.
— sporpsonov (@OVECHKlN) January 18, 2020
Author greggdrinnanPosted on January 21, 2020 Tags Bob Strumm, Cole Cheveldave, Daryl Reaugh, Devan Dubnyk, Dustin Slade, Dwight Perry, Dylan Ferguson, Dylan Garand, Evan Daum, Geoff McIntosh, Jeff Bosch, Kamloops Blazers, Kenric Exner, Kurtis Mucha, Lee Child, Matt Savoie, Neate Sager, Rayce Ramsay, Scott Ostler, Taran Kozun, Tyler Kepner, Winnipeg IceLeave a comment on Scattershooting on a Tuesday night while waiting for Meghan and Harry to arrive for tea . . .
Injury-riddled Giants add Sexsmith . . . Strumm, Thunder into Hall of Fame . . . Rockets, Royals pay for early scrap
1988-89 Victoria Cougars – “Catch A Winner” @Jim_Mullin #WHL pic.twitter.com/YR4kQGmMka
— Victoria Cougars (@victoriacougars) February 14, 2018
D Martin Gernát (Edmonton, 2011-13) had his loan assignment by Košice (Slovakia, Extraliga) to Lausanne (Switzerland, NL A) extended until the end of the season. He has two goals and an assist in eight games with Lausanne. . . . The initial loan assignment was until Dec. 17 and was subsequently extended until Feb. 5. Gernát started this season with Prešov (Slovakia, 1. Liga), recording two assists in three games. He signed with Košice on Nov. 21. He was pointless in two games when he was loaned to Lausanne on Dec. 7.
DAN’S DIARY . . .
Dan Courneyea, who heads up the Kamloops Blazers’ off-ice crew of officials is at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang where he’ll be working the hockey competitions.
On Tuesday, with the men’s hockey less than 24 hours from starting, he reported:
“The overall atmosphere here in South Korea has been amazing. There have been many locals volunteer for the Games, even if they don’t fully understand the sport. I think it’s that they just want to be involved.
“It’s still windy but the cold temps have dropped a bit.
“The locals say this is their winter season (Feb-Oct) but there is no snow in the lower elevations (kind of reminds us of Vancouver), yet the hills are battling cold and extremely windy conditions.
“Overall, the Games are good, the events are selling out and the people are very, very friendly.”
A LITTLE OF THIS . . .
Tomorrow night in Portland our driver Derek Holloway will work his 600th road game with the Giants. He’s been our driver since Day 1 and continues to keep us safe, and laughing.
Thank you D and to all junior hockey drivers everywhere for all you do! pic.twitter.com/96LIihFHXB
— Vancouver Giants (@WHLGiants) February 14, 2018
With the Vancouver Giants’ defensive corps suddenly riddled by injury, D Joel Sexsmith, 15, is expected to make his WHL debut tonight (Wednesday) against the host Portland Winterhawks. . . . Steve Ewen of Postmedia tweeted updates on the Giants’ situation on Tuesday morning. . . . The Giants will be without D Darian Skeoch, D Dylan Plouffe, D Matt Barberis and perhaps D Alex Kannok Leipert. . . . The Swift Current Broncos selected Sexsmith in the first round of the WHL’s 2017 bantam draft. The Broncos weren’t able to sign him and dealt him to the Giants on Jan. 7, getting back a first-round pick in the 2019 draft. . . . From Edmonton, he has two goals and 12 assists in 13 games with the Edge School Elite 15s. He also had a goal and three assists with the Northern Alberta X-Treme prep team. . . . D Parker Hendren, another AP, likely will get into his eighth game. Hendren, 16, has been playing with the midget AAA Regina Pat Canadians. He was a seventh-round pick by the Giants in the 2016 bantam draft. . . . Meanwhile, Vancouver F Milos Roman (ankle) is scheduled to skate on Friday for the first time since he last played on Jan. 9. In a perfect scenario, he then would be about two weeks from playing again.
The Las Vegas Thunder, which included former WHL executive and coach Bob Strumm, is to be inducted into the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony is scheduled for May 11 at the Orleans Arena. . . . The Thunder, owned by the father-and-son duo of Hank and Ken Stickney, was an International Hockey League franchise that played out of the Thomas & Mack Center for six seasons (1993-99). The franchise folded on April 18, 1999. . . . “I just want to firstly thank the directors and the committee for recognizing our efforts and the fact that we may have paved the way a little bit for professional hockey, what’s happening here today, which is pretty special for us and pretty special for that other pro team that’s going pretty good right now,” Strumm said during a Tuesday news conference. “We hope that we kicked the can down the road a little bit for those guys.” . . . Strumm worked in the WHL office, and also with the Billings Bighorns, Regina Pats and Spokane Chiefs, filling roles from owner to GM to head coach.
F Mitchell Callahan of the AHL’s Bakersfield Condors has been suspended for 20 games. According to a news release from the AHL, Callahan was suspended for “violating the terms of the AHL/PHPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program.” . . . Callahan will be eligible to return on April 11. . . . Callahan signed a two-year deal with the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers on July 1. He had been in the Detroit Red Wings’ organization for six seasons. . . . The 26-year-old Callahan is from Whittier, Calif. He played three seasons (2008-11) with the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets.
BEST OF FRIENDS: Brad Hornung enjoyed visits from buddy Ken McIntyre at the Wascana Rehabilitation Centre in Regina. McIntyre, 48, died last week in Minot, N.D.
CLARIFICATION: In this space on Saturday, I wrote that Ken McIntyre, a former WHL player, had died on Feb. 7 after being “found unresponsive in a vehicle at an intersection in Minot, N.D.” . . . I have been informed that this isn’t accurate. He wasn’t in a vehicle when he was found unresponsive at a city intersection, apparently having collapsed just as he was about to walk across the street. A passer-by spotted him, initiated CPR and called 9-1-1. However, McIntyre, 48, was pronounced dead at hospital.
The Kootenay Ice has added F Connor McClennon, 15, to its roster. McClennon, from Wainwright, Alta., was the second-overall selection in the WHL’s 2017 bantam draft. . . . He has 26 goals and 41 assists in 31 games with the CSSHL’s Northern Alberta X-Treme prep team. . . . The Ice is scheduled to entertain the Saskatoon Blades tonight (Wednesday).
The Victoria Royals and Kelowna Rockets have been fined $500 apiece after two players became involved in a fight just 10 seconds into Monday’s Family Day game in the Little Apple. F Braydon Buziak of the Royals and F Kyle Pow of the Rockets drew one-game suspensions for the scrap. . . . The Rockets won the game, 5-4, but lost F Kole Lind after he took a hard hit from Victoria D Ralph Jarratt while cutting across the slot in the Royals’ zone. Bruce Hamilton, the Rockets’ general manager, told Steve Ewen of Postmedia on Monday evening that Lind will be “out for a week likely.” . . . The Rockets also lost G James Porter Jr., when he left the game after being involved in a goal-mouth collision. . . . Lind and Porter both are listed as day-to-day with undisclosed injuries. . . . “Can you imagine if the Rockets and Royals met in a playoff series?” Regan Bartel, the radio voice of the Rockets, wrote on this blog. “It would be a blood bath. These two organizations detest one another.”
THE ROSTER REPORT: The Brandon Wheat Kings are listing F Stelio Mattheos as being out “TBD” with an upper-body injury. . . . The Regina Pats show G Ryan Kubic (UB) as being out indefinitely, meaning they will continue to go with Max Paddock as their starter. G Jacob Wasserman, who was added to the roster from the SJHL’s Humboldt Broncos, remains with the Pats. . . . G Carl Stankowski, who has yet to play for Seattle this season, remains out week-to-week. It’s looking more and more as though he won’t appear in a game this season. . . . The Victoria Royals list F Jeff de Wit and F D-Jay Jerome (both UB) as week-to-week, while D Chaz Reddekopp (UB) will be out another three weeks.
The Kimberley Dynamiters of the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League have yet to seen a penny from Mike Gould, who pledged $7.5 million to the junior B team earlier this season. . . . However, Gould has pleaded guilty to fraud charges after he allegedly paid a tab of almost $8,000 at a Cranbrook restaurant with two cheques that were in another person’s name. . . . Gould is to be sentenced in February. CBC News reports that Gould also faces a second charge of using a forged document. . . . The CBC report is right here.
You are free to donate to the cause if you wish. All you have to do is click on the DONATE button over there on the right.
If you have a tip or just want to chat, email me at greggdrinnan@gmail.com. You are able to follow me on Twitter at @gdrinnan.
One of the more humbling experiences I’ve had and an amazing way to close the book on my playing career. A massive thank you to everyone @BraeheadClan and the supporters for treating us so well this weekend and for the 3 years before. Was a night I will never forget #purplearmy pic.twitter.com/VkHsrDuStR
— Matt Keith (@MKeith19) February 12, 2018
IF THE PLAYOFFS OPENED TODAY …
Saskatoon at Moose Jaw
Regina at Medicine Hat
Brandon at Swift Current
Kootenay at Lethbridge
Seattle at Everett
Tri-City at Kelowna
Spokane at Portland
Vancouver at Victoria
At Lethbridge, D Juuso Valimaki scored a goal and drew two assists to lead the Tri-City Americans to a 6-3 victory over the Hurricanes. . . . Lethbridge (26-24-6) is second in the Central Division, five points behind Medicine Hat. . . . Tri-City (28-19-8) had lost its previous four games (0-3-1). The Americans hold down the Western Conference’s first wild-card spot, two points ahead of Seattle. Tri-City is fourth in the U.S. Division, one point behind Spokane. . . . The teams alternated goals until the Americans took control with the last three scores. . . . F Riley Sawchuk gave the visitors a 1-0 lead at 13:54 of the first period, only to have Lethbridge F Brad Morrison (21) tied it, on a PP, at 16:17. . . . The Americans went back out front at 3:41 of the second period when F Parker AuCoin struck, on a PP. . . . F Taylor Ross (15) got the Hurricanes even at 6:13. . . . Valimaki (7) gave Tri-City a 3-2 lead, on another PP, at 15:23. . . . F Logan Barlage (5) got the home boys back on even ground at 1:18 of the third period. . . . AuCoin (14) snapped the tie just 21 seconds later. . . . F Michael Rasmussen (21), who also had an assist, added insurance at 3:43 and Sawchuk (12) got the empty-netter at 19:10. . . . The Hurricanes got two assists from F Dylan Cozens. . . . Tri-City was 2-4 on the PP; Lethbridge was 1-2. . . . G Patrick Dea earned the victory with 27 saves. . . . The Hurricanes got 29 saves from G Reece Klassen. . . . The Americans are on a quick three-game trip into the Central Division. They will play the Calgary Hitmen tonight and the Kootenay Ice on Friday. . . . Prior to the game, the WHL presented Bob Bartlett, the Hurricanes’ director of player development, with a Distinguished Service Award. Bartlett has been around the WHL for more than 40 years, and has worked with the Lethbridge Broncos and Moose Jaw Warriors, as well as the Hurricanes. He is a member of the Lethbridge Sports Hall of Fame, the Alberta Hockey Hall of Game and the Lethbridge Broncos/Hurricanes Hall of Fame. . . . Announced attendance: 3,603.
Well, this hasn't happened to @BladesHockey in quite a while! Forced to spend the night in Pincher Creek, Alberta. Horribly gusty west winds causing blowing snow and icy road conditions. Highway 3 closed at Pincher Creek. Hopefully make it to Cranbrook, BC tomorrow for the game.
— Les Lazaruk (@Bladesvoice) February 14, 2018
Moose Jaw at Regina, 7 p.m.
Brandon at Swift Current, 7 p.m.
Tri-City at Calgary, 7 p.m.
Saskatoon vs. Kootenay, at Cranbrook, B.C., 7 p.m.
Vancouver at Portland, 7 p.m.
Kamloops at Spokane, 7:05 p.m.
Red Deer at Kelowna, 7:05 p.m.
Edmonton at Victoria, 7:05 p.m.
I like curling, it’s less wear and tear on the body. I wrestled, boxed, and studied martial arts. I have nothing else to prove. Therefore I choose curling. #curlingiscoolfool
— Mr. T (@MrT) February 14, 2018
Author greggdrinnanPosted on February 13, 2018 Tags Bob Strumm, Connor McClennon, Juuso Valimaki, Kootenay Ice, Las Vegas Thunder, Steve Ewen, Tri-City Americans, Vancouver GiantsLeave a comment on Injury-riddled Giants add Sexsmith . . . Strumm, Thunder into Hall of Fame . . . Rockets, Royals pay for early scrap
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538423
|
__label__wiki
| 0.912602
| 0.912602
|
Tag: Grant Armstrong
Raiders put Giants behind 8-ball. . . . P.A. scores seven in first period. . . . Winds of change blowing in Brandon
F Yegor Babenko (Lethbridge, 2015-17) has been traded by Severstal Cherepovets to Traktor Chelyabinsk (both Russia, KHL) for monetary compensation. This season, with Rubin Tyumen (Russia, Vysshaya Liga), he had seven goals and 11 assists in 25 games. He also was pointless in three games with Dynamo Moscow (Russia, KHL), and had two goals three assists in 15 games with Severstal Cherepovets. . . .
F Liam Stewart (Spokane, 2011-15) has signed a one-season contract with the Southern Stampede Queenstown (New Zealand, NZIHL). Last season, with the Guildford Flames (England, UK Elite), he had 12 goals and 11 assists in 35 games. He didn’t play this season after suffering a concussion. . . . Stewart holds dual UK/New Zealand citizenship and is considered a local player in New Zealand. However, in the UK, he is considered an import because he played his minor hockey in the U.S.
With Grant Armstrong's departure from the @bdnwheatkings after 3 seasons as GM, expect ex-Wheatie and current player agent Jason Taylor to get serious consideration for the post. Another ex-player, director of scouting Darren Ritchie, would also be an excellent candidate.
— Mike Sawatzky (@sawa14) May 7, 2019
The Brandon Wheat Kings revealed on Tuesday that they won’t be renewing the contract of Grant Armstrong, who had been their general manager through three seasons. . . . Kelly McCrimmon, the Wheat Kings’ owner, said in a news release that Armstrong “was responsible for many of the moves that will serve us well in the future. At the same time, I also felt a change was necessary as we look to return to a higher level as an organization.” . . . McCrimmon is the assistant GM with the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights. He will be taking over as the Golden Knights’ GM on Sept 1. . . . Armstrong signed as Brandon’s general manager to take over from McCrimmon when he signed with Vegas. . . . The Wheat Kings were 102-87-23 with Armstrong as the general manager. This season, they finished 31-29-8, missing the playoffs for the first time since 2013. . . . Before joining Brandon, Armstrong was with the Victoria Royals for four seasons as director of player personnel and assistant GM. Prior to that, he worked with the Portland Winterhawks for five seasons, the last four as head scout. . . . The Wheat Kings’ news release is right here. . . .
With a new general manager to be hired at some point, you are free to wonder about the future of head coach David Anning and assistant coach Don MacGillivray. After three seasons, their contracts are up, too. . . . The news release on Armstrong’s departure doesn’t mention the coaching staff.
The Tri-City Americans announced Tuesday that they have renewed the contracts of goaltending coaches Eli Wilson and Liam McOnie “through the 2021 season.” . . . Wilson and McOnie have worked with the Americans since the 2017-18 season. They also run goaltending camps through Eli Wilson Goaltending.
There has never been a subscription fee for this blog, but if you enjoy stopping by here, why not consider donating to the cause? Thank you very much.
The BCHL’s Vernon Vipers have hired Jason McKee as general manager and head coach, replacing Mark Ferner, who got the team into the BCHL final this season, his fifth season in his second stint with the organization. . . . Ferner, 53, was the Vipers’ head coach for four seasons (2007-11), getting them into three national finals and winning two of them, before spending time on the coaching staffs of the Everett Silvertips and Kamloops Blazers. This time, he had been the Vipers’ director of hockey operations and head coach since early in the 2014-15 season. . . . This season, the Vipers went 26-21-11 to finish fourth in the seven-team Interior Division. They reach the championship final where they were swept by the Prince George Spruce Kings. . . . McKee, 40, was the head coach of the Vancouver Giants for two seasons (2016-18). Prior to that, he was with the AJHL’s Spruce Grove Saints for 10 seasons, the last six as general manager and head coach. . . . Brothers John and Tom Glen purchased the Vipers in September from Libby Wray, whose husband, Dr. Duncan Wray, had owned the franchise from 1992 through his death on Jan. 11, 2018. . . . John Glen was quite involved with the Saints, although not at the ownership level. He also is a former scout with the Giants.
Alberta is in on a bunch of other big WHL names including Nolan Volcan, Griffen Outhouse, Noah Philp, and the latest is defenceman Dawson Davidson who I've been told will attend the Univ. of Alberta depending on what kind of offers he gets from pro teams.
— Victor Findlay (@Finder_24) May 7, 2019
If you’re a junior hockey fan you should be following Victor Findlay (@Finder_24) on Twitter. He always has up-to-date information on players moving from the WHL to the Canadian university scene, including F Kody McDonald, who played out his eligibility with the Victoria Royals this season and will be playing for the Carleton Ravens of Ottawa next season. Findlay also reports that Josh Curtis, who was a 20-year-old with the Prince George Cougars, will be joining the Queen’s U Gaels, who play out of Kingston, Ont. Findlay also has F Ryan Jevne (Medicine Hat Tigers) going to the U of Alberta Golden Bears in Edmonton, F Nolan Yaremko (Tri-City Americans) off to the Calgary-based Mount Royal Cougars, and F Ryan Vandervlis (Lethbridge Hurricanes), F Mike MacLean (Prince George) and F Jeff de Wit (Red Deer Rebels) all joining the Montreal-based Concordia Stingers.
The Halifax Mooseheads broke a 1-1 tie with two second-period goals and then added two more in the third, en route to a 5-1 victory over the visiting Rouyn-Noranda Huskies in the QMJHL’s championship final on Tuesday night. . . . The series now is tied, 2-2, with Game 5 in Rouyn-Noranda on Thursday night, and Game 6 back in Halifax on Saturday afternoon. A seventh game would be played in Rouyn-Noranda on Monday. . . . Both teams already know they will play in the Memorial Cup because Halifax is the host team. . . .
In the OHL, the Ottawa 67’s will meet the Storm in Guelph in Game 4 tonight (Wednesday). The 67’s hold a 2-1 lead after dropping a 7-2 decision to the host Storm on Monday night. That was the first loss of these playoffs for the 67’s, who now are 14-1.
Rich Pilon, who was named the head coach of the SJHL’s Weyburn Red Wings on April 29, now is the team’s general manager, as well. The Red Wings announced Tuesday that Pilon will add the GM’s duties, taking over from Tanner McCall, who had been the GM and head scout. . . . McCall, who also scouts for the Moose Jaw Warriors, had been with the Red Wings for five seasons, the last three as general manager and head scout.
Hearing that the @NHLBlackhawks and @LAKings will have multiple scouts at the @LangleyEvents tonight for @WHLGiants and @PARaidersHockey. Chicago picks third, L.A. chooses fifth. Giants D Bowen Byram is projected to be a top five selection.
— Steve Ewen (@SteveEwen) May 8, 2019
NOTES: Well, who saw that one coming? The Prince Albert Raiders went into Langley, B.C., and humbled the Vancouver Giants, handing them an 8-2 loss in Game 3 of the WHL final for the Ed Chynoweth Cup. . . . The Raiders lead the series, 2-1, with Game 4 in Langley tonight. Game 5 is set for Friday night in Langley. . . . Last night’s decision means that if the Giants are to win the series, they will have to do it in Prince Albert. Games 6 and 7, if one or both are needed, would be played there on Sunday and Monday. . . .
In Game 3, the Raiders took control with seven goals in the first period. . . . The WHL record for most goals in one period of a playoff game is nine and belongs to the Saskatoon Blades (March 30, 1986, second period of a 12-5 victory over the visiting Moose Jaw Warriors). . . .
Oh the games people play now/Every night and every day now. . . . According to the lineup sheet circulated prior to the game, Raiders D Max Martin would play, with D Loeden Schaufler and F Jakob Brook listed with question marks beside their names. That would seem to have indicated that one of those two would play and the other would sit. . . . Martin didn’t finish Game 2 after suffering an apparent shoulder injury when he went awkwardly into the boards in the second period. Last night, he took the pregame warmup and then was scratched. Schaufler and Brook both were dressed and on the Prince Albert bench. . . .
F Dante Hannoun of the Raiders had a goal and two assists in Game 3. He leads the WHL playoffs with 12 goals. His 23 points have him tied with Vancouver D Bowen Byram for the scoring lead. Byram had one assist in Game 3. . . .
According to tweets from Steve Ewen, there were a number of NHL luminaries in the crowd, among them Scotty Bowman (Chicago Blackhawks), and Rob Blake and Todd McLellan (Los Angeles Kings).
TUESDAY HIGHLIGHTS:
Line-ups for @WHLGiants and @PARaidersHockey pic.twitter.com/qMcQleboGE
The Prince Albert Raiders scored 41 seconds into the first period and made it 2-0 at 2:27 as they went on to an 8-2 victory over the Vancouver Giants in Langley, B.C. . . . The Raiders lead the WHL final for the Ed Chynoweth Cup, 2-1, with Game 4 in Langley tonight. . . . Prince Albert had won Game 2, 4-0, so has outscored Vancouver, 12-2, over the last two games. . . . The visitors led 4-0 at 6:33 of the first period, 6-0 at 16:30 and 7-0 going into the second period. . . . The Giants took the game’s first four minor penalties, all of them in the opening 6:33. The Raiders responded with three PP goals. . . . F Parker Kelly (5,6) and F Brett Leason (8,9) each scored twice and added an assist for the victors, with F Dante Hannoun (12) scoring once and adding two assists. . . . F Ozzy Wiesblatt (5), F Cole Fonstad (2) and F Noah Gregor (10) added a goal each. . . . D Sergei Sapego, F Aliaksei Protas and F Sean Montgomery added two assists each for the Raiders. . . . F Brayden Watts (6) and F Yannik Valenti (3) scored PP goals for the Giants after they had fallen behind 8-0. . . . Prince Albert was 4-8 on the PP; Vancouver was 2-8. . . . G Ian Scott blocked 27 shots for the Raiders. . . . Vancouver starter David Tendeck gave up three goals on 13 shots. He allowed two goals on four shots in 2:27, then was relieved by Trent Miner for the remainder of the first period. Miner allowed five goals on 14 shots. Tendeck returned for the final two periods and stopped eight of nine shots. . . . The referees were Mike Campbell and Chris Crich, with Ron Dietterle and Michael Roberts the linesmen.
Apr. 3/86: Trailing 7-0, the @blazerhockey rallied to win 9-8 (Greg Hawgood & Rob Brown had hat tricks)! #WHL50 #TBT pic.twitter.com/eKoi5UhI9t
— The WHL (@TheWHL) March 31, 2016
If Brad Marchand's conduct helps change the format for between-period and end-of-game interviews, I'm now a fan. #gottaworkharder #putpucksonthenet
— Darrell Davis (@DarrellDavisSK) May 7, 2019
Author greggdrinnanPosted on May 7, 2019 Tags Brandon Wheat Kings, Brett Leason, Dante Hannoun, Darrell Davis, Eli Wilson, Grant Armstrong, Halifax Mooseheads, Jason McKee, Jeff de Wit, Josh Curtis, Kody McDonald, Liam McOnie, Liam Stewart, Mark Ferner, Mike MacLean, Nolan Yaremko, Parker Kelly, Prince Albert Raiders, Rich Pilon, Ryan Jevne, Ryan Vandervlis, Steve Ewen, Tanner McCall, Tri-City Americans, Vernon Vipers, Victor Findlay, Weyburn Red Wings, Yegor BabenkoLeave a comment on Raiders put Giants behind 8-ball. . . . P.A. scores seven in first period. . . . Winds of change blowing in Brandon
The Brandon-Everett trade that wasn’t . . . Bader leaves Raiders, cites personal reasons . . . Blichfeld hits 200 in victory
F Tomáš Netík (Medicine Hat, 2000-01) has signed a contract for the rest of this season with Innsbruck (Austria, Erste Bank Liga) after obtaining his release from Košice (Slovakia, Extraliga). He had six goals and 18 assists in 30 games. . . .
G Juraj Hollý (Calgary 2010-11) has been traded by Liptovský Mikuláš to Dukla Trenčín (both Slovakia, Extraliga) for Marek Šimko. In 17 games, Hollý was 3-12-0, 3.47, .901 with one shutout.
The Brandon Wheat Kings traded F Stelio Mattheos, their leading scorer, to the Everett Silvertips on Jan. 10, which was the WHL’s trade deadline.
Except that they didn’t.
Josh Horton of the Everett Herald reported Wednesday that “the Silvertips agreed to a deal to acquire top-flight Brandon forward Stelio Mattheos . . . but the trade fell apart at the last minute.”
According to Horton, “A Silvertips player and draft picks were headed to Brandon in return for the 19-year-old Mattheos, sources said.”
Horton, citing sources, added that “both of the players involved had been informed of the trade and were getting ready to leave for their new teams when the deal collapsed.”
No one is saying how many WHL bantam draft picks were involved in the swap. However, Taking Note has been told that the teams had been working on the deal for a couple of months and that the Everett player who was told he was on his way to Brandon was F Reece Vitelli, whom the Silvertips selected in the fourth round of the 2016 bantam draft.
Garry Davidson, the Silvertips’ general manager, told Horton that a deal was in the works but that “it didn’t work out.” However, that is all Davidson, who is said to have been most upset, would say.
Taking Note also has been told that the deal didn’t really collapse, that it was more a case of it not having been filed in its entirety with the WHL office in time to beat the deadline of 3 p.m. MT.
Neither the WHL office nor Brandon GM Grant Armstrong would comment to Horton.
Interestingly, Davidson and Armstrong worked together with the Portland Winterhawks. Davidson, who is in his seventh season as Everett’s GM, was Portland’s director of player personnel for four seasons (2008-12); Armstrong, now in his third season as Brandon’s GM, was Portland’s head scout during that time.
This season, Vitelli, a 17-year-old sophomore from Winnipeg, has five goals and 11 assists in 45 games. He has one goal in five games since the trade deadline.
Last season, Vitelli finished with two goals and eight assists in 70 games, then added four goals and three assists in 22 playoff games.
Mattheos also is from Winnipeg. The Wheat Kings selected him with the first overall pick in the 2014 bantam draft. His NHL rights belong to the Carolina Hurricanes, who picked him in the third round of that league’s 2017 draft. Mattheos has yet to sign an NHL contract.
Mattheos is Brandon’s captain and leads the Wheat Kings in goals (30), assists (31) and points (61), all in 40 games.
Last season, Mattheos put up 43 goals and 47 assists in 90 games. In 228 career regular-season games, he has 243 points, including 113 goals.
The Silvertips and Wheat Kings aren’t scheduled to meet again this season. They played in Brandon on Oct. 19, with the home team winning, 5-2, behind three goals from Mattheos. Vitelli, playing in his home province, had one assist.
KOOTENAY KOUNTDOWN
On Dec. 19, Ron Robison, the WHL commissioner, said that there would be an announcement “very soon” and that it would deal with “what the future of that franchise is.”
That franchise is the Kootenay Ice, an organization that is believed to be headed to Winnipeg once this season is over.
But we now are into the 36th day since Robison appeared on TSN Radio 1260 in Edmonton with host Dean Millard.
Since then . . . crickets from the Ice and the WHL office.
F Bryce Bader has left the Prince Albert Raiders.
According to a news release from the Raiders, Bader, 17, flew to Calgary on Sunday “to write a final exam,” then “elected not to re-join the team for personal reasons.”
The Raiders added: “There will be no further comment from the hockey club.”
Bader’s departure leaves the Raiders’ roster at 21 players, including seven defencemen and 12 forwards.
Bader, from Sherwood Park, Alta., was selected by the Calgary Hitmen in the second round of the WHL’s 2016 bantam draft.
The Raiders acquired Bader from the Hitmen on Jan. 10 in exchange for F Quinn Olson, a 17-year-old Calgarian who has committed to the U of Minnesota-Duluth for 2020-21. In the deal, the teams also swapped conditional sixth-round selections in an undisclosed bantam draft.
This season, Bader had four goals in 10 games with the Hitmen this season, but had yet to play for the Raiders.
The Raiders, the CHL’s top-ranked team, is scheduled to conclude a B.C. Division swing tonight against the Vancouver Giants. The game will be televised on Sportsnet.
WEDNESDAY HIGHLIGHTS:
🚨MILESTONE🚨
After tonight's three-point game, @joachimblich hit 200-career points!
Congrats, Joachim! 👏 pic.twitter.com/GkWzHj0C0Y
— Portland Winterhawks (@pdxwinterhawks) January 24, 2019
F Joachim Blichfeld, the WHL’s leading scorer, struck for two third-period goals to help the host Portland Winterhawks to a 4-2 victory over the Tri-City Americans. . . . Portland (28-13-5) is second in the U.S. Division, seven points behind the Everett Silvertips. . . . Tri-City (24-17-3) had points in each of its previous four games (3-0-1). It remains fourth in the U.S. Division, two points behind the Spokane Chiefs. At the same time, the Americans are in control of the Western Conference’s first wild-card spot, with a 12-point lead on the Seattle Thunderbirds. . . . With two games left in the season series, Tri-City is 5-1-0; Portland is 1-1-4. That means that while Tri-City has won five of six games, Portland still has grabbed six points. . . . The Americans grabbed a 2-0 lead on first-period goals 40 seconds apart by F Krystof Hrabik (10) and F Kyle Olson (14). . . . Portland pulled even late in the period as F Jaydon Dureau (10) scored at 18:58 and F Josh Paterson (17) found the range at 19:35. . . . The teams played a scoreless second period, before Blichfeld, who now has 42 goals, hit at 9:53 and 16:18, with F Cody Glass assisting on both scores. . . . Blichfeld’s second goal gave him 200 career regular-season points. He has 94 goals and 106 assists in 165 games. . . . Blichfeld, who also had an assist, leads the WHL with 86 points, 10 more than F Tristin Langan of the Moose Jaw Warriors and F Trey Fix-Wolansky of the Edmonton Oil Kings. . . . Blichfeld’s 42 goals are five more than Langan. . . . Andy Kemper, the Winterhawks’ historian, points out that Blichfeld is the second import in franchise history to get to 200 points. F Oliver Bjorkstrand, who put up 290 points in 193 regular-season games. . . . G Joel Hofer blocked 26 shots for Portland, 16 fewer than Tri-City’s Beck Warm. . . . Portland won 41 of the 63 faceoffs, and was 0-5 on the PP. Tri-City was 0-1. . . . The Americans were without F Blake Stevenson (undisclosed injury) and F Sasha Mutala, who was in Red Deer for the Top Prospects Game. . . . D John Ludvig was among Portland’s scratches.
Back on the boat braving the elements today. pic.twitter.com/V56dzDqImP
— Trevor Redden (@Trevor_Redden) January 23, 2019
Author greggdrinnanPosted on January 23, 2019 Tags Andy Kemper, Brandon Wheat Kings, Bryce Bader, Dean Millard, Everett Silvertips, Garry Davidson, Grant Armstrong, Joachim Blichfeld, Josh Horton, Juraj Hollý, Portland Winterhawks, Prince Albert Raiders, Reece Vitelli, Ron Robison, Stelio Mattheos, Tomas NetikLeave a comment on The Brandon-Everett trade that wasn’t . . . Bader leaves Raiders, cites personal reasons . . . Blichfeld hits 200 in victory
Scattershooting: The Memorial Cup, a flawed playoff format and more
Maybe it is me but I so dislike the wild card format in the WHL. Moose Jaw/Swift Current and Portland/Everett had the best record in their conferences. Yet they have to face each other in semifinal matchups.
Just totally wrong
— Jess Rubenstein (@TheProspectpark) April 4, 2018
The tears hadn’t yet dried in Regina on Monday night when the bleating began on social media, with some fans crying for a change in the format of the four-team Memorial Cup tournament.
The Pats, the host team for this year’s tournament, had just dropped a 3-2 decision to the host Swift Current Broncos in Game 7 of an opening-round WHL playoff series.
Of course, that means the Pats are finished until the Memorial Cup begins, something that is more than 40 days away.
A year ago, it was the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires, the host team for the 2017 tournament, who got bounced in the first round. They came back, under head coach Rocky Thompson, a former WHL player and coach, to win the whole thing.
But, the social media gurus wanted to know, how is it fair that a team can lose in the first round and still win the national championship?
No, it isn’t right. But it’s time for people to realize that the Memorial Cup stopped being a national championship in 1983, which is when the present format that includes a host team was adopted.
If you ask around the WHL, those who have been involved in championships will tell you that the Memorial Cup doesn’t carry the cachet of a WHL championship. They also will tell you that playing in the round-robin Memorial Cup can be a letdown after taking part in a gritty, competitive best-of-seven championship series.
Now that we have that out of the way . . .
What the WHL needs to do is admit that its present playoff format is flawed, and — if it isn’t just providing lip service about wanting to minimize travel for its players — go back to having the first two rounds within each division. After the first two rounds, the division champions meet for conference titles, and the two survivors play for the Ed Chynoweth Cup.
The WHL likes to think of itself as a mini-NHL, which is why the present format — one that includes two wild-card entries in each conference — is in place. What’s good for the NHL is good for the WHL, or so the thinking goes.
This playoff format proves that isn’t always the case.
Late last month, with the first round unfolding, the WHL sent its commissioner, Ron Robison, on tour. He started in the Pacific Northwest, mostly doing damage control after that debacle in the Oregon State Legislature in Salem involving minimum-wage legislation, but he also addressed the playoff format.
“We really feel like this is the best format and it works really well for our league,” Robison told Brandon Rivers of dubnetwork.ca. “First of all, when you consider the travel demands on our players, we want to really have those games in the first round in the division, because travel is limited. At the same time, it helps with your rivalries. . . .
“If you look throughout our league in each division, we have some great rivalries. Why not get that competition level really up high in the playoffs and see how it goes from there. There’s pros and cons but, generally speaking, this format makes a lot of sense for our league.”
Later, while in Medicine Hat, Robison told Ryan McCracken of the Medicine Hat News:
“I think when you look into it, it’s more than just the seeding of teams in a playoff competition, whether it’s conference format or a divisional format. For us, in this particular case it’s about the fact that we can reduce travel from the players’ standpoint, we can take advantage of the great rivalries we have.”
We will assume that Robison said this with a straight face, even though he was in Medicine Hat, the home of the Tigers, a team that ended up playing the Brandon Wheat Kings in the first round in two straight years. That also meant travelling to Dauphin, Man., where the Wheat Kings played their first-round home games in both series because their home arena had been taken over by the annual Royal Manitoba Winter Fair.
Had the WHL used a divisional playoff format, the Tigers would have met the Calgary Hitmen in last season’s first round, and the Kootenay Ice this time around. The Ice, of course, didn’t even make the playoffs this season, thanks to the wild-card format.
Using the divisional format, the Wheat Kings would have clashed with the Moose Jaw Warriors in this season’s first round. Instead, Brandon ousted Medicine Hat in six games.
(In the Western Conference, the Tri-City Americans, a wild-card entry, swept the B.C. Division-champion Kelowna Rockets. In a divisional format, Tri-City would have opened against the Everett Silvertips, with Kelowna meeting the Kamloops Blazers, who didn’t qualify under this system.)
The present wild-card format also has other flaws.
For starters, the Saskatoon Blades didn’t make the playoffs despite having more victories and more points than two Eastern Conference teams that did advance.
This format also means that every first round includes four series that feature teams that finished second and third in each division. That means that teams that were awfully good over 72 games exit early. Two more awfully good teams are going to go home after the second round, too.
The biggest flaw, however, is that there now is the perception that the wild-card system can be gamed.
I’m not saying that’s what happened this season, but you may recall that the Wheat Kings were third in the overall standings — and third in the Eastern Conference and East Division — when the trade deadline arrived on Jan. 10. A third-place finish in the division would have meant a first-round meeting with Swift Current.
The Wheat Kings chose to trade away two top-end players — defenceman Kale Clague and forward Tanner Kaspick — for a bundle of future assets.
In the end, Regina moved past Brandon into third place, and, as we saw, lost out to Swift Current in the first round. The Wheat Kings ended up in possession of the Eastern Conference’s first wild-card spot, which sent them into the playoffs against Medicine Hat, which had finished atop the Central Division, albeit with four fewer victories and five fewer points than Brandon.
The Wheat Kings now will open the second round against the host Lethbridge Hurricanes on Friday. The Wheat Kings finished the regular season with more victories (40-33) and more points (85-72) than the Hurricanes.
There can be no arguing that the Wheat Kings ended up with an easier route to the conference final than they would have had with a third-place finish in their division. Of course, the Hurricanes may have something to say about that.
There also can be no arguing about the job done by Brandon general manager Grant Armstrong, who added nine assets, including four first-round bantam draft picks, in those two transactions.
Inadvertent or not, he seems to have helped his club improve its playoff odds.
Meanwhile, in the Western Conference, Tri-City, the first wild-card entry, will meet the Victoria Royals in the second round, meaning it avoids a potential clash with Everett or the Portland Winterhawks for another round. Everett and Portland are preparing for a second-round series after the Winterhawks beat the visiting Spokane Chiefs, 3-1, in Game 7 last night.
Who knows how all of this will play out, but it all leaves me with one question:
What will be the reaction by the WHL pooh-bahs should Brandon and Tri-City, a pair of wild-card teams, end up in the championship final?
I recently came into possession of the feature stories written this season by Perry Bergson of the Brandon Sun that focus on former Wheat Kings players. This was the second season in which Bergson has written one of these stories each week, and they are most enjoyable. If you can find them, I highly recommend them. I also wonder why more junior hockey writers — assuming that they really love to write — haven’t followed Bergson’s example by producing stories like these.
The fact that none of the numerous Hockey Insiders had the scoop on the retirements of Daniel and Henrik Sedin says a lot about the longtime Vancouver Canucks forwards. Obviously, there aren’t any leaks in the world of the future Hockey Hall of Famers. They were true to themselves right to the end.
Sooner or later, the WHL should be issuing a news release detailing the involvement by its 17 Canadian teams in the organ donor awareness program this season. You may recall that, among other things, the teams wore Don Cherry-tribute sweaters and then made them available via auction. I am guessing that the promotions raised well over $300,000 for the four western branches of the Kidney Foundation of Canada.
On Sept. 9, 1965, left-hander Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers threw a perfect game. Yes, Vin Scully called it. Right here for your reading enjoyment, courtesy salon.com, is that call. It is, as is mentioned here, “pure baseball literature.”
Author greggdrinnanPosted on April 3, 2018 April 3, 2018 Tags Brandon Rivers, Grant Armstrong, Gregg Drinnan, Perry Bergson, Ryan McCracken, Taking Note, Western Hockey League1 Comment on Scattershooting: The Memorial Cup, a flawed playoff format and more
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538424
|
__label__cc
| 0.725081
| 0.274919
|
Gruppo Otologico
Otology and Skull Base Surgeons
Health technicians
Ear diseases (Otology)
Pathology of the skull base
Facial nerve
Pathology of the nose
Deafness - Cochlear implant
Research and medical training
Associated centers
Anatomical dissection laboratory
Mario Sanna Foundation
Research and medical training>
Medical training>
NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL TRAINING PROGRAMMES
The GO hosts Medical Residents from the different Universities across the World.
The GO offers Clinical Research Fellowships in two specialties: Skull Base Surgery and Middle Ear Surgery and Implantology. Six Clinical Fellows and over 20 Observers are taken each year. Since its inception over 100 Fellows, 500 observers from over 20 countries from across the world including USA, Australia, Japan, China, Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, India, Mexico, Venezuela, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Israel, Libya, Lebanon, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and other European countries have visited GO.
Many of the Clinical Fellows have gone on to achieve high success in their careers by being appointed as Heads of their respective departments in foreign countries like Japan (Sendai, Kyoto, Tokyo, Nigata), Australia (Sydney, Brisbane), Spain (Madrid, Barcelona), France (Marseilles, Reims), Holland (Amsterdam, Groningen, Utrecht), Belgium (Antwerp, Brussels), Egypt (Cairo, Suez Canal, Alexandria), Saudi Arabia (Jeddah, Riyadh), Jordan (Amman, Erbit), Turkey (Ankara, Konya, Trabzon, Erzurum), Brazil (Sao Paolo), Greece (Athens), Tunisia (Tunis) and Hong Kong.
Between 1992 and 2016, nearly 150 surgical and dissection courses have been organized by the GO both in Italian and English languages. All the courses are recognized by the Ministry of Health and Universities of Italy and are awarded CME credits. Over 1500 doctors from all over the world have been trained in these courses thus far. Delegates have visited from countries including USA, Canada, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Spain, Norway, Sweden, France, UK, Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Chile, Morocco, Tunisia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The Gruppo Otologico has a state-of-the-art dissection laboratory for training purposes. The dissection laboratory comprises of 14 stations, one for each delegate. Each station is equipped with separate Zeiss surgical microscope, required surgical instrument set, Bein-Air power drill and central suction irrigation. The teaching station is additionally equipped with a three chip camera that transmits the video to three 40 inches TV monitors. The Surgical and Dissection courses are organized in the Seminar Hall and the William House dissection lab.
Course director Prof. Mario Sanna
Dr. Abdelkader Taibah
Dr. Alessandra Russo
Dr. Enrico Piccirillo
Dr. Antonio Caruso
Dr. Lorenzo Lauda
Dr. Anna Lisa Giannuzzi
Dr. Gianluca Piras
Hands On Courses 2020
The Gruppo Otologico organizes, for the year 2020, the following courses of middle ear surgery and skull base surgery.
SCHEDULE A MEDICAL EXAMINATION
A.I.N.OT.Associazione Italiana Neurotologica
Via Emmanueli, 42 - 29121 Piacenza
info@gruppootologico.com
© 2020 Gruppo Otologico, All Rights Reserved.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538426
|
__label__cc
| 0.741162
| 0.258838
|
Home > The Hostway Blog > Social Media Marketing > Using Social Media to Boost Search Engine Results
Using Social Media to Boost Search Engine Results
Hostway Tech Team - August 09, 2009
By Lauren Hobson
Stand out in search engine results with expert search engine optimization services.
Most of us are well aware that the search engines frequently change their algorithms to improve search results for users (and foil spammers), which can make it challenging for small businesses just to keep up. But as Web technology continues to evolve, it also creates new opportunities for small businesses to improve their SEO strategies and boost their rankings as well. Social media (sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati, Digg, etc.) provide an excellent opportunity for small businesses to not only promote their products and services online, but also to gain significant ground in the search engine results.
One of the most critical components to getting top search engine rankings is the number of inbound links and link popularity a Web site is able to build. Although there are several existing link building strategies available to small businesses (e.g., press releases, directory submissions, article syndication, etc.), social media can help create additional high-value, on-target inbound links that are essential to achieving top placements in the search engines.
For example, each time you use Twitter to publish a link to new content on your Web site, that link gets “planted” on the Twitter page of each person following you, and has the potential to spread even further as your followers share that information with their own network of contacts.
Integrated Social Marketing (ISM)
If you have properly integrated your social networking profiles together, that same Twitter “tweet” could then be fed via RSS to your Facebook business profile, your corporate blog, your LinkedIn account, and any number of other social sites that you have set up for your business. It’s not a far stretch to imagine the link you broadcast on Twitter could reach dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other places on the Web, all pointing back to your Web site! By integrating your social networking profiles with each other, with your Web site, and with your existing marketing initiatives, you can easily make one single marketing action (such as a tweet) show up in multiple places online, each containing a new, relevant inbound link to your site.
Quantity AND Quality
In addition to the sheer number of inbound links that are created through social marketing, the value of the links that are created is another important criterion that search engines consider. To be valued by the search engines, inbound links must be from relevant, “quality” Web sites, and search engines today give social sites like Facebook and Twitter great value. These sites are highly visible to the search engines, and are constantly taking updates from users. Links tend to be shared according to subject matter, which means the search engines will see them as being relevant and on-target. All of these factors combine to create high-quality inbound links in the eyes of the search engines.
Online Visibility and Branding
Creating visibility for your business and your “brand” is really key when using social media for building links. The power of social media is realized when other users see your links or content, then share that information with their own network of contacts. Simply adding a bunch of links to your social profiles is not enough; you need to have a strong reputation and a brand that users trust so they will feel comfortable sharing your content with others. Brand recognition typically leads to natural link building anyway, which means your inbound links will end up coming from bloggers, colleagues, customers, and other people who are exposed to your links and find them useful enough to share with their own contacts.
The Proof is in the Rankings
A recent example from Website Magazine explained somewhat surprising results when they searched for their publication’s name in Google. As expected, their Web site came up as the number one listing on the results page. But what was not expected was the number three listing on the results page was the magazine’s Twitter page. They then performed a number of Google searches for the terms “Chicago Tribune,” “Chicago Public Golf,” and “Daily Career Tips,” all with similar results in Google – the Twitter page for each of these terms came up near the top of the search engine results every time.
The conclusion was that given these results, Google must be giving serious weight to Twitter content, and I happen to agree. The search engines of course keep their ranking algorithms top-secret, so there’s no way to know how much weight (if any) is really given to Twitter or other social media sites. But results like those in the example above are hard to ignore!
A Great Opportunity
Social media is here to stay, and small businesses are beginning to use it to effectively promote their businesses, reach their customers, find new leads, keep customer mindshare, and instantly communicate with customers. But maybe one of the biggest benefits of adding social media to your marketing mix is the creation of high-value, on-target inbound links that can help improve visibility in the search engines and boost your business to the top of the search engine rankings.
Lauren Hobson, President of Five Sparrows, LLC, has more than 16 years of experience in small business technology writing, marketing, and Web site design and development. Five Sparrows provides professional Web site and marketing services to small businesses and non-profit organizations, giving them access to high-quality services at affordable prices. To read articles or subscribe to Biz Talk, please visit www.FiveSparrows.com/biztalk.htm.
Social Media Marketing, The Hostway Blog
brand, Facebook, SEO, Social Media Marketing, social networking, Twitter
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538427
|
__label__cc
| 0.53718
| 0.46282
|
Between Us and Catastrophe: People on the Front Lines of COVID-19
April 20, 2020 | by Kyle Cassidy
Elijah, Zack and Deloy work for the Philadelphia Streets Department. Photographed March 27, 2020. Their day starts at 5 a.m., every day, pandemic or not. When most everything stops, it is suddenly clear who is keeping us alive.
When the virus hit, my first thought was to create an oral history of doctors and nurses on the front lines to preserve their experiences, revelations, and day-to-day stories as we moved together through this. At some point we will look back at this as an important time, significant for myriad of reasons, and we’ll want to know what it was like at the tip of the spear as well as what it was like in quarantine rationing pasta and watching Netflix. We, as humans, have a seemingly unquenchable thirst for stories about heroes. Hollywood spends a great deal of time and effort recreating destruction, but we don’t seem to have the same propensity to tell stories about people who build and people who hold back chaos. This is a story about heroes.
As I started photographing doctors and nurses in early April of 2020 the city began to shut down in parts as though someone were in the basement of a large building flipping circuit breakers. But some things stayed on. Water kept coming from the faucets, the trash kept getting picked up, food kept appearing on shelves, and the mail kept arriving at the door.
When most everything stops it becomes a lot easier to see what few people are actually keeping us all alive. As I began to meet more essential workers–delivery people, cashiers, plumbers, postal workers–I became more cautious about using the word “heroes” because it can suggest a shifting of responsibility. It’s easy in our minds to offer up the word hero in exchange for the ethical malaise we’d otherwise feel about sending someone else into the uncertain air of the grocery store to pick up our Wheat Chex cereal.
While nurses and doctors signed up for this, a lot of people now on the front lines didn’t get to make that decision and were never asked the questions that we ask doctors and nurses and soldiers and sailors: are you willing to risk your life and the lives of people you love for this job? Some people in the thick of this are economic hostages who are at risk because they cannot skip a rent payment or don’t have health insurance. And as jobs fold and people lose their employer-provided healthcare, their immediate options to pay the bills are a plethora of essential jobs that carry risk and offers no paid sick leave and everything gets worse. Our country is being hit by a medical emergency, to be sure, but that is sitting on top of an existing social emergency that has stratified risk.
So do thank the doctors and nurses you see and clap for them in the evenings. But be sure to tip your delivery person, thank your letter carrier, thank every FedEx driver who walks past your front stoop, and put your mind to thinking about how to make everyone’s lives better and more equitable, because this is a story about both heroes and inequality.
My grandparents came through the crucible of WWII forever altered, and many people through 9/11, never able to find again the world as it was in August, 2001. I imagine we all too will be changed. The life of 2019 won’t be a place we go back to. It will only be a place that was. In years to come people not yet born will find our faded collections of hand-sewn masks in trunks and ask what we did and what it was like during this time. I’d like to be able to tell them. I’d like to be able to say “Here are the stories of the people who kept us alive.”
I photographed most people early in the morning on their way to work and from a distance of at least 10 feet. If you know someone else I should photograph, please contact me.
I am grateful to the people who helped make this possible not only the doctors and nurses, but influential people who believed in this project from the beginning and were eager to help me share the stories of those on the front lines: Mayor Jim Kenney, Linda Huss, Kelly Cofrancisco, Deana Gamble, and the Philadelphia Streets Department.
All photographs by Kyle Cassidy. View his portrait series here: Betweenusandcatastrophe.com
Margaret is a nurse in the Greater Philadelphia area. Photographed March 26, 2020.
“I personally think our hospital has responded really well to everything. I think it is lucky that we’ve had a little bit of time to prepare because we’re close to New York. The pressure was on for us to get prepared really quickly because we know there’s a wave coming but we did have some lag time there and our hospital leadership and administration has been really on top of things. I’m thankful that at least for now I really feel supported and communicated with and protected, which I don’t think is the case elsewhere. That’s a silver lining because I don’t have the extra burden of fighting for myself and my co-workers because I know that they’re out there looking for equipment for me and getting information to me.”
Linda is a nurse in the Greater Philadelphia area. Photographed March 30, 2020.
“We’re always a team at the hospital. You never get everything you’re supposed to get done in a day, so we’re always helping each other. You never have your ‘own patients.’ They’re all your patients. If a nurse is busy and their patient needs medication you just do it. You’re not like ‘I just have my four patients.’
But now we’re literally dressing each other because it’s hard to get all that equipment on and off. We’re all in this nightmare and everyone is really just pulling together. I’m not surprised because we’ve always been that way. But it definitely makes it a lot easier. Everyone is just getting through it together.
The other day a patient of mine was dying and I kind of lost it at the end of my shift and two of the other nurses took me in another room and hugged me and said ‘It’s OK. We’ll wash our hands later.”
Philadelphia City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier represents the 3rd District. Photographed March 26, 2020.
“City Council is operating in this weird reality where we’re trying to support our constituents and meet their needs virtually, which is difficult because we know that lots of folks are not able to easily communicate virtually and don’t have regular access to technology. So, we’re in this space where we’re interacting with the folks that we can who are more connected, and we’re also trying to find ways to interact with folks who aren’t as connected.”
Mohammed is a doctor at a Philadelphia area hospital working on drive-thru Covid-19 testing. Photographed on March 20, 2020.
Garrett is a physician in the Greater Philadelphia area. Photographed March 27, 2020.
“At the beginning, we felt like spectators on the sidelines of what was happening. We were watching and listening to the stories coming from New York and around the world. As the stay-at-home order came into effect, and the general public’s concern about the virus was amplified, our emergency department saw our numbers dwindle, like the tide going out before a tsunami, and we knew it was only a matter of time before the wave came rushing in. With each case that came in you worried about the patient, but also the risk of infection to EMS personnel, the registration staff, the nurse, the tech, the respiratory therapist, and the environmental services team tasked with cleaning and sanitizing each room before and after the patient was there. The constant refrain in the back of my mind was, ‘Am I going to bring this home to my wife and young son?’”
Sara is a nurse in the Greater Philadelphia area. Photographed March 29, 2020.
“At work there’s a greater sense of camaraderie that wasn’t there before. We’re all working together towards a common purpose. I think that I’m also personally reaching out to people in ways that I didn’t before just to say ‘Hey. I’m thinking about you.’ And I’m spending more time with my kids. I’m having conversations with my 14 year old who normally hides in his room and doesn’t want to talk. He’s kind of bored now so he comes up and will have conversations with me, which is pretty remarkable. I think that there are a lot of silver linings. You just really have to look for them.”
Nicole, Naomi, and Hazelnut are making masks in West Philadelphia. Photographed March 30, 2020.
“The first batch I wasn’t totally confident about donating to the Facebook group Sew Masks Philly. There had been so much conversation in the group in the first week. I was just working with stuff that I had around my house, and I wasn’t quite sure if they were hospital-ready, so I just gave them to people in the community–people in the grocery store who still have to interface with everybody, the postal workers, our delivery people, et cetera. After that I used approved patterns and donated them through the Facebook group. We started with about 60 different patterns and narrowed it to three approved ones and what materials to use. There was a lot of discussion about how useful the masks are? How much does it filter? Can it be washed? And the big thing for hospitals is if they be autoclaved Can it go through the hospital cleaning process? So, the pattern and the fabric, which is 100% cotton, and there are types that have a slot for a filter, which could be polypropylene or even a paper towel that would add an additional layer. There was much discussion about the ties. Do they use an elastic tie around the ear? How does that feel? If someone’s wearing it a long time is that comfortable?
While I’m in quarantine I could be sitting here cleaning my attic, but I’m happy to have a talent that can be utilized and help support health care workers until I get called back to work.”
Travis delivers food for Caviar. Photographed March 30, 2020.
“I have noticed that folks in the restaurants are feeling a lot more tense. Some of them because of germs and others who feel overwhelmed because they’re getting so many orders, but they can’t have as many staff as they normally would because they’re trying to maintain social distance. So, there’s that tension or the exact opposite, which is, not getting enough orders. How sustainable it is for them to get three orders in a day?
I’m working fewer hours and making what I need to make. And because of the nature of riding a bike around the city I sometimes see friends on the sidewalk and I can say ‘Hi’ from a distance. For me, that’s a meaningful connection with a person. My partner is having a harder time with the idea of staying inside all the time. She’s used to being much more active, and that’s getting to her.”
Kishia is a shopper for the delivery service Instacart. Photographed April 2, 2020.
“It’s very, very crowded in that store. They have a whole bunch of social distancing signs saying things like ‘Stand here,’ but a lot of people don’t abide by that, and a lot of people just get close to you. And I know they tell you not to wear masks, that they won’t really help you, or it might even put you in more danger. But at the same time, there are so many people around and I don’t know. I’d rather just wear a mask.”
The Mayor’s Covid-19 response press conference at City Hall. Photographed April 3, 2020.
Normally this room would be filled with news media, but the conferences are now all virtual, attended only by eight staffers all sitting a dozen feet apart. City Hall itself is nearly empty. The doors are locked and the metal detectors are turned off.
Deana Gamble, director of communications for the Mayor’s Office, was the reluctant face of the Covid-19 response team for this photo, preferring to direct attention to the other people doing so much work from elected and appointed officials to behind the scenes staff and the PHLGovTV team.
“When I think about the immense sacrifices of our healthcare workers and first responders on the front lines of this crisis, not to mention the countless people suddenly out of work, I feel very blessed to have a career that allows me to play a part in helping our city get through this challenging time. The need to communicate rapidly changing, and complex information to diverse audiences is demanding. But I’m so fortunate to have an incredible team of communications pros who consistently go above and beyond the call of duty.”
Please support the following healthcare worker funds
COVID19 Clinical Response Team Fund
Delivering Meals to Healthcare Workers’ Families
Tags: city life COVID-19 Hospitals pandemics photography
Kyle Cassidy is a photographer and filmmaker who has worked closely with nurses the past two years creating curriculum and training materials. His most recent book is "This Is What a Librarian Looks Like: A Celebration of Libraries, Communities, and Access to Information" out now from Hachette. You can find him at kylecassidy.com
Great series of profiles. Idea for future photos in this vein: bus drivers and checkout staff at groceries and drugstores.
B.Gerson says:
Dave, you got it. I’m commenting below about my daughter working in a grocery store.
B. Gerson says:
My daughter works at Trader Joe’s in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. She loves working there, but is very stressed now. It’s a combination of seriously upset customers, shortages of certain products and fear of getting infected. She recently reduced her work schedule to 4 days per week.
She’s been taking orders from people who can’t get out for whatever reason and then drops off the groceries on her way home from work. They pay her electronically and she does not take money for delivery. She and her coworkers are doing an amazing job at low wages.
Chris Lombardi says:
Terrific work. Your visual magic is matched by the music of your prose. Cannot wait for the next installment.
Heidi S. says:
What heroes! Thanks for the positive article showing everyone can be a hero in all this.
Deborah Horsting says:
Very helpful to see the people behind the scenes that are keeping us alive while having to stay in place. Thank you Kyle.
Michael Lazrus says:
Thanks for the shout out to our fund, feeding front line workers. Wife and I up to 148 meals served!
Thank you for this fine tribute.
excellent article. it details the important people in all this – NOT the CEO’s of giant companies, not the traders on wall street, but the front line people who make the infrastructure work.
Mel and Beth Moyer says:
Enlightening in that it emphasizes the people we all take for granted and depend upon as the real hero’s they are. Thanks. Mel
Marge Morris says:
Thank you, Kyle. As always, you find deserving subjects to feature visually in your moving photos. Seeing these heroes makes them more real in this socially, virtually-distanced world .
Rose Glassberg says:
Gail and Jay Chaskes sent this to me and I sent this to theAFT Retirees Chapter of Rowan University, several of whom have commented to me and to you. Above all, for me it’s your humanity that shines through — both in your photos and your language. Thank you.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538429
|
__label__wiki
| 0.580268
| 0.580268
|
The challenges of Digital Identity Management in the era of Internet of Things (IoT)
Organization: International Secure Electronic Transactions Organisation - OISTE
Title: The challenges of Digital Identity Management in the era of Internet of Things (IoT)
The Internet of Things opens new challenges for persons, companies, organisations and governments. What solutions are being proposed to ensure that objects that interact with each other will not be maliciously manipulated? What are the conditions to create a secure ecosystem where objects identify and authentify each other? What is the role played by the individual consumer? At what point on the production and distribution chanel operate companies offering cybersecurity solutions? What is the role played by governments? What are the responsibilities of the state vis a vis their citizens' security concerns? Do we need some kind of regulation? Do we need agreed international technical standards and protocols to create a secure technical environment?
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538431
|
__label__wiki
| 0.821135
| 0.821135
|
Titles Tagged “Resident Evil”
Resident Evil: Vendetta by Capcom
Chris Redfield enlists the help of Leon S. Kennedy and Rebecca Chambers to stop a death merchant, with a vengeance, from spreading a deadly virus in New York.
tags (add tags): action, Based on the animated film, Based on video game, Capcom, girls with guns, Gunfight, horror, prequel, Resident Evil, thriller, Zombies
close You must sign in to add tags. Don't have an account yet? Register now.
posted: 07/12/2018 by SonicmanZ3 comments | results | vote
Biohazard: Zero Hour by Shinji Mikami
Based on the prequel to the original Resident Evil which came out for the GameCube in 2002, now planned for an HD upscale this January. The Story: The film takes place the night before the infamous Arclay Mansion Incident. The S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team is investigating a series of murders in the Arclay Mountains, nestled in Raccoon City. The investigation begins on one of Raccoon City's most iconic trains, the Elliptic Express, where rookie officer Rebecca Chambers does her part. However, the train is riddled with the walking dead and other creatures. Not only that, but prowling around the train is …
tags (add tags): action, biohazard, Capcom, horror, Resident Evil, sci-fi, survival horror, umbrella corporation, Zombie
posted: 11/24/2015 by MikeZ comments | results | vote
Biohazard Revelations TV Series: Season Two by Shinji Mikami
Based on the second installment of the Resident Evil Revelations spin-off series that released just this year. The Story: After the fall of Umbrella, Claire Redfield's passion for seeing a bioterrorism-free world sees her joining the non-governmental human rights organization TerraSave. In 2011, two years following the death of notorious bioterrorist Albert Wesker, TerraSave holds a party that Claire and new hire, former S.T.A.R.S. officer Barry Burton's daughter Moira, which gets interrupted by a military group that kidnaps a few of TerraSave's rescue workers. Both Claire and Moira come to and find themselves in a murky dungeon, being watched by …
Biohazard Revelations TV Series: Season One by Shinji Mikami
A TV series exclusive to Netflix based on Resident Evil: Revelations, the spin-off that takes place between RE4 and RE5. The Story: After the fall of the infamous Umbrella Corporation, it would seem that the world would be free of bio-organic weapons (B.O.W.). Unfortunately, some of the former employees of the fallen company aren't willing to see its legacy go down in flames. It became clear that rogue researchers had succeeded in selling off company assets to the black market, with terrorist organizations and rival firms acquiring them. In response to this growing threat, former S.T.A.R.S. officers Chris Redfield and …
Biohazard VI by Shinji Mikami
Based on the controversial sixth installment in Capcom's survival horror video game series. Some creative liberties will be taken so a live-action version of this hated game can be translated to an entertaining movie experience. The Story: Even after the defeat of Albert Wesker in 2009, his influence in biological warfare is still felt, as B.O.W.s are still being manufactured across the globe. To make matters worse, a terrorist group calling themselves Umbrella Next (putting “Neo” in front of everything doesn't make it better), look to oversee the rebirth of Umbrella. With the use of a newly perfect strain known …
Biohazard V by Shinji Mikami
Based on the fifth installment of the survival horror video game franchise by Capcom. The Story: Even after the fall of the Umbrella Corporation, rogue researchers had succeeded in selling off company assets to the black market, with terrorist organizations and rival firms acquiring them. This forced former S.T.A.R.S. members Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine to start up a new agency dedicated to the investigation of B.O.W.s called the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, or B.S.A.A. for short. Since its birth, Chris has become the most active and respected member of the BSAA, across all branches. He had participated in more …
Biohazard IV by Shinji Mikami
Based on the forth installment of the survival horror franchise. The Story: Six years ago, Leon S. Kennedy was a rookie cop for a day in Raccoon City thanks to a T-Virus outbreak that the pharmaceutical company Umbrella was responsible for. His ability to get out of the zombie-ridden jungle would catch the eye of the government, who was also in the midst of investigating the company and their role in the city's downfall. In time, he would become an agent. In 2004, the now 27-year-old Leon has been deployed on his first mission: to rescue the president's daughter, Ashley …
Biohazard III - Code: Veronica by Shinji Mikami
Based on the 2000 Dreamcast release/2001 PS2 revision, complete with story elements from The Darkside Chronicles' chapter Game of Oblivion. The Story: Following a harrowing experience in the now-destroyed Raccoon City, Claire Redfield officially sets out to find her brother, former S.T.A.R.S. member Chris Redfield. But the quest becomes perilous as Umbrella remains a step ahead at every turn, and Chris nowhere to be found. Through this time, she trains her body and mind to prepare herself for a perilous journey. However, the disappointment, treachery, and training is slowly causing her to lose touch with her humanity, almost convinced that …
Biohazard II: City of the Dead by Shinji Mikami
A merge of the plots from Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, both telling the story of the downfall of Raccoon City. Elements from Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City are also included, such as the Umbrella Corporations Security Service unit (U.S.S.) and the US government's SPEC OPS Echo Six unit. The Story: Following the events of Biohazard, things have settled down since the incident in the Arclay Mountains. But the stories of the S.T.A.R.S.' surviving members' experiences were dismissed. Therefore any involvement of Umbrella's involvement with bio-organic weapons (B.O.W.) was scrubbed clean of their illegal experiments. Unfortunately, that …
Biohazard by Shinji Mikami
The kick-off to a new movie series based on Capcom's Resident Evil series, now called Biohazard after what the game's titled in Japan. Based on the REmake, released in 2002. The Story: Something bizarre is happening in Raccoon City. People are being eaten with no clue why. S.T.A.R.S. Bravo team goes to investigate more on the situation in Raccoon Forest. The team is supposedly wiped out and S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team is sent in to find out what is going on. The team, comprised of Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, and Albert Wesker, find strange mysterious goings on. They retreat …
The Countdown
New York City News Broadcaster and the crew from the Radio Station in Madison Square …
What if Mank was made 10 years earlier? 1930's Hollywood is reevaluated through the eyes …
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (2023)
What if it was made 30 years later? Based on the life and career of …
A mockumentary-style television show (a la The Office, Parks and Recreation, etc.) that follows the …
I Heart Huckabees (2021)
What if I heart huckabees (2004) by David o' Rusell was made today (2021)?
10 years earlier 10 years later 80s 90s action Adaptation adventure aliens Animated Animation Based on Animated Series based on book based on comic based on comic book based on tv series Based on video game batman biopic Book character by name title christmas comedy comic adaptation comic book crime crime fighting superhero Crossover DC DC Comics Disney drama epic family fantasy Game History horror Idea-for-TV kids Live Action live-action martial arts Marvel Marvel Comics Music Musical mystery reboot remake romance Sci Fi sci-fi science fiction scifi Sequel Spy Superhero supervillain suspense teens thriller videogame adaptation war western
Username or E-mail Password Lost password?
© 2021 Imagine Casting staff | privacy policy
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538433
|
__label__cc
| 0.73343
| 0.26657
|
travel,
Feb 22nd
An Inside the Cask chat with…the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC)
Annebeth Wijtenburg, Communications Manager at the WTTC, was able to spare some time with us to share an insight into the organisation.
Inside the Cask: Who is the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and what is its role? How did it first get started?
WTTC is a global organisation representing the Travel & Tourism private sector. Our Members are the Chief Executives of leading global Travel & Tourism companies, from all geographies and industries, including hotels, airlines, airports, tour operators, cruise, car rental, travel agents, rail, and the circular economy.
We research and communicate the socioeconomic impact to governments and wider society, advocating policies that allow the sector to thrive and be sustainable.
Inside the Cask: How important is travel and tourism to the economies of countries? What impact does it have on the local economies?
Travel & Tourism brings huge social and economic benefits to countries as it stimulates economies and provides communities with jobs.
Our sector generates around USD$7.2 trillion to the world economy, which is nearly 10% of total global GDP and supports over 284 million jobs, which is 1 in 11 jobs worldwide.
Travel & Tourism is a force for good as it brings people together and bridges the gap of the unknown, connecting people from different cultures and backgrounds.
Inside the Cask: Are we currently going through a period of higher volatility for travel and tourism given the macro factors impacting on it such as terrorism? Does this volatility impact on the overall global volume and/or value of travel and tourism or does it just shifts movement from one location to another?
Travel & Tourism is an extremely resilient and important sector. It has faced many challenges over the last year, including natural disasters, diseases, terrorist attacks, and political turmoil, however travellers have shown to be more resilient than ever.
What we see is that people do not stop travelling but change destinations and visit a place that they perceive as safer, as we have seen this summer where visitors swapped places like Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia for Spain, Portugal and Bulgaria.
We expect our sector to have grown by over 3% in 2016, outpacing global economic growth for the 6th consecutive year. On average Travel & Tourism grows about 1% faster than the global economy, which shows that despite economies softening our sector continues to increase.
Inside the Cask: How important are the commercial revenues generated in global travel retail to stakeholders involved in travel & tourism?
The Travel & Tourism sector and the Retail sector are clearly making significant contributions to the economy in their own right, but as a combined force, the emerging trend of Shopping Tourism will without doubt generate an even more positive impact on economic wealth and job creation.
Shopping tourism is already a major part of our sector; it’s getting bigger and the cities that take a long-term strategic approach playing to their individual brand strengths will see the benefits of this market segment within our sector.
For a report on Shopping Tourism – click this link for the report from the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO).
Inside the Cask: What is the WTTC view of Brexit and its impact?
It is still difficult to predict what exactly the impact of Brexit will be to our sector as this will depend on triggering of Article 50 and the way the UK government will negotiate terms.
At the moment we believe that Britain’s Travel & Tourism GDP growth is expected to hold up throughout 2017. However, we will likely see a small impact on outbound travel as the UK’s spending power has been impacted by the drop of the pound. Therefore destinations that are heavily reliant on the UK as a source market could be at risk from seeing a reduction in their Travel & Tourism visitor exports from the UK, such as Spain, Ireland, France, Belgium, and Cyprus.
It is important to recognise that Travel & Tourism thrives in an open environment. When negotiations start we urge for those at the table to pursue policies that facilitate travel for business and leisure purposes, such as: maintaining open trade relationships; allowing mobility of labour and visa free travel; and encouraging open skies and greater security cooperation.
Thanks to Annebeth for the chat!
Note that she has also written on the topic of 5 reasons “you should build a career in travel & tourism”:
High Demand for Jobs
Attractive career programmes
A wide range of career opportunities
All jobs in one place
Bottom up and long term vision
“10 ways to make travellers happy”
The Viking Line Whisky Fair Experience
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538435
|
__label__cc
| 0.511696
| 0.488304
|
Credibility is key in New York Tax Dispute
Category: Doug George - Kanentiio
By Doug George-Kanentiio
News From Indian Country April 2010
If the Iroquois are to defeat New York States efforts to impose taxes on sales to non-Natives they must have not only credible people defending our rights but have to present a rational alternative to Albanys plans.
Recently the New York State Supreme Court held a session in Syracuse hear arguments for and against the collection of sales taxes on Native territory.
Outside the hearing chamber a group reported to consist of 150 anti-tax people carried placards and beat a large drum. A group of speakers addressed the crowd with some of them quoted in the media as making volatile statements and promising there would be active resistance to any attempt by New York to impose taxes. The media reports connected this group as belonging to the Iroquois Confederacy.
This was not true but is typical of the surface reporting which characterizes most stories coming from our communities. Anyone can say anything and none of the reporters will apply any credibility standard as to who that person is and what they actually represent. This kind of journalism is not only sloppy and careless but obscures the legitimate Iroquois leadership and may well place our people in danger.
We know from past experiences, such as Akwesasne and Kanehsatake in 1990, that individuals without standing as Iroquois representatives hijacked the media and created the illusion that the struggles of that year were acts of liberation rather than a conspiracy to take over a Mohawk community and turn it into one of the largest drug havens in North America. It was the external media which fabricated this freedom fighter myth since the writers and editors ignored the facts and allowed themselves to be manipulated.
As we know government policy is often dictated by what the policy makers and politicians read or see in the media. The bureaucrats in Ottawa acted accordingly and refused to work with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy or the leaders of the Mohawk Nation to resolve the problems here and at Kanehsatake with predictable results.
This was sadly the case in 1997 when the Haudenosaunee concluded seven months of intense negotiations with the US and New York State before agreeing to a Trade and Commerce compact which would have removed the threat of external taxes permanently.
The compact was designed to bring certain activities such as tobacco and fuel sales under the protection of the Confederacy with a central distribution point and internal regulations enforced by each member of the league. The retailers would have to abide by these new rules and would no longer be able to operate as outlaws or to use their wealth to corrupt the people or undermine the nations.
The Trade and Commerce compact was historic as it would have both the US and New York State formally acknowledge the Haudenosaunee as having exclusive jurisdiction over its territories and the right to enter into nation-to-nation agreements on its own terms.
Naturally, the leaders of the Confederacy expected resistance from some of the retailers as they saw any regulation as a threat to their profits. They refused to see the logic of having a strong Confederacy and organized a series of protests to undermine the Grand Council. Entities such as the Oneida Nation of New York and the Seneca Nation of Indians, neither of which are members of the Confederacy, held rallies and blocked roads. They promised that armed resistance was to follow.
The Haudenosaunee leaders informed the US and New York of the nature of these protests, that they were without wide popular support and were being controlled by self-serving tobacco millionaires and would soon fade away.
But New York Governor George Pataki proved to be a political coward and caved in. The opponents of the Confederacy, including certain Natives, convinced him that a stable, prosperous and effective Confederacy would be bad for their personal profits. The compact was abandoned as was any hope of controlling the tobacco kingpins.
Thirteen years have passed and the lessons of 1990 and 1997 have been discarded. Speakers rise, hint at armed resistance and are believed. The fact that those at the Syracuse rally did not represent the Confederacy and were, for the most part, members of the Seneca Nation of Indians which separated from the Haudenosaunee in 1848, was ignored. That at least one of the speakers is under US federal indictment for taking part in a massive criminal conspiracy was also brushed aside.
The fact that the Onondaga Nation was not involved in the rally and that the protesters breached Confederate protocol was not reported.
None of the reports did any background checks into who the speakers were or if they had any standing whatsoever with any Iroquois government or organization.
Yet it is the Iroquois people and the Haudenosaunee as a whole, which will have to deal with the consequences of their actions. It is the people who will be placed in harms way as the US and New York respond with heavier policing; it is the Iroquois people who will be seen as violent and treated accordingly.
Meanwhile, the only solution to this problem lies in the shadows. The Trade and Commerce Compact can yet be salvaged and put into effect as long as the screamers are ignored and the good minded ones are given our support.
There is simply no other way.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538437
|
__label__cc
| 0.727849
| 0.272151
|
(-) Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) (1)
(-) ScienceDaily (2)
(-) Waterloo Chronicle (1)
How novel X-ray technology made in Waterloo can help COVID-19 patients
A detector from Waterloo, Ontario’s KA Imaging allows for clearer visualization of a patient’s lungs.
Science Odyssey - Ten days of discovery and innovation
Science Odyssey is Canada's largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, featuring fun and inspiring experiences in museums, research centres, laboratories and classrooms from coast to coast. Powered by NSERC, Science Odyssey demonstrates how discoveries and innovations shape our daily lives and foster a strong science culture in Canada.
The Future of Food Safety: Bacterial Detection through a Smartphone
Lauren DiVito
Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation
Researchers at MIT and the Max Planck Institute have developed a method for quick, on-site E. coli detection in food. While current food safety testing either requires days to complete or expensive equipment, this new method, paired with a smartphone and QR code, will make testing inexpensive and portable. The new detection process uses Janus emulsions, droplets consisting of two hemispheres of different densities. In water, the less dense, hydrocarbon hemisphere sits above the denser hemisphere
Seaweed: From superfood to superconductor
Seaweed, an edible algae with a long history in Atlantic Canada (e.g. dulse seaweed) and some Asian cuisines, could turn out to be an essential ingredient in another trend: the development of more sustainable ways to power our devices. Researchers are using a seaweed-derived material to replace traditional non-renewable carbon materials to help boost the performance of superconductors, lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells in a sustainable way.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538442
|
__label__wiki
| 0.66889
| 0.66889
|
Haunted Lincoln
It is said that ghosts are the spirits of people who met traumatic, violent, untimely deaths. Abraham Lincoln, of course, is one, because he was murdered by John Wilkes Booth about a week after General Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops to General Grant at Appomattox, and on Good Friday at that. Before his assassination, the president foresaw his own death in a dream, where he was wandering around the White House, and was told by a soldier that the president had been killed.
Since then, Lincoln’s ghost has been roaming the halls of the White House. Jenna Bush, one of President George W. Bush’s daughters, said that she had heard phantom opera music coming from the fireplace in her bedroom while she was living at the White House. In the same breath, she expressed her disappointment about never seeing the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. It’s common knowledge that Lincoln’s spirit still resides within the Executive Mansion, as the White House was called during the Civil War. Several heads of state have witnessed the ghost of Lincoln, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, President Coolidge’s wife, Grace, President Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Maureen.
The president’s widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, said that her husband’s ghost often visited her. She became an avid believer in the supernatural and regularly attended seances, usually under an assumed name to disguise her identity. In one photograph, an eerie manifestation of Lincoln appears behind her. It could have been a photographer’s trick, but many other witnesses have seen his ghost as well.
Sightings of Lincoln’s ghost have occurred near his grave in Springfield, Illinois, and at his former home there. It has also been seen at the Loudon Cottage in Loudonville, New York, which belonged to one of the women who was sitting in the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre when he was shot. The President’s spectral funeral train has been observed on the anniversary of its journey from Washington D.C. to Springfield, thundering through the darkness to its spooky destination.
Fortress Monroe, where Confederate President Jefferson Davis was incarcerated for several years following his capture at the end of the war, is said to be haunted by Lincoln, as is Ford’s Theatre, where Lincoln was shot.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Confederate, Ford' Theatre, Jefferson Davis, John Wilkes Booth, Robert E. Lee
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538444
|
__label__cc
| 0.604608
| 0.395392
|
New York assembly members condemn ‘antisemitic’ DSA questionnaire
‘It is offensive, antisemitic, and dangerous, particularly at a time when antisemitism is on the rise in the United States and in the New York area’
Jewish Community Relations Council delegation to Israel
Jacob Kornbluh
A group of 52 members of the New York State Assembly issued a joint statement on Tuesday denouncing the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) questionnaire that asked New York City Council candidates to agree “not to travel to Israel if elected… in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation.”
“This blatantly antisemitic litmus test is abhorrent,” the lawmakers noted. “Singling out the only Jewish state – a strong democracy in the region, where women’s rights, freedom of speech, and religious freedom are protected — is detestable.”
The signatories, some of whom have visited Israel as part of organized delegations, said that opposing trips to the Jewish State “cannot be rationalized.”
“It is offensive, antisemitic, and dangerous, particularly at a time when antisemitism is on the rise in the United States and in the New York area,” the lawmakers stressed. “No political organization that embeds antisemitism into its platform should be welcome in the halls of our legislature.”
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538446
|
__label__wiki
| 0.550949
| 0.550949
|
Protests of Police Brutality Continue in Bogota After Law Student’s Death
Protests aimed at police brutality in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, erupted into violence for a second night Thursday, with at least nine deaths reported over the past two days.Protesters set fire to city buses and some threw stones and bottles at police, who fired tear gas and flash-bang grenades toward the demonstrators protesting this week’s death of a 46-year-old law student.Police were caught on video repeatedly shocking the student, Javier Ordonez, with a stun gun as he begged them to stop. He died at the hospital.Police say Ordonez was detained after he was spotted drinking alcohol in the street with friends, in violation of coronavirus distancing rules.Since the protests started Wednesday, Bogota officials say police stations and vehicles have been vandalized and hundreds of civilians and police officers injured in addition to the nine deaths.Two officers suspected of involvement in the alleged abuse of Ordonez have been suspended pending an investigation.
previous:Malawi 9-Year-Old Defies Disability, Inspires Community
next:Mali Junta Leaders Resume Three-Day Summit on Plan for Transition Government
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538447
|
__label__wiki
| 0.58488
| 0.58488
|
JANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB BOOK REVIEW: After 9/11: One Girl’s Journey through Darkness to a New Beginning
by Admin | Oct 21, 2016 | Children, college, high school, Memoir, non-fiction, reconciliation, young adults | 0 comments
After 9/11: One Girl’s Journey through Darkness to a New Beginning: A Memoir by Helaine Hovitz
Helaina Hovitz
Publisher/Imprint:
Carrel Books
“Hovitz had the grit, determination and resources to pull herself out of the morass of PTSD. What about the rest of her generation growing up in this post-September 11 world?”
Author Helaina Hovitz in her book After 9/11: One Girl’s Journey Through Darkness to a New Beginning provides us with a timely account of the seen and unseen damage searing experiences and memories shape.
In the book Hovitz shares her memories of that dread filled morning on September 11, 2001, when a neighbor, Ann, collected her children and then 12-year old Hovitz from their middle school as it was evacuated.
“’Don’t look up, don’t look back, just keep going!’’ Hovitz writes: “I was tiny so I had to fight my way through walls of people. . . . Before it was fun. An adventure. Now, it suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe, and maybe I couldn’t. In fact, I felt like I was going to faint. . . . ‘Oh my God, they’re jumping!’ Ann said . . . I kept hearing more sounds. Some reminded me of the crashing and grinding of garbage trucks, others of a heavy box suddenly dropped on the ground, others, still, hail hitting a window, only heavier, like a giant bag full of nails, creaking, slamming, booming.”
How does anyone survive psychologically intact from such horror experienced at the onset of adolescence—or at any age? But millions of New Yorkers have had to cope with PTSD to a greater or lesser degree after September 11 and so have many hundreds of millions of Americans, and indeed people from around the globe. Our world changed that day, and we are still dealing with the seismic aftershocks.
Helaina Hovitz, in understated prose, takes us with her on her path away from PTSD. She does not shy away from nor minimize the effects of her trauma. Years of therapy and counseling, growth into adulthood with not so deeply buried horrific memories that threaten to overcome her at any moment, panic attacks, her descent into sexual acting out, and alcoholism are all vividly laid out for us.
For Helaina, a university graduate, the path ends more or less happily at “This.” “’This’ would be finalizing a book. ‘This’ would be attempting, with no prior business whatsoever to start-up a news service exclusively focused on inspiring and hopeful stories about people who are trying to make the future better.’ ‘This’ was dealing with chronic pain, for almost a ten years by then, trying tons of doctors and medications and therapies and getting nowhere.’ ‘This’ was doing it all stone-cold sober.’”
Hovitz had the grit, determination and resources to pull herself out of the morass of PTSD. What about the rest of her generation growing up in this post-September 11 world? How many of them have a shot at new beginnings akin to Helaina’s?
Recently on August 17, 2016, we were reminded of the devastating effects of such trauma when we saw the infinitely tragic image of Omran Daqneesh, the Syrian boy sitting in an ambulance seat in Aleppo, his hair, face and body covered in ash and blood. Since 9/11 so many hundreds of thousands of children have suffered death or grievous physical and psychological trauma in the Middle East and other conflicts. We read and see their stories daily in the media.
Throughout history witness-bearers through their stories provide personal glimpses into historic events that can otherwise become dates and place names and statistics. Hovitz’s book opens a window on one person’s journey in the aftermath of September 11. She has rendered a valuable service in adding her voice to the memory of this momentous interstice in world history.
Janet Levine is a decades long freelance journalist and an author of four books. She writes for such publications as the New York Times Magazine and The Boston Globe.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538449
|
__label__wiki
| 0.70686
| 0.70686
|
Tag Archives: David Byrne
September 23, 2009 · 11:10 pm
Where in the World is David Byrne? [Part 2]
In the last post, I said that Byrne has a way of incorporating the world around him into his own work. And he doesn’t do it small, quiet ways. Take for examples his Playing the Building series which started in Stockholm, Sweden in 2005. Byrne describes the series as follows:
"Playing the Building" at the Roundhouse in London
“Playing the Building is a sound installation in which the infrastructure, the physical plant of the building, is converted into a giant musical instrument. Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.”
Musical may not be the best word to base your expectations off of but it is very large. In 2008 Byrne re-envisioned the installation a the Battery Maritime Building in New York City, and he has just put the finishing touches on the installation at the Roundhouse in London (see above).
These installations produce some fantastic sounds. For example, listen to Robert Gomez’s haunting “Hunting Song” which uses samples taken from the installation in New York.
David Byrne and company on office chairs
In the meantime David Byrne is finding new ways to occupy his minimal free time between shuttling back and forth across the pond to work on Playing the Building while touring for his new album Everything That Happens Happens Today, which includes dances choreographed on office chairs.
He has also been heavily involved in the developing indie music scene. His record label Luaka Bop signed Os Mutantes in 2006, a band that was originally formed in 1966, but shut down after 12 years and has now found new legs [download their latest single “Teclar” here].
He has also collaborated recently with The Brighton Port Authority (BPA), Fatboy Slim’s side project that just released their first album I Think We’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat (2008). Byrne sings on the song “Toe Jam” also featuring Dizzee Rascal, which is definitely a heavenly pairing. The video for the song, which you can find in the “This Week” section has plenty of nudity – but it’s still kid-friendly due to jolly black bars that dance around the screen with the music. Check it out!
A still from the "Toe Jam" video
And, perhaps most surprisingly, David Byrne has lent his voice to North America South America (better known as N.A.S.A.) for two songs, “Money” and “The People Tree” for their record The Spirit of Apollo which was released in February of this year. With these songs, it seems that N.A.S.A. has brought out Byrne’s subversive nature once again – something that can be better explained by watching the music videos found in the “This Week” page.
"Bicycle Diaries" by David Byrne
David Byrne is looking as fit as ever and he’s not slowing down. He just released a book called Bicycle Diaries that chronicles his travels and thoughts while biking and designed a series of funky bike racks for NYC. He also had a full-length article in Wired magazine last year about the ins and outs of the music industry. It’s really fascinating and has lots of interesting clips of Byrne talking with people from the industry including Brian Eno. While you’re there, look for his interview with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke from the same issue. And if you have the desire to stalk him even more like a psycho killer you can follow his day-to-day activities in his online journal. Happy hunting!
Oh, and one last thing:
Filed under Music
Tagged as art installations, Batter Maritime Building, Bicycle Diaries, BPA, Brian Eno, cool bike racks, David Byrne, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, Fatboy Slim. Dizzee Rascal, fun censorship, N.A.S.A, North America South America, office chairs, Os Mutantes, People Tree, Playing the Building, psycho killer, Robert Gomez, Roundhouse, Spirit of Apollo, The Brighton Port Authority, The Peak, Thom Yorke, Wired
We all know David Byrne as the wildly animate singer of the Talking Heads, who’s carefree singing kept people talking about the Talking Heads long after the 80’s were over. But what some people may not know is that David Byrne has had one of the most prolific and varied careers long after the last Talking Heads record, Naked, was released in 1988.
To give a brief background of Mr. Byrne – he was born in Dumbarton, Scotland in 1952. He moved to Canada when he was two, and by age five he had taught himself to play the accordion. At 9 his family had moved to Boston, and by the time he enrolled in high school he had picked up the guitar and violin as well. Andrew Bird, eat your heart out.
But David Byrne is not only a passionate lover of music, he is as accomplished a visual artist as a sonic one. For a year, he took art classes at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, and then dropped out due to the fact that he thought the classes weren’t worth the money. However, the school was invaluable to him in that it brought him together with Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth who would form the Talking Heads with Jerry Harrison.
From left to right: Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Byrne, and Tina Weymouth
During the band’s more than fifteen-year run from their first show in 1975 until they broke up in 1991, Byrne was extremely busy. Among other things, he directed all of the Talking Heads’ music videos, created the score for “The Catherine Wheel” a ballet choreographed by Twyla Tharp and formed the record label Luaka Bop – which highlights Brazilian pop artists.
After the Talking Heads’ official break-up, David Byrne created a series of albums – many of them having Latin themes or even Spanish language lyrics. In 2002, he released the record Uh-Oh, the cover of which shows a choir of angels surrounding a cartoon dog seated on a heavenly throne.
"Uh-Oh" by David Byrne
On his website all Byrne offers about the record is that “funk and Latin grooves were combined together”, but any combination of ago-go bells and bass clarinet, like this record has deserves a listen. “Now I’m Your Mom”, the first track on the album has lyrics that will both amaze and shock you:
Oh little girl
Please understand
And listen to the words I say
I was your dad
Now I’m your mom
I hope you’ll comprehend someday
This track goes one to have one of the best instrumental breakdowns in any song that I have heard. Layer by layer, Byrne and his band build up the the sound – but what makes it so incredible is that the layers are made up of horns and woodwind instruments. In thirty seconds, he brings in two french horns, a flugelhorn, flute, clarinet and of course my personal favorite – the bass clarinet.
David Byrne has a way of absorbing everything around him and then incorporating what he collects into his own re-creations of the world. He playfully nudges religion in “A Walk in the Dark” off of the same album (and also throws in some more bass clarinet to boot):
Now Jesus, Mary and the Holy Ghost
Took one look and said, “Hey, we’re lost!”
“How the hell do we get outa here?”
They s*** their pants, they got so scared
"Look Into the Eyeball" by David Byrne
Byrne continued this trend in a later solo project called Look Into the Eyeball (2001). The slick song U.B. Jesus proclaims
Jesus is big
Jesus is strong
Jesus’ll kill you if you don’t get along
Jesus has swing
Jesus has skills
Go on & try it if you don’t believe he will
But David Byrne has mellowed out a little but with his most recent record Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (2008). For the recording he teamed up again with British rocker Brian Eno, who played with the Talking Heads from 1978 to 1982. The album is more probing than anything else David Byrne has done since the Talking Heads and is fatalist in a Donnie Darko sort of way. You can listen to the whole album here.
Byrne and Brian Eno
Ok, so more David Byrne to come in the next post! Including recent developments with N.A.S.A., the music group (not to be confused with the makers of the vomit comet) and Fatboy Slim’s band the BPA.
Tagged as A Walk in the Dark, ago-go bells, awesomeness, bass clarinet, Brazilian Pop, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, David Byrne, Donnie Darko, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, Jerry Harrison, Jesus, Look Into the Eyeball, Luaka Bop, Now I'm Your Mom, Rhode Island School of Design, Talking Heads, The Catherine Wheel, Tina Weymouth, Twyla Tharp, U.B. Jesus, Uh-Oh
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538454
|
__label__wiki
| 0.8536
| 0.8536
|
Jeff Severinghaus is a professor of geosciences in the Geosciences Research Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. His current research interests center on using trapped bubbles of gases contained in ice cores to track changes in ancient climate.
Born in Kentfield, CA, on Aug. 26, 1959, Severinghaus received a bachelor’s degree in geology from Oberlin College in 1983, a master’s degree in geological sciences from UC Santa Barbara in 1988, and a Ph.D. in geological sciences from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in 1995.
Severinghaus uses krypton and xenon in the atmosphere to detect past ocean temperature change, taking advantage of the high solubility of these gases. The krypton and xenon are trapped along with air in the bubbles in glacial ice.
Severinghaus has developed a “horizontal ice core” in Antarctica for large-volume samples of the past atmosphere. He uses this to measure carbon-14 in atmospheric methane, which requires one ton of ice per sample, an amount more than is available from most ice cores. This measurement reveals the contribution of fossil sources of methane (such as seafloor methane hydrates) to the atmosphere during times of abrupt methane concentration increase.
Severinghaus’ team’s study of historic temperatures at an ice core site on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet using nitrogen and argon isotopes continues. Researchers also use measurements of the temperature in the borehole from which the core was extracted. A “memory” of temperature remains in the borehole due to the very slow diffusion of heat in ice, and this allows the researchers to infer the past surface temperature history. Using this borehole technique, Severinghaus’ team recently found that the Little Ice Age, a cold period from 1400-1850 A.D., occurred in Antarctica as well as in the Northern Hemisphere. The work demonstrated that the Little Ice Age was a global event and supports the idea that variations in the energy output of the Sun caused the Little Ice Age.
Current projects include construction of a “rapid access ice drill” to explore the three-dimensional interior of the Antarctic ice sheet in search of the oldest possible ice, which may allow a record of atmospheric carbon dioxide dating back 1.5 million years. This rapid access drill would allow drilling to the bed of an ice sheet in a few days, instead of the typical three to five years needed for a deep ice core.
Severinghaus has also performed extensive research in Greenland. His analysis of isotopes of nitrogen and argon contained in Greenland ice core bubbles have revealed that the earth went through a period of rapid warming at the end of the last ice age, some 11,000 years ago. He found that the region experienced a 15-degree-Fahrenheit jump in temperature in less than a decade, the impact of which was felt throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
His research raises the question of whether the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels could also produce a rapid change in climate, rather than the slow, steady rise in temperature many computer models of global climate now predict.
In other work, Severinghaus and Wallace Broecker, a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty, uncovered the cause of a life-threatening loss of oxygen from the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona. The two discovered that an excess of organic matter in the self-contained ecosystem’s soil set off uncontrolled growth of bacteria that feed on oxygen.
Severinghaus is the recipient of the 2011 Claire C. Patterson Medalist of the Geochemical Society, an award given annually for a breakthrough in environmental geochemistry. Severinghaus was also awarded a Comer Science and Education Fellowship (2002), a Packard Foundation Fellowship (2001), a NOAA Climate and Global Change Graduate Fellowship (1992), and a University of California Regents Fellowship (1985).
He worked in Nepal 1989-1991 to assist in a rural development project with World Neighbors.
Severinghaus and his family reside in Solana Beach, CA.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538455
|
__label__wiki
| 0.629541
| 0.629541
|
Administrator urges the judicial council to ignore Judges’ calls for change
Dear Members and Others:
First, let us offer our thanks and congratulations to those of you have already responded to the invitation of the Chief Justice to comment on the report of her SEC committee by emailing invitations@jud.ca.gov. We are heartened and proud that so many California judges have stepped up to insist that the recommendations of the SEC be immediately adopted by the Council and implemented promptly. Only this sort of outpouring of comment will translate this view, which we believe is the correct one, into reality.
To see the comments received and posted thus far, please simply click on
http://www.courts.ca.gov/18441.htm and you will be taken to the Council website where each comment is listed in reverse order of receipt. The website is updated roughly at 4:30 p.m. every day, so if you don’t see your comment, wait a day and it will probably be up. If it isn’t, contact us and we’ll make sure it is.
Please understand that this battle is far from over. Those who favor the status quo
are also making their views known and more will do so during the comment period, which ends on July 22. Please see, for example, the comment of Mr. Alexander Aikman, a well known administrative guru and former vice president of the National Center for State Courts. (The AOC still pays the National Center roughly $1 million per year for its “services.”)
Mr. Aikman finds nothing but fault with the SEC report, and he argues that no changes should be implemented at all by the Council. He characterizes the SEC investigation as incomplete because not every single court employee in the state was contacted (a process that would have turned a 55-week process into one taking years), ignoring the fact that the committee sent out over 3,500 surveys to all current and recently retired judges and justices, all 58 current court executive officers, all AOC directors and unit managers, all other AOC employees and everyone who has worked at the AOC in the past five years, as well as to those outside the judiciary who have an interest in its operations.
He argues that new AOC leadership (as yet unnamed) must determine which, if any, SEC recommendations should be adopted. His views seem shaped by a mistrust of–if not an outright disdain for–judges, and his belief in the primacy of administrators mirrors the current culture of control permeating the AOC. Mr. Aikman seems to suggest that the judicial role is valuable largely because the respect inherent in the office provides a credible public face for the actions of administrators-the true visionaries. Consistent with that view, he expressly urges the Council to simply ignore the views expressed by judges seeking swift implementation of the SEC’s recommendations.
A few of his views bear repeating.
“No attempt should be made to try to eliminate either mistakes or discretion (of the AOC) or set the Council up as a supernumerary administration.”
“Observers have noted for many years that judges’ perspectives are ‘professional,’ i.e., focused on their status as professionals and their ‘independence” rather than on the court as an institution with requirements and needs independent of individual judges preferences.”
“New leadership…should be given a chance to propose and implement specific changes.”
“It will not be easy to disregard the many voices calling for immediate and dramatic action, but it is best for the Council and branch if it does so.”
“Relying primarily on judges weakens the result because many judges do not have the background in management policy and experience that will produce the best solution.”
His public comment mirrors many of his earlier published comments. The following is from his article, “The Need for Leaders in Court Administration,” which appeared in The Court Manager, Volume 22, Issue 1.
“Judges should set the parameters of the position and then get out of the way.”
“It is very hard for administrators to be leaders in courts. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is very hard for administrators to be the visible leaders of significant change…”
“If judges will allow administrators to do the management job they were hired to do, and if judges can learn to be comfortable having a strong manager make decisions without their input or control…the judicial branch will continue to grow and prosper.” (Emphasis ours.)
“Judges need to know what management is, how to be an employee (emphasis ours), without jeopardizing one’s electability or adjudicatory independence, and how to oversee the work of their administrator without imposing their individual judgment about how things should be done or specific outcomes that must be achieved.”
Mr. Aikman sees no fault with the AOC. Rather, judges are the problem. In the same article cited above, Mr. Aikman wrote: “Judges are not writing about why their administrators should be regarded as peers with different skill sets rather than assistants who deal with organization details with which they do not want to deal. Judges are not writing about the need for effective administrators. Therefore, the second part of the need is judicial education.” (Emphasis in original.)
It is views like these that created the AOC that we have today. Judges in this state must continue to speak out and not accede to those, like Mr. Aikman, who insist that judges’ voices be “ignored.”
Thank you for your continued support, and if you haven’t yet sent your public comment in, please do so immediately.
*corrected to reflect Mr. Aikman was an NCSC vice president.
Posted in: Administrative Office of the Courts, Branch Boondoggles, Judicial Council of California, State of California, Trial Courts
← Chief Justice – Democratize the Judicial Council
Smokin’, Smokin’ Comments and News of a Strike by San Francisco Superior Court →
12 Responses “Administrator urges the judicial council to ignore Judges’ calls for change” →
Published today, Monday, July 16, from the Metropolitan News Enterprise, by Kenneth Ofgang:
Frustrated Judge Lance Ito Calls AOC ‘Deceptive, Vindictive, Manipulated’
Jurist Bemoans Losing His Courtroom, but Says He Has No Plans to Quit
By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lance Ito, expressing frustration over the closing of his courtroom, said Friday the judicial branch has itself to blame for its financial predicament.
In an interview elaborating on comments he submitted to the Judicial Council, he said he was not excusing the Legislature, which he said treats the judiciary as “another special interest” rather than “an independent and essential branch of government.”
But the recent acknowledgment that the judiciary’s plan for a central computer system had essentially flopped, at a cost of $2 billion—“that’s $1 million per courtroom,” Ito remarked—along with lesser failures, “have shown we’re incompetent to govern ourselves” and “done long term damage to the branch itself,” he said.
In his comments to the council, reproduced on Page 3, Ito became one of several judges who have urged rapid implementation of the recommendations of the chief justice’s Strategic Evaluation Committee. He accused the AOC of having adopted a “circle the wagons mentality,” when what it should to is to acknowledge that it “has been run in a deceptive, vindictive and manipulative manner” and get about the business of reform.
“The bottom line is that NOTHING will change,” he wrote, “until…the selection process for Judicial Council membership is changed from dictatorial to democratic” or the council “actually takes its role seriously rather than being rubber stamping sycophants.”
Ito said he was writing those words after spending an afternoon “boxing up my personal belongings from my bench as the jury from what may be very last trial of my judicial career ponders the fate of a man charged with a double murder for financial gain.”
He told the MetNews Friday that he has no immediate plans to retire, although he just completed 23 years of judicial service and will be 62 years old next month. He said he will not know what his next assignment will be until he meets with the presiding judge in the next week or so.
In the meantime he is addressing “about a week’s worth of paperwork,” Friday was devoted to working on warrants, he said.
His frustration with his personal situation is clear—“I am mildly annoyed to be one of the persons chosen to be rusticated,” he put it—but he says far more than the personal wellbeing of judges is at stake.
“One hundred twenty miles south you’ll find a judiciary that doesn’t function very well,” he said, “and you see what happens as a result.”
He noted that in some counties, elected officials are stepping up to help the courts. Ventura County, for example, is using county funds to keep the Simi Valley courthouse open.
The Los Angeles County trial courts, he said, had that type of relationship with the county when the trial courts were county-funded. Now the courts are dependent on state funding, which is drying up, and if the governor’s tax initiative fails in November, “we are going to have a real disaster.”
Ito Comments on SEC Report
To the Chief Justice and Members of the Judicial Council:
The reaction by the Judicial Council to the SEC report, to send the issues evaluated out for yet more study rather than taking immediate action, bodes III for the expectation any positive action will follow. Shortly after spending the better part of two days studying the thoughtful, thorough and comprehensive report, I spoke with a close friend and AOC acolyte. I expected her to finally concede the AOC has been run in a deceptive, vindictive and manipulative manner, and that the Judicial Council had abdicated its fiduciary duties to the trial courts and the citizenry for the past decade. Instead I got what I later learned was the list of AOC responsive talking points that the SEC report was a, “..snapshot in time,” a time long past and that many of the called for reforms were already underway. It is apparent the AOC has adopted a circle the wagons mentality rather than using the report as a starting point for a new era of actual rather than faux transparency. Again, I ask: Who in the AOC drafted and who approved the submission of the trailer bill that would ship the local courts of their ability to select a presiding judge?
The bottom line is that NOTHING will change until one of two things happen: 1) The selection process for Judicial Council membership is changed from dictatorial to democratic with the trial and appellate courts able to vote; or 2) The new Judicial Council actually takes its role seriously rather than being rubber stamping sycophants. The fact 99% of the votes of the Judicial Council have been unanimous for the past decade speaks for itself. Likewise the fact Judge David Wesley’s motion to accept the SEC report and to move forward immediately died for lack of a second. For the past five years trial court judges and administrators have been pointing out the intuitively obvious disaster presented by CCMS, but the Judicial Council failed to exercise even a minimum of oversight. One would think some questions might be raised when the original cost estimate increases by a factor of ten. Even after the state auditor’s report ripped the program and pointed out the AOC’s gross incompetence and mismanagement, the Judicial Council continued to support it. I am reminded of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
Voices of dissent were not tolerated in the past and punishment in the form of favoritism and funding decisions were commonly used and widely feared. Those judges posting comments in support of immediate implementation of the SEC report’s recommendations will likely never be appointed to any Judicial Council position or committee and can expect their application to sit on assignment to be denied. CJER will drop them as instructors. The AOC and Judicial Council’s anti-Los Angeles bias is palpable. The Chief Justice told editors of the Los Angeles Times that the LA. County Superior Court’s position is ‘very much misguided” and called then LA Presiding Judge McCoy’s forecasts of impending closures and layoffs a “Chicken Little approach.” “I think it’s very interesting that no other court has claimed that there will be such calamitous results 2/16/2010 LA Times. Today courts across the state are closing courtrooms, in large part due to the fiscal mismanagement by the AOC and the lack of diligence by the Judicial Council. The Full Court Press we saw over the past month in Sacramento with the AOC lobbyists boiling the halls of the legislature and the office of the Governor’s Budget Director were all efforts too little and at least four years too late. And now it appears those efforts were as much directed at avoiding AB 1208 type language as they were towards saving the judicial branch. The slow motion train wreck that California’s budget has become was apparent to the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles Superior Court in late 2008 when the first round of new austerity measures were discussed and voted upon.
Mine is one of 56 courtrooms closed in Los Angeles County as of July 1st and I spent my afternoon today boxing up my personal belongings from my bench as the jury from what may be the very last trial of my judicial career ponders the fate of a man charged with a double murder for financial gain. What is maddening is that this did not have to be. Sadly, the AOC and the Judicial Council, in their prepared talking points in response to the SEC report, ask us still and again to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
**************************************************************************************************
Long live Judge Ito. And long live the ACJ.
SF Superior Court SEIU 1021 Employees – Have we told you that YOU ROCK?
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Surprise-strike-closes-SF-courtrooms-3710606.php
Take no crap (or wooden nickels) from SofaMan or the AOC.
unionman575
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2012/07/san_francisco_court_strike.php
San Francisco Court Workers Go on Strike, Disrupt Courts
By Erin SherbertMon., Jul. 16 2012 at 9:19 AM
The government is melting down
Muni isn’t the only government agency melting down today. A press release was just sent out, claiming more than 200 court clerks and other workers walked off the job at 8:30 a.m., effectively shutting down disrupting the entire Superior Court system.
The workers, represented by SEIU Local 1021, say they are striking to demand their legal right to information that would “allow them to negotiate a fair contract that keeps courtrooms open and legal services available to the public, while providing them with reasonable compensation.”
Not surprisingly, we’ve been unable to reach anyone over at the courthouse to talk.
But here’s what union workers had to say:
For the past eight years, the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), the bureaucracy that manages California’s courts, has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on a boondoggle computer program, the hiring of hundreds of redundant six-figure-salaried bureaucrats, administrators and lawyers and overpriced mega-construction projects. In the meantime hundreds of courtrooms across the state have been closed, legal services for the public have been slashed, and we, the workers who provide those services, have been laid off, furloughed and had our wages cut.
Union officials will hold a press conference later this morning to explain more.
Court workers has been threatening a strike since May when 95 percent of the union voted in favor of striking in the event that negotiations hit a dead end. Workers have been complaining that the AOC has hidden millions in secret accounts for its “pet projects and personal perks,” and then lied about it.
Now, as the union works to try and get a new contract, AOC officials are forcing more paycuts along with heavier work loads, union reps claim.
“When the Local 1021 asked San Francisco Superior Court management to open the books and show the financial need for the continuing cuts, they refused,” the press release states. “When, as part of the bargaining process, the union requested they provide the financial information that federal law requires of them so the union can make reasonable and responsible counterproposals, in the court’s tradition of lack of transparency, they didn’t. Instead they abandoned negotiations and unilaterally imposed their cuts.”
SEIU says the San Francisco Superior Court’s actions are a violation of federal labor law.
“We are sorry for the inconvenience our action today causes. But there comes a time when someone must take a stand against this assault on citizens’ constitutional right of the access to justice, and for reasonable compensation for the court’s skilled and dedicated employees. Someone must say, ‘Enough is enough!'”
Hopefully, court workers weren’t relying on Muni to make their dramatic exit.
Published today, Monday, July 16, from Courthouse News Service, by Dave Tartre:
SF Superior Court Workers Strike
By DAVE TARTRE
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – Court workers walked off their jobs Monday, effectively shutting down both the civil and criminal divisions of San Francisco’s Superior Court.
Members of Service Employees International Union, Local 1021 decided to flex their collective muscle in an effort to force the court to provide the union with budget information that could justify a recently imposed wage cut.
“We have a really strong walkout here,” said union spokesperson Steve Stallone, adding that most of the local’s 225 members are participating. Stallone also said the disruption at the court wouldn’t last long, “It’s a one-day thing. We’ll be back at work tomorrow.”
Representatives from the court could not be reached for comment, but in a memo to workers last month, top court administrator Michael Yuen said he was being forced by reductions in trial court funding from the state to cut wages by five percent and to reduce some benefits. The mandatory changes became effective at the beginning of July.
“Over the last 3 years, we implemented ongoing operational cost-saving measures that resulted in approximately $12 million per year in savings, but those savings were not enough,” Yuen said in the memo.
Union members, though, say the wage cut cannot be imposed, but must instead be the result of informed negotiations.
Stallone said the union wants access to the court’s financial data and is entitled by labor law to see more information than the court has been willing to provide about its budget. Without the information, he said, the across-the-board wage cut is invalid.
“That is a violation of labor law to withhold financial data. It makes it impossible to negotiate around real numbers,” Stallone said, adding that the union had recently filed an unfair practice charge over the issue with the California Public Employment Relations Board. He said information about the San Francisco Superior’s reserves has become critical to negotiations in light of recent legislation that requires trial courts to spend down their reserves.
“They are forcing us to go on strike,” said Gary Feliciano, a union steward who works in the civil division. Speaking in front of the Civic Center Courthouse, Feliciano said, “We held off on our proposals until we could see the new data and numbers for a new contract. But they didn’t come through.”
“If they continue to impose terms, then we continue to strike,” Feliciano said, raising the possibility of a strike that lasts beyond today.
In late May the union authorized a strike with a yes vote by 95 percent of the members. Up to that point, union negotiators had met five times with court administrators, but the talks did not result in a deal to replace the labor agreement that expired in February.
In his June 4 memo, court administrator Yuen said that negotiations with Local 1021 had reached an impasse, while “the unions representing managers, court reporters, and various technical and professional classifications have agreed to and ratified the Court’s concession request.”
Yuen’s memo concluded that the cuts are necessary to “preserve access to justice to the greatest extent possible, while also saving Court employee jobs.”
courtflea
As I have said here before Aikman is a scholar whom I respect a great deal, but not an in the trenches court administrator although he held that position briefly in El Dorado. His remarks should be taken as such. While he has a point about SOME judges (just like any other population some folks just don’t get it), court administrators know their jobs are to work with judges to do what is best for the organization, the public it serves, and to ensure that fair and impartial justice is delivered. Sure there maybe an administrative/managment curve for some judges as well as a judicial responisibility curve for administrators but hey, that is why the two work together so well, to make the organization work.
But another thing that is really bugging me: I am wondering about what exactly LA is doing to cut costs besides shutting courtrooms (which does not make a lot of sense to me since the judges still get paid so what are they doing now?). Have they closed the private judges cafeterias? Does each judge have his/her own law library in chambers at the cost of thousands of dollars per chamber? Does each judge still receive a copy of the Daily Journal or an on line subscription at the cost of $500 to $700 each per annum?We are talking about scores of judges working in the same courthouses right next door to each other. Do civil judges still have one law clerk per 2 judges (is that necessary now that civil courtrooms are being closed)? How many judicial secretaries are there now per judge? Are bailiffs, judicial assistants, and court reporters (working on transcript cash) still being paid to sit in dark courtrooms? Are judges that no longer have “courtrooms” picking up the work of laid off commissioners? Maybe my flea observations are way off base, but when I hear of courts laying off staff and commissioners, it just makes me wonder. And yes bloggers each of these questions are based in fact in current times or past. Since we are talking about court employees striking to know the truth about court budgets, I just wanted to know if stuff like this goes on in any court any longer (not just to pick on LA,, if other courts have or were doing the same things), while staff is being laid off. Like the guy who had a heart attack on the loading dock that was getting laid off before his demise.
No Flea, observations are spot on. I’ve lived through many bad budget cycles. This one is really different. No one is telling us “this is your last pen for this year.” “Don’t order any more Post Its.” “We are taking any suggestions for savings or efficiency.” What I do notice is that “so and so line worker quit or retired and we’re not going to replace him/her. You’re going to have to take on their work.” Meanwhile if there’s an Analyst, Manager or Director to fill…it’s done. There have been questionable realignments for people as well. Also, I notice new equipment being bought. In other words we are not doing the normal things done during a budget crisis. The only hiring freezes happening are with line workers and departments with weak directors.
I’m told we have reserves. Paid for I’m sure on the backs of the line workers. Everybody here seems very complacent. Anyone with eyes, ears and a brain knows that this can’t last forever. It’s a little top heavy here. We used to do more with a lot less managment. I had a longer post but I lost it. Just wanted to share my observation.
PS I should add, I don’t believe that any employed CEO in California subscribes to the majority of Mr. Aikmans review of the SEC report and that do judges pay for the staffing and food at the private cafeterias? My recollection of one courthouse in downtown LA on Temple was there was no cafeteria for the staff or the public in the courthouse, just snack bars with no capability to serve cafeteria style food, but the judges had one in the same courthouse. But maybe I missed it on my visits to the courthouse. And yes I know I am going to get slammed for my observations. sorry I was just wondering and concerned that some monies could be better spent on staffing courtrooms.
PSS I really do love LA I wish I knew how to post Randy Newmans video here JCW
To post a video link from youtube, choose the video, choose the “share” button which will open a drop-down section, click the block that says “long link” and paste the link in your comment.
Thank JCW!
the silence is deafening.
Our articles aren’t short. Right now there are about 200 pages per hour being read, though no one is commenting. 🙂
@IvankaTrump Repeat after me: "My daddy killed more Americans than any president in U.S. history!" 2 days ago
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538456
|
__label__wiki
| 0.588162
| 0.588162
|
The Young Newcastle Drummer has already made an impact in the world of music performing on the same stage as Jools Holland, Simple Minds, Scouting for Girls, Texas, Adam Ant, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal (Guns N Roses) and The Jacksons. Kyle still continues to tour all around the world with various bands and artists, Bumblefoot (Sons of Apollo, Guns N Roses) & Marco Mendoza (Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy) to name a few.
He started playing drums at the ripe old age of 6 years old on a small drum set at home and performed his first gig at the age of 9. At only age 13 he was invited to join his Dad’s band We3Colonels to which Kyle would perform in local pubs and clubs to learn his craft. 3 years of playing in his Dad’s band saw Kyle’s versatility increase incredibly and prepared him for many opportunities in the future.
After learning his craft in the pubs and clubs Kyle moved on to join his first original band Twister at age 15. Twister would go on to support and open up for bands such as Simple Minds, Jools Holland, Texas, Adam Ant, The Jacksons at Hardwick live and tour consistently throughout each year. After 3 years of writing and recording the “This Isn’t Wonderland” album with the band and touring heavily Kyle then had the opportunity to perform with Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal from Guns N Roses and from there began to open new doors in his career.
Kyle is the current drummer for Guitar Legend Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal (Sons of Apollo, Guns N Roses) & Marco Mendoza (Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy) but, also records and performs for various artists Worldwide.
On the 3rd March 2015 at the O2 Academy in Newcastle, Kyle and his previous band Twister performed with (and opened up for) Ron “Bumblefoot Thal. After playing the show and keeping in touch with Ron, Kyle has since then played shows in Europe and USA with Bumblefoot and continues to do so!
In between Bumblefoot touring and other studio sessions, Kyle has already performed at festivals such as Glastonbury, Bestival recorded for members of The Alabama 3 and other well known guitar players within Europe. A long with these sessions gigs he has received many endorsements from drums companies such as Natal Drums, Istanbul Mehmet Cymbals, Aquarian Drumheads, Czarcie Kopyto Custom Made Pedals and Regal Tip Drumsticks. After working non – stop throughout 2017, another new gig came around.
After being highly recommended for the gig last year by his good friend Micky Crystal (Tygers of Pang Tang) Kyle has just recently came off a long European tour with Bass Legend, Marco Mendoza and more dates are yet to be announced for 2019!
After touring consistently from 2016 into 2018 the Number 1 Drum Magazine in USA “Drumhead Magazine” approached Kyle and featured him in their September addition of Drumhead Magazine.
We can only look forward to see what 2020 brings as Kyle will continue to work Bumblefoot, Marco Mendoza and many more artists around the globe.
© 2021 Kyle Hughes Website. All Rights Reserved
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538461
|
__label__cc
| 0.649156
| 0.350844
|
Lexwork Americas
Lexwork Europe & Asia
Atsumi & Sakai Announces Establishment of Kojimachi Office
Tokyo member firm Atsumi & Sakai is pleased to announce its merger with fellow Tokyo-based law firm Atsumi Law Office; the merger will enhance Atsumi & Sakai’s offerings in the fields of white collar crime and crisis management, and add capabilities in advising high-net-worth individuals in areas such as divorce, inheritance and family/private disputes. The combined firm will operate under the Atsumi & Sakai name, though the new team will for the time being operate from their existing offices nearby Atsumi & Sakai’s Tokyo head office.
For further information go to https://www.aplaw.jp/en/news/20201225-2/index.html
Disclaimer: Lexwork International is an association of law firms and is not a legal body separate from its constituents. All member law firms subscribe to the objectives appearing on this web site. However, neither Lexwork International nor any member firm has any control over the services provided by any other member law firm, and therefore, has no responsibility for their acts.
© Lexwork International 2021.
Websites for law firms by Square Eye Ltd.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538463
|
__label__cc
| 0.554755
| 0.445245
|
More about Albert Camus
To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.
The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
What, in fact, is a novel but a universe in which action is endowed with form, where final words are pronounced, where people possess one another completely, and where life assumes the aspect of destiny?
I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one
No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and emotions shared by all.
The first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe.
History shows that the less people read, the more books they buy.
To live is in itself a value judgment. To breathe is to judge.
His own faith, however, was not lacking in virtues since it consisted in acknowledging obscurely that he would be granted much without ever deserving anything.
It should be pointed out for our own guidance in the West that the continual signing of manifestoes and protests is one of the surest ways of undermining the efficacy and dignity of the intellectual. There exists a permanent blackmail that we all know and that we must have the often solitary courage to resist.
In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history.
There is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man's courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared.
In the past, the poverty they shared had a certain sweetness about it. When the end of the day came and they would eat their dinner in silence with the oil lamp between them, there was a secret joy in such simplicity, such retrenchment.
Hungary conquered and in chains has done more for freedom and justice than any people for twenty years. But for this lesson to get through and convince those in the West who shut their eyes and ears, it was necessary, and it can be no comfort to us, for the people of Hungary to shed so much blood which is already drying in our memories. In Europe's isolation today, we have only one way of being true to Hungary, and that is never to betray, among ourselves and everywhere, what the Hungarian heroes died for, never to condone, among ourselves and everywhere, even indirectly, those who killed them. It would indeed be difficult for us to be worthy of such sacrifices.
Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world.
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
"My field," said Goethe, "is time." That is indeed the absurd speech. What, in fact, is the Absurd Man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he prefers his courage and his reasoning. The first teaches him to live without appeal and to get along with what he has; the second informs him of his limits. Assured of his temporally limited freedom, of his revolt devoid of future, and of his mortal consciousness, he lives out his adventure within the span of his lifetime.
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.
Modern conquerors can kill, but do not seem to be able to create. Artists know how to create but cannot really kill. Murderers are only very exceptionally found among artists.
He said firmly, "God can help you. All the men I've seen in your position turned to Him in their time of trouble." "Obviously," I replied, "they were at liberty to do so, if they felt like it." I, however, didn't want to be helped, and I hadn't time to work up interest for something that didn't interest me.
Born: November 7, 1913
Died: January 4, 1960 (aged 46)
Bio: Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism.
The Plague (1947)
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
The Fall (1956)
The Rebel (1951)
life, man, love, time, live, people, absurd, freedom, human, death, god, work, order, living, day
Albert Camus on Wikipedia
Albert Camus Short Quotes
Quotes about Albert Camus
French Philosopher Quotes
Philosopher Quotes
20th-century Philosopher Quotes
Czech Author
German Philosopher
French Existentialist
Russian Author
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538468
|
__label__wiki
| 0.580347
| 0.580347
|
October 2020 – February 2021 Oct 2020 – Feb 2021
LCSR Seminar: Axel Krieger “The IMERSE Lab: Designing Smarter Safer Surgery” @ https://wse.zoom.us/s/94623801186
Link for Live Seminar
Link for Recorded seminars – 2020/2021 school year
Robotic assisted surgery (RAS) systems, incorporate highly dexterous tools, hand tremor filtering, and motion scaling to enable a minimally invasive surgical approach, reducing collateral damage and patient recovery times. However, current state-of-the-art telerobotic surgery requires a surgeon operating every motion of the robot, resulting in long procedure times and inconsistent results. The advantages of autonomous robotic functionality have been demonstrated in applications outside of medicine, such as manufacturing and aviation. A limited form of autonomous RAS with pre-planned functionality was introduced in orthopedic procedures, radiotherapy, and cochlear implants. Efforts in automating soft tissue surgeries have been limited so far to elemental tasks such as knot tying, needle insertion, and executing predefined motions. The fundamental problems in soft tissue surgery include unpredictable shape changes, tissue deformations, and perception challenges.
My research goal is to transform current manual and teleoperated robotic soft tissue surgery to autonomous robotic surgery, improving patient outcomes by reducing the reliance on the operating surgeon, eliminating human errors, and increasing precision and speed. This presentation will introduce our Intelligent Medical Robotic Systems and Equipment (IMERSE) lab and discuss our novel strategies to overcome the challenges encountered in soft tissue autonomous surgery. Presentation topics will include: a) a robotic system for supervised autonomous laparoscopic anastomosis, b) magnetically steered robotic suturing, c) development of patient specific biodegradable nanofiber tissue-engineered vascular grafts to optimally repair congenital heart defects (CHD), and d) our work on COVID-19 mitigation in ICU robotics, safe testing, and safe intubation.
Bio: Axel Krieger, PhD, and his IMERSE team joined LCSR in July 2020. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University. He is leading a team of students, scientists, and engineers in the research and development of robotic tools and laparoscopic devices. Projects include the development of a surgical robot called smart tissue autonomous robot (STAR) and the use of 3D printing for surgical planning and patient specific implants. Professor Krieger is an inventor of over twenty patents and patent applications. Licensees of his patents include medical device start-ups Activ Surgical and PeriCor as well as industry leaders such as Siemens, Philips, and Intuitive Surgical. Before joining the Johns Hopkins University, Professor Axel Krieger was Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland and Assistant Research Professor and Program Lead for Smart Tools at the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children’s National. He has several years of experience in private industry at Sentinelle Medical Inc and Hologic Inc. His role within these organizations was Product Leader developing devices and software systems from concept to FDA approval and market introduction. Dr. Krieger completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany and his doctorate at Johns Hopkins, where he pioneered an MRI guided prostate biopsy robot used in over 50 patient procedures at three hospitals.
LCSR Seminar: Dieter Fox “Toward robust manipulation in complex environments” @ https://wse.zoom.us/s/94623801186
Over the last years, advances in deep learning and GPU-based computing have enabled significant progress in several areas of robotics, including visual recognition, real-time tracking, object manipulation, and learning-based control. This progress has turned applications such as autonomous driving and delivery tasks in warehouses, hospitals, or hotels into realistic application scenarios. However, robust manipulation in complex settings is still an open research problem. Various research efforts show promising results on individual pieces of the manipulation puzzle, including manipulator control, touch sensing, object pose detection, task and motion planning, and object pickup. In this talk, I will present our work in integrating such components into a complete manipulation system. Specifically, I will describe a robot manipulator that can open and close cabinet doors and drawers in a kitchen, detect and pickup objects, and move these objects to desired locations. Our baseline system is designed to be applicable in a wide variety of environments, only relying on 3D articulated models of the kitchen and the relevant objects. I will discuss lessons learned so far, and various research directions toward enabling more robust and general manipulation systems that do not rely on existing models.
Dieter Fox is Senior Director of Robotics Research at NVIDIA. He is also a Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he heads the UW Robotics and State Estimation Lab. Dieter obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Bonn, Germany. His research is in robotics and artificial intelligence, with a focus on state estimation and perception applied to problems such as mapping, object detection and tracking, manipulation, and activity recognition. He has published more than 200 technical papers and is the co-author of the textbook “Probabilistic Robotics”. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the AAAI, and recipient of the 2020 Pioneer in Robotics and Automation Award. Dieter also received several best paper awards at major robotics, AI, and computer vision conferences. He was an editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, program co-chair of the 2008 AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, and program chair of the 2013 Robotics: Science and Systems conference.
LCSR Seminar: Michael Yip “Towards Autonomous Surgical Robots: New Strategies in Design, Control, and AI” @ https://wse.zoom.us/s/94623801186
Surgical robots offer a potential future for combatting doctors shortages, decreased access to care, and the longer wait-times. My lab has looked towards developing autonomous surgical robots that can break the dependency on having a human surgeon perform each procedure, which is not scalable to meet the increasing population of patients, and suffers from a large and unpredictable variability amongst doctor experiences, training, and even day-to-day alertness. However, with very limited exceptions, we (as roboticists) are not there yet — the hurdles facing surgical robotics AI and automation comprise a host of multidisciplinary problems, from challenging computer vision problems robot and scene estimation, to control challenges with flexible and complex surgical instrumentation, to sub-second reactive motion planning in constrained and dynamic environments. In this talk, I will show how my lab’s research towards autonomous surgical robots have led us to develop computationally efficient methods for deformable SLAM, model-free robot learning, neural motion planning, and machine learning models for trajectory optimization. Furthermore, I will show how these techniques, many of which driven by data, are ubiquitous in that they expand not only to different surgical robots (both commercially available and those developed in the lab) but also to a broader set of applications across robot manipulation and bio-inspired robotics.
Michael Yip is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego, IEEE RAS Distinguished Lecturer, Hellman Fellow, and Director of the Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory (ARCLab). His group currently focuses on solving problems in data-efficient and computationally efficient robot control and motion planning through the use of various forms of learning representations, including deep learning and reinforcement learning strategies. His lab applies these ideas to surgical robotics and the automation of surgical procedures. Previously, Dr. Yip’s research has investigated different facets of haptics, soft robotics, artificial muscles, computer vision, and teleoperation. Dr. Yip’s work has been recognized through several best paper awards at ICRA, including the inaugural best paper award for IEEE’s Robotics and Automation Letters. Dr. Yip has previously been a Research Associate with Disney Research Los Angeles in 2014, a Visiting Professor with Amazon Robotics’ Machine Learning and Computer Vision group in Seattle, WA in 2018, and a Visiting Professor at Stanford University in 2019. He received a B.Sc. in Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Waterloo, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia, and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Stanford University.
LCSR Seminar: Josie Hughes “Computational Design & Fabrication of Robots” @ https://wse.zoom.us/s/94623801186
Automating the design and creation of complex robots is challenging due to the complexity of the design search space and physical processes required. To address this, new approaches are required to understand how to design and optimize robotic structures for a given task. This talk introduces a number of techniques and processes for the computational design of robots, focusing on automated design, rapid fabrication, and task-specific learning. This includes approaches ranging from biologically inspired design, to developing terrain optimized robots by searching over 10,000s of possible designs, and Bayesian based approaches for rapid task learning. Different application scenarios for these approaches are also presented. The talk concludes with a vision for the future in which bespoke robots can be automatically created for a given task.
Josie Hughes completed her Undergraduate, Masters and PhD at the University of Cambridge. She finished her PhD in 2018, developing robots which utilize embodied mechanics and sensory coordination for advanced capabilities. Her research focused on manipulation, sensor technologies and new approaches for designing and fabricating complex anthropomorphic manipulators. Josie is now working as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Distributed Robotics Lab, MIT. At MIT she is working on computational design methods, wearable technologies and new novel robot fabrication methods. Her work has been published in Science Robotics, Nature Machine Intelligence, Soft Robotics and many other conferences and journals. Additionally, she has lead teams which have won over 5 International Robotics Competitions.
LCSR Seminar: Andinet Enquobahrie “Accelerating Medical Image Guided Intervention Research using Open Source Platforms” @ https://wse.zoom.us/s/94623801186
Nov 11 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Image-guided intervention techniques are replacing traditional intervention, surgery, and invasive procedures with minimally invasive techniques that incorporate medical imaging to guide the intervention. Patients prefer these procedures to open surgeries and interventions because they are typically less traumatic to the body and result in faster recovery times. Despite its many merits, image guided intervention procedures are challenging due to restricted views and depth perception, limited mobility and maneuvering of surgical instruments, and poor tactile feedback in some instances, which make it difficult to palpate organs. Virtual simulators and planning systems are powerful tools that allow clinicians to practice and rehearse their surgical and procedural skills in a risk-free environment. Software is an integral part of these virtual simulators and planners. Whether it is for interfacing with a tracking device to collect position information from surgical instruments, integrating intra-operative and pre-operative images, controlling and guiding robots or generating a 3D visualization to provide visual feedback to the clinician, software has a critical role. Open source software is playing a major role in increasing the pace of research and discovery in image-guided intervention systems by promoting collaborations between clinicians, biomedical engineers, and software developers across the globe. Kitware, Inc., a leader in the creation and support of open-source scientific computing software is at the forefront of this type of effort. In this talk, I will provide an overview of image guided intervention system and discuss two NIH funded image guided intervention training projects currently led by Kitware: 1) A simulator that trains clinicians to improve procedural skill competence in real-time, ultrasound-guided renal biopsy and 2) An interactive, patient-specific virtual surgical planning system for upper airway obstruction treatments.
Dr. Enquobahrie received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University. He has an MBA from Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University with an emphasis in innovation management, product innovation, and technology evaluation and commercialization. Dr. Enquobahrie has authored or co-authored more than 70 publications in machine learning, image analysis, visualization, and image-guided intervention. He has served as a technical reviewer for several medical image analysis and image-guided intervention journals including Medical Imaging Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, Academic Radiology, Journal of Digital Imaging, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, and the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
LCSR Seminar: Dan Bohus “Situated Interaction” @ https://wse.zoom.us/s/94623801186
Situated language interaction is a complex, multimodal affair that extends well beyond the spoken word. When interacting, we use a wide array of non-verbal signals and incrementally coordinate with each other to simultaneously resolve several problems: we manage engagement, coordinate on taking turns, recognize intentions, and establish and maintain common ground as a basis for contributing to the conversation. Proximity and body pose, attention and gaze, head nods and hand gestures, prosody and facial expressions, all play very important roles in this process. And just like a couple of decades ago advances in speech recognition opened up the field of spoken dialog systems, current advances in vision and other perceptual technologies are again opening up new horizons — we are starting to be able to build machines that computationally understand these social signals and the physical world around them, and participate in physically situated interactions and collaborations with people.
In this talk, using a number of research vignettes from work we have done over the last decade at Microsoft Research, I will draw attention to some of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead of us in this exciting space. In particular, I will discuss issues with managing engagement and turn-taking in multiparty open-world settings, and more generally highlight the importance of timing and fine-grained coordination in situated language interaction. Finally, I will conclude by describing an open-source framework we are developing that promises to simplify the construction of physically situated interactive systems, and in the process further enable and accelerate research in this area.
Dan Bohus is a Senior Principal Researcher in the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group at Microsoft Research. His work centers on the study and development of computational models for physically situated spoken language interaction and collaboration. The long term question that shapes his research agenda is how can we enable interactive systems to reason more deeply about their surroundings and seamlessly participate in open-world, multiparty dialog and collaboration with people? Prior to joining Microsoft Research, Dan obtained his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.
LCSR Seminar – Life After Graduate School: Careers in Robotics A Panel Discussion With Experts From Industry and Academia @ https://wse.zoom.us/s/94623801186
Dec 2 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Life After Graduate School: Careers in Robotics
A Panel Discussion With Experts From Industry and Academia
A Special LCSR Career Development Seminar
Please join us with a panel of robotics experts to discuss careers in robotics.
Amy Blank, PhD
Senior Software Engineer and Manager
Barrett Advanced Robotics
Boston, Massachusetts,
Muyinatu Bell, PhD
Peter Kazanzides, PhD
Cara LaPointe, PhD
Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy
Assured Intelligent Systems Program Manager
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Moderator: Louis Whitcomb
Panelist Bios:
Dr. Amy Blank is a Senior Software Engineer and Manager at Barrett Advanced Robotics, Boston, Massachusetts, (https://advanced.barrett.com/) where she previously was Senior Software Engineer. Dr. Blank received her undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University om 2006, and completed her PhD in the topics of proprioceptive motion feedback and task-dependent impedance and implications for upper-limb prosthesis control in 2012. She conducted post-doctoral research at LCSR on the topic of hybrid force/position control for teleoperation under large time delay using the Whole Arm Manipulator, and the da Vinci Surgical System master console,
and post-doctoral research at Rice University developing novel hardware, control algorithms, and haptic feedback systems for an EMG-controlled robotic grippers.
Dr. Muyinatu Bell is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, where she founded and directs the Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Systems Engineering (PULSE) Lab. Dr. Bell earned a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (biomedical engineering minor) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006), received a Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University (2012), conducted research abroad as a Whitaker International Fellow at the Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden Hospital in the United Kingdom (2009-2010), and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology at Johns Hopkins University (2016). She is Associate Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control (T-UFFC), Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, and holds patents for short-lag spatial coherence beamforming and photoacoustic-guided surgery. She is a recipient of multiple awards and honors, including MIT Technology Review’s Innovator Under 35 Award (2016), the NSF CAREER Award (2018), the NIH Trailblazer Award (2018), the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2019), the ORAU Ralph E. Powe Jr. Faculty Enhancement Award (2019), and Maryland’s Outstanding Young Engineer Award (2019). She most recently received the inaugural IEEE UFFC Star Ambassador Lectureship Award (2020) from her IEEE society.
Peter Kazanzides received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Brown University in 1988 and began work on surgical robotics as a postdoctoral researcher at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. He co-founded Integrated Surgical Systems (ISS) in November 1990 to develop the ROBODOC System, which has been used for more than 20,000 hip and knee replacement surgeries. Dr. Kazanzides joined Johns Hopkins University in 2002, where he is appointed as a Research Professor of Computer Science. His current research is in the areas of medical robotics, space robotics and augmented reality.
Dr. Cara LaPointe is a futurist who focuses on the intersection of technology, policy, ethics, and leadership. She is the Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy which works to ensure that autonomous systems are safe, secure, and trustworthy as they are increasingly integrated into every aspect of our lives. During more than two decades in the United States Navy, Dr. LaPointe held numerous roles in the areas of autonomous systems, acquisitions, ship design and production, naval force architecture, power and energy systems, and unmanned vehicle technology integration. At the Deep Submergence Lab of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), she conducted research in underwater autonomy and robotics, developing sensor fusion algorithms for deep-ocean autonomous underwater vehicle navigation. Dr. LaPointe has served as an advisor to numerous global emerging technology initiatives and she is a frequent speaker on autonomy, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and other emerging technologies at a wide range of venues such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Dr. LaPointe is a patented engineer, a White House Fellow, and a French American Foundation Young Leader. She served for two Presidents as the Interim Director of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical and Oceanographic Engineering awarded jointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and WHOI, a Master of Science in Ocean Systems Management and a Naval Engineer degree from MIT, a Master of Philosophy in International Development Studies from the University of Oxford, and a Bachelor of Science in Ocean Engineering from the United States Naval Academy.
LCSR Seminar: Shan Lin “Exploring Robust Real-time Instrument Segmentation for Endoscopic Sinus Surgery” @ https://wse.zoom.us/s/94623801186
Vision-based surgical instrument segmentation, which aims to detect instrument regions in surgery images, is often a critical component for the computer or robot-assisted surgical systems. While advanced algorithms including deep CNN models have achieved promising instrument segmentation results, several limitations remain unsolved: (1) The robustness and generalization ability of existing algorithms is still insufficient for challenging surgery images, and (2) deep networks usually come with high computation cost, which needed to be addressed for time-sensitive applications during surgery. In this talk, I will present two algorithms to address these challenges. First, I will introduce a lightweight CNN that can achieve better segmentation performance with less inference time on low-quality endoscopic sinus surgery videos compared with several advanced deep networks. I will then discuss a domain adaptation method that can transfer the knowledge learned from relevant and labeled datasets for instrument segmentation on an unlabeled dataset.
Shan Lin is a PhD candidate in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Washington working with Prof. Blake Hannaford on medical robotics. Her research focuses on surgical instrument segmentation and skill assessment.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538469
|
__label__cc
| 0.54457
| 0.45543
|
LaurenConrad.com is an online lifestyle destination where editor-in-chief Lauren Conrad curates the best in fashion, beauty, food, family, home décor, and so much more. The hub for all of Lauren’s brands and business endeavors, you can find out about upcoming product launches and get a first look at Lauren’s latest collections. Read, shop, get inspired, and subscribe to our newsletter. We’re so glad you stopped by!
About Lauren Conrad
Lauren Conrad is a television personality, New York Times bestselling author, fashion designer and philanthropist with over 10 million social media followers.
In 2009, she launched LC Lauren Conrad exclusively at Kohl’s. Her collection includes apparel (regular, plus, petite), fashion and fine jewelry, fashion accessories, footwear, handbags, bedding, bath, giftables, cold-weather accessories and ornaments.
Lauren became a New York Times best-selling author when she signed multiple book deals with Harper Collins. Her first series for young adults, “LA Candy,” spurred a spin-off trilogy called “The Fame Game.” In addition to the novels, she has written three personal fashion, beauty and entertaining books, Lauren Conrad Style, Lauren Conrad Beauty and Celebrate. Lauren continues to reach her fan base with daily postings on her ever popular lifestyle website LaurenConrad.com.
In addition, Lauren has made it a point to use her platform to help and empower others. In 2013 she cofounded The Little Market whose mission is to build sustainable partnerships with artisans around the world, by connecting them with customers through an online marketplace and to empower women artisans to rise above poverty and support their families. In 2018 The Little Market launched their first brick and mortar location in Los Angeles.
After years the in the making, Lauren launched Lauren Conrad Beauty in August of 2020. Lauren Conrad Beauty is an eco-conscious brand that meets the desires of cosmetics consumers at a price point that everyone can enjoy without sacrificing quality. The collection is committed to clean beauty, offering vegan, ethically-sourced, and environmentally-friendly products and packaging.
Get to Know LC Lauren Conrad
Introducing My New Kid’s Line: Little Co. by Lauren Conrad
Fruity Jam-momile Cocktail
10 Unexpected Perks of Motherhood
She’s brightening, reduces puffiness, and is hyd
Barely-there beauty: a tutorial. We’ve got our b
2021 is here, and so are our resolutions! From dai
If one of your goals is to shop consciously in 202
Yep, we're keeping it cozy well into the New Year!
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538477
|
__label__wiki
| 0.81167
| 0.81167
|
Marchioro v. Chaney
PETITIONER:Marchioro
RESPONDENT:Chaney
LOCATION:Adult Store
DECIDED BY: Burger Court (1975-1981)
LOWER COURT: Washington Supreme Court
ADVOCATES:
Charles A. Goldmark – for appellants
Daniel P. Brink – for appellees
Audio Transcription for Oral Argument – March 26, 1979 in Marchioro v. Chaney
Warren E. Burger:
We’ll hear arguments first this morning in Number 647, Marchioro against Chaney.
Mr. Goldmark, you may proceed whenever you’re ready.
Charles A. Goldmark:
Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court.
A Washington statute Revised Code of Washington 29.42.020 regulates the State Committee of Washington’s major political parties.
One requirement of this statute is that these State Committees be composed of two persons from each county in the state no more, no less and none other.
The issue presented here is whether this requirement that the State Committees be composed of two persons per county no more, no less and none other can be constitutionally applied to bar the Democratic party of Washington from establishing its State Committee composed of two persons from each county, plus one person from each legislative district in the state.
Mr. Goldmark, as I understand it in the Supreme Court of Washington you also challenged the requirement that the composition of the committees be one man and one woman.
You don’t renew that here?
Mr. Justice Rehnquist, that is correct we do not challenge that requirement here.
Harry A. Blackmun:
And the last amendments didn’t change that sex provision.
Mr. Justice Blackmun, in my knowledge they did not.
Appellants challenge here only the two-person per county requirement and the court below ruled that this provision was severable from the remainder of the statute.
Appellants are eight members and officers of the Washington Democratic Party.
Four of them were persons elected as legislative district representatives to the Democratic State Committee and denied their seats on the basis of the challenge statute.
Appellees are the Democratic State Committee and its chairman at the time this suit was instituted.
The State of Washington was served, as required by state law, with a copy of the complaint when this litigation began and notified of the appeal for the Washington Supreme Court.
It has not appeared at any stage in this proceeding.
The Democratic State Committee is the governing body of the Washington Democratic Party.
In 1970, the Washington Supreme Court in the case of King County Republican Central Committee versus Republican State Committee interpreted the authority of State Committees regulated by RCW 29.42.020.
The court ruled there that these Party State Committees have the inherent power to govern the statewide operations of parties as political organizations subject —
Between conventions.
Between, subject only to the overriding authority of the party state convention.
That is correct Mr. Justice Rehnquist they only govern between conventions.
Potter Stewart:
And they are defined and provided for by legislation enacted by the legislature of your state, are they?
Mr. Justice Stewart, that is correct.
And how long has that been true?
I’m not aware, Your Honor.
The statute authorizes that Party State Committees to call conventions and to plan them.
It specifically precludes them from setting rules to govern the operations of the convention.
They are creatures of statute, aren’t they, the State Committee?
I tell you I’m asking these questions, this is for me a puzzling case and I’m sure you’re going to be helpful in straightening me out.
But if a State Committee is a creature of statute and if it’s — performed some sort of statutory function in the State of Washington it’s one thing.
If it’s a private organization it’s another.
In other words, I suppose the Federal Trade Commission to take the national government, which is a creature of statute couldn’t all of a sudden have a meeting and say “We’re going to expand our membership to 15.”
And then have an argument with the Government of the United States saying that their rights of association had been impaired because the statute provided for a lesser number.
On the other hand, I suppose that it’s equally clear that a garden club could have a legitimate constitutional claim if the legislatures, federal or state said purported to begin to direct what its membership should be.
And this — these committees are creatures of statute, aren’t they?
Mr. Justice Stewart it is not freely —
They’re not voluntary self —
Let us begin.
— selecting organizations.
Democratic Party has been characterized in the King County Republican Central Committee case as a voluntary political association.
That association has the right to establish a governing body.
Whether the statute that regulates what that governing body does actually creates it, regulates it or as I believe the Court also said in that case, gives it statutory body in being may only be matters of terminology because it seems clear that this is a voluntary association and this regulation regulates the way in which it can do certain functions.
Well it creates it almost doesn’t it, it — the statute?
The 1970 decision —
It says what a State Committee is and what it shall be composed and then it gets its certain statutory duties in that —
The statement of the Washington —
— in that respect is not unlike any governmental agency.
The statement of the Washington Supreme Court interpreting this statute was that the Party State Committee had inherent power, not statutory power, but inherent power to govern the statewide operations of a party as a political organization.
And that is a quote from the court’s decision.
And how many other states are the — are political parties created and defined by state statute?
Mr. Justice Stewart, it is not clear to me whether they are created by the statute.
Or defined by state statute.
To appellant’s knowledge, they are regulated in approximately 32 states.
Twenty of those merely reference the existence of a State Committee and leave the composition to the party’s choice.
Four of them establish a minimum number but allow the remainder to be added by the party.
Fourteen, mandate that the party State Committee shall be composed on the basis of one person one vote.
Twelve, like Washington, set an absolute figure.
Well, aren’t almost all of them provide for elections of county delegates or representatives and then provided that the county delegates shall elect the State Committee?
Mr. Justice Rehnquist, not to my knowledge.
In a number of instances, congressional district organizations for example, are entitled to elect the representatives to the State Committee, or legislative district organizations.
Not all are county based, but most have a constituency of some kind like a county.
Mr. Goldmark —
The state’s Attorney General is noticeably absent from this litigation.
Has he ever been in it at all trying to defend the statute?
Mr. Justice Blackmun, he has not.
Appellants served the Attorney General with a copy of their complaint when the suit began, and notified him of the appeal to the Washington Supreme Court.
He is not here at any state —
And also the amended complaint.
That is correct Mr. Justice Marshall.
Just one more question, I didn’t hear your last sentence.
His what?
He was also served with a copy of our — of the appellant’s amended complaint and of the — and the notice of the appeal from the trial court to the Washington Supreme Court.
But he — then he has never appeared?
He has never appeared.
Then in the litigation at any stage?
That wasn’t what I wanted to ask.
Aside from that, is there any other marker that we can find that shows the interest that the state has in this statute?
Appellants are not aware of any Mr. Justice Marshall.
I would like to —
Did you serve him and submit to some state requirement that he must be served of a state statute’s constitutionality?
Mr. Justice Brennan, yes I did.
The Washington declaratory judgment statute requires the Attorney General to be served in any suit challenging the constitutionality of the state statute.
But leaves it to him whether or not he shall defend it?
That is correct, Your Honor.
I would like to add in further response to the question from Mr. Justice Stewart that even if the statute is the sole power that gives this committee being, it is clear that the functions, the statute requires that committee to perform are protected by freedom of association.
The statute authorizes and requires that committee to call and plan state party conventions.
That is an activity protected by freedom of association.
Well, that’s almost — that’s the question in this case.
The statute requires the Democratic State Committee to provide for election of delegates to the Democratic national — to a national party convention.
As this Court knows from the case of Cousins versus Wigoda, the power within a party to provide for the election of delegates to national convention is considered to be extraordinarily political and a vital matter within that party.
Now this statute which is quoted in your brief refers to the State Committee of each major political party.
I suppose elsewhere in the legislation, major political party is defined one way or the other isn’t it?
That is correct Mr. Justice Stewart.
A major political party is one that received 5% or more of the total vote cast in any proceeding statewide election.
In general too in your state?
That by definition.
The major benefit of being a major political party is that you are allowed to participate in the state’s primary system.
Minor political parties must hold state conventions in order to place their candidates in the general election ballot.
How are these parties structured before the statute was passed?
The record does not show, Mr. Chief Justice, I —
Does that the matter of which we could take judicial notice if we knew about it?
Mr. Chief Justice —
Tell me, was it a purely voluntary organization like that Parent-Teachers Association or a Garden Club as Justice Stewart suggested?
Just a voluntary —
That would be my assumption.
This statute, the State of Washington has had statutes regulating the composition of Party State Committees since 1907.
If the Democratic Party in Washington is like other political parties in American history, it was a voluntary political association up until the end of about the 1890’s when as the Court will recall, there were abuses enough in primary election systems and other areas to cause states to gradually bring political parties within their regulatory power.
But it’s almost a definition first of all, isn’t it?
Mr. Justice Stewart —
It states to me “of each major political party shall consist of”.
And there’s nothing in there that says that some other Democratic political voluntary organization isn’t entirely free to form itself and have whatever rules it wants to.
But the legislature has defined what a State Committee of each major political party is.
Mr. Justice Stewart, perhaps I could explain further the ruling the Court in this case with respect to the charter enacted by the Democratic Party, which may further shed light on your concern.
That charter was adopted by the Democratic State Convention in 1976.
The charter is contained in the party’s joint appendix, to establish the Democratic Party’s permanent statewide organization.
Article 4 (g) of that charter states that the Democratic State Committee shall be the governing party — body of the party while the convention is in adjournment.
In the decision below, the Washington Supreme Court held that the Democratic State Convention as the supreme party authority is implicitly empowered.
It did not say empowered by statute, but implicitly empowered to establish the party’s permanent statewide political organization, and to delegate authority within that organization.
Is it that the Democratic State Party?
That was what you just said.
The Democratic State Convention, meaning the 1976 adopted the charter.
Excuse me, Mr. Justice Rehnquist the Washington Supreme Court could’ve held that the Washington Democratic State Convention was implicitly empowered to establish the party’s permanent statewide organization, and to delegate authority within that organization.
And that is a relatively voluntary organization, I take it?
What’s an example supposing that the Democratic State Central Committee were on the outs with the Democratic State Party as represented by the state convention?
What sort of serious burdens could the Democratic State Committee put on the Democratic State Convention or party?
For example Your Honor, if the Democratic State Convention adopted a party platform which the State Committee then refused to implement that would be a very substantial burden on the party’s freedom of association.
Well how would a Democratic State Committee, composed such as this one is by a statute play a role in implanting the platform of the state party?
Because that is its inherent function.
It is as you’ll notice clause 5 of this statute authorizes the State Committee to perform all inherent functions of such organization.
And in the court in the decision below, the court held that the Democratic Party State Convention is implicitly empowered to establish its permanent statewide party organization and delegate authority within it, and that was the Statutory State Committee.
The court below held that the Democratic Party charter is binding authority on the Democratic State Committee absent valid state law to the contrary.
But nothing that the State Central Committee to do would prevent the members of the Democratic State Party, or the people who adhere to the platform without the convention from espousing their views as to how good a platform it was.
A political party is an organization established to influence policy and to win elections.
The only permanent statewide organization that members of the Democratic Party have, the only organization to carry this out between conventions is the Democratic State Committee.
If this committee does not implement the party platforms, raise money as the record shows it does, raises money for Democratic candidates and distributes money to those candidates.
If the committee does not perform these functions as the convention desires, that would be a very substantial burden —
Well can’t the party itself raise money quite apart from the activities of the State Central Committee?
The State Central Committee is under the common law of the state under this statute, and under the party’s charter its governing body.
If the Democratic Party attempted to establish some other organization, appellants have no doubt that it would be denounced as an illegal body.
Are you saying that the Supreme Court of Washington would tell you if the Democratic Party had a fund raising event in Seattle or Spokane and Tacoma that wasn’t sanctioned by the State Central Committee that you couldn’t have that event?
No, Mr. Justice Rehnquist, I’m not suggesting that.
I’m suggesting that this is the party’s permanent statewide organization.
It has the authority.
When the Democratic State Committee speaks on an issue, it speaks with the authority of the Democratic Party.
It elects the party’s chairman or elects that state chairman.
When he speaks, he speaks with the authority of the Democratic Party.
For the convention to establish some other body would not only be contrary to state law, it would be extraordinarily divisive with the party.
This is the group that leads this party.
Party members have no other organization to look to for this function.
The record is clear that this State Committee raises and distributes money to party candidates, passes resolutions and performs all the normal functions of the governing body of a political party.
Four of appellants were elected as members to serve and participate in its decisions and have been denied from doing so on the basis of this statutory requirement.
And there is no evidence anywhere in the record of any compelling state interest of the State of Washington that justifies the implicitness of such a burden.
Well isn’t it that the legislature has defined what the State Committee is and what it shall consist of.
Now, it’s not at all unusual for a legislature, state or federal, to set up advisory committees.
There’s a committee a generation — almost a generation ago set up by the federal government.
I don’t know if it was by legislation or resolution or what antitrust study group of which my brother Stevens was a member.
And I’m sure whatever it was whether it was legislation or a resolution or an executive order whatever it was, set up put the membership of that should be.
And now could that organization passed a meeting and said “We want to double our membership and have a member from every state.”
Once the government, legislative or executive had set it up and defined it?
I do not believe that that organization had its genesis in a voluntary private association.
There’s no indication that this one did either.
What we have before us is a legislative act defining what a State Committee is.
Your Honor, appellants believe as the Washington Supreme Court has said, and with the Court’s indulgence, I’ll read its statement that appears on page 5 of appellee’s brief in which the Washington Supreme Court stated the powers of the state committees, and stated their role in under this statute.
Representative of a permanent state party organization, those subordinate to the overriding power of the Party State Convention.
So the two were linked and the state convention has power over this body.
Is the state convention, I interrupt just for a moment, to say is that defined by statute anywhere?
It is not Mr. Justice Stewart.
Is a State Committee created by RCW 29.42.020, as a committee designed to function on a statewide level, it is necessarily invested with the inherent power to adopt rules and regulations for its own internal government, as well as to promulgate subject to the overriding authority of the state convention.
Intraparty rules governing statewide operations of the party as a political organization during the interval between conventions.
For this reason, appellants submit that state law regulates the activities of the Democratic State Committee.
It does not so create them as to strip them of any First Amendment protection.
John Paul Stevens:
Doesn’t everything you read say it’s all subject to what the convention dictates?
Yes, Mr. Justice Stevens.
Can’t the convention widely it wants to?
Yes, Mr. Justice Stevens and it has.
Well that’s — what?
And the convention has.
The convention in its charter —
We’ll take the platform example you gave in Mr. Justice Rehnquist’s we’re talking.
Say the central committee says it shall be A, and the convention says it shall be B.I
t’ll be B won’t it?
That is, Mr. Justice Stevens that is what the suit is about.
The convention said that State Committee shall be two persons per county.
Oh no, forgetting the membership.
You’re talking about if we’re getting who — on any issue except who shall comprise the membership of State Central Committee, wouldn’t the convention’s views prevail?
No, Mr. Justice Stevens.
And what example would they not prevail?
To give you an example of something that occurred during the pendency of this case.
And I refer to a matter outside the record, something contained in the minutes of the Democratic State Committee meeting, and I believe the Court may take judicial notice of this under the case of Texas Railway v. Pottorff 291 U.S., simply for the fact that the State Committee took such an action.
The Democratic State Party platform for a number of years has espoused, repealed state sales taxes on food and drugs.
At a meeting prior to a general election to vote on an initiative which would’ve accomplished this repeal, the State Committee adopted a resolution opposing it.
Now what remedy does the state convention have to bring the State Committee into line?
It doesn’t have to.
It just says the policy of the party shall be to favor it instead of opposing it.
And that controls under the statute.
If the state convention meets every two years, it has no power during the interim, except through the party’s representatives on the State Committee to see that its mandates are carried out.
Litigation, if the party cannot control the composition of its State Committee, so if the State Committee is responsive to the party it has no means except litigation, which courts properly are reluctant to bring.
Well it’s certainly — the situation is now that what a State Committee is, is defined by statute.
Now your remedy is to go to the legislature of the State of Washington and they have to have them either to repeal that statute or amend it.
But the whole definition of what is a State Committee is contained in the statute of your state.
But he says he can come here and give us then.
That is right.
The common law of the State of Washington gives the Democratic Party the authority to assign functions to its Sate Committee, the same State Committee regulated by the statute and to delegate authority to it.
It does not just regulate it, it’s created.
It’s defined by the statute, and so far as one can see, created by the statute.
Mr. Justice Stewart, I must respectfully disagree in terms of terminology, given the decisions of the Washington Supreme Court in the King County Republican case and in the decision of the court below.
It seems odd that the Democratic State Convention can ask its State Committee to do anything, as the court below ruled, except to establish the composition of the Party State Committee.
What if the Democratic State Convention, Mr. Goldmark, had said that the Democratic State Central Committee shall not be subject to any elections at all, but simply be appointed by the Democratic State Convention every two years.
And this Washington state legislature passed the statute saying “No, you’re going to have some elections.”
Would you feel you had stronger case?
In other words, the Democratic State Party was asserting its authority over the central committee by saying that instead of having its — the central committee having its members elected, they were going to be appointed by the state convention.
It seems to me if the convention, since it’s a large body, was going to appoint these people, it would have to elect them.
Well, but supposing that — supposing it said then that the chairman of the convention would appoint them?
It’s not clear to me whether that would be proper.
I do know in California for example, virtually every member of a part State Committee is appointed by the party officers.
For example, the governor appoints two members, the secretary of state appoints two members. This seems to be a common practice in a number of states.
Byron R. White:
What if the convention decided would be — initial committee should be composed of two members from each candidate, but the legislator then said “Oh no, the central committee should be selected on a population basis.”
Mr. Justice White, I thought about that question and it is not clear to me whether the state would have a compelling state interest enforcing a State Committee to be a portion on the basis of one person one vote.
In this case, the two-person per county requirement of this statute has already been superseded by a federal court injunction requiring the State Committee to vote on the basis of one person one vote whenever it exercises those electoral functions.
The federal court ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment required it to do so when it performed these electoral activities.
What is the status of that litigation?
That was a stipulated injunction between the Democratic State Committee and the parties in that case, that the State Committee only exercises its electoral functions on very rare occasions.
Well it seems like most party political troubles that via the most states that they settle within the convention politically in Washington they settle them in courts.
There is no way for the party to settle this in the court Mr. Justice Marshall, because it can’t control its own State Committee.
What the convention decides can only be settled by litigation because it has a State Committee whose composition it can not control.
That is the substantial burden on freedom of association.
So that’s the difference from other states where you’d vote it down and not politically?
Yes, Mr. Justice Marshall.
So we’ll be supervising the parties eventually.
Mr. Justice Marshall, it is appellants belief that if parties are free to decide how their governing bodies are composed, and exert power over them through the political process —
Then you go to the legislature and change the Act.
The fact that a legislature can remove a burden on freedom of association and provide that remedy does not excuse the substantial burden that is creating or justify them in prosecution as —
But wasn’t that Act passed by political parties?
Or they have nonpartisan elections in —
The state legislature is controlled by political parties.
It is a fact of political life that often legislatures and politicians in office are not exactly excited about having strong or responsive party organizations, and prefer to see one that’s built around individuals.
Oh, could the statute say this?“
The Party Central Committee shall be composed on the following ten people.”
And then list an accountant, a lawyer, an engineer and just list ten people.
It doesn’t say they have to be from anywhere, it just says “That’s going to be the governing body of the party.”
Would that be unconstitutional too?
Mr. Justice White, only if the party decided that if wish the governing body of some different composition.
Well it does.
It decides that it wants that it wants —
Two persons per county.
— it wants two lawyers and two — I suppose right down the list of them, two of everybody.
The party’s preference should control.
Well why is that?
Because it is a voluntary political association that has a right to decide for it self how a governing body shall be composed.
The composition of the party’s governing body can be as important to the success to that party as the choices it makes in its platform.
Well do you think — do you think the state can impose the duty on the party if the party doesn’t want to perform?
I don’t know Mr. Justice White.
Well, do you suppose it can prevent the party from doing something that the party wants to do?
If the party wishes to take a position on a particular issue, it certainly can do that.
If it wishes to conduct a voter educator program on a particular issue, I do not — really the state could prevent it from doing that absence some compelling state of which —
Well is there some law of Washington or under the Constitution that would — if you don’t like the rules about the Democratic Party or the Republican party in Washington, there’s no reason you can’t form another one.
Form another party and run it the way you want to.
This is not a realistic alternative for members of the Democratic Party because they’re permitted to its ideas.
I know because you — I know because you wanted to take advantage of the provision for getting candidates on the ballot.
We are not, Mr. Justice White, taking advantages of provisions for getting candidates on the ballot.
The functions performed by this committee exclusive of those activities are themselves calling and planning state conventions, electing delegates to national conventions are all protected by freedom of association under this Court’s prior decisions.
Mr. Goldmark, I want to ask you one question before you sit down.
If I understand your position correctly, if you just reverse the positions in this case and said you wanted the just two recommend per county or two representatives per county, and the others on the state statute required the legislative representation.
You’d say that was the statute would be equally unconstitutional?
And is it your position then that no matter what the requirement of the statute is, it would be subject to this attack under the First Amendment?
As I indicated in the question to Mr. Justice White, the state may have a compelling state interest in requiring political party state committees to be a portion on the basis of one person one vote.
Otherwise, I can conceive of no other compelling —
One party member per — I mean, one voting party member or one voter — I mean what —
So that the constituency is a State Committee members are composed of approximate equal members of party members or the electorate.
That would be a compelling state interest for having every county represented would not be a compelling state interest?
Yes, Mr. Justice Stevens, I said it might.
Mr. Brink.
Daniel P. Brink:
Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please this Court.
I think to understand the question, we do have to go back into the background of the system, the political structure of the State of Washington and the governmental structure.
It’s been of — we’re still fairly young state, but of some 70 years duration has there been this structure of 39 counties with 39 separate governments each having their own elected representatives, excuse me, legislative executive in judicial branches.
They elect their own county judges, the county commissioners and executives, prosecuting attorneys, county clerks and so on down the line.
The state has authorized by a section just one following this, and in the same basic enabling Act in 1907, the existence of county committees which are composed of precinct committee men elected in each county.
These organizations of course parallel the county governments.
Then the county committee of each county selects two members to the State Committee.
It originally was just one in 1907, and 1927 as I recall, they added the rights of one man or/and one woman from each county.
Now, when you say “they” is that the state legislature?
The state legislature, yes Your Honor.
The powers of the county committee are not restricted by statute.
And when it is stated here that there can be no other organization speaking for the Democratic party, that is simply not true.
Each county speaks for itself and sometimes most vociferously and they’re not always in concert.
However, the state charter attempted to put the counties in line a little bit and did say that they do have a limitation upon them, and that is that they should attempt at least to follow the policy set forth in the national charter, the state — excuse me, the national platform, the state platform and the county platform.
The State Committee as I said was — is elected by the — composed of these people from the county committees, two from each, and just provides a skeleton of the state party and as an administrative, not an electoral and not a policy making body.
The policy making is reserved to the state convention.
The charter itself requires the State Committee to follow the policies set forth by the state convention and by the state charter.
It’s important to understand that the functions of the State Committee are relatively limited.
We — I’d like to talk to you about what it does and what it does not do. It does not do a lot of the things represented by counsel.
By statute, it comes into being every —
May I ask this?
Are its powers limited to the five specified in the statute?
Its powers, by statute, are limited to those.
However it has been assigned additional functions by the state convention.
And in further answer to that Your Honor, the state convention can of course assign additional committees to do additional things.
The state convention is all powerful in the view of the Washington State Supreme Court in any event.
What do you think, Mr. Brink, is the federal issue involved in this case?
I do not believe there to be a federal issue because I do not believe there to be a — an infringement at all upon anybody’s rights to associate.
The State Committee does not nominate candidates.
It does not even endorse candidates.
It does not participate in the election process, it simply the administrative function to try to glue these 39 counties together to provide communication one to the other.
It is our position as appellees that there is no issue under the First Amendment.
But you make your case — do you make your case, I’ll put it that way, if you demonstrate to us that there is no federal issue involved in the case?
That it’s a matter for the state legislature and people of Washington?
Mr. Chief Justice that is of course our position.
Well now, why not focus sharply on that?
I will attempt to.
The state legislature has been requested in the past on several occasions in the last 10 years to change this composition make up of the State Committee.
This legislature which is made up by one man one vote basis has declined to do so.
In fact, it hasn’t even considered the — been strongly enough to pass from one house to the other.
I don’t know how I can answer you question further if you —
Well is there anything in the Washington law that would prevent the convention from forming a committee whatever you wanted it do to perform all the functions that the convention wanted it to perform except the ones that the statute says the central committee has to perform?
I agree, Your Honor.
I think that is correct that they can do so that they could form a committee for fund raising.
They could form a —
And so that in so far as — so that you think the issue really is here whether or not it’s constitutional for the state to say that the committee that — that the central committee that is to perform these five functions have to be two from each county?
That’s the — you think that’s the issue?
If the legislature said it should be two from each county and —
For it to perform these particular functions.
Yes, just these limited functions.
That does not impinge upon anybody’s rights of association or expression.
I understand you say that’s really the only issue that’s here.
That is to us the only issue that is here.
Because the party could provide for — under the statute that the party could have all the other functions that the State Committee might be given to perform.
It could be assigned to another committee.
It can and in fact they have set up a judicial committee by the charter.
They did not set up the separate finance committee that has —
Well Mr. Brink, this category five perform all functions inherent in such an organization.
How broad is that?
That is not very broad in view of the King County Republican case in which the Washington State Supreme Court said that subject to the overriding power of the state convention.
So I suspect the legislature went and said inherent just saying “Well, do whatever you can.”
Even the exercise of 1, 2, 3 and 4 under the case you mentioned, the subject to the overriding authority of the convention?
Absolutely, that is the holding of the Washington State Supreme Court back at 1971 in King County Republican case.
I — this Court has not so far, as we can tell, gone so far —
So your — you say that under this — under the Washington law, the — while there must be a central committee with two members from each county, the convention could remove — could say if the committee has no functions?
They could theoretically do that in our view.
And will set up another committee to do all the things they want them to do, and will have this committee composed any way they wanted to?
Right, but they must allow the State Central Committee as set up by statute to exist to attempt to coordinate at least the election procedures of the 39 different counties and their own county committees.
And it does provide an element of stability between conventions.
It is there.
It is official.
The Secretary of State knows he can call up the State Chairman or the — of either party and plan ahead for conventions.
This is the most important function, seems to me, of the State Committee.
And that is to initiate the election procedures by calling conventions, setting dates, heading the precinct committee men and their various precincts.
They set the dates for precinct caucuses, for county caucuses and then for the state convention.
But as also limited by statute, they can’t tell the state convention what to do in its own convention.
The case that this Court has cited to of Kasper versus Pontikes and Cousins versus Wigoda are just so far and away from what we’re involved in here.
Those were — Cousins versus Wigoda involved a national political party convention and as to which delegation from the State of Illinois should be seated, the one that was elected under the state law or the one that was selected in accordance with rules of the national convention.
And the state did attempt to interfere and this Court said it was an interference.
But that was a national convention case.
The Court was very concerned and well it should be, it’s of importance to all parties, all citizens that this convention be held without interference from 50 states.
It’s also, in the case of Kasper versus Pontikes, that was a nomination case and a state little again from the State of Illinois, and where an Illinois statute prevented appellee from voting in the Democratic primary because she had within 23 months previous, voted in a Republican primary.
Now the Washington State Committee does not affect at all primary elections.
It does not permit, prevent, deprived anyone from participating in primary or general elections.
The Ripon Society case is simply not in point again.
A national convention case in which the Republican — and an also was a Fourteenth Amendment case.
There’s no Fourteenth Amendment issue here nor is there one raised here.
The — assuming that there would be any kind of a burden upon the appellants, there is a state interest in maintaining the stability and integrity and continuity of the major political parties in the state.
To become a major political party in Washington State by getting 10% of the vote at the last general election, and then if the new party, new major party is still in being it can qualify for the primary ballot without a separate convention.
As a matter of fact, the only — I think the only time we had a party that achieved this was the Progressive Party back in 1948, and then of course by the year 1950, nobody was interested to pick up the fact that they were a major party.
So they — we have a lot of minor parties that come and go and a lot of them on the ballot.
What party was that in 1948?
Progressive Party, Your Honor.
Progressive.
They got enough vote to qualify for the next time.
Didn’t follow through.
The State Committee is not the policy maker, but it is important that it retain communications and maintain communications between these county organizations who are all out speaking for their selves — themselves as well.
It has the same constituency as those county committees.
We suggest the statute is narrowly drawn and serves a state interest to maintain this continuity of the major parties.
It is our suggestion that the Court affirm the Washington State Supreme Court.
Thank you Mr. Brink.
Do you have anything further Mr. Goldmark?
You have about three minutes remaining.
This case cannot be distinguished from Cousins versus Wigoda.
There, this Court held that a party’s choice and the composition of its higher governing body was a choice protected by freedom of association.
The matter there was regulated by state law, yet the Court hold — held that the State of Illinois could not interfere with the delegates chosen by the party to attend the Democratic National Convention, or more importantly a state caucus held to elect members to the Democratic National Committee.
And this Court said that that membership in that state caucus was protected by freedom of association because the representatives elected to the Democratic National Committee would be involved in planning the next Democratic National Convention.
Didn’t the Illinois court there enjoin those representatives from presenting themselves as delegates to the national convention?
Yes, Mr. Justice Rehnquist and that is the effect of this statute.
It has prevented four of appellants from presenting themselves to the State Committee in participating in its deliberations.
So you must have to say that the State Central Committee created by a statue in Washington is of the same political and associational significance as the Democratic or Republican National Convention sitting every four years to choose a presidential candidate?
It is of the same significance for freedom of association.
The fact that a national party convention was involved in Cousins, means that states may have different interests in regulating.
A state may not have an interest in regulating a national party convention or its membership, whereas it may in regulating participation in state party matters, but both are protected.
The difference in the compelling interest does not relate that to strip away the First Amendment protection of the association of party members.
And Cousins did hold that stating or state interference in a state party caucus to choose representatives to the Democratic National Committee was protected.
Thank you gentlemen.
The case is submitted.
Williams v. Rhodes
Baker v. Carr
City of Mobile v. Bolden – Oral Argument – March 19, 1979
Cousins v. Wigoda – Oral Argument – November 11, 1974
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538479
|
__label__wiki
| 0.727679
| 0.727679
|
Image From Flickr licensed under CC BY 2.0
Medieval Life in Wisconsin
World History I Middle Ages Culture
Several times a year, Americans around the country recreate the kind of medieval warfare that occurred in the 1600s. This public radio story describes a medieval ‘war’ put on in Wisconsin by the SCA - the Society for Creative Anachronism. After creating their own weapons and armor, participants gather by the thousands to do battle. You will hear what it sounds and feels like to be part of one of these recreated battles.
The Art of Michelangelo
In 2013, a rare collection of paintings by Michelangelo was on display at the Muscarelle Museum at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. This audio story reflects on Michelangelo's life and looks at what makes his work so special. It focuses on the drawing of Cleopatra, which depicts her in two ways, beautiful and ugly, and well as some of his other captivating pieces. Listen to learn more about Michelangelo's life, his art, and why his work remains inspirational to many people today.
Joan of Arc’s Influence Still Shines Today
Joan of Arc was an uneducated girl who followed the voices of angels and worked to free France from England’s domination. When she was captured by the English, she was burned at the stake. Later she was pronounced a Catholic Saint. Listen to learn how her religious and political legacy still inspire French politicians today.
Understanding the Amish and Technology
The Amish are a Christian religious group who are known for their isolation and rejection of modern technology. Popular culture has shaped our understanding of the Amish community, from the Harrison Ford movie Witness to TLC’s show Breaking Amish. But this lens on the Amish doesn’t show the complexities of their religious culture. Listen to learn more about the Amish and their complicated but thoughtful relationship with technology.
Magna Carta's Influence on U.S. Law and Government
In Medieval England, British King John was at war with a group of English Barons because he extracted money from them to fight a war with France. To appease the Barons, the king wrote the Magna Carta, which essentially says the King cannot arbitrarily collect taxes from Barons. This revolutionary document, signed in 1215, limited the power of the monarchy and outlined the basic principles of the modern judicial system. The Pope invalidated the document just ten weeks later but its ideas have lived on and served as the basis of portions of the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. Listen to learn how the British library celebrated the 800th anniversary of this revolutionary document.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538482
|
__label__wiki
| 0.733746
| 0.733746
|
Union of Nigerian Nationals in Norway
Seminar med Professor Lucy Smith og Dr. Chika Unigwe
fredag 8. oktober 2010, kl. 18:00
Sal: Nedjma
Arrangør: Union of Nigerian Nationals in Norway
I anledning markeringen av Nigerias 50-årsjubileum for uavhengighet arrangeres Union of Nigerian Nationals in Norway seminar på Litteraturhuset. Foredragsholdere er Professor Lucy Smith og Dr. Chika Unigwe.
1. Foreldremyndighet og barnerett (Parental Authority and Children`s Rights) (ved Professor Lucy Smith)
2. Nigeria’s Image in the West. Prejudices and Stereotypes against Nigerians: The Causes and Possible Solutions (ved Dr. Chika Unigwe)
3. anThe Challenges of Disabled Persons d Suggestions on How to Improve Their Conditions (av Mr. Rashead Olaiwola Ajetumobi)
4. Panel Diskusjon: Nigeria at 50: A critical Assessment of the Problems, Achievements and the Future of the Nation. (Panelists: Dr. Chika Unigwe, Dr. Ahams Adoni, Alhaji Rasaki Akinyemi, Mrs. Mary Adahada, Chief (Sir) Theo Oparaebo. Moderator: Dr. Toby Uche Mbamalu)
About Professor Lucy Smith
Professor Lucy Smith is a renowned scholar and an authority in the field of Human Rights. She has special interest in Children`s Rights and has a lot of publications to her credit. She is going to speak on the topic: "Parental Authority and Children`s Rights". Professor Lucy Smith was the rector of the University of Oslo from 1993 to 1998. She is Norway’s first female full professor of law. She is now emeritus professor of law at the University of Oslo.
Professor Lucy Smith has served as the vice-president of the European University Association; Chairperson, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights; Member, U.N. Human Rights Commission; Adviser to UNICEF, Norway; Adviser to the Ombudsman for Children in Norway; Member of the Norwegian Academy of Letters; Member of the Board of the Red Cross Contact Telephone for Children in Norway, Member of the Advisory Board of the Institute on Family and Neighbourhood Life, Clemson University, South Carolina, United States of America, among others.
Professor Lucy Smith is a recipient of the Commander of St. Olav`s Order which is an honour bestowed on men and women of distinction by the King of Norway. She has been honoured with the Order of the Northern Star by the Swedish Authority and with an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Copenhagen.
About Dr. Chika Unigwe
Dr. Chika Unigwe is a Nigerian-born author based in Belgium. She was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and now lives in Turnhout, Belgium,with her husband and four children. She holds a BA degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, an MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and a PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands.
Chika Unigwe is the author of fiction, poetry, articles and educational material. She won the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition for her story "Borrowed Smile", a Commonwealth Short Story Award for "Weathered Smiles" and a Flemish literary prize for "De Smaak van Sneeuw", her first short story written in Dutch. "The Secret", another of her short pieces, was nominated for the 2004 Caine Prize. She was the recipient of a 2007 Unesco-Aschberg fellowship for creative writing, and of a 2009 Rockefeller Foundation fellowship for creative writing.
Chika Unigwe’s stories have been broadcast on BBC World Service, Radio Nigeria, and other Commonwealth Radio Stations. Her first novel, De Feniks, was published in Dutch in September 2005; it is the first book of fiction written by a Flemish author of African origin. Her second novel, On Black Sisters Street was recently recommended by Tony Blair’s former director of communications and strategy, Alastair Campbell, who described the novel as ""Best novel so far read this summer". Bernardine Evaristo described the Novel as "an important and accomplished novel that leaves a strong aftertaste. Unigwe gives voice to those who are voiceless, fleshes out the stories of those who offer themselves as meat for sale, and bestows dignity on those who are stripped off it".
Dr. Chika Unigwe will speak on the topic: "Nigeria`s Image in the West. Prejudices and Stereotypes Against Nigerians: The Causes and Possible Solutions".
18:00 -18:15 Registration, Welcome and general information
18:15 – 18.30 Short speech by the Chairman of Nigeria at 50 Committee and the President of the Union of Nigeria Nationals.
18:30 – 19.00 Introduction of the first guest speaker, Professor (Mrs.) Lucy Smith, and presentation of her speech: Parental Authority and Children`s Rights.
19: 10 – 19:40 Introduction of the second guest speaker, Dr. Chika Unigwe, and presentation of her speech: Nigeria`s Image in the West. Prejudices and Stereotypes against Nigerians: the Causes and Possible Solutions.
19:45 – 20:00 15 Minutes Break and light refreshments
20:00 – 20:15 Introduction of the third speaker, Mr. Rashead Olaiwola Ajetumobi, and presentation of his speech The Challenges of Disabled Persons and Suggestions on How to Improve Their Conditions.
20:20 – 21:20 PANEL DISCUSSION: Nigeria at 50: A critical Assessment of the Problems, Achievements and the Future of the Nation. Panelists: Dr. Chika Adigwe, Dr. Ahams Adoni, Alhaji Rasaki Akinyemi, Mrs. Mary Adahada, Chief (Sir) Theo Oparaebo. Moderator: Dr. Toby Uche Mbamalu)
21:20 – 21:30 SUMMARY AND CLOSING REMARKS
Tekst: Toby Uche Mbamalu. For spørsmål ta kontakt med Toby Uche Mbamalu (90238327) email: tobymbamalu@gmail.com.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538483
|
__label__wiki
| 0.948521
| 0.948521
|
Melissa G Reinberg
Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown University; Mediator
Edited by System over 5 years ago History
A.B., Cornell; J.D, Harvard; LL.M., Georgetown. Professor Reinberg, who joined the adjunct faculty in 2001, currently serves as a mediator with...
A.B., Cornell; J.D, Harvard; LL.M., Georgetown. Professor Reinberg, who joined the adjunct faculty in 2001, currently serves as a mediator with the D.C. Superior Court's Multi-Door Dispute Resolution Division, where she mediates small claims and family cases. She also serves as a mediator with the Community Dispute Resolution Center in D.C., where she mediates criminal and police misconduct cases.
From 1995 to 2000, Professor Reinberg was the Legal Director of the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, where she managed and directed the organization's legal operations and trained and supervised the attorneys in all aspects of individual and impact case development and trial preparation in family, housing, public benefits, and disability cases. Prior to working at the Legal Aid Society, Professor Reinberg was a staff attorney at the Neighborhood Legal Services Program in D.C. and a Prettyman Fellow at Georgetown University Law Center's Juvenile Justice Clinic.
Professor Reinberg has taught negotiation and mediation to attorneys and judges through the Harvard Negotiation Project's Program of Instruction for Lawyers and Conflict Management, Inc., in Cambridge, MA, and to attorneys in the District of Columbia. She has served on several D.C. Bar projects, including the D.C. Bar Landlord and Tenant Task Force and the D.C. Bar Task Force on Children at Risk.
Professor Reinberg has also taught at many D.C. Bar and D.C. Superior Court training programs and has been a guest lecturer at American University's Washington College of Law and a guest lecturer and member of the adjunct faculty at George Washington University School of Law.
more » « less
Georgetown University Law Center One of the professional graduate schools of Georgetown University
• Adjunct Professor of Law ('01→?)
• LLM
• JD
Cornell University Mixed Public/Private University in Ithaca, NY
Donation/Grant Recipients
Barack Obama 44th President of the United States
• 14 contributions · 11,600 USD ('07→'12)
Democratic National Committee governing body for the U.S. Democratic Party
• 11 contributions · 5,500 USD ('04→'12)
John Kerry 68th US Secretary of State, Senator from Massachusetts
• 1 contribution · 500 USD ('04)
Tim Kaine US Senator from Virginia (2013-present); former Governor of Virginia; former candidate for US VP
Glenn Ivey
Kristin Cabral
Paul Spyros Sarbanes US Representative and Senator from Maryland
Pat Miles
John Sarbanes US Representative from Maryland
Tom Daschle Lobbyist. Former US Representative and Senator from South Dakota
Types Person, Academic
Most Politically Active American Academics (2015)
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538484
|
__label__cc
| 0.645728
| 0.354272
|
Tour Peru The Land of The Inca's
By Heather Boag
Peru is a nation filled with natural beauty and mystical charm. These Tours of Peru let you see Peru as it was meant to be seen.
Known as the “Land of the Incas,” because it was once home to the powerful Inca Empire, Peru was conquered and colonialized by Spain in the 1500's. A nation filled with great natural beauty and mystical charm there are many top vacation destinations in Peru.
Peru’s ancient history makes it home to a variety of astonishing archaeological remains and Spanish colonial architecture. This fact, combined with the spectacular Andes Mountain range which makes up 40% of the country’s land mass makes Peru somewhere that should be on your travel bucket list.
Despite its natural beauty and rich cultural tradition, Peru used to be one of the most backward countries in Latin America. In recent years, its economy has improved and it has become more prosperous. This has become fantastic news for travelers, which has led to increased transportation and accommodation options for those who want to explore Peru. Take advantage of this and take the trip to Peru. Here are a few of the top vacation hotspots in Peru.
Machu Picchu is a national landmark and by far one of the top vacation hotspots in Peru. This Incan citadel perched high up in the Andes Mountains is almost 8,000 ft. above sea level. The Incas built this stone estate around 1450, only to abandon it about a century later. While it is open year-round, October-April is the official rainy season, so you might want to avoid going during those times. It is recommended to stay in Machu Picchu Pueblo, the nearest town to Machu Picchu for a night or two, where you can get used to low altitude before exploring Machu Picchu.
Located on Peru’s northern coast, the small town of Mancora features the best sandy beach in the country, as it stretches for several miles. The region is full of high-end resorts, world-class restaurants and hot night clubs. The beach has a reputation throughout South America for being a popular year-round surfing destinations because both summer and winter swells create perfect wave conditions no matter when you visit.
This second most populous metropolitan area of Peru is known as the “City of Everlasting Spring” and contains many examples of colonial and religious architecture. Its grand colonial streets look like they haven’t changed in hundreds of years. Its main attraction, however, is its nearby ancient ruins. These include Chimú, capital of Chan Chan, which was the largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas.
Huanchaco
Located approximately 8 miles outside of Trujillo is the picturesque beachside town of Huanchaco, famous for its surf and Caballitos de torora, traditional reed watercraft traditionally used by Peruvian fisherman. Huanchaco’s beautiful scenery and low key vibe has cemented it as one of the top vacation hotspots in Peru. Its surfing is so legendary that it was approved as a World Surfing Reserve in 2012, making it the first Latin American town with that distinction and only the fifth in the world.
Located on the border between Peru and Bolivia, high up in the Andes Mountains, Lake Titicaca is one of South America’s largest lakes and is the highest navigable lake in the world, with a surface elevation of 12,507 feet. According to Andean tradition, Lake Titicaca is the birthplace of the sun and it’s easy to believe, as the region’s famous blue skies shimmer. It is also famous for its floating reed islands, home to the Uros Tribe which pre-dates the Incan civilization.
Nazca Desert
The Nazca Desert, located along the northern Pacific coast on a high arid plateau. This is the site of the Nazca Lines. Created between 200 BC and 700 AD, these ancient figures drawn in the sand range from spiders, monkeys, lizards and human figures. You can arrange a Cessena tour from the town of Nazca to see the lines from a bird’s eye view or take a look from a viewing tower, about four staircases high.
Approximately 60% of Peru is covered by dense tropical rainforest and is defined by its diverse biodiversity. Peru has the largest number of bird species in the world and the third-largest number of mammals. The Amazon Bain is Peru’s lease inhabited area, but for those looking for a more adventurous getaway, you can hire a cruise boat, complete with local guide, to see the wonders of this rich natural playground.
Founded in 1535 by the Spanish conquistador Franscico Pizarro, Peru’s capital and largest city of Lima offers a rich mix of history, culture and entertainment unmatched anywhere else in the country. Boasting such historic landmarks as The National University of San Marcos, the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas and The Walls of Lima, built between 1684-1687, which were built to defend Lima from exterior attacks, it’s no wonder the city center of Lima is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A popular stop for tourists to Machu Picchu, Cusco, the historic capital of the Inca Empire is truly a city rich in history. Cusco acts as a living museum as it contains many well-preserved structures dating back to Inca and Spanish colonial times. The city’s main square, the Plaza de Armas, is an ideal place to spend an afternoon with a variety of restaurants, cafes, and boutiques.
Surrounded by three spectacular volcanoes in the country’s Southern Coastal Region, Arequipa is one of the top vacation hotspots in Peru. The second largest city in the country, “The White City” is a modern metropolis that showcases Peru’s mix of indigenous and Spanish colonial cultures. The 215,000-square-foot Santa Catalina Monastary is the focal point of the city and acts like a city within a city, featuring fountains and cobblestone streets. Arequipa is also highly regarded for its food scene, with some of Peru’s best restaurants as it is most famous for its picanterias, which are local eateries serving traditional Andean cuisine such as Adobo.
Comment on Tour Peru The Land of The Inca's
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538488
|
__label__wiki
| 0.992746
| 0.992746
|
Robert De Niro replaces James Gandolfini in HBO's 'Criminal Justice'
Hollywood star Robert De Niro has inherited a role initially intended for the "Sopranos" star, who died in June, Deadline.com reports.
(AFP) Hollywood star Robert De Niro has inherited a role initially intended for the "Sopranos" star, who died in June, Deadline.com reports.
Following the sudden death of James Gandolfini, HBO was left with a gap in the cast of "Criminal Justice," a forthcoming miniseries in seven episodes. In the end, the pay channel has settled on no less than Hollywood legend Robert De Niro to fill the actor's shoes.
De Niro will headline the series in the role of a New York lawyer representing a young Pakistani man accused of murder.
Penned by Richard Price ("The Color of Money," "The Wire") and directed by Steven Zaillian, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind "Schindler's List," "Criminal Justice" is an adaptation of a UK series that aired on BBC One in 2008 and 2009. Each five-episode season of the British series followed one suspect's experience in the UK justice system, from arrest to trial.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538490
|
__label__wiki
| 0.816012
| 0.816012
|
[[File:DeFede.jpg|thumb|Joseph DeFede]] '''Joseph "Little Joe" DeFede''' (born 1934) is a New York City mobster and former acting boss of the [[Lucchese crime family]] who eventually turned informant. == Early years == Born in 1934, DeFede grew up in the Queens borough of New York City. In his early days, he operated a hot dog vendor truck in Coney Island, Brooklyn, running numbers rackets on the side. A close friend and handball partner of Lucchese leader [[Vittorio Amuso]], DeFede was inducted into the family in 1986 after Amuso became boss. DeFede's rise and fall in the New York mob can all be attributed to Amuso. DeFede drove a Cadillac and owned three race horses that he stabled at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. DeFede was married twice, and is currently wed to his second wife Nancy who entered the Witness Protection Program with him. The couple receive an annual income of $30,000 a year from Nancy's pension and a modest annuity provided by the U.S. Marshals Service. == Acting Boss == In 1994, [[Vittorio Amuso]] was convicted of federal racketeering and murder charges and sent to prison for life. Amuso then named DeFede his acting boss to replace [[Alphonse D' Arco]], who had become a government witness. Amuso chose DeFede because he needed a weaker and more controllable man at the top. On April 28, 1998, DeFede was indicted on nine counts of racketeering stemming from his supervision of the family rackets in New York's Garment District from 1991 to 1996. The prosecution reported that the Lucchese family had been grossing $40,000 per month from Garment District businesses since the mid-1980s. In December 1998, DeFede pleaded guilty to the charges and received five years in prison. He was released in 2002. == Informant == During the late 90's, Amuso's relationship with DeFede began to sour. Suspecting that DeFede was hiding money from the family, Amuso replaced him as acting boss with [[Steven Crea]], head of the family's powerful Bronx faction. Once Crea took over, family profits rose enormously. That was enough to convince Amuso that DeFede had been skimming profits; Amuso reportedly decided to have him murdered. On February 5, 2002, DeFede was released from a Lexington, Kentucky prison medical center. Having heard of Amuso's plans to kill him, DeFede immediately became a government informant. DeFede explained the Garment District rackets and the protection rackets in Howard Beach, Queens. He also provided information leading to the convictions of [[Steven Crea]], [[Louis Daidone]], [[Dominic Truscello]], Joseph Tangorra, [[Anthony Baratta]], and a number of family captains, soldiers and associates. While testifying against Gambino crime family boss [[Peter Gotti]], DeFede exclaimed that all he made during his reign as acting boss was $1,014,000, or approximately $250,000 per year. DeFede also estimated that a low ranking family soldier would make on average $50,000 per year. DeFede entered and left the federal Witness Protection Program. He now lives in Florida under an assumed name. He and his wife reportedly live on $30,000 a year, their assets having been depleted by legal bills and the cost of creating new identities. [[Category:Lucchese Crime Family]]
Return to Joseph DeFede.
Retrieved from "https://mafia.wikia.org/wiki/Joseph_DeFede"
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538491
|
__label__wiki
| 0.94794
| 0.94794
|
Crystal Monee Hall Goes Indie | East Bay Express
Music » Music Feature
Two Years After Rent, Crystal Monee Hall Goes Indie
The ex-Broadway singer moves to Oakland and launches her solo career.
by Rachel Swan
Joseph Schell Crystal Monee Hall.
Crystal Monee Hall performs her CD release concerts on Friday and Saturday, June 18 & 19, at the Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko (222 Mason St., San Francisco). 10:15 p.m., $20-$30. CrystalMoneeHall.com
Crystal Monee Hall did everything in reverse. She landed a teaching job right out of college, but quit within the first month of school. Hall had gotten her Masters in Teaching at University of Virginia, expecting to either be a school marm or the next editor of Essence magazine. Instead, she went off to New York and joined the cast of Rent. After eight years on Broadway, Hall moved again, this time to the East Bay in the hope of furthering her career. She's the first to admit that on the surface, it didn't make much sense. All the tangible weight of the music industry lies on the East Coast, particularly if you're trained in theater or cabaret.
But Hall didn't want to croon "And I'm Telling You" or "Seasons of Love" for the rest of her life. She wanted to pick up a guitar, shake out her dreadlocks, and sing at jam sessions. And, so far, the move has paid off.
In hindsight, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Hall became a folk singer. She honed her skills at Greensboro Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia, singing three-part harmonies with her mother and brother. She grew up listening to all the soul and gospel royalty: The Clark Sisters, Odetta, Donny Hathaway, Aretha Franklin, The Pace Sisters, Tracy Chapman, Meshell Ndegeocello, anyone with the surname "Hawkins." Hall gravitated to music with warm, full chords and tightly overlaid vocals. She liked for a singer to mean every word. She would eventually use her gospel upbringing for secular means, belting out songs about sex and seduction. "I'm religious and spiritual," she said, "but now I emphasize the 'spiritual' over the 'religious.'"
Hall launched her singing career on October 1, 2002, the day of her 23rd birthday. She'd just accepted a job teaching English and drama at a high school in Charlottesville. "It was cushy, it was cool, it was a new," Hall said. "But I had to quit. ... On my birthday I walked into the principal's office and was like, 'I'm sorry, I have to go. I really wanna sing.'" Within two months she moved to New York, began auditioning, and ultimately replaced Jennifer Hudson on a Disney cruise ship. "It was her last gig before American Idol," Hall recalled. "She was very sweet. We haven't talked since, but I imagine she's still very sweet."
Cruise-line gigs are a form of dues-paying for some musicians. You're at sea for two-week stretches at a time. "We were coming to port two days a week, and we would get to go to Walmart," said Hall. "We'd have to be back in the boat at three o'clock." Cast members did full-scale productions of Hercules (based on the Disney film), Disney Dreams, and a new show called The Golden Mickeys (a spinoff of the Golden Globes). Hall wore a seven-pound wig and teetered around the stage in three-inch platform heels. She started dreading her hair on the advice of one of the ship stylists. "I had a really big fro at that time," said the singer. "You know on cruise ships, they have the island women who braid hair and stuff. One of them had these beautiful locks. She was like, 'You should just let me lock your hair, because I know that wig is hot.'"
Cavorting around a sea vessel in big heels and bigger hair helped prepare Hall for a four-year run with Rent. She started as a "swing," or fill-in, and went on to play Joanne, the lover of bisexual performance artist Maureen Johnson. (Joanne sings "We're Okay"). After Rent closed in 2008, Hall spent a year touring with fellow cabaret artist Spencer Day. She picked up guitar and started writing songs. They were earthier than the stuff she was singing on Broadway, and a bit closer — in spirit, at least — to the church music of her youth. Hall found that she wasn't just a big-voiced belter. In person she's surprisingly demure and careful with words. She wears sneakers and pink, trapezoidal glasses. She relies on other people to talk up her career.
"Most artists, they go to New York, and they want to land the best gig in the city, which is Broadway, and when you land one of the lead roles in Rent, you're there," said Hall's current manager Ben Yonas, who also works with Jazz Mafia and DJ Amp Live. Yonas met Hall about three years ago at Bushwick Studios in Brooklyn. Hall was singing background for her friend Shayna Steele, who starred in the Broadway production of Hairspray. "In New York, there's this circle of amazing vocalists who all have roles on Broadway," said Yonas, explaining that Steele and Hall were close friends. He said he fell in love with Hall during the mic check. "She does this little harmony thing, where she sings 'Hello, Hello, Hello.' It was so in tune. It was so beautiful."
It was partly at Yonas' behest that Hall moved to the West Coast. But not completely. She came out here for the Fillmore Jazz Festival last summer, and relocated permanently in January. In November Hall recorded her new album, River Train, over a two-day session at Berkeley's Fantasy Studios. Yonas commandeered the rhythm section: Scott Amendola on drums, John Evans on bass, Carl Wheeler on keys, and Errol Cooney on guitar. Hall wrote or co-wrote most songs on the album, save for her cover of Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" (her version is a lean blues). "Work Me Over" is a brittle love ballad sung over dry blues guitar. "Siren" is traditional roots-rock. The title track sounds like an old spiritual. Amendola plays a shaker. Hall sings in a style that recalls protest singers of the Sixties and Seventies: liquid, chillingly pure, full of vibrato without being ostentatious. She draws out all the long vowels and elides all the hard consonants. She vamps on the chorus, then allows the notes to evaporate. Her voice bristles, but she isn't afraid of empty space.
On the East Coast, Hall was known as "one of those Broadway chicks." Now she's an indie artist muscling for gigs. She directs the choir every Sunday at Oakland's Plymouth United Church of Christ, and sings with Jazz Mafia's Brass, Bows, & Beats Hip-Hop Symphony. She performs at Cheeseboard Pizza, sings most Tuesday nights at the Chop Bar in Jack London Square, and occasionally graces small arts spaces in Oakland, where audience members drink tea from the bar and sit on folding chairs. For Hall, that's not a regression. "I think the Bay will do really well by you," she said over a croissant sandwich at Oakland's Cafe Madrid. "In New York it's so different, because it seems like there are all these boxes, she said. "Here are the girls of this particular type, you know what I'm saying? Here are the big-belter girls. You have Dorothies and you Evilenes. Out here people can be whatever you wanna be."
Yonas likes that aura of rugged independence, even though he thinks that Hall undersells herself as a singer. Yes, she's an ex-Broadway chick who chose to go it alone. But, Yonas said, she won't be alone for long.
Music Crystal Monee Hall Jazz Mafia River Train Scott Amendola Carl Wheeler Brass, Bows & Beats Carl Wheeler John Evans Errol Cooney Rrazz Room
Rrazz Room
222 Mason St. (San Francisco)
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538492
|
__label__wiki
| 0.658878
| 0.658878
|
207 F. 2d 190 - Ross-Whitney Corp v. Smith Kline & French Laboratories
207 F2d 190 Ross-Whitney Corp v. Smith Kline & French Laboratories
99 U.S.P.Q. 1
ROSS-WHITNEY CORP. et al.
SMITH KLINE & FRENCH LABORATORIES.
United States Court of Appeals
Ninth Circuit.
Rehearing Denied Oct. 20, 1953.
Robert O. Whitney, Beverly Hills, California, in pro. per., Louis S. Edelberg and Samuel Greenfield, Los Angeles, Cal., for appellants.
Lyon & Lyon, Leonard S. Lyon, Reginald E. Caughey, Los Angeles, Cal., Ballard, Spahr, Andrews and Ingersoll, Charles I. Thompson, William S. Rawls, Philadelphia, Pa., for appellee.
Before DENMAN, Chief Judge, and STEPHENS and BONE, Circuit Judges.
STEPHENS, Circuit Judge.
Smith Kline & French Laboratories, known as SKF, is principally engaged in the manufacture of prescription drugs which are sold to pharmacists. In 1936 SKF obtained the patent1 on the combination drug, benzyl methyl carbinimine, and put in on the market under the name 'Benzedrine' which was registered as a trade-mark with the United States Patent Office.2 In 1938 the American Medical Association adopted the name amphetamine sulfate as its official designation for the combination.
Some years after acquiring the patent on amphetamine sulfate, SKF developed through research the dextro-optical isomer of amphetamine sulfate, i.e., dextro-amphetamine sulfate, which it put on the market in 1939 under the name 'Dexedrine' registered as a trade-mark with the United States Patent Office.3
At first, SKF marketed the Benzedrine in five or ten milligram dosage in the form of a round, white tablet with beveled edges and a concave bottom, and marketed the Dexedrine in a five milligram yellow tablet. In May 1949 SKF changed the form of its Benzedrine and Dexedrine tablets. The new Benzedrine tablet was colored pinkish-brown. It was in form similar to an equilateral triangle with sides slightly curved and points rounded. A straight furrow bisecting the tablet ran across it to one of the rounded corners. The tablet resembled what may be termed a Valentine heart. The new Dexedrine tablet had the same size and shape, but was colored orange. Between 1949 and 1951, SKF expended over $1,200,000 to advertise and publicize the new size, shape, and color combinations of its Benzedrine and Dexedrine tablets. SKF's patent expired on amphetamine sulfate and dextro-amphetamine sulfate in November, 1949, and other companies began to manufacture and sell the drugs under various brand names.4
In 1951, the Ross-Whitney Corporation, doing business as the Heart Pharmaceutical Co. of California, hereinafter referred to as appellants, began the manufacture, advertisement, and sale of a dextro-amphetamine sulfate tablet which in size, shape, and color exactly duplicated SKF's Dexedrine tablet. Appellants labeled their product 'Heart Brand Dexedrine' and offered it for sale at a price considerably below that of SKF's Dexedrine.
In an action instituted against appellants in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, SKF charged appellants with trade-mark infringement and unfair competition. In its complaint SKF prayed that the court issue a temporary restraining order and a preliminary and permanent injunction to prevent appellants from manufacturing, selling, offering for sale, advertising or otherwise dealing with medicinal tablets in imitation of SKF's Dexedrine or in using the trade-mark Dexedrine.
The District Court, Judge Leon B. Yankwich presiding, declined to issue an ex parte temporary restraining order, but entered a rule to show cause why a preliminary injunction should not issue. The matter was heard before Judge James M. Carter who ordered a preliminary injunction after making preliminary findings of fact and drawing preliminary conclusions of law which are summarized as follows:
Preliminary Findings of Fact
1. SKF is a citizen of Pennsylvania and appellant is a citizen of California, and the amount in controversy exceeds $3,000.
2. SKF is using Dexedrine as its trade-mark for dextro-amphetamine sulfate.
3. Dexedrine is marketed in a unique, distinctive, non-functional, well-advertised color and shape combination which has acquired a secondary meaning in the wholesale and retail drug trade.
4. Dextro-amphetamine sulfate is a potent drug which may be sold only on prescription.
5. Dexedrine is sold in bottles bearing SKF's trade-mark, but the tablets do not individually contain the trade-mark.
6. Appellants have duplicated the size, shape, and color of SKF's Dexedrine tablet.
7. Certain retail pharmacists have purchased appellants' tablets and 'palmed them off' as SKF's and appellants have made that possible with their counterfeit tablets in bottles labeled Heart Brand Dexedrine.
8. Dexedrine is a valid trade-mark and not a synonym for dextro-amphetamine sulfate or the generic name of a drug.
9. Some of appellants' tablets were not of the potency of SKF's Dexedrine.
10. SKF has suffered irreparable injury in that large quantities of appellants' tablets have been distributed throughout the United States and have enabled druggists to palm of appellants' product for SKF's.
Preliminary Conclusions of Law
1. The court has jurisdiction over the parties.
2. Dexedrine is SKF's valid trade-mark for dextro-amphetamine sulfate.
3. Neither the trade-mark Dexedrine nor the shape-color combination of SKF's tablets is in the public domain.
4. Appellants unfairly competed with SKF and infringed the Dexedrine trade-mark.
5. Some of appellants' tablets were misbranded in violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act.
6. SKF has suffered and will continue to suffer irreparable injury unless a preliminary injunction is granted; and therefore SKF is entitled to a preliminary injunction.
Accordingly, an order of preliminary injunction was entered by which appellants were enjoined, jointly and severally, until a final determination in the action,
'from making, advertising, offering for sale, delivering, or selling dextroamphetamine sulfate, or any drug having similar therapeutic effects, in tablets having the combination of shape and color of plaintiff's product, or in any other shape and color so closely resembling the combination of shape and color of plaintiff's product as to be likely to enable druggists to plan off defendant's product as plaintiff's product; * * * .'
Appellants were further ordered to obtain clearance from the court if they wished to market their product in a different shape and color, and they were enjoined from using the trade-mark Dexedrine. SKF was required to put up a $25,000 bond to secure appellants if they are subsequently found to have been 'wrongfully enjoined'. See Rule 65(c), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Title 28 U.S.C.A.
This appeal is from the preliminary injunction. See Title 28 U.S.C.A. § 1292.
In its complaint SKF alleges both infringement of a registered trade-mark and unfair competition. Title 15 U.S.C.A. § 1121 bestows upon the United States District Court original jurisdiction in civil suits for trade-mark infringement without regard to the amount in controversy or the lack of diversity of citizenship of the parties. And Title 28 U.S.C.A. § 1338(a) bestows jurisdiction on the District Court in civil cases affecting registered trade-marks. Thus, there can be no doubt that the suit for trade-mark infringement is properly before the District Court.
The suit for unfair competition is also properly before the District Court for several reasons, First, since there is an allegation of infringement of SKF's trade-mark Dexedrine before the District Court, Title 28 U.S.C.A. § 1338(b) gives the court jurisdiction to determine at the same time the substantial and related claim by SKF that appellants are guilty of unfair competition in copying the appearance and name of SKF's tablet. Furthermore, this court recently held in Stauffer v. Exley, 9 Cir., 1950, 184 F.2d 962, that the District Court has original jurisdiction over causes alleging unfair competition where the acts complained of affect interstate commerce even in the absence of diversity of citizenship of the parties and jurisdictional amount and where there is no substantial and related claim under the federal trade-mark laws. Citing 15 U.S.C.A. § 1126(b), (h) and (i).5
In any event, the District Court has jurisdiction under Title 28 U.S.C.A. § 1332. There is the required diversity of citizenship since SKF is a citizen6 of Pennsylvania and appellants are citizens of California. And the District Court's finding that the amount in controversy exceeds $3,000 is supported by the evidence that SKF had a substantial investment in Dexedrine and its peculiar shape-color-size combination by virtue of the $1,200,000 spent in advertising alone from May 1949 to September 1951.7
Limited Question Before Court of Appeal
The decision to grant or to refuse a preliminary injunction lies within the District Court's sound exercise of its discretion. In an appeal from the grant of a preliminary injunction, the question before this court is, did the District Court abuse its discretion in granting a preliminary injunction?8
The ruling on the motion for a preliminary injunction leaves open the final determination of the merits of the case. However, to the extent that the merits have been indicated by affidavit or testimony before the trial court, they must be considered in an appeal from the granting of a preliminary injunction since it is the rule in this circuit that the district court has not abused its discretion if 'the possibility that the plaintiff may make out a case upon the merits' has been established. Northwestern Stevedoring Co. v. Marshall, 9 Cir., 1930, 41 F.2d 28, 29.
Trade-Mark9
Does SKF have a valid trade-mark in the name of Dexedrine? It is appellants' contention that the name Dexedrine became so identified with SKF's product during the period of the patent as to become the generic name of the product, and that upon the expiration of SKF's patent both the patent and its generic name fell into the public domain. SKF takes the position that Dexedrine is a trade-mark for a drug, the generic name of which is dextro-amphetamine sulfate.
When a new product or machine is patented and then marketed for the duration of the patent under a particular name, if the consumer so identifies the name with the article itself, without regard to the source of its manufacture, that name may become the generic designation of the product and as such enters the public domain along with the patent at the end of the protected period.10 The generic designation may have originated as a proper name,11 or a descriptive name,12 or even an invented name.13 However, to the extent that the given name is identified in the mind of the consumer with the source of the product, the name may be protected.14 'There is no presumption of law, without proof of the fact * * * , that a name used on a patented article passes to the public on the expiration of the patent.' President Suspender Co. v. MacWilliam, 2 Cir., 1916, 238 F. 159, 163.
We find it significant that the combination drug dextro-amphetamine sulfate (or Dexedrine, as designated by SKF) is so powerful that it can be obtained by the consumer only as a patient on a physician's prescription. He cannot purchase Dexedrine or the combination drug by generic name over the counter. It follows that he is not concerned with the designation of the product, but the prescribing doctor and the pharmacist are concerned. Therefore, it is irrelevant that the patient for whom the drug is prescribed may or may not know its generic name or the name coined by the manufacturer. Since the manufacturer's market for the drug is, in fact, the prescribing physician through the pharmacist, the word Dexedrine through advertising as to identification by size, shape, and color in tablet form may well come to mean SKF's preparation of dextro-amphetamine sulfate.
To paraphrase the American Law Institute's Restatement of Torts, 1938 ed., Vol. 3, Sec. 735, Illustration 3:
'A (i.e., SKF) invents a medicinal product for which he secures a patent and which he markets to druggists for resale. He gives the product the name (dextro-amphetamine sulfate) and markets it under the name (Dexedrine) as his trade-mark. He sells the product in bulk to druggists who then put it up in smaller packages and sell it to consumers as (Dexedrine) prepared by them. In the course of years (Dexedrine) becomes the only name by which the product is known to consumers and they regard the name as the generic designation for the product. Druggists, however, know the technical name and know that (Dexedrine) is A's brand name for the product. A's interest in the designation is then not protected in sales to ultimate consumers; but it is protected, as far as practicable, in sales to druggists.'15
The record abounds with affidavits of doctors and pharmacists stating that to them the name Dexedrine designates the dextro-amphetamine sulfate tablets marketed by SKF. Therefore, the District Court's preliminary finding that Dexedrine is SKF's trade-mark for dextro-amphetamine sulfate is not clearly erroneous.
Furthermore, SKF's statement of registration of the trade-mark Dexedrine was in evidence before the court. And there are exhibits of bottles in which SKF distributes its preparation. On the label of each bottle there appears the word Dexedrine footnoted with an asterisk after which appears: 'T.M. Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.' and a reproduction of the tablet, indicating its color, shape, and size with the designation 'Trade (picture) Mark.' We conclude that the requirements of Title 15 U.S.C.A. §§ 1051, 1072, and 1111, have been complied with and accordingly the District Court did not err in its preliminary conclusion that Dexedrine is a valid trade-mark.
SKF also alleges in its complaint that appellants have engaged in unfair competition by counterfeiting SKF's Dexedrine tablet with 'the intent and suggestion * * * that the purchasers (i.e., pharmacists) in filling prescriptions for 'Dexedrine' would substitute said imitation tablets for the distinctive tablets of (SKF) * * * thus deceiving the physicians and their patients and causing irreparable damage and injury * * * to (SKF's) good will * * * .'16
Fraudulent practices which induce confusion of goods and deception of the public have been proscribed as outside the realm wherein competitive forces may operate freely and untrammeled.17 In order to prove the fraud it is necessary to establish that the name or appearance of the injured product has acquired either a technical trade-mark or a secondary meaning,18 the copying of which would lead to confusion; and that the copying product is intended to be palmed off19 upon the thereby deceived consumer.
When Dexedrine was first put on the market it was sold in the form of a round, yellow, scored or furrowed tablet. As was pointed out in Smith, Kline & French Laboratories v. Clark & Clark, 3 Cir., 1946, 157 F.2d 725, the roundness20 and scoring21 are functional features wh;ch cannot acquire a secondary meaning. Since that case dealt with Benzedrine which was a white tablet,22 there was no holding as to whether the yellow coloring formerly employed by SKF to distinguish its Dexedrine tablet was functional.
However, in 1949 SKF changed the color and shape of its Dexedrine tablet to an orange, Valentine-like heart, and advertised the change widely in an effort to develop a distinctive tablet which would point to SKF as the manufacturer without actually putting SKF's initials on the tablet. According to the affidavits of doctors and pharmacists submitted by SKF, its campaign met with considerable success. Whether or not the heart shape is functional in that it prevents the tablet from rolling away when dropped, we do not decide. It is clear that there is evidence to the effect that the shape and color of the tablet were for the purpose of identifying SKF's product Dexedrine. Thus, the Court's preliminary finding that the color and shape combination employed by SKF has acquired a secondary meaning is not clearly erroneous.
Appellants' marketing of a dextro-amphetamine sulfate tablet identical, for all practical purposes, in size, shape, and color of SKF's dextro-amphetamine sulfate tablet sets the stage for possible confusion of the two products. Appellants' argument that there is no confusion since their tablets are sold by them in, and are dispensed by the pharmacists from, bottles which are unambiguously marked, was not necessarily controlling on the trial judge. Moreover, appellants have labeled their product as Heart Brand Dexedrine. And, as we have already pointed out, the term Dexedrine is SKF's trade-mark for dextro-amphetamine sulfate. Since a trade-mark refers to the source of a product, the use of the name Dexedrine by appellants, even in connection with the prefix Heart Brand, suggests that the tablet is the product either of SKF or a licensee of SKF. In other words, SKF's reputation is involved. In such a circumstance the label does not prevent conscious or accidental confusion of the two products when Dexedrine is prescribed. Furthermore, since the tablets look alike, no label could prevent unethical pharmacists from substituting appellants' tablets for SKF's without detection and to the deceit of the prescribing doctor and his patient.
Confusion or invited substitution is indicated by the showing that appellants' advertising circular contains the slogan 'We Guarantee a Change of Heart' and encloses two samples of heart-shaped tablets which are Chinese copies of SKF's Dexedrine tablet, and by the showing that appellants' tablet is sold at a lower price. The combination of appearance, name, and advertising employed by appellants could well lead the trial judge to conclude that, paraphrasing a paragraph from William R. Warner & Co. v. Eli Lilly & Co., 1924, 265 U.S. 526, 44 S.Ct. 615, 68 L.Ed. 1161, ' * * * efforts of (appellants) to create a market for (Heart Brand Dexedrine) were directed not so much to showing the merits of that preparation as they were to demonstrating its practical identity with (SKF's Dexedrine), and, since it was sold at a lower price, inducing the purchasing druggist, in his own interest, to substitute, as far as he could, the former for the latter. In other words, (appellants) sought to avail (themselves) of the favorable repute which had been established for (SKF's) preparation in order to sell its own.' William R. Warner & Co. v. Eli Lilly & Co., supra, 265 U.S. 529, 530, 44 S.Ct. 617.
Whether or not the sales to the pharmacists were deceptive, 'sales to the ultimate purchasers are of the product in its naked form out of the bottle, and the testimony discloses many instances of passing off by retail druggists of (appellants') preparation when (SKF's) preparation was called for. That no deception was practiced on the retail dealers, and that they knew exactly what they were getting, is of no consequence. The wrong was in designedly enabling the dealers to palm off the preparation as that of (SKF).' William R. Warner & Co. v. Eli Lilly & Co., supra, 265 U.S.at 540, 44 S.Ct.at page 617. (We have interpolated 'appellants" for 'petitioner's' and 'SKF's' for 'respondent's' in paraphrasing the cited opinion.)
We conclude that there is sufficient evidence to support the preliminary conclusion that appellants had engaged in unfair competition.
The Preliminary Injunction
Appellants argue that the preliminary injunction must fall because based on affidavits rather than on oral testimony, and because it does not conform to the requirements of Rule 65(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A.
In support of its contention that oral testimony is necessary to sustain a preliminary injunction, appellants quote from Sims v. Greene, 3 Cir., 1947, 161 F.2d 87, 88, as follows:
'The allegations of the pleadings and affidavits filed in the cause are conflicting. Such conflicts must be resolved by oral testimony since only by hearing the witnesses and observing their demeanor on the stand can the trier of fact determine the veracity of the allegations made by the respective parties. If witnesses are not heard the trial court will be left in the position of preferring one piece of paper to another. * * * Rule 65(a) provides that no preliminary injunction shall be issued without notice to the adverse party. Notice implies an opportunity to be heard. Hearing requires trial of an issue or issues of fact. Trial of an issue of fact necessitates opportunity to present evidence and not be only one side to the controversy.'
In our view, a preliminary injunction may be granted upon affidavits. A requirement of oral testimony would in effect require a full hearing on the merits and would thus defeat one of the purposes of a preliminary injunction which is to give speedy relief from irreparable injury. Where the injunction is granted, the enjoined party is protected by the requirement that the petitioner post a bond and by the requirement that the court support its discretionary action with findings of fact and conclusions of law. However, even granting the premise that oral testimony must be had to resolve material conflicts in affidavits presented upon the motion for the issuance of a preliminary injunction, affidavits would be sufficient in the circumstances of the instant case because there is no dispute as to the basic facts. Appellants manufacture and sell dextro-amphetamine sulfate tablets in the same shape, size, and color as SKF's; and appellants designate their tablets Heart Brand Dexedrine, while SKF calls its tablets just plain Dexedrine.
As for the requirement of notice and a hearing, affidavits meet the requirements of due process.
Rule 65(d) requires that '(e)very order granting an injunction * * * shall set forth the reasons for its issuance; shall be specific in terms; shall describe in reasonable detail, and not by reference to the complaint or other document, the act or acts sought to be restrained * * * .' Rule 65(d), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
The order for preliminary injunction clearly sets forth the persons to whom it applies and enjoins them 'until the final determination of this action from making, advertising, offering for sale, delivering or selling dextro-amphetamine sulfate, or any drug having similar therapeutic effects, in tablets having the combination of shape and color of plaintiff's product or in any other shape and color so closely resembling the combination of shape and color of plaintiff's product as to be likely to enable druggists to palm off defendants' product as plaintiff's product; * * * ' and from marketing their product in any other shape and color except 'upon prior application to this (the District) Court, at which time, the distinctive features which defendants will be required to use will be determined * * * ' and from 'making any use whatsoever of the trademark 'Dexedrine' or any imitation or simulation thereof in connection with pharmaceutical products * * * .' The above quoted injunction is clear and unambiguous in its terms; and it carries out its purpose of restraining appellants from dealing in a product in such a way as to create confusion to SKF's detriment.
And finally the order of injunction sets forth as the reason for its issuance that otherwise 'plaintiff will suffer irreparable loss, injury (and) damage.' Those reasons are specific enough for the requirements of Rule 65(d), especially when read in connection with the Court's findings of fact as to SKF's injury.23
Appellants also take the position that the injunction is too broad in that it requires them to cease manufacturing or selling its dextro-amphetamine sulfate in the same shape as SKF's. Appellants argue that a preliminary injunction must maintain the status quo, which in their view would permit them to continue sales to present customers. Otherwise, they claim, their business would be destroyed prior to the oral hearing on the merits. Citing John Dollinger Jr., Inc., v. Horkan, 1918, Tex. Civ. App., 202 S.W. 978.
The maintenance of the status quo is only one of the reasons for which a preliminary injunction may be granted. It may also be granted to prevent irreparable injury.24 Since SKF's reputation would be prejudiced by the substitution of a tablet which looked like SKF's but which the District Court found did not conform to the labeled potency, SKF would suffer irreparable injury. On the other hand, appellants' business which they describe in their brief as a 'small business, enough to earn a fair living for the members of the corporation and their individual families', would seem to be amply protected by the bond of $25,000 which the trial court ordered and which has been posted.
The findings of fact and conclusions of law are all preliminary and are not to be construed as foreclosing any findings and conclusions to the contrary based upon evidence which may be received at the trial on the merits. However, pending a decision on the merits, the preliminary injunction shall stand.
1 U.S. Patent No. 1,879,003 issued in 1932 to Gordon A. Alles, and later assigned to SKF. See Smith, Kline & French Laboratories v. Clark & Clark, 3 Cir., 1946, 157 F.2d 725.
2 Registration No. 337,407, issued August 4, 1936.
3 Registration No. 373,000, issued November 21, 1939. (See Exhibit D.)
4 E.g., 'Adrizine'; 'Dextron'; 'Amphadex'; and 'D.A.S.' are some of the brand names under which dextro-amphetamine sulfate is sold by other manufacturers.
5 See, also, Pagliero v. Wallace China Co., 9 Cir., 1952, 198 F.2d 339.
6 For the purposes of diversity, a corporation is a 'citizen'. Barrow Steamship Co. v. Kane, 1898, 170 U.S. 100, 18 S.Ct. 526, 42 L.Ed. 964; Thomas v. South Butte Mining Co., 9 Cir., 1916, 230 F. 968; United States v. Southern Pacific R. Co., C.C. 1892, 49 F. 297.
7 See DelMonte Special Food Co. v. California Packing Corp., 9 Cir., 1929, 34 F.2d 774; Indian Territory Oil & Gas Co. v. Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Co., 10 Cir., 1938, 95 F.2d 711.
8 Owen v. Perkins Oil Well cementing Co., 9 Cir., 1924, 2 F.2d 247; Kings County Raisin & Fruit Co. v. U.S. Consol. Seeded Raisin Co., 9 Cir., 1910, 182 F. 59; Weiner v. National Tinsel Mfg. Co., 7 Cir., 1941, 123 F.2d 96.
9 'The term 'trade-mark' includes any word, name, symbol, or device or any combination thereof adopted and used by a manufacturer or merchant to identify his goods and distinguish them from those manufactured or sold by others.' Title 15 U.S.C.A. § 1127.
10 See Title 15 U.S.C.A. § 1064(c); Singer Mfg. Co. v. June Mfg. Co., 1896, 163 U.S. 169, 16 S.Ct. 1002, 41 L.Ed. 118; Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co., 1938, 305 U.S. 111, 59 S.Ct. 109, 83 L.Ed. 73.
11 'Singer' is the generic description of a type of sewing machine: Singer Mfg. Co. v June Mfg. Co., 1896, 163 U.S. 169, 16 S.Ct. 1002, 41 L.Ed. 118.
12 'Shredded Wheat' is the generic description of a particular breakfast cereal composed of 'whole wheat which has been boiled, partially dried, then drawn or pressed out into thin shreds and baked' to form a pillow-shaped biscuit. Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co., 1938, 305 U.S. 111, 113, 59 S.Ct. 109, 111, 83 L.Ed. 73.
13 'Aspirin' is the generic description (for some purposes later referred to in this opinion) for the drug 'acetyl salicylic acid', also called 'monoaceticacidester of salicylicacid'. Bayer Co. v. United Drug Co., D.C.S.D.N.Y., 1921, 272 F. 505, 510.
14 'Prest-O-Lite' is not the generic description of an acetylene gas package upon which the patent has expired. Searchlight Gas Co. v. Prest-O-Lite Co., 7 Cir., 1914, 215 F. 692. 'Ideal' is not the generic description of a type of hairbrush. Hughes v. Alfred H. Smith Co., 2 Cir., 1913, 209 F. 37.
15 Cf. Bayer Co. v. United Drug Co., D.C. 1921, 272 F. 505.
16 Allegation XIX of the Complaint.
17 See 63 C.J.,Trade-Marks, Trade-Names and Unfair Competition, § 104(3); Restatement of Torts Secs. 760, 712, 717, 741; 148 A.L.R. 13; 24 Cal Jur.Trade-Marks, etc. § 16. As Judge Goodrich said in Q-Tips, Inc., v. Johnson & Johnson, 3 Cir., 1953, 206 F.2d 144, at page 145. 'It is worth pointing out, at the start of our discussion, that we are in a field where the tendency of the law 'has been in the direction of enforcing increasingly higher standards of fairness or commercial morality in trade. The tendency still persists.' Restatement, Torts, Volume III, page 540.'
18 See Lucien Lelong, Inc., v. Lander Co., 2 Cir., 1947, 164 F.2d 395, 397; 150 A.L.R.note 1067 et seq., 1071.
19 See G. H. Mumm Champagne v. Eastern Wine Corp., 2 Cir., 1944, 142 F.2d 499; Zangerle & Peterson Co. v. Venice, Furniture Novelty Mfg. Co., 7 Cir., 1943, 133 F.2d 266, 269; My-T Fine Corp. v. Samuels, 2 Cir., 1934, 69 F.2d 76.
20 For economy of manufacture.
21 To enable the patient to take smaller dosages by splitting the tablet.
22 The inactive ingredient which comprises the bulk of the tablet is sugar milk, a white substance. Therefore, in the court's opinion, the white color of the tablet was functional.
23 Findings of Fact. '17. That plaintiff by reason of the specific facts heretofore set forth, suffered irreparable injury, loss (and) damage, particularly in that large quantities of defendants' tablets have been distributed to druggists unknown to plaintiff, in various parts of the United States of America, and druggists have, and may in the future continue, to palm off said tablets for plaintiff's tablets in filling physician's prescriptions calling for and specifying plaintiff's 'Dexedrine' tablets to the deception of the medical profession and consumers, and the continued distribution of defendants' tablets, unless restrained, will cause further and continued irreparable injury, loss (and) damage to plaintiff.
'18. That plaintiff has suffered irreparable injury, loss (and) damage by reason of defendants' deliberate use of its trademark 'Dexedrine' and the continued use, unless restrained, will cause further and continued irreparable injury, loss (and) damage to plaintiff.'
24 43 C.J.S.,Injunctions, § 17.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538493
|
__label__wiki
| 0.720283
| 0.720283
|
864 F. 2d 463 - Bieneman v. City of Chicago
864 F2d 463 Bieneman v. City of Chicago
12 Fed.R.Serv.3d 807
Lawrence C. BIENEMAN, Plaintiff-Appellant,
CITY OF CHICAGO, et al., Defendant-Appellees.
Submitted Nov. 1, 1988.
Decided Dec. 13, 1988.*
Joseph V. Karaganis, Karaganis & White, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellant.
Calvin Sawyier, Winston & Strawn, Michael M. Conway, Hopkins & Sutter, Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellees.
Before POSNER, COFFEY and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges.
Noise from O'Hare Airport is the subject of this case. Lawrence C. Bieneman, who bought a parcel of land near O'Hare in 1967 and has become a frequent filer, commenced this suit as a class action on behalf of all other residents of northern Illinois adversely affected by noise.1 Bieneman contended that the City of Chicago (which operates O'Hare) and the airlines using O'Hare intentionally reduced the value of his land by propagating noise and the chemicals in aircraft exhaust. Two counts of the complaint alleged a deprivation of property without due process, a third alleged a taking, and other counts made claims under state tort law.
Decisions by three district judges have left Bieneman empty-handed. Judge Decker dismissed the claims alleging deprivations of property without due process on the ground that entitlements to be free from nuisances and related torts are not "property" within the meaning of the Due Process Clause. Judge Duff, to whom the case was transferred, dismissed the remaining claims. 662 F.Supp. 1297 (N.D.Ill.1987). Any taking occurred no later than 1976, Judge Duff concluded, so that this suit, filed in 1984, is untimely. The state claims presented under the court's pendent jurisdiction all had been preempted by federal statutes and regulations, Judge Duff concluded in reliance on Luedtke v. County of Milwaukee, 521 F.2d 387, 391 (7th Cir.1975). Although Judge Duff reserved decision on the complaint's demand to proceed as a class action, 662 F.Supp. at 1298 n. 1, Bieneman filed a notice of appeal. After we dismissed this as premature, 838 F.2d 962 (7th Cir.1988), Bieneman asked the district court to certify a class limited to some of the legal issues in the case. By then the case had been transferred to Judge Leinenweber, who denied the motion. Judge Leinenweber doubted whether Bieneman, who had lost the case on the merits, was an adequate representative of the class; at all events, the judge thought that the prospect of inconsistent decisions on legal questions was insufficient to call for certification of a class, given the disparate interests of the many thousands of persons affected by operations at O'Hare Airport. Bieneman again appeals, this time from a final judgment.
* Bieneman contests the district court's refusal to certify the case as a class action. Unless the district court abused its discretion, we must respect its decision. Patterson v. General Motors Corp., 631 F.2d 476, 480 (7th Cir.1980); Adashunas v. Negley, 626 F.2d 600, 605 (7th Cir.1980); Susman v. Lincoln American Corp., 561 F.2d 86, 90 (7th Cir.1977). There was no abuse. Bieneman's proposed class contained at least 300,000 persons. Some of these undoubtedly derive great benefit from increased operations at O'Hare, which make the area attractive for business and may increase the value of land, even as they make land less attractive for residential purposes. The magnitude of any effect on residential owners depends on topography, flight patterns, and many other variables; homeowners who want to sell to businesses (or are in areas zoned for business) may benefit from extra flights and so oppose homeowners differently situated. No wonder courts routinely decline to certify classes in airport-noise cases. E.g., Virginians for Dulles v. Volpe, 344 F.Supp. 573, 575 (E.D.Va.1972), affirmed in relevant part, 541 F.2d 442 (4th Cir.1976); Town of East Haven v. Eastern Airlines, Inc., 331 F.Supp. 16, 18 (D.Conn.1971), affirmed, 470 F.2d 148 (2d Cir.1972); Ario v. Metropolitan Airports Comm'n, 367 N.W.2d 509 (Minn.1985); City of San Jose v. Superior Court of Santa Clara County, 12 Cal.3d 447, 115 Cal.Rptr. 797, 525 P.2d 701 (1974).
Conceding this, Bieneman insists that the district court should have certified a class for purposes of legal questions only, such as preemption and the length of the statute of limitations. Such a class could prevent inconsistent outcomes in multifarious cases, achieving the objective of Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(b)(1). Maybe so; some courts have given class treatment to questions of law while reserving issues of fact for individual resolution. Sterling v. Velsicol Chemical Corp., 855 F.2d 1188, 1196-97 (6th Cir.1988); In re Agent Orange Product Liability Litigation, 818 F.2d 145, 166-67 (2d Cir.1987); In re School Asbestos Litigation, 789 F.2d 996, 1008-10 (3d Cir.1986). That this may be done does not mean that it must be. A court does not abuse its discretion in failing to employ novel procedural devices, especially when there are serious doubts about the adequacy of the plaintiff's representation of the class, even about the existence of a case or controversy with regard to a certification of the sort Bieneman proposes. A class limited to legal claims (such as identifying the period of limitations), leaving the class members to file separate suits if they want to take advantage of the ruling, does not resolve any concrete case, and it looks suspiciously like a request for an advisory opinion. (Sterling, Agent Orange, and similar opinions contemplated that questions not covered by the class certification would be resolved by further proceedings in the same case, avoiding this problem.)
Bieneman filed this case as a class action yet pursued it for more than three years without asking the district court to certify a class; he appealed, leaving the class behind, and recovered his zeal to serve as representative only on learning that disposition of the class claim was essential to his own claim. We suggested on the first appeal that "a class representative who has lost on the merits may have a duty to the class to oppose certification, to avoid the preclusive effect of the judgment". 838 F.2d at 964. Bieneman nonetheless pressed on. What he pressed, however, was a motion for partial certification, abandoning members of the class pleaded in the complaint and many of the issues originally identified for class treatment, in the teeth of our observation that a representative may not unilaterally abandon the class, 838 F.2d at 963. The district court was entitled to doubt that Bieneman is a fit representative of other land owners. See East Texas Motor Freight System, Inc. v. Rodriguez, 431 U.S. 395, 405, 97 S.Ct. 1891, 1897, 52 L.Ed.2d 453 (1977). This is quite enough to support Judge Leinenweber's decision, and we resolve no other questions concerning class certification.
Bieneman alleges that noise and noxious gasses emanating from O'Hare Airport deprive him of property without due process of law, and so allow a remedy under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. The contention is fundamentally that O'Hare is a nuisance, traditionally a subject of state law. Judge Decker believed that maintaining a nuisance does not deprive anyone of "liberty or property" within the meaning of the Due Process Clause. The desire to prosecute a nuisance suit is not based on either liberty or property, the judge held in reliance on Brown v. Brienen, 722 F.2d 360 (7th Cir.1983), and Jackson v. City of Joliet, 715 F.2d 1200 (7th Cir.1983). As we see things, however, the right question is not whether there is or may be property in a chose in action--to which the answer, if pertinent, is "yes". See Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 428, 102 S.Ct. 1148, 1153, 71 L.Ed.2d 265 (1982). Sending waves of noise across a stranger's land can "take" his property, see United States v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256, 66 S.Ct. 1062, 90 L.Ed. 1206 (1946), and therefore must be able to "deprive" him of "liberty or property" too. The property interest is in the land, not in the right to litigate. That the state's conduct concerning the land is tortious does not eliminate a liberty or property element that otherwise exists. Brown, Jackson, and similar cases do not depend on a belief that obnoxious conduct by the state cannot deprive a person of liberty or property. They hold, rather, that the Constitution does not require the state to use civil or criminal process to protect its residents from private aggression or ameliorate the vicissitudes of life. See generally Archie v. City of Racine, 847 F.2d 1211 (7th Cir.1988) (en banc).
The state is the aggressor in our case, however. The complaint alleges that state actors manage O'Hare Airport so as to inflict injury on private persons. This formally states a constitutional claim. The immediate hurdle for Bieneman, however, is the principle that negligent conduct does not violate the Due Process Clause, Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327, 106 S.Ct. 662, 88 L.Ed.2d 662 (1986), and we added in Archie that grossly negligent conduct should be treated just like negligence. 847 F.2d at 1218-20. To get anywhere, Bieneman must show that the City of Chicago intentionally or recklessly inflicted injury without due process of law. This is so whether he contends that the violation is procedural or substantive.2
No one supposes that the City of Chicago set out to aggravate Mr. Bieneman by jacking up the levels of noise at O'Hare Airport. He is not a member of some prostrate group; owners of land near O'Hare are among the wealthiest and most influential people in Illinois; noise injures without regard to race, religion, and political beliefs. To show "intent" (or at least recklessness), Bieneman maintains that Chicago knows the effect of noise and exhaust gasses, yet does nothing to aid their victims. Put in this way, however, the argument is no different from the one in Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 99 S.Ct. 2282, 60 L.Ed.2d 870 (1979). Statutes reserving public jobs for veterans assist a group almost all members of which are male. Women seeking the jobs contended that the state must have "intended" to do them injury, because everyone intends the natural and probable consequences of his acts--and the consequences of the preference law were apparent. The Supreme Court took a different view of intent in constitutional law, however, distinguishing knowledge from intent, byproduct from objective. A state may know what its laws do, yet may not "intend" all of the consequences. Some of them may be unwelcome fallout from activities undertaken for another reason. The essential question, as the Court saw things, was whether the state acted "at least in part 'because of,' not merely 'in spite of,' [the] adverse effects upon an identifiable group." 442 U.S. at 279, 99 S.Ct. at 2296.
Chicago intends to operate O'Hare Airport, knowing that noise and pollution occur. But it does not operate O'Hare because this is the best way to create noise and fumes. These are unwelcome byproducts. A good way to put the intent question is: "If the consequence at issue were smaller, or its effect were reversed, would the actor find the activity less attractive?" If planes made less noise, would Chicago curtail the size and hours of operation of O'Hare? To put the question this way is to show that Bieneman cannot establish intent.
Recklessness is a proxy for intent, and Bieneman fares no better with the claim that Chicago gratuitously subjects him to noise and pollution. He might say that a government acts recklessly toward something if the government accords it no weight--in prison cases, for example, we say the guards act recklessly if they accord the interests of prisoners no weight and so disdain cries of distress. One might ask from this perspective whether the City would operate O'Hare differently if it owned all of the surrounding land. Cf. William F. Baxter & Lillian R. Altree, Legal Aspects of Airport Noise, 15 J.L. & Econ. 1 (1972). If Chicago would behave no differently, then it must be holding property owners' interests as dear as its own, the pole away from recklessness. Bieneman's complaint does not allege that the City allows O'Hare to be noisier or dirtier than it would if the government owned the surrounding land, and at oral argument Bieneman's counsel denied that it does. This aspect of the case therefore stands or falls on the proposition to know of an adverse consequence, and to do nothing to palliate things, is to "intend" that consequence. Under Feeney, the contention fails.
Protests about "deprivations" without due process sound tinny when the state is free to take what it wants--with or without process--so long as it is prepared to pay. A state may take property outright or may condemn an easement for noise, and sometimes under the Constitution it must do so, see Causby, although airport noise rarely requires compensation, Griggs v. Allegheny County, 369 U.S. 84, 82 S.Ct. 531, 7 L.Ed.2d 585 (1962). See also Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R.R. v. Chicago, 166 U.S. 226, 233-41, 17 S.Ct. 581, 583-86, 41 L.Ed. 979 (1897) (applying the Takings Clause of the fifth amendment to the states through the fourteenth). The right step logically is an inverse condemnation action. Bieneman contends that the noise at O'Hare took his land--or at least an easement--no later than 1976, when, Bieneman believes, the din became unbearable. Since this suit was filed eight years later, the defendants insist that it is untimely.
A suit under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 must be filed within the time allowed by state law for personal injury actions. Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U.S. 261, 105 S.Ct. 1938, 85 L.Ed.2d 254 (1985). See also Goodman v. Lukens Steel Co., 482 U.S. 656, 107 S.Ct. 2617, 96 L.Ed.2d 572 (1987) (same for Sec. 1981). In Illinois that period is two years, although we held in Anton v. Lehpamer, 787 F.2d 1141 (7th Cir.1986), that in light of cases before Garcia that might have engendered reliance on a longer period, the plaintiff would be allowed two years from the decision in Garcia or five years from the time the claim accrued, whichever is shorter. Bieneman contends that Chicago took his property in 1976, so under Anton he had until 1981 to file a Sec. 1983 action. Bieneman attempts to avoid that outcome by insisting that the takings claim rests on the Constitution rather than Sec. 1983. The district court disagreed, holding that constitutional inverse condemnation suits against state actors depend on Sec. 1983. 662 F.Supp. at 1299-1300. We know from First English Evangelical Lutheran Church v. County of Los Angeles, 482 U.S. 304, 107 S.Ct. 2378, 2386 n. 9, 96 L.Ed.2d 250 (1987), that takings suits may be filed directly under the Constitution. It follows, Bieneman contends, that we should use as the limitations period the most analogous period drawn from state law--which, he submits, is the 20-year time allowed to bring adverse possession actions, a period applied to inverse condemnation suits against governmental units. E.g., Rosenthal v. City of Crystal Lake, 171 Ill.App.3d 428, 121 Ill.Dec. 869, 525 N.E.2d 1176 (2d Dist.1988); DiSanto v. City of Warrenville, 59 Ill.App.3d 931, 17 Ill.Dec. 289, 376 N.E.2d 288 (2d Dist.1978).
The line of argument works only if three things hold: first, that state rather than federal law supplies the period of limitations for a claim arising directly under the Constitution; second, that the period for adverse possession is the most analogous period of state law; third, that the existence of a claim directly under the Constitution cancels the holding of Garcia that the period of limitations applicable to personal injuries governs all constitutional torts, even though state law might use different periods for different wrongs. Each is questionable. Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U.S. 143, 107 S.Ct. 2759, 97 L.Ed.2d 121 (1987), which applied a four-year period from antitrust law to suits under a different federal statute that did not contain its own period of limitations, shows that the custom of recurring to state law for periods of limitations is not the same as a rule requiring their absorption. See also DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983) (applying the six-month period from the National Labor Relations Act to "hybrid" contract-duty of fair representation cases); In re Data Access Systems Securities Litigation, 843 F.2d 1537 (3d Cir.1988) (en banc) (applying the three-year period contained in federal securities laws to implied federal rights of action); Smith v. City of Chicago, 769 F.2d 408 (7th Cir.1985) (applying a six-month period derived from federal employment laws to actions enforcing rights under a federal consent decree). An appropriate benchmark for this purpose might be the six years provided by 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2401(a) for suits against the United States, a period that is employed to mark the outer limits for purposes of inverse condemnation actions under the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1491(a)(1). United States v. 422,978 Square Feet of Land, 445 F.2d 1180, 1187-89 (9th Cir.1971); Stubbs v. United States, 620 F.2d 775, 784 (10th Cir.1980); cf. Kabua v. United States, 546 F.2d 381, 383 (Ct.Cl.1976). If this six-year period were applied, Bieneman still would be out of court.3 And Chicago contests the submission that if state law supplies a period of limitations, the 20-year adverse possession rule is the most closely analogous. We shall go no further along either path, however, for the third condition cannot be satisfied.
Garcia and Goodman, which established the periods of limitations applicable under Sec. 1983 and Sec. 1981, resolved two questions: where to get the period of limitations, and which period to use. The answer to the first of these questions, based on 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1988, was "state law". Section 1988 does not apply to a case in which the Constitution rather than a civil rights statute supplies the remedy, although the Rules of Decision Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1652, might have the same effect for other federal litigation. The second question has two parts: (a) shall there be a single period of limitations for all Secs. 1981 and 1983 cases, or should different periods be used for different patterns (some analogized to contracts, some to intentional torts, some to negligent torts, some left to the catch-all statute)?, and (b) if one period is to be used, which? Garcia and Goodman concluded that only one period should be borrowed from state law, the one generally applicable to personal injuries.4
These decisions--whether to have a single period, and which period to use--do not depend on Sec. 1988. Nothing in the text or history of that statute speaks to the questions. The Court had to devise its own rule, and it made a practical choice for compelling reasons:
The experience of the courts that have predicated their choice of the correct statute of limitations on an analysis of the particular facts of each claim demonstrates that their approach inevitably breeds uncertainty and time-consuming litigation that is foreign to the central purposes of Sec. 1983. Almost every Sec. 1983 claim can be favorably analogized to more than one of the ancient common-law forms of action, each of which may be governed by a different statute of limitations.... If the choice of the statute of limitations were to depend upon the particular facts or the precise legal theory of each claim, counsel could almost always argue, with considerable force, that two or more periods of limitations should apply to each Sec. 1983 claim.... The simplicity of the admonition in Sec. 1988 [to use state law] is consistent with the assumption that Congress intended the identification of the appropriate statute of limitations to be an uncomplicated task for judges, lawyers, and litigants, rather than a source of uncertainty, and unproductive and everincreasing litigation. Moreover, the legislative purpose to create an effective remedy for the enforcement of federal civil rights is obstructed by uncertainty in the applicable statute of limitations, for scarce resources must be dissipated by useless litigation on collateral matters.
Garcia, 471 U.S. at 272-75, 105 S.Ct. at 1944-47 (footnotes omitted). See also Agency Holding, 107 S.Ct. at 2763-64.
These considerations apply with equal force to claims invoking the Constitution directly. Actions under Sec. 1983 and those under the principal fount of direct suits, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971), are identical save for the replacement of a state actor (Sec. 1983) by a federal actor (Bivens ). No wonder the only two courts of appeals that have addressed questions concerning limitations under Bivens have held that the rules used for Sec. 1983 suits will be applied in full force to Bivens cases. Chin v. Bowen, 833 F.2d 21, 23-24 (2d Cir.1987); McSurely v. Hutchison, 823 F.2d 1002, 1004-05 (6th Cir.1987). When the defendant is a state actor, Sec. 1983 and direct litigation may be interchangeable, the choice between them adventitious. There is no reason to have a different period of limitations, and a strong reason not to: any difference would give the plaintiff an incentive to pick whichever jurisdiction provided the longer period, recreating the uncertainty that the Supreme Court sought to eliminate. We conclude, therefore, that there should be a single period of limitations for all suits in which the Constitution supplies the remedy.
Harmonizing the "direct" suit with the Sec. 1983 suit requires us to go the rest of the way with Wilson v. Garcia. The Supreme Court applied the period for personal injuries to all Sec. 1983 cases, recognizing that Sec. 1983 covers many wrongs that states, for domestic purposes, would classify under different statutes. To avoid enervating litigation, the period for direct actions must be the same as the period for Sec. 1983 actions. So pleading this case as a claim directly under the Takings Clause leaves Bieneman exactly where pleading it under Sec. 1983 would have left him: with five years from the wrong, or two years from Wilson, whichever is less, to file the complaint. Bieneman missed the time by three years, and the district court properly granted summary judgment for the defendants.
There remain questions of Illinois law, laid under the pendent jurisdiction. "[I]f the federal claims are dismissed before trial, even though not insubstantial in a jurisdictional sense, the state claims should be dismissed as well." United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 726, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 1139, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966). The district court did not dismiss them but resolved them on the merits--adversely to Bieneman. The court did not give a reason for doing so or recognize that there might be a problem in disposing of state questions after the basis of federal jurisdiction evaporated.
The dictum given unqualified in Gibbs has been qualified in practice. See Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397, 404-05, 90 S.Ct. 1207, 1213-14, 25 L.Ed.2d 442 (1970). Although this court regularly directs district judges to remit pendent state claims to state court after wrapping up the federal issues before trial, e.g., Baltimore Orioles, Inc. v. Major League Baseball Players' Ass'n, 805 F.2d 663, 682 (7th Cir.1986), we recognize that courts sometimes ought to dispose of everything at once, that prompt resolution may be dramatically more efficient, justifying the displacement of state questions to the federal tribunal. See Zepik v. Tidewater Midwest, Inc., 856 F.2d 936, 945-46 (7th Cir.1988) (collecting cases). The failings in the federal issues may carry over to the state claims. Mechmet v. Four Seasons Hotels, Ltd., 825 F.2d 1173, 1178 (7th Cir.1987). Or there might be a federal defense to the state claims, one appropriately resolved by a federal court. Graf v. Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Ry., 790 F.2d 1341, 1345-48 (7th Cir.1986). Our case is of this kind. The defendants contended, and the district court held in reliance on Luedtke, that federal law preempts any claims otherwise available under state law. 662 F.Supp. at 1300-01. Bieneman recognizes that Luedtke governs and asks us to overrule it, which a state court could not do. Gibbs permits a federal court to proceed in such a case.
Luedtke offered this analysis, which we quote in full: "Since the federal laws and regulations have preempted local control of aircraft flights, Burbank [v. Lockheed Air Terminal, Inc., 411 U.S. 624, 93 S.Ct. 1854, 36 L.Ed.2d 547 (1973) ], the defendants may not, to the extent they comply with such federal laws and regulations, be charged with negligence or creating a nuisance. Similarly, Sec. 114.04 of the Wisconsin Statutes cannot be invoked to make unlawful flights which are in accordance with federal laws and regulations.... To the extent that the County may be violating the federal laws or regulations, the plaintiffs should ... exhaust their administrative remedies." 521 F.2d at 391. Since Luedtke every court that has examined the question independently has come to the opposite conclusion. Greater Westchester Homeowners Ass'n v. City of Los Angeles, 26 Cal.3d 86, 100, 160 Cal.Rptr. 733, 740, 603 P.2d 1329, 1336 (1979), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 820, 101 S.Ct. 77, 66 L.Ed.2d 22 (1980); Owen v. City of Atlanta, 157 Ga.App. 354, 277 S.E.2d 338, affirmed, 248 Ga. 299, 282 S.E.2d 906 (1981); Krueger v. Mitchell, 112 Wis.2d 88, 101, 332 N.W.2d 733, 739 (1983); Baker v. Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, 39 Cal.3d 862, 218 Cal.Rptr. 293, 705 P.2d 866 (1985); Ursin v. New Orleans Aviation Board, 506 So.2d 947, 955 (La.App. 5th Cir.1987).5 The Solicitor General, in a brief filed at the Supreme Court's invitation in Greater Westchester, informed the Court that Luedtke had been decided incorrectly but that because Luedtke stood alone the conflict did not require resolution.
We must decide whether to maintain a go-it-alone position. Three things persuade us that Luedtke is incorrect and that we should fess up to the error.
1. Preemption of state law depends on either a comprehensive federal regimen ("occupation of the field"), usually established by express statutory declaration, or a clash between state and federal norms (a fight that the federal rules win under the Supremacy Clause). Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp., 464 U.S. 238, 248, 104 S.Ct. 615, 621, 78 L.Ed.2d 443 (1984). See also, e.g., Capital Cities Cable, Inc. v. Crisp, 467 U.S. 691, 698-99, 104 S.Ct. 2694, 2699-2700, 81 L.Ed.2d 580 (1984) (collecting cases); Louisiana Public Service Comm'n v. FCC, 476 U.S. 355, 106 S.Ct. 1890, 90 L.Ed.2d 369 (1986); CTS Corp. v. Dynamics Corp., 481 U.S. 69, 107 S.Ct. 1637, 95 L.Ed.2d 67 (1987). The Federal Aviation Act does not expressly preempt state damages remedies. To the contrary, Sec. 1106 of the Federal Aviation Act, 49 U.S.C.App. Sec. 1506, provides that "[n]othing contained in this chapter shall in any way abridge or alter the remedies now existing at common law or by statute, but the provisions of this chapter are in addition to such remedies." Luedtke did not mention this anti-preemption statute. Statutes of this sort save common law remedies even when federal law exclusively determines the content of substantive rules. International Paper Co. v. Ouellette, 479 U.S. 481, 497-98, 107 S.Ct. 805, 814-15, 93 L.Ed.2d 883 (1987); Brown v. Hotel & Restaurant Employees, 468 U.S. 491, 505-07, 104 S.Ct. 3179, 3187-88, 82 L.Ed.2d 373 (1984). Section 1106 is no exception. Nader v. Allegheny Airlines, Inc., 426 U.S. 290, 298-300, 96 S.Ct. 1978, 1984-85, 48 L.Ed.2d 643 (1976), holds that Sec. 1106 preserves against preemption a claim for fraudulent misrepresentation in selling tickets for air travel. State courts award compensation for takings in inverse condemnation cases, although if there is complete federal preemption the national rather than the local government should be the payor. State courts award damages every day in air crash cases, notwithstanding that federal law preempts the regulation of safety in air travel. If damages are available for takings, and common law remedies are available on questions of fraud and safety, why not on questions of noise and chemical emissions?
2. Burbank, on which we relied in Luedtke, was a different kind of problem altogether. The City of Burbank had enacted a curfew, forbidding departures of jet aircraft from a privately-owned airport between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. This directly regulated the airport's operations, interfering with the Federal Aviation Administration's contrary judgment. The Supreme Court distinguished in Burbank between the state's role as a regulator and its role as a proprietor of airports, observing that it was not questioning the ability of a governmental body to determine how it would run its own airports. 411 U.S. at 635-36 & n. 14, 93 S.Ct. at 1860-61 & n. 14. It stepped back from this issue because both reports on the statute establishing federal noise rules stated expressly that local governments could set their own standards as proprietors. See H.R.Rep. 92-842, 92d Cong., 2d Sess. 8-10 (1972); S.Rep. 92-1160, 92d Cong., 2d Sess. 10-11 (1972), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1972, p. 4655.
So Illinois has some role notwithstanding Burbank in governing the amount of noise and pollution that escapes from O'Hare. We need not and do not say just what the role is, although other courts have read Burbank as allowing a state to exclude certain kinds of aircraft in order to reduce noise. E.g., British Airways Board v. Port Authority of New York, 558 F.2d 75 (2d Cir.1977) (exclusion of Concorde). Illinois might choose to exercise such powers as it has through the City of Chicago, the "owner" of O'Hare. It might withdraw home rule from Chicago and exercise these powers through legislation of general application. Or it might exercise these powers through the courts. Neither the Constitution nor the Federal Aviation Act, as amended by the Noise Control Act of 1972, determines how Illinois apportions its governmental powers. Whalen v. United States, 445 U.S. 684, 689 n. 4, 100 S.Ct. 1432, 1436 n. 4, 63 L.Ed.2d 715 (1980); Mayor of Philadelphia v. Educational Equality League, 415 U.S. 605, 615 n. 13, 94 S.Ct. 1323, 1330 n. 13, 39 L.Ed.2d 630 (1974); Highland Farms Dairy, Inc. v. Agnew, 300 U.S. 608, 612, 57 S.Ct. 549, 551, 81 L.Ed. 835 (1937); Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co., 211 U.S. 210, 225, 29 S.Ct. 67, 69, 53 L.Ed. 150 (1908); Dreyer v. Illinois, 187 U.S. 71, 83-84, 23 S.Ct. 28, 32, 47 L.Ed. 79 (1902); United Beverage Co. v. Indiana Alcoholic Beverage Comm'n, 760 F.2d 155 (7th Cir.1985). Whether Illinois should allow its courts some role in setting noise levels at O'Hare is the state's business. The federal role is limited to defining the powers of the state as an entity. Given the recognition in Burbank that the state may govern the operation of airports it owns, the conclusion in Luedtke that every conceivable role for state courts has been preempted is untenable.
3. Burbank dealt with regulation: the city enacted a substantive rule. Bieneman wants damages, not regulation. Perhaps this is a distinction without a difference. An award of damages is compensatory from Bieneman's perspective, but from O'Hare's it is no different from regulation. The airport and the air carriers see the award of damages as a signal to stop doing whatever led to the decision, just as the monetary penalty for violating an express substantive rule would lead them to desist. Damages for disobeying an acknowledged rule discourage that disobedience and also induce potential defendants to steer clear of the danger zone, to discontinue conduct that in fact complies with the rule but could be mistaken for noncompliance. It is hard (and costly) to determine facts, and the errors inevitable in litigation may discourage beneficial conduct. So too, excessive awards might discourage conduct that is questionable under existing rules but beneficial on balance (and therefore goes unchallenged by the agency with control of the substantive doctrines).
The identity of common law damages and penalties for disobedience to substantive rules could lead to a conclusion that where a state is forbidden to alter the substantive rule, it is forbidden to award damages. Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee rejects this equation, however. The Court held in Pacific Gas & Electric Co. v. State Energy Conservation & Development Comm'n, 461 U.S. 190, 103 S.Ct. 1713, 75 L.Ed.2d 752 (1983), that federal law occupies the field of nuclear safety regulation. Notwithstanding the argument (indeed the truism) that an award of hefty compensatory and punitive damages is a method of regulating safety, the Court concluded that federal law does not preempt common law remedies concerning nuclear safety. "Silkwood ... highlights the extreme reluctance of the modern Court to find preemption." Ronald D. Rotunda, Sheathing the Sword of Federal Preemption, 5 Constitutional Commentary 311, 317 (1988). If no preemption is the conclusion notwithstanding the absence from nuclear safety legislation of a statute such as Sec. 1106, it must be the appropriate treatment of air travel as well.
Luedtke did not mention any of these considerations, and its holding cannot be maintained in the face of them. We overrule Luedtke to the extent it holds that all common law remedies for airport noise and pollution have been preempted by federal law.6
A word on what this means. Bieneman wants common law remedies, but these must be remedies for wrongs, as in Silkwood, or for those aspects of airport operation within the state's control as proprietor under Burbank. Federal law governs much of the conduct of O'Hare and its carriers. See 14 C.F.R. Part 36 (noise characteristics of aircraft), Part 150 (noise abatement procedures at airports). A state court could not award damages against O'Hare or its users for conduct required by these regulations, or for not engaging in noise-abatement procedures that the Federal Aviation Administration considered but rejected as unsafe. Bieneman's complaint suggests that damages should be awarded because there are too many flights per hour, or because the aircraft are older models not fitted with high-bypass turbofan engines, or because the planes do not climb at a sufficiently steep rate after takeoff. These subjects are governed by federal law, and a state may not use common law procedures to question federal decisions or extract money from those who abide by them. There may be, on the other hand, aspects of O'Hare's operations that offend federal law, or that federal norms do not govern. Perhaps, as Bieneman insists, the airport does not use adequate noise baffles around the perimeter of the airport, or perhaps it has built more runways than federal law requires (to the detriment of those under the new ones), or is out of compliance with the governing federal rules. The essential point is that the state may employ damages remedies only to enforce federal requirements (as in Silkwood ) or to regulate aspects of airport operation over which the state has discretionary authority.
This disposes of the federal defense to the claims under state law. Remaining questions about the common law of Illinois are more appropriately resolved in state court, since no ground of federal jurisdiction survives. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment to the extent it rejects all of Bieneman's claims under the Constitution, vacate the judgment to the extent it holds that claims under state law are preempted, and remand with directions that the court relinquish jurisdiction under Gibbs, so that Bieneman may pursue his state-law contentions in state court.
The case was orally argued on January 6, 1988, but we dismissed the appeal for want of jurisdiction because the judgment was not final. This new appeal, taken from a final judgment, has been submitted to the original panel for decision without a second oral argument
Bieneman became Mayor of Bensenville, Illinois, and that village, joined by three others, filed suit in state court seeking an injunction against the expansion of O'Hare. The villages lost. Village of Bensenville v. City of Chicago, 16 Ill.App.3d 733, 306 N.E.2d 562 (1st Dist.1973). Bieneman, as Mayor of Bensenville, was among the signatories to a consent decree affecting planning for growth at O'Hare. Illinois ex rel. Scott v. Butterfield, No. 74 C 2440 (N.D.Ill.1974). Bieneman personally was among the plaintiffs in a case challenging the Federal Aviation Administration's plan of redevelopment at O'Hare--another defeat. Suburban O'Hare Commission v. Dole, 787 F.2d 186 (7th Cir.1986). So this case is at least the fourth for Bieneman on the topic
Whether there is such an animal as "substantive due process" when the state affects property that it could choose to take outright is a subject we need not pursue. See Coniston Corp. v. Village of Hoffman Estates, 844 F.2d 461 (7th Cir.1988)
The 12-year period in the Quiet Title Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2409a(f), might be an alternative benchmark, but this statute applies only when the government claims an interest in land. See United States v. Mottaz, 476 U.S. 834, 106 S.Ct. 2224, 90 L.Ed.2d 841 (1986); Block v. North Dakota, 461 U.S. 273, 103 S.Ct. 1811, 75 L.Ed.2d 840 (1983). The point of Bieneman's suit is that the government dis claims an interest in his land but ought to be forced to pay for it anyway, the classic inverse condemnation action
The Court has heard oral argument in Okure v. Owens, 816 F.2d 45 (2d Cir.1987), cert. granted, --- U.S. ----, 108 S.Ct. 1218, 99 L.Ed.2d 419 (1988), which presents the question whether a different rule should apply when the state has a special period of limitations for intentional torts. This complication need not detain us
Bryski v. City of Chicago, 148 Ill.App.3d 556, 101 Ill.Dec. 795, 499 N.E.2d 162 (2d Dist.1986), finds state claims preempted on the authority of Luedtke
Because this opinion overrules a portion of the decision in Luedtke, it was circulated to all judges in regular active service under Circuit Rule 40(f). No judge requested that the case be heard en banc
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538494
|
__label__wiki
| 0.732876
| 0.732876
|
874 F. 2d 1186 - Levit Vn v. Ingersoll Rand Financial Corporation
874 F2d 1186 Levit Vn v. Ingersoll Rand Financial Corporation
57 USLW 2677, 22 Collier Bankr.Cas.2d 36,
19 Bankr.Ct.Dec. 574,
Bankr. L. Rep. P 72,910,
11 Employee Benefits Ca 1323
Louis W. LEVIT, Trustee of V.N. Deprizio Construction Co.,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
INGERSOLL RAND FINANCIAL CORPORATION, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
Nos. 88-3091, 88-3092 and 88-3093.
David M. Schiffman, Sidley & Austin, Chicago, Ill., Garry D. Gray, Dept. of Justice, Tax.Div., Appellate Section, Washington, D.C., for defendants-appellants.
Louis W. Levit, Levit & Mason, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before BAUER, Chief Judge, and FLAUM and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges.
We must decide a question no other appellate court has addressed: whether payments to creditors who dealt at arms' length with a debtor are subject to the year-long preference-recovery period that 11 U.S.C. Sec. 547(b)(4)(B) provides for "inside" creditors, when the payments are "for the benefit of" insiders, Sec. 547(b)(1). The bankruptcy court in this case answered "no", 58 B.R. 478 (Bankr.N.D.Ill.1986), and the district court "yes", 86 B.R. 545 (N.D.Ill.1988). We agree with the district court for the most part, although we conclude that payments satisfying pension obligations ordinarily are not for the benefit of inside creditors, and payments of tax obligations never are.
* In 1980 V.N. Deprizio Construction Co. was awarded contracts to do $13.4 million of work on the extension of Chicago's subway system to O'Hare Airport. By 1982 the company was in financial trouble. Because Mayor Byrne wanted the line open before the primary election for that office in February 1983, the City made the firm extraordinary loans of $2.5 million; the firm in turn donated $3,000 to the Mayor's campaign fund. Neither outlay achieved its purpose. The line wasn't finished on time, and Byrne lost. These and other dealings by Richard N. Deprizio, the firm's president, including suspicions of affiliation with organized crime, led the United States Attorney to open an investigation. In April 1983 Deprizio Co. filed a petition under the Bankruptcy Code of 1978. Other firms finished the subway, which opened in 1984.
As the investigation continued and Deprizio's indictment was imminent, word circulated that he might "sing". So in January 1986 Deprizio was lured to a vacant parking lot, where an assassin's gun and the obligations of a lifetime were discharged together. Corporations are not so easily liquidated.
Deprizio Co. had borrowed money from many sources other than the City of Chicago, including Ingersoll Rand Financial Corp., CIT Group/Equipment Financing, Inc., and Melrose Park Bank & Trust. Richard Deprizio co-signed the note to the Bank. Richard and his brothers, Robert and Edward, all insiders of the firm, also guaranteed its debts to other lenders. ("Insider", a term to which we return, includes officers of the debtor and the officers' relatives.) As the district court observed "the record is devoid of detail" concerning these guarantees. Details are potentially important, because CIT maintains on appeal that no insider guaranteed any of the firm's debts to it. The Trustee does not contest this but maintains that inside creditors received a benefit from payments to CIT because insiders had guaranteed debt secured by collateral in which CIT held the senior interest.
Deprizio Co. was party to collective bargaining agreements calling for payments to pension and welfare plans, for the benefit of the firm's employees. When it fell behind in making the required payments, the firm executed notes in favor of the plans, secured by junior interests in equipment in which Ingersoll and CIT held senior interests. Richard Deprizio co-signed the notes to several plans. The Central States Pension and Welfare Funds received only notes and security interests from Deprizio Co.; no insider guaranteed these notes.
Then there were tax obligations. Employers must remit to the government taxes withheld from wages. The Trustee believes that Deprizio Co. fell behind in making these payments but made substantial payments of delinquent withholding taxes in the year before bankruptcy. The United States, on the other hand, believes that Deprizio Co. did not remit any overdue taxes during the year before it filed its petition in bankruptcy.
Payments out of the ordinary course in the 90 days before filing a bankruptcy petition may be recovered for the estate under Secs. 547 and 550. Creditors then receive shares determined by statutory priorities and contractual entitlements rather than by their ability to sneak in under the wire. Payments to or for the benefit of an insider during a full year, not just 90 days, may be recovered by virtue of Sec. 547(b)(4)(B). The Trustee filed adversary proceedings against the lenders, the pension and welfare funds, and the United States--none of them insiders--seeking to recover payments made more than 90 days but within the year before the filing. The Trustee reasoned that the payments made to these outside creditors were "for the benefit" of inside co-signers and guarantors, because every dollar paid to the outside creditor reduced the insider's exposure by the same amount.
Without deciding whether any of the payments was preferential within the meaning of Sec. 547 or worked to the benefit of any insider, the bankruptcy judge denied the Trustee's request. Judge Eisen concluded that any transfer to an outside creditor for the benefit of an insider should be treated as two transfers: one being the money, and the other the benefit. A transfer may be recovered under Sec. 550(a) only to the extent it is avoidable under Sec. 547. The monetary transfer to the outsider is not avoidable, Judge Eisen concluded, when made more than 90 days before the filing. Thus it may not be recovered from the outsider, even though the benefit to the insider may be recovered from the insider.
On an interlocutory appeal to the district court, Judge Plunkett reversed. He concluded that payment is only one transfer, although a transfer may create benefits for many persons. If the insider receives a benefit, then the transfer is avoidable under Sec. 547(b)(4)(B) if made within a year of the bankruptcy and does not qualify for the exclusions in Sec. 547(c). (These include payments in the ordinary course of business, payments for equivalent value received, and so on.) Section 550(a), as Judge Plunkett read it, allows the Trustee to recover the transfer from either the recipient or the indirect beneficiary, at the Trustee's option. The district court remanded the case so that the bankruptcy court could determine whether the payments identified by the Trustee occurred, whether an insider received a benefit from any particular payment, and whether any of them was protected by Sec. 547(c). Judge Plunkett certified the question under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1292(b), and we granted leave to appeal.1
Many bankruptcy and district judges have addressed the question we confront,2 as have commentators.3 A majority of judges have concluded that insiders' guarantees do not expose outside lenders to an extended preference-recovery period, frequently because they believe that recovery would be inequitable when ordinarily outside creditors need restore only preferences received within the 90 days before bankruptcy. The commentators are evenly divided.
* Six sections of the Bankruptcy Code supply the texts. Section 547(b) says:
Except as provided in subsection (c) of this section, the trustee may avoid any transfer of an interest of the debtor in property--
(1) to or for the benefit of a creditor;
(2) for or on account of an antecedent debt owed by the debtor before such transfer was made;
(3) made while the debtor was insolvent;
(4) made--
(A) on or within 90 days before the date of the filing of the petition; or
(B) between ninety days and one year before the date of the filing of the petition, if such creditor at the time of such transfer was an insider; and
(5) that enables such creditor to receive more than such creditor would receive if--
(A) the case were a case under Chapter 7 of this title;
(B) the transfer had not been made; and
(C) such creditor received payment of such debt to the extent provided by the provisions of this title.
This is Sec. 547(b) as amended in 1984. The version in force in 1983, when this case began (and thus the one applicable to it), applied the year-long period for insiders only if the insider "had reasonable cause to believe the debtor was insolvent at the time of such transfer", Sec. 547(b)(4)(B)(ii), a qualification unimportant to this case.
Section 547(b) uses three terms of art: "creditor", "insider", and "transfer", and the definition of "creditor" brings in a fourth: "claim". Section 101 defines each.
(4) "claim" means--
(A) right to payment, whether or not such right is reduced to judgment, liquidated, unliquidated, fixed, contingent, matured, unmatured, disputed, undisputed, legal, equitable, secured, or unsecured; ...
(9) "creditor" means(A) entity that has a claim against the debtor that arose at the time of or before the order for relief concerning the debtor;
(B) entity that has a claim against the estate of a kind specified in section 348(d), 502(f), 502(g), 502(h) or 502(i) of this title; ...
(30) "insider" includes--
(B) if the debtor is a corporation--
(i) director of the debtor;
(ii) officer of the debtor;
(iii) person in control of the debtor;
(vi) relative of a general partner, director, officer, or person in control of the debtor;
(50) "transfer" means every mode, direct or indirect, absolute or conditional, voluntary or involuntary, of disposing of or parting with property or with an interest in property, including retention of title as a security interest and foreclosure of the debtor's equity of redemption; ...
Finally there is Sec. 550, which specifies who is liable for a transfer avoided under Sec. 547:
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, to the extent that a transfer is avoided under section ... 547, ... the trustee may recover, for the benefit of the estate, the property transferred, or, if the court so orders, the value of such property, from--
(1) the initial transferee of such transfer or the entity for whose benefit such transfer was made; or
(2) any immediate or mediate transferee of such initial transferee.
(b) The trustee may not recover under section (a)(2) of this section from--
(1) a transferee that takes for value, including satisfaction or securing of a present or antecedent debt, in good faith, and without knowledge of the voidability of the transfer avoided; or
(2) any immediate or mediate good faith transferee of such transferee.
(c) The trustee is entitled to only a single satisfaction under subsection (a) of this section.
The Trustee's argument for extended recovery from outside creditors flows directly from these interlocked provisions.
Suppose Firm borrows money from Lender, with payment guaranteed by Firm's officer (Guarantor). Section 101(30)(B)(ii) renders Guarantor an "insider". Guarantor is not Firm's creditor in the colloquial sense, but under Sec. 101(9) of the Code any person with a "claim" against Firm is a "creditor", and anyone with a contingent right to payment holds a "claim" under Sec. 101(4)(A). A guarantor has a contingent right to payment from the debtor: if Lender collects from Guarantor, Guarantor succeeds to Lender's entitlements and can collect from Firm. So Guarantor is a "creditor" in Firm's bankruptcy. A payment ("transfer") by Firm to Lender is "for the benefit of" Guarantor under Sec. 547(b)(1) because every reduction in the debt to Lender reduces Guarantor's exposure.4 Because the payment to Lender assists Guarantor, it is avoidable under Sec. 547(b)(4)(B) unless one of the exemptions in Sec. 547(c) applies. Once the transfer is avoided under Sec. 547, the Trustee turns to Sec. 550 for authority to recover. "Section 547(b)(4) distinguishes according to [whether Guarantor is an "insider"], but Sec. 550 does not. It says that if a transfer is recoverable by the trustee, it may be recovered from either the 'initial transferee' (Lender) or the 'entity for whose benefit such transfer was made' (Guarantor)." Bonded Financial Services, Inc. v. European American Bank, 838 F.2d 890, 894 (7th Cir.1988) (emphasis in original). So Lender may have to repay transfers received during the year before filing, even though Lender is not an insider.
Judge Plunkett accepted this chain of reasoning. The creditors seek to break it at three links. First, they observe that Sec. 550(a) allows the trustee to recover only "to the extent that a transfer is avoided under" Sec. 547. Viewing each payment as two "transfers"--one to Lender, another to Guarantor--they insist that the only transfer avoidable under Sec. 547 is the one to Guarantor. Second, several of the lenders say that the insiders are not "creditors" for particular debts. Third, CIT submits that payment of a non-guaranteed loan backed by a senior security interest does not produce a "benefit" for an inside guarantor of a junior secured creditor. The district court did not consider this third argument, and we do not pursue it (although we discuss it briefly at the close of this opinion); it should be resolved in the first instance by the bankruptcy court. The other two arguments we address in reverse order.
The United States, as tax collector, did not receive a guarantee from any insider of Deprizio Co. There is no note; the debt is created by operation of law. The wrinkle is that 26 U.S.C. Sec. 6672(a) potentially requires insiders to pay any tax the firm should have withheld and paid over. It provides:
Any person required to collect, truthfully account for, and pay over any tax imposed by this title who willfully fails to collect such tax, or truthfully account for and pay over such tax ... shall ... be liable to a penalty equal to the total amount of the tax evaded, or not collected, or not accounted for and paid over....
Because an "insider" may be liable under Sec. 6672(a) when the firm does not pay over taxes, every dollar of tax paid reduces the insider's exposure. Thus the insider receives a benefit from payment. Section 547(b)(1) speaks, however, of payments for the benefit of creditors, not benefits at large. A person is a "creditor" only to the extent he holds a "claim" against the debtor. So all turns on whether a "person required to collect, truthfully account for, and pay over any tax"--in the shorthand of tax law, a "responsible person"--has a contingent right to recover from the debtor in bankruptcy, the only basis for calling him a "creditor".
Section 6672(a) does not authorize a responsible person to recover from the firm. Nothing in the text or structure of the statute suggests that the responsible person can seek compensation from anyone else. The law imposes a "penalty" on the defaulting responsible person. This is personal liability, standing apart from the firm's tax debt. The government customarily collects the full tax only once, from the employer or the responsible person, see Policy Statement P-5-60, 1 CCH Internal Revenue Manual 1305-14; Emshwiller v. United States, 565 F.2d 1042, 1047 (8th Cir.1977), but nothing in the text of Sec. 6672(a) prevents the Commissioner of Internal Revenue from collecting both the taxes withheld by the employer and the penalty from the responsible person. Because the responsible person owes his own debt to the government, Monday v. United States, 421 F.2d 1210, 1218 (7th Cir.1970), he does not hold a "claim" against the debtor and so is not a creditor. In re FJS Tool & Mfg. Co., 88 B.R. 866, 870 (Bankr.N.D.Ill.1988); Arrigoni v. CIR, 73 T.C. 792, 800-01 (1980).
The Trustee responds with an argument based on common law: the employer is liable for the tax, the responsible person has been vexed only to ensure collection, and so (the Trustee insists) the responsible person may get contribution or indemnity from the employer. That contingent claim would make the responsible person a creditor. Section 6672(a) does not define a tort, however, and federal courts no longer create private rights of action without support in either the statutory text or the legislative history. See Karahalios v. Federal Employees Union, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 1282, 103 L.Ed.2d 539 (1989). Rights of contribution and indemnity are no different in principle from other implied rights of action, see Texas Industries, Inc. v. Radcliff Materials, Inc., 451 U.S. 630, 101 S.Ct. 2061, 68 L.Ed.2d 500 (1981). The Trustee has not identified anything suggesting that Congress sought to create a private right of action by the responsible person against the employer to accompany the express right in favor of the Commissioner against the responsible person.
Analogies to indemnity at common law do not assist the Trustee. "[T]here can be no indemnity in favor of the intentional or reckless tortfeasor", W. Page Keeton, et al., Prosser and Keeton on Torts 343 (5th ed.1984). Section 6672(a) imposes a penalty only when the responsible person has "willfully" failed to collect or pay over the tax. Wilful is a term with many shadings, but its incarnation in Sec. 6672(a) means at least reckless. "[T]he 'responsible person' is liable if he (1) clearly ought to have known that (2) there was a grave risk that withholding taxes were not being paid and if (3) he was in a position to find out for certain very easily." Wright v. United States, 809 F.2d 425, 427 (7th Cir.1987). See also, e.g., Sawyer v. United States, 831 F.2d 755 (7th Cir.1987); Ruth v. United States, 823 F.2d 1091, 1094-95 (7th Cir.1987); Purdy Co. v. United States, 814 F.2d 1183, 1188-89 (7th Cir.1987). Cf. United States v. Sotelo, 436 U.S. 268, 274-75, 98 S.Ct. 1795, 1799-1800, 56 L.Ed.2d 275 (1978). Anyone who must pay a penalty under Sec. 6672(a) also has the degree of involvement and the mental state that would prevent indemnity at common law.
An insider potentially subject to a penalty under Sec. 6672(a) therefore does not hold a "claim" against the debtor and is not its creditor. In re All Star Sports, Inc., 78 B.R. 281 (Bankr.D.Nev.1987); In re Windsor Communications Group, Inc., 45 B.R. 770 (Bankr.E.D.Pa.1985). Payments to the tax collector, although to the benefit of the responsible person, are not to his benefit as creditor, and the Trustee may not recover funds from the United States for transfers more than 90 days before the filing.
Several of Deprizio Co.'s pension and welfare funds accepted notes co-signed by Richard Deprizio. Payments to the funds on these notes directly reduced his liability. These pension and welfare funds therefore must be treated just like the commercial creditors to the extent of these notes. The Central States pension and welfare funds, however, did not obtain Richard Deprizio's promise, and the other funds may have received payments on account of the firm's current obligations, which did not reduce the balances on the notes. The Trustee wants to recover payments made to all funds within the year before the filing on the ground that insiders of the firm are secondarily liable. The theory, as with the tax obligations, is that the insiders hold contingent claims against the debtor if they should be called on to satisfy its debts to the pension and welfare funds, making them "creditors". Once again the potential benefit to the insiders is obvious but their status as "creditors" is not.
Pension funds look to the employer for payment. Section 515 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 1145, requires "[e]very employer who is obligated to make contributions to a multiemployer plan under the terms of the plan or under the terms of a collectively bargained agreement [to] ... make such contributions in accordance with the terms and conditions of such plan or such agreement." This statute, which we discussed in detail in Central States Pension Fund v. Gerber Truck Service, Inc., 870 F.2d 1148 (7th Cir.1989) (en banc), requires strict adherence to the terms of the contribution agreement, unless those terms are inconsistent with law.
ERISA lacks, however, a provision such as Sec. 6672(a) of the Internal Revenue Code. Nothing in ERISA requires insiders of the firm to stand behind its pension commitments. If this is the whole story, then payments to pension and welfare funds do not provide even a "benefit" to an inside creditor: because the plans are unable to recover from the insiders, payments do not reduce the insiders' exposure. More, the insiders who are not exposed to personal liability have no potential "claim" against the firm and could not be "creditors".
Things are not so simple, though. Section 3(5) of ERISA, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 1002(5), defines "employer" as "any person acting directly as an employer, or indirectly in the interest of an employer", and Sec. 3(9), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 1002(9), adds that a "person" includes "an individual ... [or] corporation". Perhaps, then, an insider counts as an "employer" under ERISA to the extent he is acting "indirectly in the interest of an employer", and therefore is responsible for the firm's pension and welfare obligations. If the insider's obligation does not depend on wilful misconduct (thus avoiding the argument that defeated the Trustee's claims concerning tax payments), the insider's right to recover over against the firm would make the insider a "creditor".
Section 3(5) was derived from a similar provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act, and courts have allowed employees to collect from corporate investors and officers under the FLSA when they caused the firms to pay less than the minimum wage. See Riordan v. Kempiners, 831 F.2d 690 (7th Cir.1987); Donovan v. Agnew, 712 F.2d 1509 (1st Cir.1983). The analogy to the FLSA led Judge Shadur to conclude that a firm's managers are jointly and severally liable with the firm for pension obligations. Gambino v. Index Sales Corp., 673 F.Supp. 1450, 1452-56 (N.D.Ill.1987). Accord, Elam v. Seng Truck Leasing Co., No. 87 C 8132, 1988 WL 139280 (N.D.Ill. Dec. 14, 1988); West Virginia-Ohio Valley Area IBEW Welfare Fund v. Ball Electric Co., 685 F.Supp. 953 (S.D.W.Va.1988). On this approach, payment to the funds yields a benefit for an inside creditor. Gambino gives a thoughtful and plausible account of managers' liability under ERISA. At the end of the day, however, we remain unpersuaded, for two reasons.
First, we must take account of Sec. 515. Only an "employer who is obligated to make contributions to" a plan under an agreement need do so. Such an employer must make contributions "in accordance with the terms and conditions of such plan or such agreement." Even if a manager or other officer is an "employer" under Sec. 3(5), the plan or other agreement still governs what each must do, for not all "employers" are "obligated to make contributions" under the "terms and conditions" of a plan or agreement. Gerber Truck Service holds that these documents will be strictly enforced. Exactitude works both ways. Just as pension and welfare plans get no less than the agreements provide, so they get no more. The parent corporation of an employer under the act is an "employer" itself--may even have its own pension plan--but the parent would not be liable under Sec. 515 for its subsidiary's pension debts in the absence of a promise running from the parent. So it is with other investors and managers. Several plans obtained Richard Deprizio's personal commitment, as co-maker of notes with Deprizio Co. Other plans had only Deprizio Co.'s commitment to pay. Section 515 requires us to honor the difference between these engagements. Massachusetts Laborers' Health and Welfare Fund v. Starrett Paving Corp., 845 F.2d 23 (1st Cir.1988) (Breyer, J.).
Second, the General Counsel of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which insures multi-employer pension funds and accordingly has a strong interest in seeing that they collect their due, has concluded that ERISA does not address "shareholder or officer liability". Opinion Letter 82-38 (Dec. 14, 1982), states: "With regard to your question as to individual shareholder responsibility for withdrawal liability, we note that ERISA has no special rules regarding shareholder or officer liability. Accordingly, this issue is usually determined by State law, which generally provides that shareholders are not liable for the debts of a corporation." Opinion Letter 82-38 does not go into detail, but even so we owe it some respect. Gerber Truck Service, 870 F.2d at 1153-54. The approach of this letter has been adopted widely. Courts routinely rebuff efforts to collect pension debts from managers and investors unless the officer or investor would be liable for the firm's other debts under state law--in other words, unless courts would "pierce the corporate veil" in light of the structure and operation of the particular firm. Scarbrough v. Perez, 870 F.2d 1079 (6th Cir.1989); International Brotherhood of Painters v. George A. Kracher, Inc., 856 F.2d 1546 (D.C.Cir.1988); Solomon v. Klein, 770 F.2d 352 (3d Cir.1985); Operating Engineers Pension Trust v. Reed, 726 F.2d 513 (9th Cir.1984) (Kennedy, J.). It would take a compelling argument to persuade us to depart from an interpretation of the law adopted by a responsible agency and followed by so many courts. Inferences from the importation into ERISA of a few words from the FLSA do not satisfy that standard.
An officer who does not make a contractual commitment to a pension or welfare plan still could be personally liable, to the extent he is liable for general corporate debts under state corporate law, Starret Paving, 845 F.2d at 26. But when state law recognizes the separate identity of manager and firm, liability under ERISA depends on the contents of the plan and related agreements.5 No insider guaranteed Deprizio Co.'s debts to the Central States pension and welfare funds. Because the Trustee does not maintain that Deprizio Co. is a shell corporation or that the other attributes allowing a court to disregard the corporate form are present, cf. Secon Service System, Inc. v. St. Joseph Bank & Trust Co., 855 F.2d 406, 412-16 (7th Cir.1988), payments to the Central States funds did not produce a benefit to an inside "creditor". Whether particular payments to the other funds produced such an avoidable benefit depends on the terms of their agreements, a topic that must be explored on remand.
Now for the principal question: whether the Trustee may recover from an outside creditor under Sec. 550(a)(1) a transfer more than 90 days before the filing that is avoided under Sec. 547(b) because of a benefit for an inside creditor. The textual argument, which we have already given, is simple. Section 547(b) defines which transfers are "avoidable". No one doubts that a transfer to Lender produces a "benefit" for Guarantor. After Sec. 547 defines which transfers may be avoided, Sec. 550(a) identifies who is responsible for payment: "the initial transferee of such transfer or the entity for whose benefit such transfer was made" (emphasis added). This gives the trustee the option to collect from Lender, Guarantor, or both, subject only to the proviso in Sec. 550(c) that there can be but one satisfaction.
More than language lies behind this approach. The trustee's power to avoid preferences (the "avoiding power") is essential to make the bankruptcy case a collective proceeding for the determination and payment of debts. Any individual creditor has a strong incentive to make off with the assets of a troubled firm, saving itself at potential damage to the value of the enterprise. Many a firm is worth more together than in pieces, and a spate of asset-grabbing by creditors could dissipate whatever firm-specific value the assets have. Like fishers in a common pool, creditors logically disregard the fact that their self-protection may diminish aggregate value--for if Creditor A does not lay claim to the assets, Creditor B will, and A will suffer for inaction. All creditors gain from a rule of law that induces each to hold back. The trustee's avoiding powers serve this end in two ways: first, they eliminate the benefit of attaching assets out of the ordinary course in the last 90 days before the filing, so that the rush to dismember a firm is not profitable from a creditor's perspective; second, the avoiding powers assure each creditor that if it refrains from acting, the pickings of anyone less civil will be fetched back into the pool. See Thomas H. Jackson, Avoiding Powers in Bankruptcy, 36 Stan.L.Rev. 725, 727-31, 756-68 (1984).
How long should this preference-recovery period be? If one outside creditor knows that the firm is in trouble, others will too. Each major lender monitors both the firm and fellow lenders. If it perceives that some other lender is being paid preferentially, a major lender can propel Firm into bankruptcy. Reasonably alert lenders can act with sufficient dispatch to ensure that the perceived preference is recoverable even when the preference period is short. Section 547(b) makes 90 days the rule, time enough (Congress concluded) for careful creditors to protect themselves (and when one does, small unsecured trade creditors get the benefits too).
Insiders pose special problems. Insiders will be the first to recognize that the firm is in a downward spiral. If insiders and outsiders had the same preference-recovery period, insiders who lent money to the firm could use their knowledge to advantage by paying their own loans preferentially, then putting off filing the petition in bankruptcy until the preference period had passed. Outside creditors, aware of this risk, would monitor more closely, or grab assets themselves (fearing that the reciprocity that is important to the pooling scheme has been destroyed), or precipitate bankruptcy at the smallest sign of trouble, hoping to "catch" inside preferences before it is too late. All of these devices could be costly. An alternative device is to make the preference-recovery period for insiders longer than that for outsiders. With a long period for insiders, even the prescient managers who first see the end coming are unlikely to be able to prefer themselves in distribution.
Loans from insiders to their firms are not the only, or even the most important, concern of outside creditors. Insiders frequently guarantee other loans. If the firm folds while these loans are outstanding, the insiders are personally liable. So insiders bent on serving their own interests (few managers hold outside lenders' interests of equal weight with their own!) could do so by inducing the firm to pay the guaranteed loans preferentially. If the preference-recovery period for such payments were identical to the one for outside debts, this would be an attractive device for insiders. While concealing the firm's true financial state, they would pay off (at least pay down) the debts they had guaranteed, while neglecting others. To the extent they could use private information to do this more than 90 days ahead of the filing in bankruptcy, they would make out like bandits. The guaranteed loans would be extinguished, and with them the guarantees. True, it is logically possible to recover from the insider the value of the released guarantee, even if the trustee could not reach the proceeds in the hands of the outside lender. But it is hard to determine the value of a released guarantee, and anyway insiders might think that they would be more successful resisting the claims of the trustee than the hounds of the outside creditors. So an extended recovery period for payments to outside creditors that benefit insiders could contribute to the ability of the bankruptcy process to deter last-minute grabs of assets. The outsiders who must kick into the pool when the trustee uses the avoiding powers retain their contractual entitlements; all the trustee's recovery does is ensure that those entitlements (as modified by any statutory priorities)--rather than the efforts of insiders to protect their own interests, or the cleverness of outsiders in beating the 90-day deadline--determine the ultimate distribution of the debtor's net assets.
* The bankruptcy court bridled at the extended preference period for outside creditors. Treating each payment as two transfers, one to Lender and the other to Guarantor, Judge Eisen concluded that Sec. 550(a) limits the trustee to recovery from Guarantor. Section 550(a) allows recovery only "to the extent that a transfer is avoided" under Sec. 547, and the two-transfer approach implies that the transfer to Lender has not been "avoided" at all. Judge Plunkett disagreed with this approach; so do we.
The two-transfer approach equates "transfer" with "benefit received". Both Lender and Guarantor gain from payment, and each receives a "transfer" to the extent of the gain. The Code, however, equates "transfer" with payments made. Section 101(50), which we quoted above, says that a transfer is a disposition of property. Sections 547 and 550 both speak of a transfer being avoided; avoidability is an attribute of the transfer rather than of the creditor. While the lenders want to define transfer from the recipients' perspectives, the Code consistently defines it from the debtor's. A single payment therefore is one "transfer", no matter how many persons gain thereby.6
Section 550(a) allows recovery "to the extent that a transfer is avoided" not because a single payment may be many "transfers" but because on occasion less than all of a given transfer is "avoided". Section 547(b)(5) provides that a transfer is avoidable only to the extent it gives the creditor more than it would have received in a liquidation under Chapter 7. Several portions of Sec. 547(c) also contemplate avoiding part of a transfer. Section 547(c)(1), for example, excludes from recovery the portion of a transfer supported by contemporaneous new value. So if Lender receives an asset worth $100 and infuses $80 of new capital, only $20 of the transfer is avoidable. The "to the extent that a transfer is avoided" language in Sec. 550(a) ensures that the trustee recovers only the $20 and not the $100 in such a case.7
There is no greater support for the two-transfer approach in the legislative history than in the text and structure of the Code. The features of the Code important to us were substantially revised by the Conference Committee, which did not issue a report. Managers of the legislation read into the Congressional Record identical statements explaining the Conference Committee's work, but these statements do not address the subject at hand.
The parties agree that there is no helpful legislative history. They draw different inferences from this, however. The creditors say that we must infer that Congress meant to preserve the practice, under the Bankruptcy Act of 1898, of recovering payments only from those to whom the transfer represented a preference, see Dean v. Davis, 242 U.S. 438, 443, 37 S.Ct. 130, 131, 61 L.Ed. 419 (1917) (dictum), on the theory that if Congress made a change as momentous as this, surely someone would have said so. Frequently the pre-1978 practice will be informative. United Savings Ass'n v. Timbers of Inwood Forest Associates, Ltd., 484 U.S. 365, 108 S.Ct. 626, 634, 98 L.Ed.2d 740 (1988); Kelly v. Robinson, 479 U.S. 36, 44-47, 107 S.Ct. 353, 358-60, 93 L.Ed.2d 216 (1986); Midlantic National Bank v. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, 474 U.S. 494, 501, 106 S.Ct. 755, 759-60, 88 L.Ed.2d 859 (1986). Yet "[i]t is not the law that a statute can have no effects which are not explicitly mentioned in its legislative history". Pittston Coal Group v. Sebben, --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 414, 420-21, 102 L.Ed.2d 408 (1988). See also, e.g., United States Railroad Retirement Board v. Fritz, 449 U.S. 166, 101 S.Ct. 453, 66 L.Ed.2d 368 (1980); Harrison v. PPG Industries, Inc., 446 U.S. 578, 591-92, 100 S.Ct. 1889, 1897, 64 L.Ed.2d 525 (1980); Swain v. Pressley, 430 U.S. 372, 378-79, 97 S.Ct. 1224, 1228-29, 51 L.Ed.2d 411 (1977). When Congress makes wholesale changes in the text and structure of the law, it is fatuous to pretend that a silent legislative history means that existing practices should continue unchanged. The 1978 Code separates the identification of avoidable transfers (Sec. 547) from the identification of those who must pay (Sec. 550), a structural change with no antecedents in the 1898 Act.8 It also creates for the first time the principle that transfers may be recoverable from either transferee or beneficiary--something introduced to Sec. 550(a)(1) in the Conference Committee, too late for comment in the usual committee reports.9 Changes of this character show that the pre-1978 practice is not a useful guide to interpreting the relation between Secs. 547 and 550. See United States v. Ron Pair Enterprises, Inc., --- U.S. ----, 109 S.Ct. 1026, 1031-33, 103 L.Ed.2d 290 (1989).
Applying the longer preference-recovery period to outside creditors would not put the Code in conflict with fundamental policies reflected in both state and federal law--in Kelly the policy denying discharge to criminals seeking to avoid penalties for their crimes, in Midlantic the policy of requiring those who discharge hazardous wastes to clean them up. The Court thought it fantastic to suppose that Congress would provide for the discharge of criminal restitution orders when it expressly forbade discharge of penal sanctions, or that Congress would allow polluters to leave the mess to someone else (technically, allow unsecured creditors to obtain larger shares of the debtor's assets even though the clean-up obligation passed through bankruptcy as a charge against the firm's assets). It therefore resolved ambiguities in the Code in a way harmonious with the structure of the rest of bankruptcy law and non-bankruptcy entitlements. See Butner v. United States, 440 U.S. 48, 99 S.Ct. 914, 59 L.Ed.2d 136 (1979). There is no similarly enduring policy concerning the length of the preference-recovery period for outside creditors or the relation between insiders' guarantees and the preference-recovery period. An extended recovery period is consistent with the structure of the Code and does not subvert any of its functions. A longer period when insiders reap benefits by preferring one outside creditor over another facilitates the operation of bankruptcy as a collective process and ensures that each creditor will receive payment according to the Code's priorities and non-bankruptcy entitlements. Silence in the legislative history therefore does not require or authorize a court to depart from the text and structure of the Code. Chan v. Korean Air Lines, Ltd., --- U.S. ----, ----, 109 S.Ct. 1676, 1683-85, 104 L.Ed.2d 113 (1989); Ron Pair, 109 S.Ct. at 1030.
The creditors do not argue that even if the Code extends the preference period, the extension should not be enforced because "inequitable". Perhaps our rebuff to "equity" arguments in other bankruptcy cases is responsible. See Bonded Financial, 838 F.2d at 894-95, and, e.g., In re Iowa R.R., 840 F.2d 535, 536 (7th Cir.1988); In re Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific R.R., 791 F.2d 524, 528 (7th Cir.1986); Boston & Maine Corp. v. Chicago Pacific Corp., 785 F.2d 562, 566 (7th Cir.1986). See also, e.g., Norwest Bank Worthington v. Ahlers, 485 U.S. 197, 108 S.Ct. 963, 968-69, 99 L.Ed.2d 169 (1988) ("whatever equitable powers remain in the bankruptcy courts must and can only be exercised within the confines of the Bankruptcy Code"); Official Committee v. Mabey, 832 F.2d 299, 301-02 (4th Cir.1987); Guerin v. Weil, Gotshal & Manges, 205 F.2d 302, 304 (2d Cir.1953) (A. Hand, J.). "There is a basic difference between filling a gap left by Congress' silence and rewriting rules that Congress has affirmatively and specifically enacted." Mobil Oil Corp. v. Higginbotham, 436 U.S. 618, 625, 98 S.Ct. 2010, 2015, 56 L.Ed.2d 581 (1978). Bankruptcy laws are not special cases, as Ahlers demonstrates.10 See also SEC v. United States Realty & Improvement Co., 310 U.S. 434, 455-57, 60 S.Ct. 1044, 1053-54, 84 L.Ed. 1293 (1940).
Nonetheless, "equity" arguments have captivated a majority of the bankruptcy judges and several of the commentators who have spoken on this subject (see notes 2 and 3 above). So it is worth pointing out that even if equity arguments were admissible, they would not help the creditors' cause. Rules of law affecting parties to voluntary arrangements do not operate "inequitably" in the business world--at least not once the rule is understood. Prices adjust. If the extended preference period facilitates the operation of bankruptcy as a collective debt-adjustment process, then credit will become available on slightly better terms. If a longer period has the opposite effect, creditors will charge slightly higher rates of interest and monitor debtors more closely. In either case creditors will receive the competitive rate of return in financial markets--the same risk-adjusted rate they would have received with a 90-day preference-recovery period. A rule may injure debtors and creditors by foreclosing efficient business arrangements and increasing the rate of interest low-risk borrowers must pay, see In re Thompson, 867 F.2d 416, 419 (7th Cir.1989); In re Patterson, 825 F.2d 1140, 1142 (7th Cir.1987); In re Erickson, 815 F.2d 1090, 1094 (7th Cir.1987), but inefficiency is not inequity. At all events, in what sense is it "inequitable" to recapture payments to creditors that may have been favored only because payment reduced insiders' exposure (recall that the insiders select which debts to pay first), then distribute these monies according to statutory priorities and contractual entitlements? In what sense is it "inequitable" to require the outside lenders to pursue the inside guarantors for any shortfall, when they bargained for exactly that recourse? See also 86 B.R. at 552-53.
Our creditors press a cousin to "equity" arguments: "policy" arguments. According to the creditors, an extended preference period will force lenders to precipitate bankruptcy filings at the slightest sign of trouble in order to prevent erosion of their positions. The lenders paint a bleak picture of firms driven under when the problems could have been worked out--if only the lenders knew that they would keep what they receive in the "workout". Workouts often involve guarantees, and if these mean longer preference periods, then workouts may become less common (and formal bankruptcy more common). It is not clear to us that bankruptcy proceedings are more costly than workouts. See Olympia Equipment Leasing Co. v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 786 F.2d 794, 802-03 (7th Cir.1986) (concurring opinion). It's not as though the filing of a bankruptcy petition closes the firm and heaves its workers into the streets. A firm with positive cash flows will continue operating in bankruptcy; the court simply sorts out the financial claims to the enterprise. Creditors are free to compromise their claims inside of bankruptcy, just as they are outside it.11 So the fear of bankruptcy replacing some workouts does not lead us to shy away from an ordinary reading of the statute.
For what it may be worth, we doubt that an extended preference-recovery period will cause a stampede from workouts to bankruptcies. Unless there is a "preference", there is nothing for the trustee to avoid. Most of the tales of woe presented by the creditors do not involve preferences in light of Sec. 547(b)(5), which says that a transfer is a preference only to the extent the creditor got more than it would have received in a liquidation, and Sec. 547(c), which specifies situations that do not create avoidable preferences.
Sec. 547(c) The trustee may not avoid under this section a transfer--
(1) to the extent that such transfer was--
(A) intended by the debtor and the creditor to or for whose benefit such transfer was made to be a contemporaneous exchange for new value given to the debtor; and
(B) in fact a substantially contemporaneous exchange;
(A) in payment of a debt incurred by the debtor in the ordinary course of business or financial affairs of the debtor and the transferee;
(B) made in the ordinary course of business or financial affairs of the debtor and the transferee; and
(C) made according to ordinary business terms;
(3) that creates a security interest in property acquired by the debtor--
(A) to the extent such security interest secures new value [in the nature of a purchase-money security interest] ...
(4) to or for the benefit of a creditor, to the extent that, after such transfer, such creditor gave new value to or for the benefit of the debtor--
(A) not secured by an otherwise unavoidable security interest; and
(B) on account of which new value the debtor did not make an otherwise unavoidable transfer to or for the benefit of such creditor;
(5) that creates a perfected security interest in inventory or a receivable or the proceeds of either, except to the extent that the aggregate of all such transfers to the transferee caused a reduction ... to the prejudice of other creditors holding unsecured claims, of any amount by which the debt secured by such security interest exceeded the value of all security interests for such debt on [one of three defined dates] ...
(6) that is the fixing of a statutory lien that is not avoidable under section 545 of this title; or
(7) [aggregate transfers of less than $600 for an individual debtor].
This is the current version of Sec. 547(c), as amended in 1984 to eliminate the former requirement in Sec. 547(c)(2) that the payment come within 45 days of the debt to count as one in due course, a qualifier that at least potentially allowed the trustee to recover all installment payments, because the contract had been signed and credit extended more than 45 days before a given payment. Cf. In re Xonics Imaging Inc., 837 F.2d 763 (7th Cir.1988). We need not decide whether installment payments before 1984 may be recovered even though made within 45 days of their due date, because this appeal does not present for decision the Trustee's effort to recoup any particular transfer. It is enough to observe that Sec. 547(b)(5) and (c), both before and after amendment, exclude from recovery the bulk of ordinary commercial payments.
Consider some of the transactions the lenders use to illustrate what they view as pernicious consequences of an extended preference-recovery period:
. A fully-secured creditor with an insider's guarantee to boot is paid off nine months before bankruptcy and releases its security interest. The debtor uses the property as security for a new loan. The trustee recovers the payment as a preference, and the creditor has been stripped of its security.
The trustee confronts two obstacles in such a case. First, if the creditor was fully secured, then payment does not produce a benefit for the inside guarantor, whose exposure was zero. The preference-recovery period therefore would be only 90 days. Second, under Sec. 547(b)(5) a transfer is avoidable only to the extent the creditor received more than it would have in a Chapter 7 liquidation. A fully-secured creditor will be paid in full under Chapter 7, so there is no avoidable preference in this case with or without a guarantee by an insider. If, on the other hand, the security covered only 90% of the debt, then only the remaining 10% of the payment is avoidable as a preference.
. A creditor financing the debtor's inventory and receivables makes many loans and receives many payments during the year before the filing. The trustee seeks to recover all of these. Under Sec. 547(c)(5), however, the trustee must show that the lender improved its position relative to other creditors during the preference period. See In re Ebbler Furniture & Appliances, Inc., 804 F.2d 87 (7th Cir.1986). Ordinary financing arrangements do not produce such an effect.
. A creditor makes an unsecured loan guaranteed by an insider and requires monthly payments over a number of years. The trustee seeks to recover all of the payments during the year before the filing. To the extent the debtor paid on time, the creditor is protected by the current version of Sec. 547(c)(2), the "ordinary course" rule. (The state of things for payments before the amendment is less clear, as we have mentioned.)
. Lender # 1 extends credit and takes security. It is so over-secured that Lender # 2 is willing to make a second loan and take a junior security interest. This second loan (but not the first) is backed up by an insider's guarantee. Every payment to Lender # 1 increases the amount of security available for Lender # 2, which produces a benefit to Guarantor by reducing his exposure. Cf. In re Prescott, 805 F.2d 719, 731 (7th Cir.1986). The trustee seeks to recover all payments to Lender # 1 during the year before the filing, even though Lender # 1 did not negotiate for an insider's guarantee.
This appears to be the Trustee's position vis-a-vis CIT. If the payments had been made after the 1984 amendments, then Sec. 547(c)(2) would prevent recovery. Even under the pre-1984 law that applies to this case, we have substantial doubt that the payments to Lender # 1 are avoidable transfers. By assumption Lender # 1 is over-secured, so its position has not been improved relative to a Chapter 7 liquidation, Sec. 547(b)(5). The benefit in such a case is negligible at best, so the case for recapture is weak. Bonded Financial, 838 F.2d at 895. Because neither the bankruptcy court nor the district court considered this question in detail, we do not resolve it, but the Trustee has an uphill battle.
In light of these exclusions, there is no reason to use ambulatory arguments of "equity" or "policy" to defeat the Trustee's claims in this case. Congress has considered and addressed specifically the situations that most concern lenders. If these exclusions and exemptions are not "enough", creditors should complain to Congress.
To sum up: We hold in Part II.B.1 that insiders who may be liable on account of the firm's failure to pay taxes are not "creditors" because they do not hold "claims" against their firms. Accordingly, delinquent taxes paid more than 90 days before the filing may not be recovered under Sec. 550(a). We conclude in Part II.B.2 that pension and welfare trusts may recover from insiders only to the extent state law allows that under rules for disregarding the corporate form, or the insiders make contractual commitments enforceable under Sec. 515 of ERISA. When state law supports "veil piercing" it does so on the ground that the investor and the firm are a single entity, which precludes the insider from holding a "claim" against the firm. The Trustee therefore may not recover payments to pension and welfare trusts made more than 90 days before the filing, unless those trusts negotiated for and received contractual guarantees from insiders--in which event the funds should be treated just like any other outside creditor. We hold in Part III that the preference-recovery period for outside creditors is one year when the payment produces a benefit for an inside creditor, including a guarantor.
The judgments of the district court are affirmed in part and reversed in part. The cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
One creditor's appeal from the bankruptcy court was assigned to Judge Leinenweber, who held the case in abeyance pending Judge Plunkett's opinion and followed his decision in a brief order. This court consolidated the appeals
Five cases answer "yes": the district court's decision here plus In re Robinson Bros. Drilling, Inc., 97 B.R. 77 (W.D.Okla.1988), appeal pending, No. 88-8089 (10th Cir.); In re Coastal Petroleum Corp., 91 B.R. 35 (Bankr.N.D.Ohio 1988); In re W.E. Tucker Oil, Inc., 42 B.R. 897 (Bankr.W.D.Ark.1984); In re Big Three Transportation, Inc., 41 B.R. 16 (Bankr.W.D.Ark.1983). These cases answer "no" on the ground that extended preference recovery would be inequitable: In re T.B. Westex Foods, Inc., 96 B.R. 77 (Bankr.W.D.Tex.1989) (alternative holding); In re Midwestern Companies Inc., 96 B.R. 224 (Bankr.W.D.Mo.1988); In re C-L Cartage Co., 70 B.R. 928 (Bankr.E.D.Tenn.1987); In re Aerco Metals, Inc., 60 B.R. 77 (Bankr.N.D.Tex.1985); In re R.A. Beck Builder, Inc., 34 B.R. 888 (Bankr.W.D.Pa.1983); In re Duccilli Formal Wear, Inc., 8 Bankr.Ct. Dec. (CRR) 1180 (Bankr.S.D.Ohio 1982); In re Cove Patio Corp., 19 B.R. 843 (Bankr.S.D.Fla.1982); In re Church Buildings & Interiors, Inc., 14 B.R. 128 (Bankr.W.D.Okla.1981). Two answer "no" on the ground that insider and outsider receive different "transfers", only one of which may be recovered: the bankruptcy judge's opinion in our case and In re Mercon Industries, Inc., 37 B.R. 549 (Bankr.E.D.Pa.1984). (Midwestern adopts this view as an alternative holding.)
Compare Lawrence P. King, 4 Collier on Bankruptcy p 550.02 at 550-8 (15th ed. 1987), and Vern Countryman, The Trustee's Recovery in Preference Actions, 3 Bankruptcy Developments J. 449, 464 (1986), both saying "no" on grounds of equity, with Isaac Nutovic, The Bankruptcy Preference Laws: Interpreting Code Sections 547(c)(2), 550(a)(1), and 546(a)(1), 41 Bus.Law. 175, 186-99 (1985), and Thomas E. Pitts, Jr., Insider Guaranties and the Law of Preferences, 55 Am.Bankr.L.J. 343 (1981), both answering "yes". See also Phillip I. Blumberg, The Law of Corporate Groups: Bankruptcy Law Sec. 9.03 (1985 & Supp.1988), contending that the answer should depend on whether the insider is solvent. A student note suggests still another approach. Note, The Interplay Between Sections 547(b) and 550(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code, 89 Colum.L.Rev. 530 (1989)
This is even clearer when the insider is a co-maker on the note, as Richard Deprizio was on several. On the other hand, a co-maker may have no right to recover from the firm and therefore no "claim" in bankruptcy. The parties have not treated inside co-makers differently from inside guarantors, so neither shall we
Section 502(a)(3)(B)(ii), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 1132(a)(3)(B)(ii), adds nothing to Sec. 515. It authorizes a plan's trustee to bring suit to "enforce any provisions of this subchapter or the terms of the plan." This returns us to the question whether the "terms of [a] plan" require managers and investors to stand behind the employer's pension commitments, the same question to which Sec. 515 directs us
The creditors contend that In re Air Conditioning, Inc., 845 F.2d 293, 296-97 (11th Cir.1988), and In re Compton Corp., 831 F.2d 586, 591-94 (5th Cir.1987), modified on other grounds, 835 F.2d 584 (1988), take a different view. These two cases do not consider the relation between Secs. 547 and 550 of the Code or mention Sec. 101(50). Identifying multiple "transfers" was an heuristic device to explain how recoveries could be had from indirect beneficiaries under the 1898 Act, which on the surface did not allow such recoveries. See note 9 below. In summarizing this approach, the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits did not thereby resolve a question that was not before them. (The holding of each case was that a recoverable preference had taken place.)
The legislative history supports this understanding. See, e.g., H.R.Rep. No. 95-595, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 375-76 (1977); S.Rep. No. 95-989, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. 90 (1978), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1978, pp. 5787, 5876, 5963, 6331, 6332
This separation was well thought out and discussed at length in the legislative history, although without discussing all of its consequences. See the references in note 7 above
And obviously too late for comment in the Report of the Commission on the Bankruptcy Laws of the United States, H.R.Doc. No. 137, 93d Cong., 1st Sess. (1973). This Report has influenced the interpretation of the many features of the 1978 Code it proposed and discussed in detail. As the creditors observe, the Report does not mention the possibility that outside lenders could be subject to an extended preference-recovery period on account of insiders' guarantees. The Report discussed (and discarded) a proposal to make transfers avoidable on account of benefits to insiders, reasoning that this was implicit under current law. Report pt. II at 170; see National Bank of Newport v. National Herkimer County Bank, 225 U.S. 178, 184, 32 S.Ct. 633, 635, 56 L.Ed. 1042 (1912). The creditors ask us to infer that the "benefit" language in the Code did not change the law. But it is not the "benefit" language of Sec. 547(b)(1), the possibility discussed by the Report, that makes the change; it is the novel text of Sec. 550(a)(1), allowing recovery from either transferee or beneficiary, that underlies the Trustee's claim. Because that change did not happen until five years after the Report, its silence on the subject is not informative
Whatever force the assertion in Bank of Marin v. England, 385 U.S. 99, 103, 87 S.Ct. 274, 277, 17 L.Ed.2d 197 (1966), that "equitable principles govern the exercise of bankruptcy jurisdiction" may have had under the 1898 Act, this approach has no place under the Code to the extent the statute addresses the question
To a substantial extent a corporate bankruptcy is nothing but an orderly forum for private adjustments. Often these adjustments could be made at least cost if the firm were sold intact and the proceeds divided according to contractual and statutory entitlements, see Douglas G. Baird, The Uneasy Case for Corporate Reorganization, 15 J. Legal Studies 127 (1986), but even when the court rather than an auction market resolves questions of valuation, it is serving a function equally important in a private workout
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538495
|
__label__cc
| 0.670884
| 0.329116
|
From The Shelf
mister beebop
pop culture and entertainment
The Chalet School Books and Why I’m Obsessed with Them
April 10, 2017 by Sandy
Frühstück. Abendessen. The Speisesaal. Kafee und Kuchen.
If you’re familiar with these words, chances are it’s because you’re as obsessed with the ‘Chalet School’ books as I am (or maybe you just know German).
The ‘Chalet School’ is a series of books by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer about a girls’ boarding school in Tirol, Wales, and Switzerland, published between the 1920s and 1970s. (It started in Tirol, moved to Wales during World War II, then went back to Switzerland, or the Oberland, after that.) There were so many books published that the series was able to follow characters from their childhood to teenage years, and up to two generations of students. I got into the books by accident when I was in grade school. My mom found a couple of books at a used bookstore and bought them for me. I loved them so much that we went back to the store and bought all we could find (they were only about 10 or 20 pesos each!), but even then I could only collect 10 of them. These books are so rare and hard to find now, and fetch a ridiculously high price on eBay. (If you know where I can find them, hook me up! I’m still looking.) You would think that, because they’re school stories, I would have stopped reading them a long time ago. But I still read them to this day, and still enjoy them. I think the main reason I do is because the stories are so simple – it’s just a bunch of schoolgirls having adventures at their boarding school. Cliques! Lessons! Feuds! Pranks! What fun!
These books were my introduction to the boarding school subculture. When I first came across the word prefect, I thought it was a typo and it drove me nuts. This is where I learned that students start out in the Kindergarten, then move on to the Second Form, Third Form and so on. The Fourth Formers are considered Middles, and students become Seniors when they reach the Fifth. The Sixth lord it over everyone, being the form where the prefects and all-important Head Girl come from. Students do their homework or preparation after classes and before Abendessen (that’s supper for us). It always bothered me how parents send their children away to school for three months at a time. It seems that when the children are home for their holidays (or hols, don’t you know), they’re just visiting their parents for a couple of weeks before they get back to school where they actually live. As one Margia Stevens says in “Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School” (from the name alone, you just know Eustacia is a piece of work):
Well, she’s here to be brought up, so I vote we do it!
Although to be fair, most of the girls sent to the Chalet School have relatives who are sick with tuberculosis and who have to be confined for months at a time at the big San (sanatorium), so the children really do need to be sent somewhere where adults can look after them and still be near enough their relatives.
Having read these books for years now, I’ve also come to notice a lot of the Chalet School’s idiosyncrasies. For one thing, the Chalet School is kind of full of itself. The school makes sure you never forget the Old Girls (what we’d call graduates) because in every book there’s a mention of a few older students and their previous adventures (which, if you’re lucky to have all the books, you’ll have read about in detail), or an update on what they’re doing now. And get this, practically every Chalet girl goes on to Oxford. Or a famous school of art needlework. I always thought this was a bit of a stretch, because is there even such a thing? But I’ve since learned from my recent binge-watching of ‘Call the Midwife’ that there are, indeed, schools for needlework. Who knew? Not only do most girls go to Oxford, but most of them become renowned scholars or experts in their field. Several of the Old Girls come back to teach, or if they marry (mostly they marry doctors because of the proximity of the San), they send their own children to the school.
There also seems to be an accident every term, like avalanches or floods. Major injuries as a result of a girl trying to run away are also fairly common. Probably the fact that most of these girls have no family is the only thing that keeps people from reporting the school for negligence!
But a special mention has to be made about the food they eat, which sounds absolutely sumptuous. Just look at this:
The soup was followed by pink boiled ham served with prunes. This course ended, there came plates of something that looked, and tasted, not unlike porridge, and with this they ate cherries steeped in spirits. The whole was topped by excellent coffee and rolls split and spread with jam of some kind.
…she came up to their table with plates of delicious iced soup…good it was, and so was the dish of cold stuffed veal accompanied by tiny potato-balls, crisp outside and hot and melting in, and a glorious golden color which went with it. Small dishes of cherries and raspberries were added, too, and a crisp chilled salad. This was followed by a creamy sweet, cold and luscious…
The books use the literary trope of “new girl undergoing a transformation to fit in.” In every book, there is always a problematic new girl – either undisciplined or just plain troublesome – who doesn’t have any family left, whose guardians ship her off to boarding school so the teachers (rather, mistresses) can worry about her instead. And of course by the end of the book, new girl is reformed because of the influence of the Chalet School.
There are three main characters throughout the series – Jo Bettany (who eventually becomes Mrs. Maynard), “the first student the school ever had” because it was her sister who put up the school in the first place; Mary-Lou Trelawney, who’s about 16 years younger than Jo, and Len Maynard, Jo’s eldest daughter. My books range from Jo’s time as a naughty schoolgirl until she herself has daughters in the school. But I don’t have the later books, so I don’t know about Len’s exploits as the main character. But I do know this: Jo and Mary-Lou are annoying! They’re Brent-Dyer’s clear favorites, because they are headstrong and “helpful” to others. But to me they are stubborn and interfering. Some personalities are just too much to handle and exhaust you from their very presence. Jo and Mary-Lou are exactly this type, but for some mysterious reason Brent-Dyer thinks this is a virtue. What makes them more annoying is the author’s habit of frequently shoving it in your face that Jo and Mary-Lou are “everything the Chalet School wants its girls to be”. They are never painted as goody-two-shoes, but the author makes it clear that this is what makes them, in fact, perfect! (Jo is also the perfect mother, because she has triplets and two sets of twins, and in total 11 children!)
Perfect Jo
The “too good to be true” Mary-Lou
In one book, “The New Mistress at the Chalet School” (because sometimes the new girl can also be a mistress), Kathie Ferrars is the newest member of Staff, who gets into a bit of a row (that’s quarrel for us non-Brits) with Mary-Lou. Kathy thinks Mary-Lou is too familiar with her (see, I told you normal people find Mary-Lou annoying). But of course, Mary-Lou is a Chalet girl, and for Kathie to be reformed, she too must fall in with their values and eventually love Mary-Lou as well.
However, there are other characters who are not irritating. Jo’s triplets – Len, Con, and Margot Maynard; Peggy Bettany (who becomes Head Girl), and Sybil Russell (the Maynards, Bettanys, and Russells are all cousins). In fact, Peggy is one of my favorite characters because she’s so normal. Even as a Head Girl she is still likable. A lot of Peggy’s contemporaries are actually the most engaging characters, but funnily enough they are almost always on the periphery of the story (well, based only on the paltry 10 books I have!). It seems the characters Brent-Dyer doesn’t care much for are the most appealing ones. My other favorite is Kathie Ferrars, partly because with a book told from her perspective she’s the only mistress we really get to know very well, and partly because she hates Mary-Lou in the beginning.
And Peggy! My favorite.
Listen to me talking about these characters as if they’re real people. In a sense, because the Chalet School creates its own history and keeps referring to it in the books, the world they inhabit becomes real. Try rereading books every year for about 20 years and see where it gets you.
Let’s compare the Chalet School with my other favorite boarding school, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry and gang sure have a lot of freedom! At the Chalet School, every activity from Monday to Friday is regulated, from rising bell to bedtime. Even on Saturdays, the girls have to wake up at 7 am (!) for mending, leftover prep, and home letters. On Sundays they also have to wake up early for service. Although to be fair, this was set almost a hundred years ago, so maybe things have changed since then.
Yet I still keep reading them! In fact, I’m in the middle of my 10 books now, which is why I wrote this post. I always need a book to read, and when I’m in a reading slump I reach for my Chalet School books. For one thing, they’re incredibly easy to read once you get past the archaic terms like chock-a-block, dekko, “what’s all this in aid of?” Also, does anyone still use the term “presently”?
The fact that they’re simply about school also serves as a comfort. Adulting is hard. So escaping to stories about schoolgirls and their mundane concerns lightens things up a bit. And in a way, I like to imagine how I’d do if I were in the Chalet School. They have some pretty posh sports there, like lacrosse and skiing, and they get to learn French and German. So it might be pretty nice. I would do well in prep because it’s just study hall. And for sure I would do well in what the Chalet School thinks is the height of analysis: reasoning from cause to effect and vice versa. In almost every book, a mistress uses this as the barometer for whether a student meets the standards of the school, that I sometimes feel sorry (in a self-righteous way) for Brent-Dyer if this is the most complicated thing she can think of.
Now you’ll have to excuse me. The bell for Kaffee und Kuchen will be ringing soon and the prefects will give me extra prep if I’m late!
Category : From The Shelf
Tags : young adult
← 5 Reasons Why Concerts are More Fun in the Philippines
Persuasion – Jane Austen →
6 thoughts on “The Chalet School Books and Why I’m Obsessed with Them”
Bag Full of Books on April 25, 2017 at 10:22 said:
I’ve always enjoyed the Chalet books and own several of them. This month I read Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s Terms and Conditions and it has rather demolished my rosy image of boarding school life.
Sandy on April 25, 2017 at 20:09 said:
I don’t think I’ll ever stop rereading my Chalet School books – the covers are practically falling off haha. Ok, now I’m curious about Terms and Conditions and will definitely look for a copy! 🙂
Betsy on August 26, 2018 at 11:51 said:
I’ve re-read the entire series 5 times (and doing it again now). in Australia they were all available in the 90’s, so we got them.
I’m obsessed by them, love Jo, Mary-Lou and many of the others. They are a great escape from real life!!!
Sandy on August 26, 2018 at 16:00 said:
Oh you’re so lucky! My search continues 🙂
Pingback: “In Poplar they call it arriving ass-first.” – Call the Midwife 1 x 02 | mister beebop
Pingback: The Books of My Childhood | mister beebop
Follow mister beebop on WordPress.com
Dream Casting 'The Silmarillion'
Let's talk about William Holden!
"This Is It" and "Calling All Angels" Mashup - Kenny Loggins and Pat Monahan
The Chalet School Books and Why I'm Obsessed with Them
My Top 10 U2 Videos
albums bono christmas concerts downton abbey food movie reviews music videos old hollywood random songs sports theater tv recaps u2
Beebop Travelogues
Arena Island, Palawan
Been There, Blogged That
Been There, Blogged That Select Month December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 July 2020 May 2020 January 2020 December 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 January 2019 December 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2013
A Parks and Recreation SpecialApril 30, 2020
Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to KillMay 5, 2020
U2X Radio LaunchJuly 1, 2020
HamilfilmJuly 3, 2020
The MandalorianOctober 30, 2020
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame InductionNovember 7, 2020
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538496
|
__label__wiki
| 0.907302
| 0.907302
|
Working from home? Switch to the DIGITAL edition of Musical Merchandise Review. CLICK HERE to signup now!
DCA: Vote!
MMR Global
Supplier Scene
26th Annual Dealers’ Choice Award Winners
2019 Don Johnson Award Winner
Don Johnson Award Winners Archive
Fretted
MMR TV
Trade Regrets: J.C. Costa
Christian Wissmuller • Trade Regrets • March 25, 2020
Noted audio/M.I. industry publicist Jean Charles Costa — better known as J.C. Costa — passed away after a lengthy illness on the morning of March 24. The owner and founder of Brainstorm Media, Costa handled public relations for clients including Martin Audio, Fishman, CAD Audio, 3G Productions, and SenovvA. He was 75.
Costa began his independent New York City-based company in 2001, offering creative marketing support, public relations, online solutions, promotions and social networking for consumer electronics, musical instrument and entertainment technology companies. This came about after decades as a successful public relations professional for companies including Samson Technologies (VP marketing, 1993-2000), the Manhattan-based PR firm SR/A, and on the staff of Atlantic Records from 1971 to 1973, doing publicity, artist relations, A&R and writing liner notes.
He attended New York’s Columbia University, graduating with a B.A. degree in Comparative Literature in 1970. This came in handy, as during that time, he also began working as a writer for Rolling Stone magazine, contributing record reviews and feature stories.
Costa is survived by his wife Rise, their son, and granddaughter. He will long be remembered for his wit, creativity, and warm character. No plans for a memorial had been announced at press time.
The Latest News and Gear in Your Inbox - Sign Up Today!
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538498
|
__label__wiki
| 0.569116
| 0.569116
|
Women’s lacrosse enters second season
Posted on March 4, 2016 March 16, 2016 by Claire Murray
The year of 2015 was the first year McNicholas had its very own lacrosse program and is the first co-ed Catholic school to start a women’s lacrosse program.
The 2016 season starts Feb. 2, with practices and scrimmages through the month of March, and their first game on March 21 against McAuley. The team is again being coached by Glenn Namian, and he has high expectations for players to have a higher proficiency of being able to handle the ball, and expects game awareness to improve.
“We expect to build on the 2015 season, when we launched the program. Players have worked on conditioning and individual skills, and we should be more proficient handling the ball and game awareness will definitely continue to improve,” Namian said.
The team is expected to play at a more competitive level than last year. Namian expects their hardest games to be against Turpin and Anderson since they are “intra-city” rivals. Senior Sydney Blaha also thinks that Turpin will be the hardest team that they will face in the 2016 season.
“I think Turpin will be one of our toughest games because they have good players and they are one of our rivals,” Blaha said.
Namian expects the team to be competitive, and he would like to have more players on the team, but he understands that as a program continues to build, this is normal for a new sports program.
“My favorite part about playing on the team is being able to play against other varsity teams around the area, and I also like playing with the other girls on the team,” Blaha said.
The only named captain so for this year is Blaha, but the other seniors on the team are Maria Ciampone, Brynna Maxey, and Maggie Klett.
Junior Erin McHugh is carrying the ball down the field looking for a pass to a teammate. McHugh played on the inaugural team in the 2014-2015 season, and she plans on playing in the 2015-2016 season as well.
The McNicholas Talent Show offers various performances for only $1
PTSA holds events to allow parents time with their children
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538502
|
__label__wiki
| 0.887994
| 0.887994
|
Race in academia
News, The Saint
According to a Freedom of Information request obtained by The Saint, only one black academic (defined as a staff member with both teaching and research responsibilities) worked at the University of St Andrews during the majority of years between 2010 and 2015. An exception is found in the 2013-14 school year, when the University had three black academic staff members.
Comparatively, the number of white academics averaged 500 between the 2010-11 and 2014-15 academic years.
The number of black academics employed by the University between 2010 and 2015 averaged 0.3 percent of the total number, while the number of white academics remained stable at an average of 84 percent. Asian academics averaged 3.3 percent of the total staff, with the remaining percentages allocated to those designated as “other” or “unknown.”
Charlotte Andrew, president of the Students’ Association, promoted increased diversity throughout her campaign. She said that more should be done to increase outreach initiatives and inclusivity, adding, “ensuring we have a diverse and highly qualified staff population is of benefit to all involved in the University. It’s an area in which we should always be trying to improve, and I think it’s an extremely positive sign that we have a new principal whose previous experience and current priorities often revolve around the promotion of equality and diversity.”
Principal Professor Sally Mapstone has indeed been vocal about her internationalist outlook. During her installation address last November, Professor Mapstone said the University “must become more clearly inclusive. This is not something around the edges of what we are as a university; it is central to how we are, and to how we attract the best and the brightest to us at all levels, and how we retain them. And it is central to the message that we are an open and diverse community.”
Professor Mapstone also referenced the University’s aim of attaining the Race Equality Charter Mark, which is awarded to institutions that achieve excellence in advancing racial equality. St Andrews was one of 21 universities that participated in the initiative during its inaugural year. Eight universities eventually received recognition, but the St Andrews was not one of them.
The growing focus on racial diversity in UK higher education is apparent in initiatives such as the Race Equality Charter Mark, as well as university-specific efforts and the creation of groups such as the Black British Academics.
In March 2014, University College London held a public talk entitled “Why Isn’t My Professor Black?” Speakers questioned why just 85 of the UK’s 18,500 professors were black.
During the talk, community and voluntary sector studies lecturer Dr William Ackah, of Birkbeck, University of London, compared the representation of black academics in the UK and the US.
Dr Ackah said, “There are a lot more black academics, administrators, and leaders [in the US], not just in black studies but other subjects as well.”
Infographic: Meilan Solly
The Black British Academics, an independent organisation dedicated to racial equality, offered further insight about black academic staff members’ experiences at higher education institutions.
The group’s 2014 Race Equality Survey found that 73 percent of 100 individuals surveyed rated their institutions’ racial equality performance as “poor” or “very poor.” 56 percent of those same individuals reported facing discrimination.
According to the FOI request obtained by The Saint, no complaints related to racism against academic staff were lodged in the 2015-16 academic year.
A University spokesperson said, “The University is […] working on Black & Minority Ethnic (BME) outreach initiatives, such as promoting the University on the UK Black History Month website and working with BME communities across Scotland.”
The ethnic makeup of academic staff at St Andrews is, overall, similar to that of universities across the country.
The Higher Education Statistical Agency, which specialises in higher education analysis, found that during the 2015-16 school year, 3,205 out of a total 201,380 academic staff members (widely defined to include those with teaching, research, and/or administrative duties) across the UK identified as black. 158,409 identified as white, while 16,750 identified as Asian. The remaining 23,025 were designated as “other” (including mixed race) and “unknown.”
In terms of percentages, white academics made up 78.7 percent of academic staff members, while black individuals made up 1.6 per cent. The number of Asian academics fell between these figures at 8.32 per cent.
During the 2015-16 school year, white academics at St Andrews formed 82.3 per cent of total staff, while black and minority ethnic (BME) academics made up 8.92 percent. The remaining 8.75 percent of staff members were classified as “unknown.”
On a smaller scale, St Andrews’ percentage of BME staff remains comparable to other top UK institutions.
“THE UNIVERSITY IS […] WORKING ON BLACK & MINORITY ETHNIC (BME) OUTREACH INITIATIVES, SUCH AS PROMOTING THE UNIVERSITY ON THE UK BLACK HISTORY MONTH WEBSITE AND WORKING WITH BME COMMUNITIES ACROSS SCOTLAND.”
During the 2013-14 school year, the University of Cambridge’s staff consisted of 11 per cent BME individuals, while the University of Oxford’s academic and research staff consisted of 13 per cent BME individuals. The Russell Group Universities’ average percentage of BME academic and research staff was 13 per cent. St Andrews’ percentage of BME total academic staff (teaching only, research only, and teaching and research) was 10.2 per cent.
Halia Mohammed, the Students’ Association member for equality, said she thought course selection was partially to blame for a lack of staff diversity at St Andrews.
“The University may be lacking in its number of academics from minorities, not because it does not try, but rather because of the courses we offer,” she explained.
“St Andrews does not run many of the traditional degrees such as law and engineering, which attract the largest number of ethnic minority groups in academia.
“It is also true that academics from ethnic backgrounds tend to culminate in city universities, and that the demography of Scotland is not the most diverse.
“I do not believe this is a deliberate attempt to exclude anybody. […] That being said, I believe more could be done to incentivise academics from more diverse background[s], even with simple outreach programs, and with time I’m sure this will occur.”
Another potential explanation for the low numbers of BME staff is a lack of positive action in higher education recruitment.
Under positive action recruitment guidelines, which are completely voluntary, hiring managers are allowed to recruit individuals with a “protected characteristic that is underrepresented in the workforce,” such as age, gender, or race.
These individuals may be hired over equally qualified candidates without underrepresented characteristics.
This might mean, for example, that a woman with the same qualifications as a man would be offered a position in order to increase the representation of females in the workforce.
According to a 2013 survey conducted by the Black British Academics, 77 percent of respondents supported the practice of positive action recruitment.
A spokesperson said that the University’s HR recruitment page states it “is committed to promoting equality of opportunity for all, which is further demonstrated through its working on the Gender, LGBT and Race Equality Charter Marks in addition to the Athena SWAN award for women in science. We particularly welcome applications from traditionally under-represented groups of the community.”
(The Saint, 2 February 2017)
The costs of studying abroad
Inside the hospitality industry: a culture of harassment?
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538505
|
__label__wiki
| 0.957989
| 0.957989
|
Home Features Columns Variety Rules
Variety Rules
After 35 years, WEVL’s still going strong.
by Marilyn Sadler
Jonathan Postal
Judy Dorsey
Back in the mid-1970s, Judy Dorsey was losing interest in the mainstream music that blasted from her radio. “I loved rock-and-roll,” she says, “but I was tired of hearing the same old songs. And I was interested in other kinds of music. I’d go to the library and check out albums from the past, just learn about the artists on my own.”
So imagine her excitement when she read in the paper about a new, independent radio station run by volunteers. “I was amazed that Memphis would have such a thing,” she laughs. “It was just too cool, like something you’d hear about in San Francisco or Los Angeles.” She lived outside the station’s broadcast range and could only pick it up in Midtown, but once she heard it and then met others connected to the station, she knew she wanted to get involved.
That station was WEVL — WeVoLunteer, 89.9 FM — and since 1976 it’s held firm to its mission: To entertain and inform its audience through diverse musical programming with an emphasis on Memphis and Southern culture. WEVL has operated in various buildings through the past 35 years — and Dorsey has been involved for 33 of them, starting out as a volunteer. Since 1986 she’s been the station manager, one of only two full-time paid positions at WEVL. Working with program director Brian Craig out of the station office on South Main, the two ensure that some 60 different programs — from blues to bluegrass, Irish to Western swing, Hawaiian guitar to Cajun, to name just a few featured genres — reach listeners 24 hours a day. Within WEVL’s “protected” range — which means no other station can interfere with its airwaves — is Memphis, Bartlett, Southaven, Millington, and Germantown, but it’s also picked up in neighboring counties.
Among the most popular programs, created, produced, and supported by 100 volunteers, are the bluegrass show, Bluff City Barn Dance, hosted by The Ridge Runner, which airs Saturday mornings; and Singing Down in Dixie on Sunday mornings, hosted by Charlie May. “He’s a pharmacy professor at [the University of Tennessee Health Science Center] and an expert on compounding medicine,” says Dorsey. “But every Sunday morning he’s here, putting out that Southern gospel quartet program.”
At the opposite end of the spectrum is Hitchhiker’s Dance Guide airing on Saturday evenings. “It’s electronic dance music,” explains Craig, “like you’d hear in clubs. It started in 1989 and is considered the oldest, continuously running show of its type in the country, so we’re considered pioneers in that.”
WEVL’s longest-running show was Cap’n Pete’s Blues Cruise, which aired for 26 years until its creator, Dee Henderson, was murdered by his grandson in 2008. “He was really a legend and everyone still misses him,” says Dorsey. A program featuring “the best” of Cap’n Pete airs on Friday nights.
Having a program accepted by WEVL requires completing an online application and sending a music demo. Craig and Dorsey determine if the program meets the station’s expectations — “that is, if it’s something that deserves a place on the radio dial in Memphis but for some reason isn’t being covered on commercial radio,” says Craig. “One of our greatest contributions is giving a voice to people who would never have been heard on the radio because they’re not slick, they don’t have managers, they’re just ordinary people who love music.”
To keep the station running, WEVL depends on twice-a-year pledge drives, its annual Blues on the Bluff event, mailings, and online pleas.” We have a 90 percent pledge collection rate,” says Craig, “and that’s excellent.” Probably the biggest chunks of the station’s $210,000 budget are rental space for the radio tower and maintaining the transmitter. “It has tubes that cost in the hundreds of dollars,” says Dorsey. “If we have one go bad, that’s a huge expense.”
Over the years, WEVL has weathered change. “In the old days,” says Craig, “the volunteer programmers had to lug their records in boxes upstairs or even on reel-to-reel tape, a dinosaur now. And today even CDs are old-fashioned. Some people still do it the older ways, but the 2011 volunteer just plugs in his laptop to our board and the program comes off their computer.”
But one aspect of WEVL remains firm: “Our mission,” says Craig, who started volunteering in 1981 when he was 15. “As we say during our pledge drives, we continue to bring the widest variety of music to listeners. And that variety gets broader all the time.”
Memphis Magazine June 2011 June-2011 City Seen Columns
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538506
|
__label__wiki
| 0.90004
| 0.90004
|
History of the Wreck Site
The Dunkirk Schooner wreck site was first located 20 miles off the Dunkirk, New York, shoreline of Lake Erie by visual observation in the early 1990's, by members of Northeast Research, LLC, a Massachusetts company involved in locating and salvaging shipwrecks.It wasn't until 2004 that a team was assembled to excavate and document the wreck site.It was at this point that North East Research, LLC, applied for custodianship of the wreck site, which was granted, and archaeological research was begun.
Dunkirk Schooner Wreck Site. Photo by Steve Gatto.
The wrecksite was considered to be 'remarkably pristine and intact' according to a representative of Northeast Research, which was attributed in part to the cold temperatures of it's environment, as the water has not been reported to rise above 37 degrees Fahrenheit.
The archaeological excavation produced many personal items, such as a ring and several compasses, along with utilitarian items, and grain in the cargo hold. The personal items collected from the cabin presented the excavation team with the high probability that the crew went down with the ship. This was confirmed with the reported removal of human remains by the Northeast Research team. DNA analysis of the remains concluded that the remains were most probably not those of an individual of African American descent.
The identity of the wreck has been legally contested by two parties involved in a legal battle regarding ownership of the wreck. The state of New York intervened legally in 2004, an event which coincided with the conclusion of Northeast Research's archaeological research project. This intervention was the beginning of a nine year legal battle over the fate of the wreck site known as the Dunkirk Schooner.
The Legal Battle
The legal battle over the Dunkirk Schooner was fought between Northeast Research, LLC, and the state of New York, specifically the United States Marshal for the Western District of New York. The legal dispute hinged on whether the wreck site was that of a legally abandoned shipwreck. The identity of the ship was contested as a factor in proving whether the ship could indeed be declared abandoned. According to the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987, any wreck declared legally abandoned (where the owner(s) or descendants relinquished valid claims of ownership) would revert to ownership by the government, in this case the state of New York.
Two possible identities of the ship were presented by Northeast Research and the representatives of New York. Northeast Research maintained that the wreck was that of the Caledonia, a ship involved in the War of 1812 and later the Underground Railroad. Northeast Research insisted that the final owners of the ship did not abandon the wreck, and that contemporary descendants had not relinquished their claims either.
Arthur B. Cohn, the co-founder and executive director for the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum.
Schooner. (Two masted wooden sailing ship).
Length: 24 meters
Width: 5.8 meters
Dunkirk Schooner Wreck Site.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538508
|
__label__cc
| 0.611037
| 0.388963
|
Subject: This "Forbidden" Market Is About to Crack Open
URL: http://mney.co/1l6JE4X
This "Forbidden" Market Is About to Crack Open
By Dr. Kent Moors, Global Energy Strategist, Oil & Energy Investor • @KentMoors_OEI • March 20, 2014
Dr. Kent Moors
Marina and I are off again. Early tomorrow morning, I'm making my fourth trip to Mexico City in less than two years.
This time, I'll be making a major presentation at a Bloomberg advisory session on the recent opening of the Mexican energy markets.
After operating as a monopoly for 76 years, Mexico is now set to dismantle all the barriers to foreign investment in its oil fields.
That promises to open up a series of unprecedented money-making opportunities for a select group of companies – and their investors.
As the story in Ukraine and Crimea continues to unfold, these dramatic new changes remind us there are other profitable matters afoot in the energy sector.
And the topics I am going to discuss this week in Mexico City go well beyond what's immediately south of the border.
All of these developments offer significant upside for investors…
Mexico Opens Up for Business
At the top of the list remains the dramatic change now being introduced in Mexico involving PEMEX, the nationalized and state-run oil/gas producer.
It started when the current President, Enrique Peña Nieto, was sworn into office on Dec. 1, 2012. One of his major initiatives promised big reforms in the national oil company and the energy sector as a whole.
That required a revision of the national constitution and a slew of new laws. But in the end, these changes have been approved at least in outline.
Now, admittedly, the "devil is in the details," but the potential upside for energy investors is significant.
These reforms will open the doors to outside companies and investments, provide the basis for joint ventures and other initiatives, and introduce the Mexican energy market to international services and support – all for the first time since the sector was nationalized on March 18, 1938.
Given the country has substantial known reserves, there is already plenty of American interest. According to the latest U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures, Mexico is ranked sixth in shale gas and seventh in tight/shale oil in the world.
Today, there are no fewer than five major basins to develop, and the most promising – the Burgos Basin – is actually an extension of the highly productive Eagle Ford basin in South Texas, with well-defined geology and reserve estimates.
The fact that there are already U.S. operating companies, field services, support, and expertise just north of the border has hardly gone unnoticed.
Another priority involves the major need for new investment and technology to reverse the declining production curve in Mexico's once-dominant onshore and offshore oil fields.
PEMEX has made some progress in arresting what had been a precipitous collapse in production. But significant time and field pressure has already been lost. Reversing this trend – upon which the national economy is still dependent – requires money and equipment that is only available from the outside.
That's the reason why Bloomberg has convened this meeting. Companies that can provide both the capital and the know-how will offer investors some intriguing plays. And further down the road, individual investors will even have the prospect of investing in PEMEX itself.
The Details on My "Sidebar" Agenda in Mexico
Yet, major convocations, like the one assembling at the W in downtown Mexico City on Thursday, always provide opportunities for "sidebar" discussions on other matters.
That's where the other three matters of interest on my agenda will emerge.
Browse Dr. Kent's articles | View Dr. Kent's research services
Dr. Kent Moors is an internationally recognized expert in oil and natural gas policy, risk assessment, and emerging market economic development. He serves as an advisor to many U.S. governors and foreign governments. Kent details his latest global travels in his free Oil & Energy Investor e-letter. He makes specific investment recommendations in his newsletter, the Energy Advantage. For more active investors, he issues shorter-term trades in his Energy Inner Circle.
yngso
Yes, yes and yes! However, there ´s no u in Colombia.
Rebecca Kerins
Reply to yngso
You are correct! Thank you for pointing out this error. We have corrected this in the text. Thank you for reading Money Morning!
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538510
|
__label__wiki
| 0.553245
| 0.553245
|
Selected Features
Justin Bieber & Benny Blanco Announce New Single “Lonely”
Well, this is going to be big! Justin Bieber is returning to the New Music Friday lineup on October 16 courtesy of a collaboration with Benny Blanco called “Lonely.” It’s unclear at this point if “Lonely” is a stand-alone single or part of JB6 or BB2, but the song’s commercial prospects are crystal clear. In that it is all but guaranteed to be huge. So far this year, Justin has racked up four top 10 hits (“Yummy,” “Intentions,” “Stuck With U” and “Holy”). The latter is still making huge ground on pop radio, so it has a lot of life left in it.
As for Benny, well, when he’s not showing basic bitches how to do Instagram right or working on his massively successful artist project, the producer is crafting smash hits for the biggest name in pop including Selena Gomez, Halsey, FKA Twigs, Camila Cabello, Shawn Mendes, Ed Sheeran, Cardi B and many, many more. Check out the “Eastside” hitmaker’s less-is-more announcement below as well as one of his amusing teaser posts that sends up Justin’s Calvin Klein billboard.
#Lonely with @justinbieber FRIDAY
A post shared by @ itsbennyblanco on Oct 12, 2020 at 11:01am PDT
justin bieber ?
A post shared by @ itsbennyblanco on Oct 5, 2020 at 10:03am PDT
BTS Lands Second #1 Hit With “Savage Love” Remix
Kylie Minogue Takes Us Behind The Scenes Of Her “Magic” Video
by Editorial Stuff
A Response To “Drivers License”? Joshua Bassett Drops “Lie Lie Lie”
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538512
|
__label__cc
| 0.738854
| 0.261146
|
140 South Montezuma Street Prescott, Arizona 86303 (928) 445-2886
Ron Evans Photography
Resale Art & Others
Prescott City Statues
Home Bucky- Jack Osmer
Bucky- Jack Osmer
• $3,600 •
Located on the Gurley St. side of the Courthouse Plaza in Prescott, AZ • “Erected by Arizona in honor of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry. Known to history as Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and in memory of Captain William O’Neill and his comrades who died while serving their country in the War with Spain.” “This free-spirited Son of the West, sensitive to the changing era in which he lived, portrayed the western epic in marble and bronze. Our “Bucky O’Neill” monumental bronze is among his greatest works, and is acclaimed by art critics as one of the finest equestrian monuments in the world.” The Bucky O’Neill sculpture by Jack Osmer is a replica of Solon Borglum’s statue. Solon Borglum was the brother of Gutzon Borglum who sculpted Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. The statue was purchased by the city in 1907.
Mountain Spirit Gallery ©2015-2018
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538516
|
__label__wiki
| 0.624253
| 0.624253
|
Roy C. Spong
Obituary of Roy C. Spong
Roy C. Spong, 59, passed away on Sunday, January 3, 2021 at Hartford Hospital. He was the beloved husband of Robin (Brown) Spong. Born in Hartford, Roy was the son of the late Marguerite (Wing) Boyes. He has been a longtime resident of East Hartford, moving from Glastonbury over nineteen years ago. Roy worked as an auto mechanic for Monaco Ford for over thirty-five years and later worked for Dave’s service. Roy was an avid 49ers fan and loved animals, especially dogs. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his three daughters; Jamie Spong, Casey Scriven and her husband Matt, Nikki Cortez and her husband Edgar, all of Manchester, his grandson Leonardo Cortez, his stepson Daniel Caron of East Hartford, his brother Grandin Boyes, his sister Patricia Spong of TN. Roy also leaves Susan LaBonne of East Hartford who, along with her late former husband Peter Lawrence, raised him and their children; Michael Lawrence of Hebron and Tina Savino of South Windsor. In addition to his mother, he was predeceased by his former wife Janet Gibbens. Funeral service and burial will be private. There are no calling hours. A celebration of Roy’s life will be held at a later date.
Mulryan Funeral Home is family owned and operated and has been serving Glastonbury and surrounding communities for many years.
725 Hebron Ave.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538518
|
__label__cc
| 0.534523
| 0.465477
|
Allis Chalmers D-14 miniature featured in annual Ottawa Valley Farm Show CHEO auction
TOPICS:Ottawa Valley Farm Show
George Nesbitt and the model tractor featured in the Ottawa Valley Farm Show CHEO auction. A full-size version of the Allis Chalmers D-14 appears behind him.
OTTAWA — For the second year, Vintage Iron & Traditions of Eastern Ontario will present a collectible toy tractor sale at the Ottawa Valley Farm Show, with the 90th edition set for March 14-16.
This year’s model will be the Allis Chalmers D-14; last year, the miniature was the 460 Farmall with 50 units at $75 each selling out in under an hour. Number One in the series sold for $4,000 at the auction in support of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario which is sponsored annually by the Ottawa Valley Seed Growers Association which organizes the show.
In 2017, 125 units will be up for grabs at $75 each; once again, Number One will be entered in the CHEO auction. Pre-orders are being accepted.
“We expect results similar to the first sale,” said VITEO outgoing president Barry Dean who is also chair of the OVFS 90th anniversary committee. “This time, the boxes will include decals celebrating the farm show 90th and Canada’s 150th.”
Dean was pleased to announce that a full-size D-14 will be on display at the show, compliments of Renfrew collector George Nesbitt whose father was president of the Seed Growers during the mid-1940s.
“It’s great to see Nesbitt participation in the show carry on through George,” Dean observed. “Part of the appeal of the toy sale is to have the real thing on hand as well. We did that last year and we’re able to do it again in 2017.”
Spotlight — Morewood Winter Carnival
Click on the above business cards to learn more about their community-minded business.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538524
|
__label__cc
| 0.548023
| 0.451977
|
NCTA -Accredited and Known for Quality
The Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture has been granted accreditation status with the Higher Learning Commission. The American Veterinary Medical Association accredits the Veterinary Technology program. In addition, the College is approved to offer courses and majors for veterans benefits and training under the War Orphans Act.
30 North LaSalle Street, Suite 2400
Veterinary Technology Accreditation
The Veterinary Technology Program at NCTA has been accredited by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Committee on Veterinary Technician Education and Activities (CVTEA) since the early 1970s. The next accreditation site visit is scheduled for fall of 2020.
NCTA - Known for Quality
Ranked #1 U.S. 2-year college for career outcomes - This metric measures the ratio of starting salary for graduates to cost of education. WalletHub
Ranked #7 U.S. 2-year college for graduate career success - Using 10 years of U.S. government data such as tax records, as reported in IPEDS and College Scorecard, NCTA is the #7 two-year college in the United States for graduate career success at 92 percent employment 10 years after graduation. Zippia, 2017
Ranked #11 U.S. 2-year colleges for graduate salary - Government tax records reveal average NCTA graduate earnings are $37,300 at 6 years and $49,800 at 10 years which ranks NCTA graduates as having the 11th highest average salaries of all U.S. two-year college graduates. Zippia, 2017
Top 30 trade schools - When evaluating two-year trade schools for graduate success and return on educational investment, NCTA was listed among the top 30 in the U.S. and the only agricultural college identified. Forbes Magazine
Top 150 two-year colleges - NCTA was ranked among the top 150 two-year colleges, from a pool of approximately 1,900, when evaluated for overall quality (Aspen Institute).
NCTA is a member of the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements. NC-SARA makes it easier for students to take online courses and transfer those credits to postsecondary institutions in other states by establishing national standards among member schools.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538527
|
__label__wiki
| 0.944114
| 0.944114
|
The Premier International Online Directory of Musicians & Entertainers
music minder
In Table: Albums Birthdates Businesses Entertainers Hits Lyrics Memorials On This Day
Home Entertainers Businesses About Contact
Albums Birthdates Hits Instruments Lyrics Memorials On This Day
Home > Hits Menu > Hits List > "PUPPET ON A STRING" by SANDY SHAW > Summary
« List Summary Credits Reviews Lyrics Audio Links Artist »
SONG & HIT DETAILS
Artist Name: SANDY SHAW
Top Position (Australia): 39
Song Author: Bill Martin, Phil Coulter
Record Label: RCA
Label Number: 102611
SONG PROFILE
"Puppet on a String" is the name of the Eurovision Song Contest-winning song in 1967 by British singer Sandie Shaw.
It was her thirteenth UK single release.
The song was a UK Singles Chart number one hit on 27 April 1967, staying at the top for a total of three weeks.
Shaw had originally performed the song as one of five prospective numbers to represent the United Kingdom in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest on The Rolf Harris Show.
She had never been taken with the idea of taking part in the contest but her discoverer, Adam Faith, had talked her into it, saying it would keep her manager Eve Taylor happy.
Taylor wanted to give Shaw a more cabaret appeal and felt that this was the right move - and also felt that it would get Shaw back in the public's good books as she had recently been involved in a divorce scandal.
Of the five songs performed, "Puppet on a String" was Shaw's least favourite.
Shaw re-recorded "Puppet on a String" in early 2007 in honour of her 60th birthday.
The song is not to be confused with the Bennett-Tepper song of the same name that was performed by Elvis Presley.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538529
|
__label__cc
| 0.660632
| 0.339368
|
UPDATE: Aircraft Crashes Near Wichita Falls
Images credit: Wichita County Sheriff's Office
Update 11/2/18 1:06 pm
Wichita County Sheriff David Duke confirms that a helicopter crashed on the south side of the Fort Worth-Denver railroad tracks near FM 369. Two occupants were in the helicopter and both have been transported to United Regional and are in serious condition. We will bring you further updates as information is made available.
Original Post 11/2/18:
Several Wichita Falls Facebook users and KFDX-TV 3 are reporting an aircraft crashed near Business 287 (Old Iowa Park Road) and F.M. 369 shortly before 11:30 am today. Multiple first responder units, police, the Wichita County Sheriff's Office and Air Evac have reportedly responded to the scene.
This is in the vicinity of Wichita Valley Airport, though it is unknown if the aircraft was taking off from or attempting to land there. We have no word yet as to the type of aircraft involved, injuries or fatalities. News Talk 1290 will bring you updates as information is made available.
Filed Under: aircraft, crash, Wichita Valley Airport
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538533
|
__label__cc
| 0.575599
| 0.424401
|
Body Beautiful
Relationship GPS
Travel with Attitude
Eats & Tweets
UH professor releases “The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health”
N.W.A. Editor May 21, 2020
HOUSTON – The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health is a newly released book written by University of Houston clinical psychology professor, Dr. Rheeda Walker. The much-anticipated book has already sold-out online at Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, and Bookshop.org. Millions of people across the country first learned of the book in January 2020 when nationally syndicated radio show host, Charlemagne Tha God, expressed the need for it during a live broadcast of his show, “The Breakfast Club.” Later in the month, he recited a quote from the book to Will Smith during a live interview and subsequentially had Walker on the show when the book was released on May 1st.
In her book, Walker offers important information on the mental health crisis in the Black community, details on how to spot potential mental illnesses, how to practice emotional wellness by assessing one’s Psychological Fortitude or PF, and how to get the best care possible in a system steeped in racial bias.
“It’s past time to take Black mental health seriously. Daily African Americans, no matter what age, interact with colleagues and school mates who remind us that we ‘don’t belong,’” says Walker. The pressure has led to the highest rate of suicide in the United States among Black children ages 5 to 11-years-old. Knowing that parents are overwhelmed in their own daily lives and are missing the warning signs in their children, is what compelled me to write this book,” she explains.
With book sales soaring, Walker is celebrating with family, friends, and supporters this Thursday, May 21, during her Virtual Book Release Party via an Instagram live chat at 6:30 p.m., local time.
“The response to the book has been positive. The outpouring of support, combined with book sales confirms my reason for writing the book,” comments Walker.
Before The Unapologetic Book to Black Mental Health was released, Walker wrote more than 50 op-ed articles on how mental health affects Black people. This spring, national media outlets such as the Los Angles Times and Prevention magazine asked her to address the anxiety and stress many people are dealing with during the current pandemic. In April she appeared on Black Entertainment Television’s special Saving Our Lives: A BET COVID-19 Relief Effort and Call to Unite, an online event created by Tim Shriver to inspire people during the Coronavirus crisis.
This book is an exploration of Black mental health in today’s world, the forces that have undermined mental health progress for African Americans, and what needs to happen for African Americans to heal psychological distress, find community, and undo years of stigma and marginalization in order to access effective mental health care.
About Dr. Rheeda Walker: Rheeda Walker, is a tenured professor of psychology in the department of psychology at the University of Houston. She is a behavioral science researcher
and licensed psychologist who has published more than fifty scientific papers on African American adult mental health, suicide risk, and resilience. Walker is recognized as a fellow in the American Psychological Association due to her scholarly accomplishments.
Walker has been a guest expert psychologist on T.D. Jakes’s national television talk show, and her work has appeared or been cited in The Washington Post, CNN Health, the Houston Chronicle, and Ebony magazine. Her expertise has been critical to mentoring doctoral students in cross-cultural psychology since 2003. Walker was previously a lead consultant in the statewide African American Faith-Based Education and Awareness initiative in Texas. She conducts workshops and coordinates with churches and other organizations to address emotional wellness.
african americansBlacks and mental healthmental healthRheeda Walker
Previous ArticleDie from a broken heart? Grief coach says you actually can
Next ArticleBlack Girl Magic SUPREME! 10 nurses complete doctorates together
N.W.A. Editor
Why do we keep quiet? The unpopular yet important topic of depression
N.W.A. Contributor January 21, 2017
Black students at Harvard to host their own graduation ceremony
N.W.A. Editor May 8, 2017
Beauty Supply store owner chokes customer
N.W.A. Contributor March 14, 2017
Recognizing depression when all appears normal
N.W.A. Editor June 9, 2011
Film ‘Dark Girls’ sheds light on black-on-black hatred
Can strong women find love, or continue to settle for less?
Teen stripper charged with murder after HPD chase, crash
My EX just got remarried — Thank God, I’m FREE!
Prissy Chick 101: Is Independence Over-rated?
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538534
|
__label__wiki
| 0.907972
| 0.907972
|
MLB by Dylan Fraychineaud
RANKED: 30 Greatest Shortstops of All-Time
29. Jim Fregosi
Before becoming a successful manager with the Phillies, Fregosi was a very reliable shortstop for the California Angels. The California native was a 6-time All-Star with the Angels — garnering MVP votes eight consecutive seasons.
Fregosi slugged 151 HR over the course of his career and added one Gold Glove to his mantle. Fregosi holds a franchise record with 70 career triples. Following the end of his playing career, Fregosi immediately became a manager with the Angels — leading the team to the ALCS in 1979. Fregosi and the Phillies won the NL pennant in 1993, eventually losing to the Blue Jays thanks to Joe Carter’s World Series-winning walk-off home run.
Image Source: Transcendental Graphics/Getty Imagesh
The 25 Greatest Pitchers of All-Time
Brightcast is a digital publishing company dedicated to creating an enjoyable content experience for users. Brightcast prides itself on finding high-quality contributors who are as passionate about the content as the fans reading it.
© New Arena
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538537
|
__label__wiki
| 0.966907
| 0.966907
|
Remembering Kynaston McShine, the Visionary MoMA Curator Who Defined Some of Contemporary Art’s Most Radical Movements
He organized some of the 20th century's most consequential exhibitions and was the first curator of color to work at a major American museum.
Julia Halperin, January 9, 2018
Kynaston McShine. Photo: Marc Ohrem-Leclef, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.
Kynaston McShine, one of the most influential curators of the 20th century, has died. He was 82.
If you have visited a museum in the last 50 years and enjoyed a site-specific installation, participated in an interactive work of art, or been taken aback by a project that critiques the very institution in which it is shown, you probably have McShine to thank.
Over the course of his more than half-century career, McShine organized exhibitions that defined several of the most consequential movements in modern and contemporary art. In 1966, he presented the show “Primary Structures” at the Jewish Museum in New York, which introduced Minimalism to an American audience. (The artist Mark di Suvero called it “the key show of the 1960s.”)
His exhibition “Information,” organized four years later at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is often considered the first survey of conceptual art in America and one of the earliest shows to examine technology’s impact on art.
In a statement, MoMA director Glenn Lowry called McShine “a daring and pioneering curator with an unfailingly sharp eye and a keen sense of moment.” When he first joined MoMA in 1959, McShine, who was Afro-Caribbean, is believed to have been the first curator of color to work at a major American museum.
Despite the fact that he crafted some of the most famous exhibitions of the first half of the 20th century, however, McShine remained an elusive figure—he rarely granted interviews, and went so far as to decline Hans Ulrich Obrist’s invitation to participate in the 2008 book A Brief History of Curating. As of 2011, he didn’t even have a Wikipedia entry.
McShine was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1935. He attended Dartmouth College, where he studied philosophy and worked at the school’s Hood Museum. He did graduate work at the University of Michigan (1958–59) and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University (1960–62). He taught at Hunter College from 1965 to 1968.
After a stint in the department of circulating exhibitions at MoMA, McShine secured a gig as curator of painting and sculpture at the Jewish Museum from 1965 to 1967. He served as acting director from 1967 to 1968. There, in addition to “Primary Structures,” he organized solo exhibitions of work by Gene Davis, Robert Irwin, and Yves Klein. A statement released by the Jewish Museum described McShine as a “visionary curator.”
McShine returned to MoMA in 1968 as associate curator and later served as acting chief curator of the department of painting and sculpture. In the 1970s, he initiated MoMA’s Projects series, which offered younger artists—including, early on, Sam Gilliam and Nancy Graves—an opportunity to present experimental new work. He also organized solo exhibitions surveying the achievements of Andy Warhol (1989), Robert Rauschenberg (1977), and Marcel Duchamp (1973). He retired from MoMA in 2008 as chief curator at large.
“He was famous for his gruff manner, which masked a warm and deeply affectionate colleague who cared enormously about modern art and the museum that was home to him for more than forty years,” Lowry said.
Bard College gave McShine its award for curatorial excellence in 2003. He has received honorary doctorates from the San Francisco Art Institute (2007) and the University of the West Indies (2008).
The art historian Sarah Edith Kleinman, who is writing her dissertation on McShine, told artnet News that when she began her research a year and a half ago, many people told her he would be impossible to track down. She suspects that his disinterest in self-promotion was a holdover from an earlier era. With the exception of one or two big names like Seth Siegelaub and Harald Szeemann, curators in the 1960s and ’70s “were understood to be ‘behind-the-scenes’ decision makers,” she said. By the time art historians became public figures, “McShine had become entrenched in his unspoken policy of declining interviews.”
Nevertheless, McShine himself redefined the role of an art museum curator over the course of his career. “No longer a behind-the-scenes caretaker of art collections, the contemporary curator that McShine exemplifies is understood as a globally networked practitioner who shares with museum staff the duties of a collaborator, creator, manager, networker, planner, publicist, and fundraiser,” Kleinman said. “In the context of 1950s and 1960s New York City, where curators and artists of color faced blatant discrimination, McShine’s work is even more significant and groundbreaking, opening conversations about the intersections of race, identity, and power.”
McShine sometimes favored projects that needled MoMA’s establishment—but the guiding force behind it all was a fundamental belief in the power and importance of the museum. In “Information,” he allowed Hans Haacke to poll MoMA’s visitors about the views of New York Governor—and MoMA trustee—Nelson Rockefeller on the Vietnam War.
As ARTnews notes, McShine once wrote a memo proposing a show of MoMA acquisitions “which have enriched our collection as a result of Hitler’s Entartete Kunst campaign.” (MoMA’s leadership declined to bite, but the idea ultimately evolved into a show of political art from the collection, “The Artist as Adversary.”)
McShine also, however inadvertently, helped inspire the creation of the Guerrilla Girls. His 1985 exhibition “International Survey of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture” at MoMA—which sought to offer a snapshot of the current state of contemporary art—included 169 artists, only 13 of whom were women. McShine said that any artist who wasn’t in the show “should rethink his career” (emphasis ours)—prompting a group of young artists to gather together to protest.
Despite its demographic limitations, however, that show—like many of McShine’s exhibitions—expressed his belief that the museum ought to present the most challenging and visionary art of its era and never cease to interrogate its own role in the larger machine. In a rare interview with the New York Times, he described the show as “a sign that the museum will restore the balance between contemporary art and art history that is part of what makes the place unique.”
He added: “A serious public cannot depend upon the whims of commercial galleries. It has to depend upon museums.”
Julia Halperin
Agnes Gund, Anne Umland and Others Remember Pioneering Curator Kynaston McShine
By Julia Halperin , Jan 12, 2018
Art Industry News: MoMA’s Director Says Museums Should Have Fewer Limits on Selling Art + More Must-Read Stories
By Artnet News , Jan 12, 2018
12 Wildly Popular Everyday Things You Would Never Guess Started Out as Artworks
By Ben Davis , Sep 26, 2017
Artists and Celebrities Unite to Battle Injustice at LA’s Sprawling INTO ACTION! Festival
By , Jan 11, 2018
Betty Woodman, Visionary Sculptor of Ceramic Vessels, Has Died at 87
By , Jan 3, 2018
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538539
|
__label__wiki
| 0.882041
| 0.882041
|
Keough Institute to host major Irish studies conference
The University of Notre Dames Keough Institute for Irish Studies will host the annual meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies from April 13 to 17 (Wednesday to Sunday).
The five-day meeting, entitledIreland Beyond Borders,will be the largest gathering of Irish studies scholars ever held, bringing some 300 speakers to campus for nearly 100 discussions on a wide variety of subjects, including globalization, partition, the Internet age, gender and sexuality, critical race theory, sport, popular culture, music and dance, the visual arts, contemporary literature, the Irish and English languages, and Irish studies as an academic discipline.
The conference will include lectures by Seamus Deane, Keough Professor of Irish Studies at Notre Dame, and numerous other Irish writers, including Tom Kilroy, Nuala O’Faolain, Angela Bourke, Joep Leerssen, Cathal Ó Searcaigh, David Roediger, James R. Barrett and Katie Trumpener.
At theDeBartoloCenterfor the Performing Arts, there will be performances by Irish dancer Jean Butler and the traditional Irish music group Altan, and an Irish film series hosted by Luke Gibbons, Keough Family Professor of Irish Studies.
The Snite Museum of Art will feature an exhibition of paintings by the Irish artist Margaret Corcoran, and the Hesburgh Library Special Collections department will exhibit rare books from its Loeber Collection of Irish Fiction.The Hesburgh Library also will feature an Irish government-sponsored exhibition on the life and writings of James Joyce.
The Ireland Beyond Borders conference is being co-sponsored by the American Conference for Irish Studies, Údarás na Gaeltachta, theUniversityofWisconsin Pressand numerous departments and centers at Notre Dame.
For more information and a schedule, visit the conference web site at http://www.nd.edu/~irishstu/conferences.html
* Contact: * _Éamonn O Ciardha, program coordinator of the Keough Institute, at 574-631-6250 or OCiardha.1@nd.edu _
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538541
|
__label__cc
| 0.674322
| 0.325678
|
Maybe This is what b, sd Had in Mind (trigger warning for Keller aficionados)
Published on May 26, 2018 by D. G. Hart
)And for contributors to Sasse 2020.)
Rod Dreher re-posted parts of an Aaron Renn post about urban/hipster Protestantism.
First, Renn’s categories:
Ben Sasse is a conservative exemplar of what I term “neutral world” Christianity. In my framework, there are three worlds we’ve seen in my lifetime related to the status of Christianity and traditional Christian norms in society.
1 Positive World (Pre-1994). To be seen as a religious person and one who exemplifies traditional Christian norms is a social positive. Christianity is a status enhancer. In some cases failure to embrace those norms hurt you.
2 Neutral World (1994-2014). Christianity is seen as a socially neutral attribute. It no longer had dominant status in society, but to be seen as a religious person is not a knock either. It’s more like a personal affectation or hobby. Traditional norms of behavior retain residual force.
3 Negative World (2014-). In this world, being a Christian is a social negative, especially in high status positions. Christianity in many ways as seen as undermining the social good. Traditional norms are expressly repudiated.
To illustrate the differences, consider these three incidents:
1 Positive World: In 1987 the Miami Herald reported that Sen. Gary Hart had been having an affair, and cavorting with the woman in question on his yacht. He was forced to drop out of the presidential race as a result.
2 Neutral World: In 1998 the Drudge Report broke the story that Bill Clinton had been having an affair with intern Monica Lewinksy, including sex acts in the Oval Office. Bill Clinton was badly damaged by the scandal but survived it as the Democratic Party rallied around him and public decided his private behavior was not relevant to the job.
3 Negative World: In 2016 Donald Trump, a many whose entire persona (sexual antics, excess consumption, boastfulness, etc.) is antithetical to traditional Christianity, is elected president. The Access Hollywood tape, for example, had no effect on voter decisions about him.
Even for those who hate Christianity, the rise of Trump, something only possible in a post-Christian world, should give them pause to consider.
Tim Keller’s ministry is the consummate neutral world Christianity:
The neutral world church is very different in a number of ways. It has traditionally been much more apolitical (though many of its practitioners lean left). It’s also much more heavily urban and global city focused. It tries to avoid highlighting areas where Christianity is in conflict with the world. Instead of being antagonistic towards the culture, it is explicitly positive towards culture. In fact, you could sum up much of the model under the heading “cultural engagement.” They want to meet the culture on its own terms, and reach people as participants in a pluralistic public square. They want to be in the mainstream media, not just Christian media or their own platforms. Many of their ministries have been backed by big money donors. These are many of the people who denounced Trump to no effect during the election. In effect, they represent a version of Christianity taking its cues from the secular elite consensus.
Which means that some political topics are okay, some aren’t:
The average neutral world Christian leader – and that’s a lot of the high profile ones other than the remaining religious righters, ones who have a more dominant role than ever thanks to the internet – talks obsessively about two topics today: refugees (immigrants) and racism. They combine that with angry, militant anti-Trump politics. These are not just expounded as internal to the church (e.g., helping the actual refugee family on your block), but explicitly in a social reform register (changing legacy culture and government policy).
I’m not going to argue that they are wrong are those points. But it’s notable how selective these folks were in picking topics to talk about. They seem to have landed on causes where they are 100% in agreement with the elite secular consensus. . . .
I won’t speculate on their motives, but it’s very clear that neutral world leaders have a lot to lose. Unlike Jerry Falwell, who never had secular cachet and lived in the sticks, these guys enjoy artisanal cheese, microbrews, and pour over coffees in Brooklyn. They’ve had bylines in the New York Times and Washington Post. They get prime speaking gigs at the Q conference and elsewhere. A number of them have big donors to worry about. And if all of a sudden they lost the ability to engage with the culture they explicitly affirmed as valuable, it would a painful blow. For example, to accept Dreher’s Benedict Option argument they’d have to admit that the entire foundation of their current way of doing business no longer works. Not many people are interested in hearing that.
The neutral world Christians – and again that seems to be much of Evangelical leadership today – are in a tough spot when it comes to adjusting to the negative world. The move from positive to neutral world brought an increase in mainstream social status (think Tim Keller vs. Pat Robertson), but the move to a negative world will involve a loss of status. Let’s be honest, that’s not palatable to most. Hence we see a shift hard to the left and into very public synchronization with secular pieties. That’s not everybody in Evangelical leadership, but it’s a lot of them. Many of those who haven’t are older and long time political conservatives without a next generation of followers who think like them. (Political conservatism is also dying, incidentally).
And lo and behold, The Gospel Coalition is smack dab in Neutral World Christianity:
I was speaking with one pastor who is a national council member of the Gospel Coalition. He’s a classic neutral worlder who strongly disapproves of Trump. But he notes that the Millennials in his congregation are in effect Biblically illiterate and have a definition of God’s justice that is taken from secular leftist politics. They did not, for example, see anything at all problematic about Hillary Clinton and her views. A generation or so from now when these people are the leaders, they won’t be people keeping unpopular positions to themselves. They won’t have any unpopular positions to hide. They will be completely assimilated to the world. Only their ethics will no longer be Hillary’s, but the new fashion du jour.
Renn’s recommendation is not necessarily the Benedict Option but the Fighting-the-Good-Fight Option:
The template is Paul, who was one tough hombre. Paul was a Jewish blueblood on the fast track to high council membership who threw it all way to endure beatings, imprisonment, etc. (One of the underappreciated virtues of Paul is just how physically and mentally tough that guy was). He said he counted it all as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. He also someone who could say, “I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God.”
Even the author of the Benedict Option, Dreher, sees merit in Paul as the model for ministry:
Paul did not focus his struggle on the world, but within the church itself. Aside from seeking converts, he doesn’t advise his followers to engage the culture, get politically active, or anything like that. Nor did he instruct his followers to run away from the world. Rather, he focused on building up the church in holiness, and exhorting believers in the new faith to overcome the world in themselves.
That seems a lot like the confessional Reformed Protestant model. It’s very personal, familial, congregational, and local, perhaps even too local for the advocates of localism.
Categories Being Human, Christianity and the West, Evangelicalism, New World Presbyterianism, Reformed Protestantism, sanctification•Tags Aaron Renn, Ben Sasse, localism, Rod Dreher, The Gospel Coalition, Tim Keller
Previous Transforming New York City Was Always Going to be a Slog
Next Alexander Hamilton Meets Abraham Kuyper
89 thoughts on “Maybe This is what b, sd Had in Mind (trigger warning for Keller aficionados)”
johnyeazel says:
DGH, nice post. You got me more interested in this Renn guy. I’m kind of surprised that you think his cultural or social theology is similar to the “confessional Reformed Protestant model.” However, I have always found the large variety of social theological thought to be quite confusing to sort through. Hence, I find myself often misinterpreting the points writers on the subject are trying to communicate. Social theology can often be a big distraction to far more important issues so I really don’t spend much time trying to figure it all out anymore.
I have no delusions of my own goodness though. Sometimes I wonder if the confessional Reformed really believe that about themselves. Of course, you will deny that on a public site. However, do you really believe that?
sdb says:
More or less. I suspect that a certain strain of evangelicals are invested in “reclaiming” the culture and proving they aren’t like those backward fundies of yore. They fancy themselves intellectually, aesthetically, and socially more sophisticated. Hearing that their institutions will either die or be co-opted because the broader culture thinks they are indistinguishable from those fundies of (i.e., Keller is just a slightly less annoying version of Phelps) is a bitter pill to swallow. Accepting that something like the BenOp is necessary is to concede defeat and swallow the pill.
None of us (conservative prots broadly defined) are are doing a great job of passing on our faith effectively to the next generation. I am very keen on hearing why that might be and what we might think about doing differently.
SDB said,
I suspect that a certain strain of evangelicals are invested in “reclaiming” the culture and proving they aren’t like those backward fundies of yore. They fancy themselves intellectually, aesthetically, and socially more sophisticated.
Ding, ding, ding.
It’s starting to get really annoying. The evangelical intelligentsia is falling over themselves to prove how woke they are, how hip they are to structural racism, and a host of other things. I don’t know if all of it is pandering, but there definitely seems to be this underlying assumption that if we can convince the culture that we’re on the right side of history with them on these issues, they’ll be eager to hear what we have to say about sexual ethics. It’s incredibly naive.
JohnnY, it’s not that Renn is confessional, it’s that he sees what’s wrong with evangelicalism. But evangelicals won’t admit it. Why? They are bigger than confessional groups. And then they step on the rake of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics.
It would seem to me that 2KT would smile on any Christian who promotes a neutral world. And thus, the subtle criticisms of Keller here are puzzling, but not surprising. In addition, the assessment of Keller seems off too. One would think that Keller’s transformationalism would cause us to assess him as a frustrated positive world Christian. In fact, hasn’t that been the 2KT criticism of Keller? And while mentioning the Benedict Option, doesn’t Dreher’s option qualify for a positive world wannabe?
While D.G.’s model lends itself to some interesting insights, the model describes the outside world rather than the Christian. So to be a positive, neutral, or negative world Christian is akin to telling us about our national identity rather than how we live. And that would put all of us living at this time in the same boat.
But the inconsistent use of the model is there to help facilitate criticism of Keller. What is added is an attempt to use the regulative principle. For D.G.’s use of the regulative principle says that Christians can only follow Christ by imitating the examples of fellow believers or following concrete instructions regardless of the vast differences in historical context and living situations. So there is an assumption that there are no significant changes in historical context or living situations.
What D.G. is promoting seems to be a Goldilocks of what the Anabaptists and Conservative Catholics promote. But what D.G. is promoting neglects to preach repentance to those participating in corporate sin. Thus, we should ask is, should German Christians who lived during the reign of the Nazis have lived out their Christianity exactly according to what D.G. suggests for Keller? For it seems that those German Christians who lived during the Nazi reign according to D.G.’s advice would be forced, with their unbelieving neighbors, to march through the death camps by the order of General Eisenhower so they could see what their silent complicity helped wrought. And if we live out D.G.’s advice to Keller, then we will be committing some of the same errors that were made by the predominant branch of the Church that existed during the pre-revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain. And here we should note that when those revolutions came, those respective predominant branches of the Church were understandably seen as the allies of oppression and enemies of the people. And such violates what Peter wrote:
13 Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, 14 or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. 15 For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. 16 Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. 17 Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.
Now while D.G. will be quick to point to verses 13-14, the reason for that instruction rests in verses 15-16. So though how the times change does not change what God’s Word says, it does change how we implement it in our lives.
wresby says:
The science is settled.
Curt,
The liberal mainline church is seen by conservatives as allies in the attempt to destroy conservative people who resist the LGBTQ agenda and socialism. Are you going to decry their complicity? Or are you selectively in favor of the church being seen as on the side of the ruling elite as long as the ruling elite is doing what you like? Where’s the love for all the non-Christians who voted for Trump or non-Christian conservatives?
Bryan Morey says:
sdb says: “None of us (conservative prots broadly defined) are are doing a great job of passing on our faith effectively to the next generation. I am very keen on hearing why that might be and what we might think about doing differently.”
That’s because most of your generation of conservative protestants decided it was ok to let the secular government raise your (I’m using your generally, not pointing a finger at you) children rather than sending them to a Christian school or homeschooling them. The vast majority of Christians I know don’t even consider giving their children a Christian education. 8 hours per day five days a week of “there is no God, you evolved, and being depraved is superior to believing the Bible” is going to have a lot more impact than one hour per week at church on Sundays.
Bryan, the fraction of students in conservative protestant private schools has fluctuated by about a percentage point over the past 25yrs if I’m normalizing the NCES numbers correctly (check my math though…it’s late). Meanwhile, the the number of homeschooled students has doubled since 1999 (from about 1.5% to about 3%). While it is true that there is a modest effect on religious observance for students who attend conservative protestant schools relative to their public school peers, shifts in schooling practice don’t seem to account for the sharp shift among millennials.
I have homeschooled and public schooled kids. I’ve not had any teachers spend any time asserting that there is no God (as far as I can recall – none of my public school teachers back in the 90’s when I was in high school taught anything like that either). Unfortunately, science education is mostly abysmal, and virtually no time is spent on evolutionary theory which is unfortunate as it is a wonderful description of many scientific phenomena and a great way to introduce students into ways of scientific thinking. Of course, the sequencing of the genome and confirming the predictions made by evolutionary theory was one of the most important scientific discoveries of the past quarter century. Francis Collins’s book “The Language of God” has a very accessible description of contemporary genetic science that you might find interesting.
It would seem to me that 2KT would smile on any Christian who promotes a neutral world.
You are misreading Renn. Positive world, neutral world, and negative world aren’t programs that Christians promote. They are interpretations of how friendly the broader culture is to conservative protestantism. 2KT and the spirituality of the church doesn’t really have anything to say about that. 2KT is about the proper scope of the church’s authority. No more, no less.
And thus, the subtle criticisms of Keller here are puzzling, but not surprising. In addition, the assessment of Keller seems off too. One would think that Keller’s transformationalism would cause us to assess him as a frustrated positive world Christian. In fact, hasn’t that been the 2KT criticism of Keller?
I don’t think the criticisms have been subtle at all. The concerns that dgh has expressed are that (1) Keller plays fast and loose with the confession he has vowed to uphold (2) He undermines presbyterian polity by building parachurch organizations that compete for denominational resources, and (3) his celebrity status makes it more difficult to hold him accountable on items 1 and 2. A fourth concern that I don’t recall receiving much air time (CW has commented on it I think) has been that his attempt to reach the culture has resulted in obscuring more controversial beliefs. The 2K criticism of Keller (such as it exists) is separate from these concerns (though perhaps related). By making transformationalist statements and wanting “all of life” brought under the gospel, he squeezes out adiaphora. It is a subtle legalism (i.e., if you are going to be a musician, you better be a Christian-Musician who sees it as a ministerial vocation). I’m not sure that this squares with Paul’s injunction that one work quietly with one’s hands, mind one’s own business, and support one’s family.
And while mentioning the Benedict Option, doesn’t Dreher’s option qualify for a positive world wannabe?
Just the opposite. Dreher’s BenOp is premised on the fact that the west is post-Christian and that modernity is corrosive to genuine Christian faith. If one is going to persevere, one must create intentional community to build up one’s faith to resist the corrosive aspects of our culture. I think he overstates his case in some ways, but there is an important element to what he has written – modern society works against communal faith (of which Christianity most certainly is). Creating the plausibility structures that allow one to transmit one’s faith to one’s kids is not easy and requires creative thinking. This wasn’t true before.
The positive/neutral/negative description tells us what support we might expect from the broader culture. Conservative protestantism has been on the outs for a century. Evangelicals thought they were getting in. They weren’t.
This is 180deg backwards. I’m surprised you continue to make this mistake after several people have corrected it. The regulative principle in this context has nothing to do with what the individual Christian does. It is about the scope of church authority. The Church is only authorized to condemn behavior as sinful if scripture condemns it. That doesn’t mean that you can’t avoid (or embrace as the case may be) certain activities because you find them sinful for you. The Good and necessary consequence covers issues like historic context and so forth. I wonder if your frustration is born from the fact that most of the folks here (and indeed virtually no one in the world of conservative protestantism) finds your arguments compelling.
@Robert But this is what Evangelicalism is. Anytime there is a cultural movement, they want to jump on board to make the gospel relevant. Rock and Roll, youth culture, and Woodstock -> Petra, Rez, and Cornerstone. On the high brow side, NYRB -> Books and Culture. And on and on it goes… evangelicalism is all about mimicry. This is why there is no lasting evangelical cultural impact. What they are doing now with the BLM and MeToo is in their DNA.
I get the impulse, and it is true that we need to be ready to share our faith in a language that others understand, but I suspect that the conservative protestantism would be much better off if it focused on the basics and got those right. I think Noll made a good case that the Civil War proved you couldn’t resolve thorny moral controversies exegetically. The church would be healthier if they stopped being reactive (reactionary?) and focused on Word and Sacrament. That might mean not having a lot to say about Supreme court justices, Roe v. Wade, evolutionary theory, tax rates, human trafficking, prohibition, Darfur, Palestine, income inequality, policing strategy, or reparations. But I suspect that we would have much healthier churches. Maybe I’m wrong though.
That’s because most of your generation of conservative protestants decided it was ok to let the secular government raise your (I’m using your generally, not pointing a finger at you) children rather than sending them to a Christian school or homeschooling them.
While I’m sympathetic to this, Americans have been doing this for generations (public schools). But it seems only recently that handing on the faith has been more difficult.
SDB,
The church would be healthier if they stopped being reactive (reactionary?) and focused on Word and Sacrament.
That might mean not having a lot to say about Supreme court justices, Roe v. Wade, evolutionary theory, tax rates, human trafficking, prohibition, Darfur, Palestine, income inequality, policing strategy, or reparations.
But if you are focusing on the Word, you are going to have stuff to say about a lot of those issues, if not all of them.
I think Noll made a good case that the Civil War proved you couldn’t resolve thorny moral controversies exegetically.
I don’t know Noll’s argument here. Is he applying it only to the broader society? If so, then he’s probably right. If he’s applying it within the church, we should just pack up and go home because all we have in the church to solve thorny moral issues is the Word of God.
Probably not in press releases, public demonstrations, or letters to congress though. There is a big difference between preaching about the story of Joseph and talking about the sin of his brothers selling him into slavery and calling on your congregation/twitter followers to support HB1234.
“I don’t know Noll’s argument here.”
It would be worthwhile to read his book The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. The bible was unable to adjudicate the most pressing moral question of mid-19th century American among conservative protestants with shared theological beliefs.
Zrim says:
Bryan, so you think academia is the vehicle for passing down the faith? Worldview alert. And why such a low view of God’s ordained means of grace, i.e. one in seven as opposed 8/5/275? You think religious schooling can improve on God’s prescription? Eeeevangelical alert.
RubeRad says:
Where do I send my contributions for Sasse 2020?
Vae victis (@masonmandy) says:
Wow, a lot to discuss in this thread. First things first:
DGH – I agree with Renn’s basic assessment of Redeemer/Keller. They are certainly “neutral world,” as Renn defines it. Indeed, many of the new quasi-Reformed churches in Manhattan (which are largely there because of Redeemer and heavily influenced by Redeemer) fall into that category as well. However, I disagree that Redeemer (or Keller) is militantly anti-Trump and constantly speaks about refugees/racism. That may be true of some other neutral world churches and pastors, but not the Redeemer churches and Keller (he is no longer the pastor anyway). I will also add that Redeemer/Keller view general culture as a very positive thing – if culture views Christians with antipathy, Keller views culture positively.
Bryan Morey – I attended a PCA Christian school from Kindergarten through high school. We were an academic and athletic powerhouse, and had good theological instruction as part of our core curriculum, as well as weekly chapels, mission trips, etc. It was as good of a “Christian” education as you could ask for. Yet of my 93 classmates, at least 15-20 have abandoned the faith or never really had faith to begin with. Others converted to Catholicism or very broad evangelicalism. So 8 hours of daily Reformed theological education for 12 years had no impact whatsoever on them. I just don’t buy that Christian education is that important, though I do value my own experience. My kids go to public school, and our experience is fantastic, despite the fact their their first grade teacher was an atheist and they have Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu classmates – they have never been told that God doesn’t exist or that being depraved is superior to believing the Bible.
sdb – “By making transformationalist statements and wanting “all of life” brought under the gospel, he squeezes out adiaphora. It is a subtle legalism (i.e., if you are going to be a musician, you better be a Christian-Musician who sees it as a ministerial vocation). I’m not sure that this squares with Paul’s injunction that one work quietly with one’s hands, mind one’s own business, and support one’s family.”
This is not at all Keller’s belief on work – he would not agree that you have to be a “Christian-Musician.” The idea is to be a great musician – whether the music is overtly Christian or not – and honor the Lord in how you work in how and why you work. His belief is much like Luther’s: that when we work we are essentially “God’s fingers” for accomplishing His tasks on earth. One’s work does not need to be explicitly “Christian” to do this.
Curt, “D.G.’s use of the regulative principle says that Christians can only follow Christ by imitating the examples of fellow believers or following concrete instructions”
Reading comprehension alert. I don’t think you have a clue about the regulative principle which may sort of kind of possibly affect your rendering of what “D. G. promotes. . .”
Bryan, that generation may have merely allowed the secular government to grant money to local school districts, run by local citizens (some Christian) who hired teachers from the neighborhood (some Christian). It’s not like the federal government sent out FBI agents to work the schools.
RubeRad, Old Life (only a minor service charge).
vv, “That may be true of some other neutral world churches and pastors, but not the Redeemer churches and Keller (he is no longer the pastor anyway).”
Do you know how you sound like Curt on socialism?
Renn’s comment on Trump and Neutral Christianity pegs The Christian Coalition well. And who’s one of the poster boys for TGC?
I bet you don’t read the Bible this literally.
DGH – once again your brush is too broad. It’s like me saying that all 2K advocates must smoke tobacco because you smoke and are a “poster boy” for 2K. Doesn’t really work, does it? Pretty classic “guilt by association” logical fallacy.
sdb says: “I’ve not had any teachers spend any time asserting that there is no God (as far as I can recall – none of my public school teachers back in the 90’s when I was in high school taught anything like that either).”
I imagine that everything they taught was from the perspective that there is no God and we evolved. The Bible is very clear that we didn’t evolve. And evolution is not a science. Science is something that can be observed and replicated in an experiment. We don’t observe organisms evolving. The scientists sequencing genomes are merely interpreting the data through an evolutionary lens. They’re looking at reality through opaque glasses. Sin is very disorienting.
Zrim says: “so you think academia is the vehicle for passing down the faith? Worldview alert. And why such a low view of God’s ordained means of grace, i.e. one in seven as opposed 8/5/275? You think religious schooling can improve on God’s prescription? Eeeevangelical alert.”
No, I believe parents are supposed to train up their children in the way they should go (a verse my Reformed K-12 school displayed prominently on a sign by the road). Sending a child to a government run indoctrination center where they teach common core nonsense is hardly training them up in the way they should go. God’s prescription is to train children up in the Bible. Sending kids to a pagan (actually, worse than pagan) education is a direct violation of God’s prescription, and thus one could argue is sinful.
Vae victis, I don’t keep up with people I grew up with in the Reformed school I went to. Many may have fallen away, but that isn’t the fault of the school. It is still the parent’s duty, obligation, responsibility to give their a Biblical education, be that through homeschooling or private schooling. I highly doubt that those 12 years had “no impact” on the people that rejected it. 40 hours a week for 12 years in a school that starts with the presupposition that there is no God is not going to be healthy for a child from a Christian home. There is simply too much contradiction, and most kids aren’t gaining that firm grounding in the Bible. Ask yourself this: Would I rather have my kids taught that there is a God who created the universe and who loves His people, or would I rather have my kids taught that they evolved, they don’t matter, and there is no basis for right and wrong and thus can do whatever they want with their bodies without consequence? The answer to that question should dictate where one’s priorities are.
“I imagine that everything they taught was from the perspective that there is no God and we evolved.”
Why imagine? Perhaps you could talk to actual public school teachers and find out. Then you can explain how belief in God affects learning grammar, the branches of government, and factoring quadratic equations. Amazingly, kids from public school, homeschool kids, and kids that learned from an Abeka curriculum all program their DVRs the same way, make count their change at McDonalds the same way, and read their summons for jury duty the same way. The overwhelming majority of life skills one learns in primary and secondary school are irrelevant to one’s theological persuasion.
“The Bible is very clear that we didn’t evolve. And evolution is not a science. Science is something that can be observed and replicated in an experiment. We don’t observe organisms evolving. The scientists sequencing genomes are merely interpreting the data through an evolutionary lens. They’re looking at reality through opaque glasses. Sin is very disorienting.”
The Bible wasn’t so clear on this point to B.B. Warfield as I recall. It certainly isn’t clear to me. But whatever the case, your understanding of science is deeply impoverished. Bacon was not the last word on science. Data collection is one element of science, but you can’t go from observations of phenomena (even over and over) and end up with science. All you get is correlations, and as we all know, correlation does not entail causation. That thing you need to turn data into science is “theory”. Theory can be tested several ways – mathematically, computationally, experimentally, and observationally. The test of a theory is its explanatory power – can it parsimoniously explain observed phenomena and predict new phenomena. Evolutionary theory is a parsimonious and elegant explanation of the data that also makes novel and important predictions that scientists use in medicine, dealing with invasive species, and addressing epidemics. Evolutionary algorithms have also been found to be a great way to do model optimization. Ironically enough, the google search your doing right now on “100 reasons evolution must be false” is probably using an evolutionary algoerithm. You should read Francis Collins (an evangelical Christian) on how what we’ve learned from the genome has provided remarkable confirmation of evolutionary theory. In fact it allows us to trace the evolution of generations (I’m sure you understand that individual organism don’t evolve – Lamarkian theory lacks the explanatory power of Darwinian theory) of all kinds of organisms. From a theological perspective, if one understands miracles to always serve as signs, then one shoudn’t expect the creation and sustaining of the universe to be miraculous – rather we should expect it to fall under God’s ordinary providence (following the WCF) meaning that we can learn how this stuff works. This means we should expect to be able to develop scientific theories that account for the origin of this (and possibly other) universe(s) as wel as the origin and evolution of life on this planet (and possibly others). If your faith (and trust in the scriptures) rests on what science purportedly cannot do rather than wonder at the creator who has gifted us an intellect that can understand what he has done, then your faith is impoverished and misplaced.
At any rate, your suggestion that the drift from Christianity is caused by the collapse of parents sending their kids to CHristian schools is belied by the data. The fraction hasn’t budged over 20yrs. Homeschooling has doubled and now accounts for ~3% of schooling. And yet faith attainment continues to drop.
But the issue with evolutionary theory as it is commonly accepted today is that evolution can’t actually be observed. We can see some changes within species, but it takes millions of years, if evolutionary theory is correct, to produce the various species etc.
One could come up with any number of other theories to explain things that can’t actually be observed either, including creationism.
Bryan, you attended a Reformed K-12 and suggest that consciences may be bound on a matter indifferent, schooling? For all the moaning about secular schooling’s basic failings, this isn’t a great case for Reformed schooling.
But have you read Strong’s “Children in the Early Church”?
“The early Christians lived in a society whose values were inimical to them in many respects. The pagan society around them was underpinned by a religion which they considered false, if not demonic; it was characterized by moral values they could not share; and it was entered into by an education steeped in paganism. So we might expect the early Christians to try to protect their young by providing some alternative form of education which would keep them free from the temptations and snares of the pagan world in which they lived. They had, after all, the example of the Jewish synagogue schools. But, rather surprisingly, the Christians did not take that course for several centuries. There was no fiercer critic of paganism than Tertullian (c. 160-c.225), but even he accepted the necessity for young people to share in the education on offer at pagan schools. His chosen image to describe the Christian pupil’s situation as he read the pagan authors whose work formed the ancient syllabus, was that of someone offered poison to drink, but refusing to take it (On Idolatry 10).
“The young Origen (born c.185 AD)…is said to have received extra instruction in the Scriptures from his father, Leonides, each day before he set out for his secular schooling (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.2.7f.)…Here was a devout Christian father, later to be martyred for the gospel, who was nonetheless willing for his son to attend school, and follow the normal curriculum of the pagan classics. Origen himself became an enthusiast for secular education as a preparation for Biblical study, and in later life urged it on those who came to him for instruction (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.18.4: NE 192).
“We hear of no Christian schooling outside the home in the early centuries. A century after Clement had written to Corinthian fathers and husbands to ‘instruct the young in the fear of God,’ the same pattern of family responsibility can be seen in Origen’s Alexandria. Christian parents were still content for their children to share a common education with their pagan neighbors, and the church was slow to copy the synagogue in providing an alternative pattern of schooling. Even when John Chrysostom (c.347-407) wrote the first Christian treatise on the education of children (On the Vainglory of the World and on the Education of Children), he addressed himself to parents, and said nothing about sending children to specifically Christian schools. The first Christian schools seem to have been those founded by the monasteries from the fourth century onwards (Marrou 1965 472-84).
“It is worth asking why Christians did not take the opportunity to create their own schools. If we take the comparison with the Jewish community, one reason must have been that there was no need for Christian children to learn a sacred language; their Jewish contemporaries had to learn Hebrew. Those who spoke Greek could read the New Testament in its original language, and the Old testament in Greek translation. And the New Testament Scriptures were rapidly translated into the various languages of the Mediterranean. Further, Christians did not see themselves as culturally distinct from their neighbours. An anonymous writer of the late second century expressed eloquently how Christians were in the world, but not of it:
For Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind by country, or by speech, or by dress. For they do not dwell in cities of their own, or use a different language, or practise a peculiar speech…But while they dwell in Greek or barbarian cities according as each man’s lot has been cast, and follow the customs of the land in clothing and food, and other matters of daily life, yet the condition of citizenship which they exhibit is wonderful, and admittedly strange…Every foreign land is to them a fatherland, and every fatherland a foreign land. (Epistle to Diognetus 6.1-5: NE 55).
“To set up their own separate educational provision would have been to withdraw from the common life they shared with their pagan neighbours. And, while they recognized the dangers and allure of paganism, the early Christians saw no need to do that. They let their children ‘share in the instruction which is in Christ’ (1 Clement), and they allowed them access to education for the wider pagan society. They were not trying to create a Christian ghetto, but to be salt and light in their world. Their attitude to their children’s education was an expression of this open yet critical attitude.”
But you on with your modern religious self.
It is not true that it takes millions of years for speciation to occur. The isolation of squirrels on mountain islands resulted in separate species in a few thousand years. Certain insects and bacteria evolve even faster so that laboratory experiments are possible.
Evolutionary theory is not simply a “just so” story that explains fossils and the relationship among species. The theory made a prediction about the genome. Much of your genetic code is unused. Mutations there do not affect fitness. Thus evolutionary theory predicted that the less of the “junk” different species have in common the longer it has been since divergence. In fact you can count generations this way. This observation was not predicted by creationism, but it was by evolution. To be sure, there are lots of interesting questions to address, and we are constantly learning. But there are no competitive theories that can synthesize such a broad range of data and make testable predictions.
Creation science fails on a few measures- it gets the age scale of the Earth wrong, it does not provide a means (mechanism) for creation, and it has not yielded a single successful prediction of an observed phenomenon.
sdb and Robert – “Creation science fails on a few measures- it gets the age scale of the Earth wrong, it does not provide a means (mechanism) for creation, and it has not yielded a single successful prediction of an observed phenomenon.”
Exactly. I think it was R.C. Sproul who said that scientific inquiry answers the how, what and when of the cosmos, while the Bible answers the who and why of the cosmos. We know God created everything out of nothing for His glory. How long ago He created, how He created, and exactly what He created initially are unclear, but fall within the domain of science, since Scripture doesn’t provide an answer. Evolutionary theory has problems and holes, but in the main does a much better job of scientific inquiry than “Creation science.” But really they shouldn’t be viewed as separate: one can believe God created the world and all of life and used evolutionary principles to do so. I don’t understand why those are at odds. (Unless you believe there was human death before the Fall, which I believe is problematic theologically.)
Bryan – “Many may have fallen away, but that isn’t the fault of the school. It is still the parent’s duty, obligation, responsibility to give their a Biblical education, be that through homeschooling or private schooling.”
Exactly! But this cuts both ways: it’s not the fault of a secular public school if the child grows up to reject the faith. The Pharisees talked to Jesus personally and saw Him perform miracles, including bringing dead people back to life. They saw the miracles performed through the Apostles. Yet they still rejected Christ as Lord. People can have superb Christian school experience and home school experience throughout their developmental years and still reject Christ. You would have to show me some kind of data that suggests people who are raised in public schools apostatize at a significantly higher rate than those who are raised in Christian schools or home school in order for me to accept your claims.
vv, when Keller is broad, I use an appropriately sized brush. Now you’re telling me he’s narrow? Who knew!?
DGH – “vv, when Keller is broad, I use an appropriately sized brush. Now you’re telling me he’s narrow? Who knew!?”
This doesn’t even remotely make sense.
@VV There is evidence from longitudinal data that conservative Protestant schooling does increase the likelihood that one will retain the faith even after controlling for parental religious practice. You can read the work here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01451.x
However, the fraction of families that send their kids to conservative Protestant schools has been fairly flat for as far back as I can find data. Homeschooling has been on the rise, but it is pretty small overall. So while conservative Protestant schooling does enhance the likelihood that one will retain one’s faith, it doesn’t explain why the attrition rate has gone up.
I have a pretty good clue as to how it is implemented by some. And I know more about that principle than you are willing to give credit for.
sdb – thanks for the article. There are some limitations to the study (only 4 Protestant schools were sampled, apparently all from Texas), and when controlled for parental religious involvement the perseverance of faith into young adulthood dropped dramatically. Still, it seems that Protestant education has at least some impact on remaining a follower of Christ, though Catholic education does as well, albeit to a lesser degree. Though I still maintain – and I think we agree – that secular education is not the culprit for the attrition rate among young Protestants.
I maintain it is primarily fundamentalism/moralism with an emphasis on “works” and external conformity rather than the Gospel of grace. I know Christians who grew up in that culture (my wife included) have a terrible time understanding grace and have a constant cloud of guilt hanging over them. Early on they had it drilled into their heads that Christianity is abiding by a certain set of (largely man made) rules, rather than clinging in faith to Christ: Christians don’t smoke, don’t wear skirts above the knee, don’t use “bad words,” don’t paint their finger nails, don’t see R-rated movies, don’t drink beer on Sunday, and a whole slew of other moralistic rules. As adults they reject these rules, but in so doing believe they are rejecting Christianity. So they are faced with the choice of continuing in moralism or abandoning their faith altogether, and many choose the latter.
That’s why I think the idea of The Gospel Coalition is so good in principle, but is largely botched by the heavy Baptist influence and its accompanying moralistic flair.
Okay, we still can’t observe it in a laboratory if it takes thousands of years. Where have we observed in a laboratory common ancestors that produced divergent species and so forth?
I’m not necessarily advocating for “creation science.” Where has divergence been observed in the laboratory such that we’ve isolated a common ancestor and then seen how many different species that can’t interbreed then result? I mean, supposedly whales and horses have a common ancestor. From what I can tell, that conclusion is largely speculative. Having more or less junk DNA in common can just as easily be supposed to be from a Designer using a common template.
The whole process just seems hopelessly presuppositional to me.
1. If this kind of evolution is true, then we would expect x.
2. Y is observed not x
3. Okay, we need to change the kind of evolution we are looking for.
4. New form/variant/track of evolution that gives us y
5. If kind of evolution that gives us y is true, then we would expect A
6. B is observed not A
7. Okay, we need to change the kind of evolution we are looking for
8. New form/variant/track of evolution that gives us B and Y
Repeat until you arrive at more explanatory forms of evolution.
Repeat ad infinitum. You can do the same thing with creationism. You could do the same thing with finding the origin of life in Martian interference.
What do you mean by “creation science?” Yes, Ken Ham is nut that gets the age scale of the earth wrong, but I’m no Ken Ham advocate. And isn’t the means for creation God in creationism?
From this non-specialist, evolutionary biology looks an awful lot like “We’re sure evolution is true because we know God can’t be an explanation for anything in science, so we’re going to keep looking for it to be true until we find that it is.”
To be fair, I’d say the same thing about creationism. On both accounts, you’re dealing with stuff you can’t actually observe. At best you’re dealing with residual evidence. And residual evidence can support any number of different theories.
VV,
I largely agree with this. It largely depends on what you mean by evolutionary principles. I think it’s pretty clear that there is adaptation within species. The theory of common ancestry seems far more speculative to this outsider.
Robert – I agree that phylogenetic trees are conjectural to a large degree, but they are based on reasonable genetic principles. To me the biggest gaps in evolutionary theory are from random atoms to biomolecules, and them from biomolecules to nucleotides, and then from nucleotides to RNA, then from RNA to DNA, then to enzymes, then to cells, etc. Those are extremely large, statistically unlikely leaps from any one of those steps to the next. I had an agnostic biochemistry professor once tell the class the use of DNA/RNA as a coding system in all of life makes perfect sense in the paradigm of a Creator or in the paradigm of an atheistic evolution. He believed that biochemistry was basically a Rorschach test: atheists saw evolutionary principles, theists saw the design of God. I think he was basically correct. To me it is abundantly clear from life on Earth that God put everything into motion – atheist biologists are rejecting God because their hearts are hard. I tend to believe – and this is all speculative – that God created some very basic life forms and then in His sovereignty guided the development of life as we know it. I also tend to believe He created man separately. But regardless of the mechanism, God created.
Delbert Brice says:
@Robert Wikipedia has a page dedicated to laboratory experiments on speciation. You might check it out and see if that is addressing what you have in mind. Biologos has useful information as well.
I don’t think creation/design arguments predict that errors in the genetic code are more similar among more similar creatures. Evolution was developed from the observation of the small variations among organisms and then noticing that the fossil record indicated that there were extinct organisms that bridged the gap. This led to the inference that modern day species evolved from a common ancestor. If this inference is correct, then we should find evidence for this in the genetic code. Indeed, we see that we have chunks of error in the code (what the link calls scars), and these gets passed along. These so-called scars can then be used to trace the lineage of different species and we can see how long its been since we diverged from a common ancestor. I don’t see evidence that genetic faults embedded in our genes was ever predicted by design theories.
Your flow chart does not reflect my experience with observational science. Here is a revision that rings more true:
0. We observe A, B, C – Model M accounts for A, B, C
1. This model also predicts X, Y, Z.
2. Further observations confirm A, B, and X but C+/-c is observed and not accounted for by Model M, and Y and Z have not yet been confirmed.
3. So now we modify the model requiring that it still account for A, B, and X and allow for C+/-c. This revision of the model suggests that we should see Y but not Z as well as a new features V and W.
4. This new model that accounts for A, B, X, C+/-c, and receives validation from the observation of Y, But it misses the mark on V (V+/-v) and gets W completely wrong.
5. Revised model accounts for A, B, X, C+/-c, Y, V+/-v, and W predicting D, E, F
6. A, B, X, Y, V+/-v, and W are confirmed and we realize an error in our interpretation of the data making C+/-c =G which is consistent with the model. D is confirmed, but the data on E and F are inconclusive.
7. Work on model M suggests we should observe H and that E should be observed and F should not.
8. We now have a model M that accounts for A, B, X, Y, V+/-v, W, G, and D. H and E should be observed, but haven’t gotten there yet.
9. This refinement of the model continues – sometimes leading the data and sometimes following it. Sometimes the continual refinements result in an unwieldy model and a simpler model that accounts for all the observations supplants it.
This flow works for laboratory experiments and field experiments. Even quantum mechanics, the predictions of which have been measured more precisely those of any other theory, is under determined. But being under determined does not mean that anything goes. To be a theory, you have to make falsiable predictions of new phenomena.
“To me the biggest gaps in evolutionary theory are from random atoms to biomolecules, and them from biomolecules to nucleotides, and then from nucleotides to RNA, then from RNA to DNA, then to enzymes, then to cells, etc. Those are extremely large, statistically unlikely leaps from any one of those steps to the next.”
The origin of life is not part of evolutionary theory though. That’s a separate (and incredibly difficult question). However, the path from atoms to organic molecules in the interstellar medium is more or less a solved problem. The reaction networks are quite good, and predictions form the thermo-chemical kinetic models of the interstellar medium have largely been confirmed by observation. There is a lot of very exciting work being done on networks leading up to simple amino acids such as glycine. While this (and other) amino acid as been observed in meteorites, the detections claimed in the ISM are very controversial. The models are getting better and will help guide ongoing searches with the ngVLA. Whether these rich organic chemistry of the ISM survives into disks around young stars or gets reset is an open question. However, since disks are warmer, the reactions are faster, so the chemistry will be richer. Studying that in detail is challenging, but we are making great strides. We have a long way to go though. But even if we are able to reproduce the amino acids observed in meteorites and discover these in disks, we still have a long way to go from there to life. This is a very, very exciting area of reasearch right now.
“ I had an agnostic biochemistry professor once tell the class the use of DNA/RNA as a coding system in all of life makes perfect sense in the paradigm of a Creator or in the paradigm of an atheistic evolution. He believed that biochemistry was basically a Rorschach test: atheists saw evolutionary principles, theists saw the design of God. I think he was basically correct. To me it is abundantly clear from life on Earth that God put everything into motion – atheist biologists are rejecting God because their hearts are hard. I tend to believe – and this is all speculative – that God created some very basic life forms and then in His sovereignty guided the development of life as we know it. I also tend to believe He created man separately. But regardless of the mechanism, God created.”
Here’s a nice essay that gets at some of the subtlety of what science is.
Evolution was developed from the observation of the small variations among organisms and then noticing that the fossil record indicated that there were extinct organisms that bridged the gap.
I’m admittedly a layman, but I don’t think this is quite right. Evolutionary theory has existed for millennia. Many ancient Greeks held to it long before there was any extensive look at the fossil record or notice of gaps, etc.
What Darwin did was suggest a plausible mechanism for evolution. But evolution as a theory existed before Darwin and really before observation based science as we know it even existed. It really seems to begin more as a philosophy than as a branch of empirical science.
Jeff Cagle says:
@ Robert: Most think that evolution is what drives antibiotic resistance. Do you disagree?
@ SDB: Can you agree that one could agree that “evolution happens” but disagree with the evolutionary history of the world, in the same way that one could agree that “physics happens” but disagree with materialist accounts of the origin of the universe?
@Robert Fair enough. I had in mind modern evolutionary theory as articulated by Darwin and developed since.
@Jeff I’m don’t think your analogy works. Agreeing that evolution happens but rejecting evolutionary history is more analogous to believing that the universe is expanding but rejecting the Big Bang. In both cases, you are left with positing something like the “appearance of age”.
curt, “by some.”
So you paint with a broad brush too. Don’t tell vv.
Maybe the terms are dated, but I would say that’s an example of microevolution, not macroevolution. I admit my understanding of these things is pretty basic. But what I do know leaves me unconvinced that genetic adaptation and mutation is sufficient to explain creation as we see it. A bacteria that is more resistant to antibiotics is still a bacteria.
In both cases, you are left with positing something like the “appearance of age”.
Well, if the most literalistic readings of Genesis are true, you’d have to have an appearance of age. Fully formed trees that are actually a minute old might look thousands of years old.
I’m not actually advocating that. Appearance of age has its problems, which is one reason why I can’t agree with young earth creationism. I can get why biological organisms might be explained via appearance of age, but why would God need to give an appearance to age to rocks?
There are dozens of phyla and millions of species of bacteria. We can observe speciation of bacteria in the lab and in the field.
John R. Smith says:
Excuse my ignorance, but who (or what) are “b” and “sd”?
My initials.
@ Robert:
The “why would God…?” argument has more bark than bite, for the simple reason that the ultimate answer is “because it brings Him glory.”
One answer to the question could easily be, “because only those initial conditions could give rise to the Savior”
Another is “because only those initial conditions are finely tuned for life on earth.”
Another answer is rhetorical: “Why would God got to the trouble of telling us six days, morning and evening, when He meant something different?” “Why would God ordain the fall?” “Why would God create Ebola?” etc.
That’s not to say that I’m insisting on YEC. Rather, just pointing out that “why would God…?” is ultimately speculative and therefore of little real force.
@ John:
It goes back to a time when Tom van Dyke haunted these parts. Somehow he became VD, T. Then when he complained about his initials looking like an abbreviation for “venereal disease”, everyone with initials got the middle-last, first treatment.
In determining how to interpret scripture, we can use “why would God” questions as a boundary condition. If the answer makes God deceptive, the author of evil, or not omnipotent then that exegetical choice is wrong. Of course such questions can be inconclusive too.
The problem I see with apparent age arguments is that it makes nature an illusion. 150,000 years ago or so a star blew up in a spectacular supernova. We saw it in 1987 (SN 1987A). If the universe is only 10,000 years old, then that event we witnessed never happened (and variable speed of light can resolve this given light echos and independent distance measures – apart from problems with fundamental constants).
So we might ask, why would God make it look like something happened that did not in fact happen. God cannot lie. He tells us that nature declares his glory. An interpretation of the creation narrative that makes the universe an illusion is problematic it seems to me.
@ SDB:
I think you’ve put forward the strongest argument for old-earth creationism: that to view the optical history of the universe and the geological history of earth as illusions is to flirt with Gnosticism.
Over against that, one has to ask “Why would God tell us that He created in six days, from the dust of the earth, when He did neither?”
The Lying God objection cuts both ways.
I say that without planting a flag for either view.
Isn’t the question, “did God tell us he created the universe in six days?” The use of idiom, metaphor, hyperbole, and other literary devices are compatible with truth telling. The Genesis creation narratives have not been universally understood to be historical. Adopting an interpretation that makes creation an illusion is problematic in a way that adopting say Klein’s literary framework is not.
My goodness, what have I started. It is relatively pointless arguing Creation vs evolution because the reasoning behind believing evolution is a rejection of God’s Word. Those of you adhering to evolution are forgetting many important points. Without a literal creation with a literal Adam and Eve, there is no fall of man. Genesis is very clear that the universe was created purposefully. We didn’t evolve. If we did, then when did the fall occur? If you believe in evolution, there is no Adam and there is no Eve. Thus, there is no fall, and therefore there is no need for a Savior to come and crush Satan’s head and forgive sins.
Evolution has no biblical basis. To argue for it is to place fake “science” above God and His divine Word. That is a scary place to put oneself theologically.
I could go on, but WordPress doesn’t seem to like my longer comment.
If only you had been around to set Hodge and Warfield straight.
sdb, maybe I could appreciate your sarcasm more if you tried defending your position from the Bible. But since it is an indefensible position, go ahead and point to dead sinners in your defense.
Bryan, my point was simply that pretty careful expositors of God’s Word (one of whom literally wrote the book on inerrancy) disagree with you about the defensibility of evolution and belief in the inerrancy of scripture. You started with the assertion that such discussions are “pointless” and have doubled down by asserting that it is “indefensible”. Are you suggesting that such a defense here wouldn’t be pointless?
His point is that you could hardly call Hodge and Warfield rejectors of God’s Word. People who accept evolutionary theory aren’t necessarily rejecting the authority of God’s Word. They just don’t believe God’s Word is actually affirming anything contrary to evolution. Maybe they’re wrong, but they aren’t rejecting the authority of Scripture.
We can observe bacteria producing other bacteria, even other species of bacteria. Have we ever observed a bacteria producing a common ancestor that produced something that wasn’t bacteria?
Bacteria is one of the 6 “kingdoms” of life (bacteria, plants, animals, fungi, amoebas, and algae’s – evidently some split bacteria, but I don’t know much about that). Originally you said you doubted speciation, but we have observed that. Wanting to observe the formation of a new kingdom of life is really moving the goal posts. I don’t see how that could be observed. Do you make similar demands of other theories? Did you accept atomic theory before the imaging of atoms in the 1989? Do you believe in electrons?
sdb – “origins of life” and “evolutionary theory” are inextricably linked: there is no evolutionary theory without DNA, at least as it exists today. You obviously know vastly more about astrophysics than I do, but finding organic molecules or even a few random amino acids in outer space proves very little about the origin of RNA/DNA. Nucleotides are highly complex molecules, and to my knowledge their “random” synthesis has not been observed. Without nucleotides there is no DNA, without DNA there are no proteins, without proteins there are no enzymes and ultimately no life. Not only that, but proteins (enzymes) are necessary for replication of DNA and the transcription/translation of RNA. So proteins are essential for the synthesis of proteins. Classic chicken/egg conundrum.
Jeff and sdb – “Isn’t the question, “did God tell us he created the universe in six days?” The use of idiom, metaphor, hyperbole, and other literary devices are compatible with truth telling. The Genesis creation narratives have not been universally understood to be historical. Adopting an interpretation that makes creation an illusion is problematic in a way that adopting say Klein’s literary framework is not.”
This is exactly right. Even Augustine believed the “days” were allegorical, and he makes a compelling case for this view in Confessions. Not to go overboard, but understanding the Genesis 1 account as a literal 7 days almost requires an open theist view: it requires belief that God constrained Himself to time before creating time, which is nowhere in evidence in Scripture.
Bryan – “If you believe in evolution, there is no Adam and there is no Eve. Thus, there is no fall, and therefore there is no need for a Savior to come and crush Satan’s head and forgive sins.”
This is a straw man argument. I believe in evolution, but also believe God created a literal Adam and Eve. There are many ways this could have happened, including physical evolution of humans until God breathed life into Adam and Eve, effectively giving them a soul, which humans had previously not possessed. I don’t accept this view personally, but the point is one can believe humans evolved from other species and still believe in a literal Adam and Eve. My personal view is that God directed evolution to a certain point and then created Adam and Eve separately using the same biological principles he used with the rest of life. This view is 100% compatible with Scripture.
Admittedly I’m a layman. When I say speciation, I’m referring to the development of a new lifeform unlike one previous to it and with which it cannot reproduce, or something to that effect.
Wanting to observe the formation of a new kingdom of life is really moving the goal posts.
Not really. It’s just my use of the wrong terminology. I’m not even looking for new kingdoms of life. Let’s stay within the animal kingdom. I remember seeing a video once of Richard Dawkins talking about how whales and horses both descend from the same common ancestor. Evidence for this was some tiny piece of bone. I’m simplifying things, and it was only a five minute clip or so, but I’m watching it and thinking, “This is only going to convince the already convinced.”
I’m not a scientist, but as I remember from my school days, the evidence for evolution is such things as similarities in structures (bat wing bones look like hand bones), some genetic similarities, and so on. What I know, and again, I’m no specialist, just isn’t very convincing. A Common Designer who reused designs in particular ways could just as well account for most of it as far as I can tell.
I don’t see how that could be observed.
It can’t be, and that’s a big problem for the theory. It’s why I tend to view evolutionary theory more as a philosophy and less as actual science. Like I said, the theory of evolution isn’t new. The Greeks taught it, though not Darwinian evolution. It seems very presuppositional to me, a theory looking for confirmation and not something that was actually put together through observation. I’m not sure that’s unique to evolutionary theory. Seems to me all knowledge works that way to some degree. But it does make me skeptical that we’ve demonstrated evolution in the same way we’ve demonstrated other things in science.
Do you make similar demands of other theories? Did you accept atomic theory before the imaging of atoms in the 1989? Do you believe in electrons?
Well, I was born in 1975 and didn’t have any real chemistry education at all until 1990-1991 or so, so I don’t know. I will say that there are far fewer problems reconciling atomic theory with Scripture than evolution. So, the buy-in is much easier.
Personally, I tend to favor a literal 7 day creation and an old earth, but I’m not dogmatic about it. I don’t think it’s impossible that some form of evolutionary theory and Scripture could be reconciled, but I have my reservations, especially when the strongest proponents of it have been people such as Pete Enns.
Robert Letham wrote an essay, I think in the Westminster Theological Review, that outlined many of the positions on Genesis 1 in interpretive history, particularly in the Reformed tradition. He wrote it at about the time the PCA was debating the issue, if I’m correct. The takeaway is that historically, one cannot make the case that the literal 24-7 view has been the unanimous teaching of the church. People have been debating whether the days are allegorical or not for generations.
That being said, I’m not sure I follow how literal 7 days would require God constraining himself to time before creating time.
@Robert I see. I think the speciation of organisms in the bacteria kingdom covers what you have in mind.
“ A Common Designer who reused designs in particular ways could just as well account for most of it as far as I can tell.”
The problem you run into are the so-called “scars” in the genetic code. They aren’t functional, and they fade out as you get further apart evolutionarily. This is a confirmation of the theory, not something the theory has to explain. This is why it has such explanatory force.
“theory looking for confirmation and not something that was actually put together through observation. I’m not sure that’s unique to evolutionary theory. Seems to me all knowledge works that way to some degree. But it does make me skeptical that we’ve demonstrated evolution in the same way we’ve demonstrated other things in science.”
So the two ways that science generally advances are through theoretical breakthroughs and observational breakthroughs. The most famous example of a theoretical breakthrough advancing new science is Einstein’s theory of relativity. This was inspired by electrodynamics and driven by thought experiments. Einstein made a number of pretty bold claims that were testable. This was a theory looking for confirmation (and he got it!). The alternative is approach is explemplified by evolutionary theory. We observe similar species, we find species with vestigial body parts, and we find fossils of species that no longer exist and we don’t find fossils of modern species. Darwin synthesized these observations and gave an account for how this diversity of life grows. Once genes were discovered, a strong falsifiable hypothesis could be formed – unused portion of the code should replicate, but do so less well than functional portions. Thus the more removed species are from one another, organisms should have fewer commonalities among the unused portions of the code. This is what is observed. Now it is true that we don’t have a time machine that allows us to constructed a time-lapsed film of evolution taking place. But then most theories have unobserved components to them as well. In chemistry, you can’t observe a “bond”. You can’t observe an electron. In physics, you can’t observe a gravitational field, dark matter, or dark energy. We accept their existence on the basis of their explanatory power. But of course, a better theory could in principle come along that makes the concept of an electric field obsolete (as was the aether). But this is how science works.
As far as reconciling evolutionary theory with scripture, this strikes me as mistaken approach. We don’t talk about reconciling scripture with the heliocentric model of the Solar System. We accept that scripture wasn’t teaching us the geometry of the Solar System, so the fact that it adopts phenomenalogical language isn’t surprising. Similarly, it is not at all clear to me that the creation narratives in Genesis, Job, the Psalms, etc…. are teaching us the providential means that God employed to bring the world as we know it into existence. One needn’t follow Enns to recognize that the thrust of Genesis is not about the means of creation. Richard Pratt’s lectures on primeval history are really quite helpful. When we ask the right question (what is the purpose of this text), then we find that the problems with science and scripture are a bit less troublesome.
@Robert thanks for the pointer to Robert Letham‘s article. Do you have a link to a pdf of it? It seems to have been taken down from the puritan board, and I can’t seem to find it elsewhere.
Robert – if the days of Genesis 1 are literal 24 hour days, then God constrained Himself to a span of 24 hours before creating a unit of measure for 24 hours. This is possible, but seems highly unlikely.
Some of you guys may be interested to explore the writings of Dr. Gerald Schroeder. Schroeder is a brilliant orthodox Jew with a doctorate in nuclear physics and planetary sciences from MIT, who has written cogently on harmonizing an old earth with the Genesis account of creation via quantum physics.
@ VV: ??? God is unable to measure time periods without a sundial? I thought the second was based on the oscillation frequency of atoms of cesium.
(My cryptic, snarky point being: Beware of anthrocentrisms!)
You’ve appealed to Einstein’s theory of relativity as an analogy to evolutionary theory, and with some justification. But there is also a difference. Einstein’s predictions were specific, quantified, and risky: Mercury’s orbit will precess by 574″ / century. Light will be redshifted by gh/c^2.
Take the other end of the spectrum, string theory. Beautiful math, very hard to make specific, testable predictions — so much so that the scientific community debates whether it is science at all.
I think evolution falls somewhere between. Predictions are made — but they aren’t nearly as specific, quantifiable, and risky as the predictions made by relativity. As a result, evolutionary theory shows a flexibility (to its proponents) or slipperiness (to its opponents) that relativity lacks.
To take one example. It is often said that “if we could find one species without an ancestor common to all of life, it would disprove evolution.” So evolution is theoretically falsifiable, right? Yet, viruses are precisely such species (Brussow 2009) — yet no-one considers the existence of viruses to be a threat to evolutionary theory. Why not? Because viruses sit right on the edge of life to begin with; they don’t “count” as evidence against the theory.
Interestingly, humans and Neanderthals actually have no current candidate for common ancestor: http://archive.news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/university-wide/2013/10/last-common-ancestor-neanderthals.shtml
But this doesn’t falsify the whole theory because it is believed, with justification, that such an ancestor will be found.
Hence, the proposition “Neanderthals and humans shared a common ancestor” is much less risky than “Mercury’s orbit will precess by 574” / century. The possibility of as-of-yet-unfound ancestors provides a way to accommodate seeming failures-of-theory into a new, larger theory.
A similar kind of thing is happening right now with epigenetics: it turns out that not all traits are passed down through DNA, thus challenging “the modern synthesis.” So the theory shifts, exhibiting flexibility in the face of falsification.
Relativity did not have those degrees of freedom. It lacks the flexibility or slipperiness that evolutionary theory possesses.
The takeaway is that those who are evolution-skeptical could benefit from seeing specific, quantified, risky predictions made and then fulfilled by evolutionary theory.
For what it’s worth, I think you may be underestimating the exegetical challenges of the old-earth theory. It’s not just the age of the earth, but the federal headship of Adam, the universality of the flood, the origin of languages. Really, Gen 3 – 11 are all subject to the same arguments that Gen 1 – 2 are.
Not to say that you’re wrong; just that it’s not as easy as “metaphor!” God ends up looking like a horrible communicator if He tells us that “Eve was the mother of all the living” when in fact she was not; or when Jesus tells us that “from the beginning, God created them male and female” when what He really meant was that ‘At some point in the process which was quite recent compared to the beginning, God took an already extant male and female and made them living souls.” That’s some serious circumlocution. Or when Peter says “For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished” that what he really means is “the earth was formed from materials from the solar nebula, and through water, the area surrounding the Black Sea drowned.”
At some point, the circumlocution just looks like deception.
Again, not saying that your wrong; just pointing out that it’s not easy.
Jeff – I understand your point. My point is that if the Genesis 1 days are 24 hours, then God established the length of a day before creating the Earth. As I said, that’s possible but seems unlikely.
Jeff – FWIW, there is good evidence for a global flood as recently as 12,000 years ago. And Adam can still be our federal head because he was the first “human” with a soul, even if Homo sapiens evolved from another species.
@Jeff I should have been clearer – I was contrasting relativity theory and evolutionary theory. Relativity is an excellent example of a theory looking for confirmation. It was for Popper the best example of what science should be. It made a clear falsifiable prediction. Examples like relativity are rare though. Evolutionary theory is the construction of a framework to explain the observations. Knowledge about the world around us advances by both approaches.
Fair enough. There are certainly exegetical challenges, but I think a lot of these are solved if we ask the right questions about the text. I don’t think it is as easy as sweeping the challenges under the metaphorical rug, but we also have to understand the use of idiom, figures of speech, and literary devices that were in circulation at the time the text was written. For what it’s worth, I hold to a historical Adam and Eve and fall, but I understand them to have evolved from early creatures before they were ensouled. I doubt the historicity of the flood and Babel accounts, but I could of course be wrong on these. Lot’s to learn to be sure!
Walt says:
As usual, I’m late to this discussion. Trigger warning for Sasse fans. I’d like to see Ben Sasse get some real world work experience besides various bureaucratic positions before I’m willing to pull the lever for him in 2020.
@SDB: how do you stay within confessional boundaries as they were historically understood with respect to the days of creation and Adam and Eve? It’s not enough to cite Hodge and Warfield, IMO. Scientifically, I don’t see why it’s impossible that the universe was created in full maturity just as Adam and Eve were. It’s also possible there was a non-constant speed of light and thus time passed more quickly in the past. I’m not an astrophysicist nor an evolutionary biologist but I will say science has a major truth problem these days and its institutions are severely in decline. I have no problem with the idea of evolution or natural selection.
@SDB: What has changed about transmitting the faith? IDK. Evangelical theology, piety and practice has worsened significantly if you believe David Wells and read Barna and LIfeway polls which show that 57% of evangelicals hold beliefs that deny ecumenical creeds.. Still, I can’t see that conservative offshoots of mainline Calvinist churches do any better. I can point to examples of children of several OPC ministers that do not believe. The grown children of OPC parents either do not believe or do not attend confessional churches which are usually bad places to try to raise children for a variety of reasons. I’d say that Christians are abandoning Christianity thus they are not transmitting it to their children.
@Zrim: thank you for those helpful quotes. I’m going to get that book. I also recommend the Rev. Shawn Mathis’ book “Uniting Church and Family.” I’ve often wondered if the application of Patristic opinions to our own time is relevant. During the Patristic period, there were so few Christians that you didn’t have many options besides going to the public schools and living in substantially pagan communities. It’s like being a NAPARC member in California. It wasn’t until Constantine that Christianity became more widespread that critical mass might have been achieved for something like Christian schools. Now the situation is going in reverse. Decisions we make depend on circumstances and conscience, not what others did in other circumstances.
That said, my kids go to the public schools and so did I. Augustine learned from attending public schools that it’s important that kids have friends of good moral character. I learned from attending them that it’s important that they get enough exercise and aren’t bored. And that they have friends of good character. The method of schooling, therefore, depends. The NEAP results aren’t encouraging – only 33% of 8th graders read at a proficient level which seems to be defined between the white and Asian reading performance mean.. The Department of Education’s reports on sexual misconduct and violence in public schools are pretty eye-opening also. Everyone’s mileage may vary with schooling method which is adiaphora (sp?) in my opinion. It’s very important to make school decisions with all the facts in hand and base your decisions on your circumstances and your conscience, not just on what the Fathers wrote.
@walt Good questions. I believe in a historical Adam and Eve. Do the confessions require a particular interpretation of the days?
The difference between a mature Adam and “mature” universe is that it makes events we can observe merely illusions.
You can’t solve this problem with a variable speed of light. We now have measures of distance to nearby galaxies independent of the speed of light. We also observe light echos from eruptive events. A variable speed of light would reveal itself in a shortened timing delay.
Another problem is that changing the speed of light changes the energy levels of atoms and molecules. This is not observed either.
As far as the shift in Christian piety goes, your prescription is fine as far as it goes, but it begs the question.
SDB: “The difference between a mature Adam and “mature” universe is that it makes events we can observe merely illusions.”
That would happen with a mature Adam also. Every anatomical feature (belly button!) tells a tale of being formed by gene expression and physical forces.
For example, my right thumb is 1/8” wider than my left. Reason: decades of guitar playing.
The same would be true of the loaves and fish created by Jesus. Some sommelier would (claim to) be able to tell you the vintage of the wine created at Cana.
The bottom line is that any miraculous work of God must either be discontinuous with creation or else be reinterpretable as having some kind of natural history.
And in the case of miracles, that natural history is illusory.
Is that deception? Or is it just art?
@ DGH:
The quotes in OP are fascinating, in part because they reveal that it is possible to be faux-2k. Rather than focusing on doing the church and its ministry, faux-2k positions itself as “opposing fundamentalism”, but by replacing one brand of political engagement with another. Hence, opportunities to compromise are plentiful.
I wonder if that’s what Ali is worried about?
SDB: None of us .. are are doing a great job of passing on our faith effectively to the next generation.
BM: That’s because most of your generation of conservative protestants decided it was ok to let the secular government raise your … children rather than sending them to a Christian school or homeschooling them … 8 hours per day five days a week of “there is no God, you evolved, and being depraved is superior to believing the Bible” is going to have a lot more impact than one hour per week at church on Sundays.
Hm. My biggest problem with this is that it leaves out election, assuming that there is a cause-and-effect line that we can draw between “what we do” and whom God calls to Himself.
But let’s assume that secondary causes have some kind of effect.
My kids went to public school K-5 and are now at the Christian school where I teach (6-12). I myself attended a variety of public and post-Christian schools. There are definitely differences between public and Christian, but not what you describe above.
For one thing, both Caglets had several Christian teachers in the public school.
For another, religious topics were not discussed by the teachers beyond a couple of one-liners (from the Christians, honestly). So not at all “8 hours a day, 5 days a week of there is no God, you evolved, and being depraved is superior to believing the Bible”
For yet another, the biggest faith challenges for both Caglets were from their peers. For Caglet #1, her whole peer group read the Percy Jackson series. One of her peers decided to hold “sacrifices to Athena” on the playground. And that led to a very productive discussion about the sin of idolatry, the blurry line between play-acting and reality, and whether it is OK to pretend to sin. In the end, her faith became stronger as a result of clearly seeing that some people are attracted to some kinds of sin (her peer was entirely in earnest about it), and that we don’t have to go along just to maintain friendships.
Now in the Christian school, challenges continue. There are not 8 hours a day, 5 days a week of “there is a God, you were created, and being non-depraved is superior” — because English and math do not concern themselves, in the main, with those topics. They *do* have Christian teachers who *do* discuss theology as appropriate, but it’s not 8/5.
And, sometimes the theology espoused by a particular teacher is in conflict with what they learn at home. Bryan, which is better: To hear a false idea at a secular school, where your children already know not to take such ideas seriously, or to hear a false idea at a Christian school, where your children are primed to trust what they hear because it is “Christian”?
The peer challenges haven’t gone away. The Caglets still have to negotiate the world of friends who tempt them to sin, or who are mean and drama-prone.
Now: Are public and private equivalent? No. We’re paying tuition on purpose, and for a variety of reasons, including the opportunity to have the Caglets be taught by my excellent peers.
Still and all, the situation you describe is a completely incorrect characterization.
Everyone’s mileage may vary with schooling method which is adiaphora (sp?) in my opinion. It’s very important to make school decisions with all the facts in hand and base your decisions on your circumstances and your conscience, not just on what the Fathers wrote.
Walt, agreed but the point of referencing the early church was to say it’s part of the weighing process (not the the only piece), bu even more to show how remarks like these are more in line with fundamentalism than historical Christianity:
Ironic that this fellow presumably went to a Reformed school and credits it for his educational fundamentalism.
But isn’t the problem with this is that a lot of the “junk DNA” has turned out to perform specific functions? At least that is what some in the ID community claim.
In general, I agree with this. I don’t really expect Scripture to teach much science at all, if any. The modern creation-evolution debates obscure us to one of the primary points of Gen. 1–2, and that is to tell the Israelites that their god was the one true God and that he made everything else that the surrounding cultures worshipped as gods. I had Pratt as a professor at RTS Orlando by the way.
Asking the questions the Bible was intending to answer is vital. That being said:
1. One of my issues with people like Enns is that they think that since the text is speaking about x, it can’t be saying anything about y. He’s recently talked about Genesis as if we can basically discount much of its history because the book is about validating the choice of Judah as Israel’s leading tribe. It’s a false dichotomy.
2. When I say “reconcile,” I really just mean reading science in a way that doesn’t contradict what Scripture affirms. I think a lot of modern evolutionary theory has some heavy lifting to do to reconcile it in this way with Gen. 2. God directly making Adam from the dust of the ground is hard to square with a theory of common animal ancestry. I don’t think it’s impossible, but as of yet I’ve been unconvinced.
3. I don’t think Gen. 1 is telling us much or really anything about the providential means of creation.
@SDB WLC17 and WCFIV are pretty clear. See also Johannes Vos’ commentary on WLC17. Hodge and Warfield wrote when confessional subscription was on the wane and many took exception to the Westminister Standards. R. Scott Clark covers this in his book. The Rev. Greg Reynolds also has some excellent papers on confessional subscription. Unless the minutes of the Westminster Assembly state that the divines did not view the creation days as literal days, we should assume WCF IV means exactly what it says. There is no evidence from that they held an analogical, day-age, or framework view. Similarly, WLC 17 is clear about the creation of Adam and Eve. How do you stay within confessional boundaries without subscribing to the standards?
You’re more knowledgeable about the science of evolutionary theory than I am. Did you see this?
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/228798/20180530/massive-genetic-study-reveals-90-percent-of-earth-s-animals-appeared-at-the-same-time.htm
@jeff The difference is that the callous on your thumb exists. If Adam was formed with the memory of event that didn’t occur, that would be problematic don’t you think? When we watch a star blow up, did that star we watched explode really exist?
@robert I don’t find Enns so helpful or insightful. I read the press release and then skimmed the paper. As is often the case, the press release appears to sensationalize the result. The upshot of the paper seems to be that there was a mass extinction event among animals 200k yrs ago.
@walt
I adhere to a historical Adam. Thanks for the pointer to Clark’s book.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538545
|
__label__wiki
| 0.985411
| 0.985411
|
When I See U
Free Yourself (feat. Missy Elliott) - Missy Elliott
What Christmas Means to Me - from "The Best Man Holiday Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"
Falling In Love Tonight
Truth Is
Fantasia Barrino may have won the third season of American Idol with "I Believe" (2004), an eventual number one pop hit, but it was a passionate take on George Gershwin's "Summertime" that effectively launched the powerhouse singer's career weeks earlier.
Confident to a degree that she could have been considered brash, Barrino at first glance seemed an unlikely candidate to take the teen-oriented show's title, but with her dynamic, gospel-rooted voice that never failed her, she became the favorite of the Idol judges and of the voting public. Through the RIAA-certified albums Free Yourself (2004) and Fantasia (2006), the singer affirmed that she was more than simply the winner of a talent competition, and it wasn't long before she reached a higher level of acclaim by winning a Grammy award for "Bittersweet" (Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, 2010). Barrino remained an old-school soul stalwart throughout the next decade with her third, fourth, and fifth Top Ten pop LPs, including The Definition Of... (2016), and her sixth proper album, Sketchbook (2019).
Born and raised in High Point, North Carolina, Barrino -- a niece of the Barrino Brothers and a cousin of brothers K-Ci and Jojo Hailey -- fell in love with music through a mix of artists including Aretha Franklin, Brandy, P!nk, and Aerosmith. Being a 19-year-old single mother and an Idol finalist had some of the media mumbling and sneering, but the always-certain Barrino paid no mind. Becoming a teenage mother focused Barrino and gave her the strength and drive to audition for the show in Atlanta. Out of 70,000 hopefuls, Barrino earned her way to the top by adjusting her style to whatever genre was thrown at her. Upon beating runner-up Diana DeGarmo, Barrino's first words as American Idol 2004 were "I broke my shoe!" Numerous appearances on talk shows and a cameo on the television show American Dreams -- playing the role of her beloved Aretha Franklin -- followed shortly thereafter.
Barrino made history when she became the first solo artist ever to reach number one with her first single, "I Believe," an inspirational ballad co-written by Idol alum Tamyra Gray. J Records released her full-length debut, Free Yourself, in November 2004. Also featuring two Top Five R&B/Hip-Hop hits, it went platinum, and its lead single won a Billboard Music Award for Top Selling Single of the Year. Barrino was also nominated for three Grammy Awards. A year later, her autobiography, Life Is Not a Fairy Tale, appeared and was turned into a film directed by Debbie Allen; it premiered on the Lifetime cable network in 2006. Her sophomore effort, simply titled Fantasia, landed that December. It debuted at number 19 on the Billboard 200 and eventually went gold. Back to Me, released in August 2010, was led by a pair of Chuck Harmony-produced singles in "I'm Doin' Me" (number 11, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop) and the Grammy-winning "Bittersweet" (number seven, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop). The singer's fourth album, Side Effects of You, was released in April 2013. Big K.R.I.T., Kelly Rowland, and Missy Elliott made guest appearances on the set, driven by the Commodores-sampling "Lose to Win." In July 2016, following a co-headlining tour with Anthony Hamilton, Barrino released The Definition Of..., her fourth Top Ten album. A holiday LP, Christmas After Midnight, was out the next year. The singer closed out the decade in September 2019 with Sketchbook, an advancement of her self-termed "rock soul" style. ~ David Jeffries, Rovi
Atlanta, US42,990 LISTENERS
London, GB35,621 LISTENERS
Chicago, US32,413 LISTENERS
Los Angeles, US28,571 LISTENERS
Dallas, US27,259 LISTENERS
Christmas After Midnight
The Definition Of...
Side Effects of You
Dance Vault Mixes - Hood Boy (feat. Big Boi)
PTSD (feat. Tank & The Bonfyre)
PTSD (feat. T-Pain)
Spotify Singles
Sleeping With The One I Love
So Blue
I Love My '00s R&B
Soulful Christmas
KeKe Wyatt
Listen to Fantasia now.
Listen to Fantasia in full in the Spotify app
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538546
|
__label__cc
| 0.535234
| 0.464766
|
PULLOVER NAMES
Let's Talk About Names
Admetos, Gaia, Xanthe: These are all names from ancient mythology. Our dog pullovers also carry these names, because for us, our dogs are brave little heroes in everyday life.
So with a feeling of well-being and safety, our little dears can continue their usual outside routines, even on those cooler days.
(Greek: Ἄδμητος Admetos, “untamed”, “untameable”) was a king of Pherae in Thessaly. He was famed for his hospitality and justice. Product Link
(GEN Ἀπόλλωνος) has been variously recognized as a god of music, truth and prophecy, healing, the sun and light, plague, poetry, and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Product Link
(/ˈɑːrtɪmɪs/; Greek: Ἄρτεμις Artemis, Attic Greek: [ár.te.mis]) was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities.
In the classical period of Greek mythology, Artemis was often described as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollon. She was the Hellenic goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, virginity and protector of young girls, bringing and relieving disease in women. Product Link
(Greek: Βερόη) in Greek mythology is a nymph of Beirut, the daughter of Aphrodite and Adonis, and sister of Golgos. Beroe wore no ornaments or make-up, and she was not vain and never examined herself in the mirror. She was a mortal but often her beauty was compared to that of goddesses. Product Link
(Greek: Ἠλέκτρα, Ēlektra) was the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra, and thus princess of Argos. She is also the central figure in plays by Aeschylus, Alfieri, Voltaire, Hofmannsthal, and Eugene O’Neill. Product Link
(Ancient Greek: Ἕρσα “dew”) is the goddess of dew and the daughter of Zeus and the Moon (Selene). Product Link
/ˈɡeɪ.ə/ or /ˈɡaɪ.ə/; from Ancient Greek Γαῖα, a poetical form of Γῆ Gē, “land” or “earth”), also spelled Gaea (/ˈdʒiːə/), is the personification of the Earth and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life: the primal Mother Earth goddess. Product Link
(Ancient Greek: Ἡμέρα [hɛːméra] “day”) was the personification of day and one of the Greek primordial deities. She is the goddess of the daytime and, according to Hesiod, the daughter of Erebus and Nyx (the goddess of night). Product Link
(/ˈhɜːrmiːz/; Greek: Ἑρμῆς) is the god of trade, heraldry, merchants, commerce, roads, sports, travelers, and athletes in Ancient Greek religion and mythology; the son of Zeus and the Pleiad Maia, he was the second youngest of the Olympian gods (Dionysus being the youngest). Product Link
(Ancient Greek: Κράτος, English translation: “State”) is the son of Pallas and Styx and the personification of authority in all its forms. Product Link
Greek: Κρόνος, krónos) was the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth. Product Link
(Ancient Greek: Λέανδρος, Léandros), a young man from Abydos on the opposite side of the strait. Leander fell in love with Hero and would swim every night across the Hellespont to spend time with her. Hero would light a lamp at the top of her tower to guide his way. Product Link
(Ancient Greek: Λεοντεύς) referred to the following individuals: Leonteus, son of Coronus (the son of Caeneus) and Cleobule, was one of the commanders of the Lapiths during the Trojan War. Product Link
(Greek: Μάγνης) was the eponym and first king of Magnesia. Magnes had a son of remarkable beauty, Hymenaios by the muse Calliope. Product Link
/ˈmiːtᵻs/ (Μῆτις, “wisdom,” “skill,” or “craft”) By the era of Greek philosophy in the 5th century BC, Metis had become the mother of wisdom and deep thought, but her name originally connoted “magical cunning” and was as easily equated with the trickster powers of Prometheus as with the “royal metis” of Zeus. The Stoic commentators allegorised Metis as the embodiment of “prudence”, “wisdom” or “wise counsel”, in which form she was inherited by the Renaissance. Product Link
(Ancient Greek: Νύξ, “Night”; Latin: Nox) is the Greek goddess (or personification) of the night. Her appearances reveal her as a figure of such exceptional power and beauty that she is feared by Zeus himself. Product Link
(Greek: Φιλότης) was a minor goddess or spirit (daimones) personifying affection and friendship. She was a daughter of the goddess Nyx. Product Link
(/ˈpaɪlədiːz/; Greek: Πυλάδης) is the son of King Strophius of Phocis and of Anaxibia. He is mostly known for his strong friendship with his cousin Orestes, son of Agamemnon. Product Link
(/sᵻˈliːni/; Greek Σελήνη [selɛ̌ːnɛː] ‘moon’;) is the goddess of the moon. She drives her moon chariot across the heavens. Product Link
(Greek Θαλλώ) One of the Horae, and the goddess and personification of the season of Spring; she is the protector of new growth. Product Link
In Greek mythology, (/ˈθɔːməs/; Ancient Greek: Θαύμας; gen.: Θαύμαντος) was a sea god, son of Pontus and Gaia, and the full brother of Nereus, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia. Product Link
(/ˈjʊərənəs/ or /jʊˈreɪnəs/; Ancient Greek Οὐρανός, Ouranos [oːranós] meaning “sky” or “heaven”) was the primal Greek god personifying the sky. Product Link
(Ancient Greek: Ὠκεανίδες) was an Okeanis whose name means “blond-haired”. Product Link
(Greek: Ζῆλος, Zēlos, literally “zeal”) personifies dedication, emulation, eager rivalry, and zeal. The English word “zeal” is derived from his name. Product Link
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538550
|
__label__wiki
| 0.943974
| 0.943974
|
Share this Story: Jordan Peterson's '12 Rules' sequel sees staff complain to publisher Penguin Random House
Jordan Peterson's '12 Rules' sequel sees staff complain to publisher Penguin Random House
'The company since June has been doing all these anti-racist and allyship things and them publishing Peterson’s book completely goes against this'
Dr. Jordan Peterson sits down with the Toronto Sun on Thursday March 1, 2018. PHOTO BY CRAIG ROBERTSON/TORONTO SUN/POSTMEDIA NETWORK.
Several employees at Penguin Random House Canada have spoken out against the company’s decision to publish Jordan Peterson’s new book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, reports Vice.
At a town hall meeting on Monday, employees aired grievances over the move by Penguin to publish the book, saying that the company shouldn’t be offering a platform to Peterson because of his popularity with the far-right. Vice reports that anonymous complaints about the book’s release have been made by “dozens” more employees.
Jordan Peterson's '12 Rules' sequel sees staff complain to publisher Penguin Random House Back to video
“The company since June has been doing all these anti-racist and allyship things and them publishing Peterson’s book completely goes against this,” one employee, who asked to remain anonymous, told Vice. “It just makes all of their previous efforts seem completely performative.” Vice reported that it spoke with four separate employees, all of whom held similar views.
The anonymous employees expressed concerns that Penguin had been secretive about the future release of Peterson’s book, deliberately keeping it under wraps. One employee said they would have organized a walkout had they known earlier about the book — as employees at Hachette did to protest the publication of a Woody Allen memoir, in a move that was eventually successful when the publisher dropped the book.
“He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him,” another employee, who is a member of the LGBTQ community, told Vice.
Peterson published his bestselling self-help book 12 Rules for Life in 2018. Penguin Random House Canada, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House, announced it would be publishing Peterson’s sequel, Beyond Order, slated for March 2021. It will be published by Portfolio in the U.S. and Penguin Press in the U.K.
'I’m alive': Jordan Peterson back in Canada after lengthy medical treatment, he says in emotional new video
Jordan Peterson in Russia for medical benzodiazepine detox: Daughter
In response to the town hall and the employee feedback, the company sent around an email statement, which read:
“We announced yesterday that we will publish Jordan Peterson’s new book Beyond Order this coming March. Immediately following the announcement, we held a forum and provided a space for our employees to express their views and offer feedback. Our employees have started an anonymous feedback channel, which we fully support. We are open to hearing our employees’ feedback and answering all of their questions. We remain committed to publishing a range of voices and viewpoints.”
Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, rose to prominence over his controversial views on gender and his objection to Bill C-16, legislation that added gender identity to Canada’s human rights and criminal codes. He has written for the National Post and runs a highly popular YouTube channel.
He dropped out of the public eye for almost a year before returning in October, posting a video on his YouTube channel explaining that he’d returned home to Toronto after months seeking medical treatment for withdrawal symptoms related to his use of benzodiazepine, a drug often used to treat anxiety.
Jordan Peterson in an image taken from a video he has posted. FROM JORDAN B PETERSON VIA YOUTUBE. Photo by YouTube
In the eight-minute video, Peterson explained he had been suffering from “severely impaired health,” after he had begun using benzodiazepines, such as Valium. When he stopped their use, it led to withdrawal and neurological damage. He travelled as far away as Russia, he said, in search of specialists who could help him.
As well as his new book, Peterson said he has plans for a new video series based on Exodus, the second book of the Bible. He already has a series on Genesis, the first book of theBible.
“With God’s grace and mercy, I’ll be able to start generating original material once again and pick up where I left off,” Petersen said in the video.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538551
|
__label__cc
| 0.606645
| 0.393355
|
Advisory Panel on Positive Ageing
03 Jun, 2007 Advisory Panel on Positive Ageing
Posted at 07:47h in Ageing by cchua
The Advisory Panel on Positive Ageing was originally constituted in 2011 with a three-year mandate to produce a comprehensive policy review on the opportunities and challenges associated with an ageing Australia, the Blueprint.
In November 2013, Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey sacked the Panel less than 8 months from the completion of its work. Given the social challenges facing Australia in the next 30 years from increasing longevity, Per Capita considers that the completion of the Panel’s Blueprint is critical to the social and economic wellbeing of Australia, to ensure that Australia continues to prosper through its ageing society.
In December 2013, Per Capita entered into a partnership with four members of the Panel to re-establish the Panel and complete the Blueprint for an Ageing Australia. Funds to re-establish to Panel were raised through a crowdfunding campaign.
In March 2014, NAB made a very generous donation of $50,000 to the project and will provide ongoing financial and strategic advice for the project. In addition, National Seniors have joined the project to provide valuable research capabilities and support. They will also consult with, and disseminate the Panel’s work to, their 250,000-strong membership.
Across March and April 2014 the Panel conducted community consultations around Australia.
Per Capita was proud to be able to finish this important work, which will place Australia at the forefront of forward-thinking policy to ensure all can contribute in society regardless of age.
Thank you to everyone who came along to a public consultation or contributed to the crowdfunding campaign that allowed this work to be completed.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538553
|
__label__wiki
| 0.81287
| 0.81287
|
David Van Patten
As COO, Dave Van Patten is responsible for developing the global strategy and overseeing all aspects of Prison Fellowship International’s operations. Dave brings over 40 years of leadership experience in government, business, and nonprofit sectors where he specialized in social entrepreneurship.
Dave began his career as an officer in the United States Coast Guard where he was decorated for his leadership in both search and rescue and law enforcement. Following military service, Dave pioneered an award-winning nonprofit before accepting an invitation from Chuck Colson to serve as the National Director of Prison Fellowship Ministries. In 1990, Dave founded a consulting firm that partnered with venture philanthropists, nonprofits, and government agencies in starting dozens of large scale social ventures. Over the years, the company received multiple awards, including the White House Contractor of the Year Award for its role in launching the President’s Faith Based Initiative. In 2013, Dave sold the company and joined Prison Fellowship International the following year.
Dave graduated from the United States Coast Guard Academy with a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemistry. He also holds a Master of Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and an OPM degree from Harvard Business School. He has completed several professional certificate programs and received dozens of awards for leadership and innovation.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538558
|
__label__wiki
| 0.940737
| 0.940737
|
Muhammad Ali Allyson Felix Patrick Mahomes II D.J. Chark Colin Kaepernick Joe Biden Jesse Helms Chris Paul Michael Jordan Barack Obama Marcedes Lewis Jeremy Jones Sports General news Race and ethnicity Social issues Social affairs Professional football Football African-Americans Government and politics NFL football NBA basketball Professional basketball Basketball Men's basketball Men's sports Racial and ethnic discrimination Discrimination Human rights and civil liberties 2019-2020 Coronavirus pandemic Coronavirus Infectious diseases Diseases and conditions Health Lung disease Police Law enforcement agencies
Kansas City Chiefs Jacksonville Jaguars San Francisco 49ers Cincinnati Bengals Green Bay Packers Chicago Bears
Athlete power: ‘Shut up and play' is tossed from the game
By EDDIE PELLS - Aug. 29, 2020 02:06 PM EDT
Men from Milwaukee wear "We're WI Men" T-shirts as they attend the March on Washington, Friday Aug. 28, 2020, in Washington, on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
With every get-out-the-vote campaign, every shutdown of a major sport, every detailed list of actions by athletes demanding change, one new reality comes into sharper focus: The days of “shut up and play” are winding down.
This summer of police shootings of Black people — the aftershocks exacerbated by a coronavirus pandemic that has upended life everywhere — has emboldened athletes to draw on the platform they've long commanded.
One big difference between now and even a year ago is that there's less indecisiveness on how hard those athletes will press the issues. And to some, the odds seem greater, this time, that what the athletes are calling for might actually come to pass.
“None of us are politicians,” said NFL veteran Marcedes Lewis, an outspoken tight end who plays for Green Bay, which is in the same state where Jacob Blake was shot in the back by police last Sunday. “We get paid to go out there and play and do our job. At the same time, wrong is wrong and right is right. It's encouraging to see guys stepping up.”
In tennis, golf, hockey, baseball, basketball, soccer and football, there have been gestures big and small, and in ways once unimaginable.
Nine NFL teams canceled practices on Thursday — a notable break from routine for a league that still has not found a job for Super Bowl quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who kneeled on the sideline during the national anthem to protest racial injustice. The police shooting of Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, came four years to the day after Kaepernick's first protest.
The Baltimore Ravens, in a posting that went viral, put out a statement with a seven-point plan of action to help combat systemic racism in the U.S.
“If you’re not trying to lead this world, lead this earth with making a positive impact, what are you here for?” receiver DJ Chark Jr. of the Jacksonville Jaguars said. “Whether it’s sports that gives you the platform, whether it’s music, entertainment, whatever it is. If you have a voice, I think if you’re contributing to something that is going to help, something that is positive, I think you should use it.”
NBA players spearheaded the latest flurry of activity, when the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court following Blake's shooting. That led to serious consideration of canceling the season altogether. Such a move was avoided in part because of the counsel of former President Barack Obama and input from Michael Jordan. According to an ESPN report, the NBA great and Charlotte Hornets owner asked players to consider that their voices would be better heard on the court than off it.
“We understand how strong our voice is, how powerful our voice is and ultimately we decided if we go away from this stage we don’t necessarily have that same platform so we stood in solidarity,” said Chris Paul, the Oklahoma City Thunder guard and president of the players' union.
Obama advised the players and league to establish a social justice coalition, made up of players, coaches and owners, that will focus on voting raccess and police and criminal justice reform. Some teams are making plans to allow their arenas to serve as polling places for November's election.
All this stands in stark contrast from the predominant attitude of athletes during Jordan's prime — an attitude Jordan himself embodied. During a Senate race in his home state of North Carolina, Jordan was reluctant to use his star power to endorse Harvey Gantt, the African American Democrat running against Jesse Helms. “Republicans buy sneakers, too,” was Jordan's now-famous quote. It still resonates today, if only because it is becoming the antithesis of what current NBA stars are doing.
This month, Steph Curry was given speaking time at the Democratic National Convention to endorse Joe Biden for president.
LeBron James has created “ More Than A Vote,” a website designed to urge Black people to vote and to root out Black voter suppression. Among the more than four dozen Black athletes who are part of the cause are Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes and Olympic champion sprinter Allyson Felix.
“It's a start. The players are pressuring the owners in the only language they understand — the money,” said 30-year-old Jahreem Edwards, a Black resident of Washington who attended the March on Washington on Friday. “LeBron James has 70 million Instagram followers. That's power. That's just about as much power as any Black man in America.”
But 61-year-old Robert Norris, another Black resident of Washington who attended the march, thinks players need to go even bigger.
“It means something to me if they completely shut down every sport," he said. “Black athletes and celebrities have not been fully welding their power. It has to be across the board. It has to be as systemic as the racism is."
The Olympic world that Felix inhabits has been among the slowest to heed the call for changes despite commanding the attention of huge swaths of the globe's population every two years.
The movement that gave rise to some of the most notable civil rights protesters in any venue — Muhammad Ali, and Tommie Smith and John Carlos — is still studying the idea of relaxing its rule that forbids protests on the medals stand. It is taking heat from across the globe, but especially from the U.S. On Friday, American athletes held the first meeting of a newly formed council on racial and social justice to tackle the issues at the Olympic level.
Given the glacial pace at which attitudes shift at the Olympic level, a council designed to tackle these issues looks a lot like progress. More concrete and fast-moving are the moves in the NBA, NFL and other American pro sports, where a growing number of players are less conflicted about calling off games, calling for action and, in short, using their platform for change.
How big an impact will it all have?
“It’s those ripple effects,” said Jeremy Jones, founder of Protect Our Winters, an athlete-driven environmental group that is spearheading its own voting project this year. “And when you say, ”Do you think it’s starting to make a difference?′ I think in a lot of ways, we’ll look back at this time and say that this was a turning point.”
Associated Press reporters Ashraf Khalil and Julie Pace in Washington, Brian Mahoney in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, and Mark Long in Jacksonville, Florida contributed to this report.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538562
|
__label__wiki
| 0.809394
| 0.809394
|
Shuaib vs Okonjo-Iweala: Court Orders FG to Reinstate NEMA Spokesperson 4 Year After Compulsory Retirement
November 22, 2017 Procyon News News 0
….. Also Orders Payment of Salaries and Allowance within one Month
Justice David Isele of the National Industrial Court (NIC) has ordered the immediate reinstatement of former Spokesperson of National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Yushau A. Shuaib back into the public service after forceful retired In 2013 over an opinion article he wrote on former Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Through Barrister James Ode Abah of Bamidele Aturu Legal Chamber, Shuaib had sued the Finance Minister, Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) and Federal Ministry of information over the purported retirement.
Delivering the Judgement, Justice Isele declared that the letter retiring Shuaib from service has no force of law and is therefore illegal, unconstitutional, null and void and of no effect whatsoever being in flagrant violation of the civil service rules.
The judge also declared “the premature retirement of NEMA spokesperson by the Federal Government without conducting any investigation, without giving him an opportunity to defend himself and without complying with the condition precedent for retirement is contrary to section 36 of the 1999 Constitution and therefore illegal, unlawful, unconstitutional and null and void.”
The court, therefore, ordered the immediate reinstatement of Yushau Shuaib to his duty post as the Chief Information Officer without any loss to seniority, salaries, position and other emoluments.
The judge orders the Federal Government to compute and pay within 30 days (before Xmas/New Year) all Shuaib’s salaries, allowances and other emoluments due to him from June 2013 to the judgment date (November 22, 2017) and interest at the prevailing commercial bank’s rate on his total package.
The case centred on the illegal and unlawful retirement of Shuaib over an allegation of criticizing a former Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in an opinion article on lopsided appointment in the public service. Early in his statement of defence before the court, Shuaib had stated that Public Service Rule 030421 gave him the right to write an article. The section states that “Nothing in this rule shall be deemed to prevent an officer from publishing in his own name, by writing, speech or broadcast matters relating to a subject of general interest which does not contain a critic of any officer.” He also cited Section 39 (1) of the 1999 Constitution which states that “Every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including the freedom to hold opinions and receive and impart ideas and information without interference.”
Shuaib an award-winning writer was offered automatic employment by Delta State and Federal Government after winning State and Presidential Awards of the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) scheme in 1993.
He had served at various organisations as Public Relations Officer and Press Secretary including Delta State Govt House, Asaba; Ministry of Information, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), National Press Centre, and National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
After his purported compulsory retirement, Shuaib activated PRNigeria, a press release platform for critical institutions in Nigeria serving the Military, Security, Intelligence and Response Agencies among others.
Source: https://prnigeria.com/featured/shuaib-vs-okonjo-iweala-court/
Elderly woman, 86, ‘robs bank at gunpoint’ while pushing stroller to walk
NUMAN ATTACK- Gov Jibrilla sets up panel.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538563
|
__label__wiki
| 0.896688
| 0.896688
|
How JRD Tata came up with a marketing strategy that ran through Tata ads for nearly a century
On September 9, 1925, Jehangir Tata wrote a letter to his father Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata from the barracks in the south of France. The 21-year-old had come up with a way to help the family business. He wanted Pathé News, a famous newsreel maker of the time, to produce short films about current events in India to be shown in the country’s cinemas.
Article by By Deborah D | scroll.in
The young Tata scion believed that footage of Mohandas Gandhi’s visit to their steel factory in Jamshedpur in 1925 would be “excellent and free propaganda and advertising”. “Too many people in India believe that steel works are just the same as a cotton mill, a foundry or a power station,” he wrote. “That is why they are all so amazed when they see that people who have seen this marvellous plant and the fine town we have built don’t wonder afterwards or shout where the 21 crores have gone to!”
Gandhi had made the trip to Jamshedpur to resolve labour disputes and ask that the Jamshedpur Labour Association be recognised by the company. Jehangir Tata had been informed that Gandhi’s preconceptions were shaken after he visited the factory and believed sharing the footage with the public would quell any similar distrust among them. In 1969, the year of Gandhi’s birth centenary, his Jamshedpur visit finally made it to promotional material. A Tata Steel advertisement from that time said, “…we proudly recall that, when [Gandhi] visited Jamshedpur in 1925 and 1934, he was happy to see the cordial relations there and felt their further extension would help to achieve a ‘Miniature Swaraj’”.
Jehangir Tata, who would later be popularly known as JRD Tata, apologised to his father in case he was “talking rubbish”. “It is the best way to talk sense one day, isn’t it?” he wrote. The letter was but a small glimpse into events that would transpire in the future.
JRD Tata took charge as chairman of the Tata group in 1938. During his 53-year tenure at the helm, it published numerous advertisements asserting its contribution to the country. Long before its companies were asking consumers to “Jaago Re” or add a pinch of “Desh ka Namak” to their food, they were communicating – in a variety of ways – its alignment with India’s mission to be a self-sufficient and expanding economy with a high standard of living. Over 200 vintage ads of the conglomerate, from the early 20th century up to 1990, along with the letter that JRD Tata wrote to his father, are on display at the Tata Central Archives in Pune. And if there is one theme that runs right through them, it is nation-building.
“The exhibition [Tata Vintage Advertising and Publicity] showcases not only the genesis and history of the Tata group, but also highlights in parallel the integral role that the group has played in India’s industrialisation and progress,” says the press release.
The foundation of the Tata group was laid by Jamsetji Tata in the 1870s with a textile mill. The young Parsi had made a tidy profit of 4 million rupees sending supplies to the British troops in the Abyssinian war, and had held nationalist sympathies. After his death, Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India between 1898 and 1905, said that “no Indian of the present generation had done more for the commerce and industry of India”.
The Tatas continued to be regarded by many as patriots after Independence. But the Indian leadership at the time also held strong socialist ideals, and both advertising and large private enterprises were viewed with suspicion.
Early in 1968, JRD Tata, in a letter to World Bank adviser George Woods, wrote: “I am afraid that in spite of all the lessons of the past twenty years, there’s no real change in Delhi’s attitude toward ‘big business’, nor have our politicians and bureaucrats realised that what seems big business to them would be little more than peanuts elsewhere”.
Companies in the private sector faced strict government controls and often felt that they were at the mercy of politicians’ caprices. Author and researcher Claude Markovits observes in his essay The Tata Paradox that the group lost the unique position it held before Independence, when it enjoyed the protection and support of the colonial state and benefited from patriotic enthusiasm simultaneously. “When British rule came to an end, other big Indian firms had a more intimate connection to the Indian state as a result of the support they had given the Congress during the independence struggle,” wrote Markovits. “This was particularly true of the Birlas and some of the Ahmedabad textile magnates.”
Against this backdrop, it’s clear from the advertisements that the company wanted to be seen as a force for good – one that wasn’t focused on accumulating wealth and power for its owners and shareholders, but devoted to improving the country.
Veteran adman Roger Pereira, whose early assignments involved working on Tata advertisements at J Walter Thompson in the 1960s, mentions a time when advertising helped the company navigate political hurdles.
In 1977, George Fernandes, the industry minister at the time, wanted to nationalise Tata Steel. In response, the company ran a campaign that detailed its philanthropic work and added, almost in passing – “we also make steel”.
“They said ‘we’ve built these hospitals, we’ve done this and this…and we also make steel. This is how we spend our money’,” said Pereira. “[The Tatas] weren’t profiteering for the sake of profiteering, they were investing in the country. That was a brilliant campaign, the most brilliant advertising campaign of all time in India. That’s what made Fernandes really look like a fool.”
This brand positioning is also seen in a Tata Iron and Steel Company advertisement from October 1955 that was created by J Walter Thompson. It portrays a man in a loincloth holding a long sheet, and says that India has come from importing the bulk of her textile requirements 30 years ago to having the second-largest textile industry in the world. Written in a larger font size below this, it reads, “Private Enterprise Serves the Nation.”
An advertisement announcing the opening of the Trombay Power Thermal Station in 1956 said it was “yet another Tata contribution to a higher standard of living through an expanding economy” and an “example of the work of enlightened Free Enterprise”.
Earlier in 1949, Tata made the connection between steel and agriculture in an advertisement that talked of the mechanisation of agriculture. It had a photograph of Nehru watching a tractor in operation. That same year, the company ran an ad that said, “Steel links India’s Frontiers”, and described how 7,000 tonnes of steel were used in the newly-laid railway line connecting Assam to the rest of the Indian Union.
Indian companies at the time strove to distinguish themselves from multinationals by emphasising their swadeshi credentials, and Tata was no exception with its Hamam soap – “Tata’s Hamam is a bigger soap – it’s truly swadeshi, too” read one advertisement. Another reminded consumers that Jamsetji Tata had set up the Swadeshi Mills Co. Ltd in 1886, twenty years before the swadeshi movement gained prominence.
“Winning the government’s approval was important during the Licence Raj days – this meant appearing to serve the people,” said Arvind Rajagopal, professor of Media Studies at New York University. “Large companies also began to reflect aspects of national developmentalist ideology. Advertising agencies all publicly avowed support for the planned economy, for example, and the biggest ones were all foreign.”
“Nation-focused ads were released not only by Tata but by all companies,” said Arun Chaudhuri, head of the marketing research company BRAND and the author of Indian Advertising: Laughter and Tears. “Obviously all these ads helped to support the government line that India was on a rapid path of progress. The reality was that the majority of the people lived pitiable lives hardly managing a square meal a day.”
According to Chaudhuri, another reason why advertisements tended to focus on the country and its progress before liberalisation may have simply been a lack of creative output from agencies. Since demand for goods was greater than supply in most industries, companies didn’t need bigger markets and didn’t care all that much about the content in ads. They were bought to keep newspapers – an important tool for public relations – happy.
Also in short supply were Tata Mercedes Benz trucks, which were “speeding prosperity to the countryside”, according to an advertisement from August 1960. The truck was compared with the Gwalior Fort that played a role during the Indian Mutiny (“Stalwarts Both”) and the India Gate (“Gateways to Prosperity”).
The messaging was clear: Tata wasn’t just driving India to a brighter future; it was also taking her back to her illustrious past. An ad for Tata Exports Limited, talks about “reviving the age-old glory of Indian exports”. Other Tata Iron and Steel Company ads advertisements refer to “implements of steel used by master craftsmen of ancient India”, “exquisite swords of Indian steel” used in the past and admired by outsiders and Indian ships being “once again on the high seas”.
If this rhetoric sounds familiar today, it is because it is used by politicians to invoke a sense of nationalist pride. But for the Tatas, that was not the only motivation. Even today, according to a recent survey, Tata Motors, a company that was founded 73 years ago, is viewed by Indians as the second-most patriotic brand in the country.
Tata Vintage Advertising and Publicity is on display at the Tata Central Archives in Pune until December.
All photos courtesy the Tata Central Archives.
← An artist who approached the work of painting like a campaign: Mehlli Gobhai (1931-2018)
XYZ Leadership Camp 2018 by Rayaan Dadiburjor →
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538571
|
__label__cc
| 0.595942
| 0.404058
|
Wikipedia Education Program/News/17 April 2012
From Outreach Wiki
< Wikipedia Education Program | News
Welcome History News Photo gallery
Determine future of U.S., Canada programs[edit]
The United States and Canada Education Programs are at a turning point. When we started the U.S. program as the Public Policy Initiative pilot in 2010, we had no idea if it would work. But it succeeded, so much that we've had to turn away interested professors because we didn't have enough Ambassador resources to support the demand. Given the enormous interest in the program, we need to start thinking about its future. While the Wikimedia Foundation is fully committed to the long-term success of the program, we believe that the Education Program should be led by our volunteers who have made this program successful: the Wikipedians and the academics. Learn more about and apply to join the new Working Group to determine the future of the U.S. and Canada Wikipedia Education Programs.
Brazil pilot kicks off at two universities[edit]
Students at two universities in Brazil are editing the Portuguese Wikipedia this term as part of their coursework. Professors in history, sociology, physics, and public policy will be assigning their students to improve Wikipedia's coverage of course topics in a small pilot of the Wikipedia Education Program in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Ambassadors are supporting the Brazilian students in class and online, with virtual support coming from Portuguese-speaking Wikipedians worldwide. Learn more about the pilot program by reading this blog post.
Campus Ambassadors at the outreach event at Ain Shams University.
Cairo outreach event draws 200+ participants[edit]
More than 200 students and faculty members at Ain Shams University in Cairo showed up to an in-person outreach event organized by Wikipedia Ambassadors from the Cairo Pilot and a local student group. Attendees learned how the Arabic Wikipedia works and how they could contribute to it. Check out the group's photo album to see photos from this successful event.
News media covers program in four languages[edit]
Journalists from around the world are taking note of the Wikipedia Education Program. Articles in Portuguese, English, Spanish, and Arabic have come out in April highlighting the work being done to promote Wikipedia's use in higher education classrooms worldwide, including a long article in tech magazine Fast Company's online site about the international program. As always, you can read all about the Wikipedia Education Program news coverage on and add other articles you see to this page.
Retrieved from "https://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_Education_Program/News/17_April_2012&oldid=69856"
Users by skillset
Wikimedia Incubator
Wikiversity Beta
About Outreach Wiki
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538574
|
__label__cc
| 0.707663
| 0.292337
|
Presidents Obama and H.W. Bush Honor Floyd and Kathy at the White House
President Barack Obama, right, presented the 5,000th Daily Point of Light Award to Floyd Hammer and Kathy Hamilton, from Union, Iowa, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, Monday, July 15, 2013. Points of Light is the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service, mobilizing millions of people to take action that is changing the world and recognizing individuals who are making a difference through service and volunteerism. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
In presenting the award, President Obama recognized the important contribution of President George H.W. Bush who, 23 years ago, created the Points of Light Award. He sought to recognize Americans who serve their neighbors and give back to their communities every day, often with very few resources, very little recognition and in innovative ways that inspire us all. President Bush knew that the Spirit of Service was vital to our national character.
President Obama said that the Outreach Program provided an extraordinary example of how service can lift people’s lives. He was pleased to present the 5000th Point of Light Award to Floyd and Kathy, an extraordinary couple who have done so much for so many people.
In expressing thanks for the award, Kathy explained how the original 2000 meals were packed in their small town of Union, Iowa, with the help of local volunteers. She noted: “We had to help, and others were eager to help us. We have seen time and time again how, when people give of themselves, when they share the burden and the task of solving it, light shines and love grows, all over the world and here at home.”
A PERSONAL NOTE FROM KATHY: The days surrounding the presentation of this incredible award were truly a whirlwind. We were in Tanzania when we received a call to be at the White House on Monday the 15th of July! On Friday we flew back home to Union, Iowa, then on Sunday flew to Washington, DC. On Monday we were honored beyond belief and flew back to Iowa the same evening!
While checking in at an airport desk in DC, the airline representative said, “I know you.” As we walked off the escalator in Des Moines airport late Monday night, a gentleman we did not know stepped out of the assembly of people waiting for their friends and family and congratulated us. At that moment I felt like bursting into tears.
Our friends called to ask, “What was it like being in the White House and meeting two Presidents?” How do you put it into words? It was incredible, we were so humbled and honored. The Presidents and their lovely wives were so gracious and kind, and we met many people that we see on the news. President Obama said, “Go enjoy the food, we have a really good cook!” The hor d’oeuvres were great, the experience was beyond description, and to this day it is one of the most memorable events of our lives. As I write this, I still feel the emotion of that day and feel the caring and happiness coming from everyone who participated by being there or sharing with us at home watching on their television — thank you!
And President H. W. Bush’s socks were great!
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538575
|
__label__wiki
| 0.600675
| 0.600675
|
Pharmaceuticals/ prescribing/ cannabis/ marijuana/ drugs 22
Chalk River National Research Universal reactor
The Canadian Medical Association urges the federal government to make a public commitment to keep the Chalk River National Research Universal reactor operational for as long as necessary beyond the announced date of 2016 and until secure alternative supplies of isotopes or alternative radiopharmaceuticals are proven and available.
A Prescription for SUFA : CMA Submission to the F/P/T Ministerial Council on Social Policy Renewal
It has been over three years since the Social Union Framework Agreement (SUFA) was signed by the federal and provincial/territorial governments, with the exception of Quebec. At the time, it was heralded as an important breakthrough in federal-provincial relations that would clear the way for greater intergovernmental cooperation on pressing social policy issues such as health care renewal. Functional federalism is essential to achieving social policy objectives that will be of benefit to Canadians from coast to coast. While SUFA may not be perfect, it is better than the alternative of federal-provincial paralysis and dysfunction. And as SUFA acknowledges, Canada’s social union is about more that how governments relate to each other: it is about how governments can and should work with external stakeholders and individual Canadians to improve the social policies and programs. The health sector is an important test case for SUFA. It is the most cherished of Canada’s social programs. Canadians want and expect their governments to work together to improve the health care system and ensure its future sustainability. Ironically, it is also the area where government intergovernmental discord has been the greatest. On the eve of the final report of the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, it is timely to reflect on SUFA and its role in the renewal of Canada’s health system. SUFA and the Health Sector – Strengths and Weaknesses The attached table provides a summary of the key elements of SUFA and the CMA’s assessment of how well SUFA provisions have been applied in the health sector. On the positive side, the health sector has fared relatively well in the area of mobility within Canada. Physicians and other regulated health care providers generally enjoy a high degree of mobility. Portability of hospital and medical benefits is largely ensured through interprovincial eligibility and portability agreements. There are, however, two areas of concern. First, there is the longstanding failure to resolve the non-portability of medical benefits for Quebec residents. Second, there is growing disparity in coverage for services that are currently not subject to national standards under the Canada Health Act, particularly prescription drugs and home care. In the area of dispute avoidance and resolution, governments have agreed to a formal process to address concerns with the Canada Health Act. This is a positive step, though few details have been made public. The real test will be whether this new process accelerates the resolution of non-compliance issues (most of which, as the Auditor-General recently pointed out, have remained unresolved for five years or longer), and whether the federal government will have the political will to levy discretionary penalties for non-compliance. There has also been progress on public accountability and transparency as governments have begun reporting results in 14 health indicator areas pursuant to the September 2000 health accord. The CMA is disappointed, however, that governments did not fulfil their pledge to involve stakeholders at all levels in the development of these indicators. Moreover, governments have short-changed Canadians by not providing them with a national roll-up of indicators that would facilitate comparisons across jurisdictions. Looking to the future, it will be critical to put in place a process that moves from benchmarks (indicators) to the bedside (best practices, better outcomes). This must be done in collaboration with health care researchers, providers and health managers—those individuals who understand the importance of taking research and importing it into practice. Clinical researchers across the country are doing this work and must to be supported. Overshadowing these relative successes in the first three years of the Social Union Framework Agreement are three key challenges that must be addressed: * inadequate institutional mechanisms to improve accountability across the system * failure to reduce uncertainty about what the health system will deliver, now and into the future * resistance on the part of governments to engage stakeholders in a true partnership for health system renewal The CMA is concerned that if these fundamental weaknesses are not addressed, they will undermine future attempts to renew Canada’s health system. Improving accountability With the adoption of SUFA, governments have significantly increased emphasis on performance measurement and public reporting. While this is a positive development, it also has the potential to lead towards information overload and paralysis, unless two critical elements are addressed. First, there is a need for a clear accountability framework that sets out the roles, rights and responsibilities of all key players in Canada’s health system: patients, health care providers and governments. This, in turn, requires the creation of a credible arm’s length institution to monitor compliance with this framework and rise above the fray to give Canadians the straight goods on health care. One has to look no further that the recent rekindling of the so-called “shares debate” between the federal and provincial governments as an example of why these changes are necessary. Reducing uncertainty Over the past decade, Canada’s health system has been plagued by an escalating crisis of uncertainty. Patients have faced increasing uncertainty about the accessibility and timeliness of essential health care services. Health care providers have seen working conditions deteriorate. Employers and private insurers have seen their contribution to funding health services increase unpredictably as governments have scaled back their funding commitments. Furthermore, provincial and territorial governments have had to contend with an unstable federal funding partner. Canadians deserve better. They need more certainty that their public health system will care for them when they need it most. They need more transparency from governments about “what’s in” and “what’s out” in terms of public or private coverage. They need their governments to act on their SUFA undertaking to make service commitments for social programs publicly available such as establishing standards for acceptable waiting times for health care. And they need governments to follow through with their SUFA commitment to ensure stable and adequate funding for the health system and other social programs. Fostering real partnerships In the health care field, deliberations and agreements have taken place behind closed doors and governments have discounted the role that non-governmental organizations and citizens should play in decision-making. It is these very providers and patients who are expected to implement and live with the results of such cloistered decision-making. The consequences of this systematic exclusion are all too evident in the current critical and growing shortages of physicians, nurses and other health professionals. If we are to achieve the vision of a sustainable Medicare program, it is critical that governments come clean on their SUFA commitment to work in partnership with stakeholders and ensure opportunities for meaningful input into social policies and programs. CMA’s Prescription for Sustainability – Building on SUFA The Social Union Framework Agreement has created the necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for health system renewal. It has codified the emerging consensus on federal-provincial relations and has clarified the "rules of the game". However, it is an enabling framework that is of limited value in the health sector unless it is given life through institutional mechanisms that establish enduring partnerships not just between governments, but between governments health care providers, and patients. In its final submission to the Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada entitled “Prescription for Sustainability”, the CMA proposes the implementation of three integrated “pillars of sustainability” that together would improve accountability and transparency in the system: a Canadian Health Charter, a Canadian Health Commission, and federal legislative renewal. Canadian Health Charter A Canadian Health Charter would clearly articulate a national health policy that sets out our collective understanding of Medicare and the rights and mutual obligations of individual Canadians, health care providers, and governments. It would also underline governments’ shared commitment to ensuring that Canadians will have access to quality health care within an acceptable time frame. The existence of such a Charter would ensure that a rational, evidence-based, and collaborative approach to managing and modernizing Canada’s health system is being followed. Canadian Health Commission In conjunction with the Canadian Health Charter, a permanent, independent Canadian Health Commission would be created to promote accountability and transparency within the system. It would have a mandate to monitor compliance with and measure progress towards Charter provisions, report to Canadians on the performance of the health care system, and provide ongoing advice and guidance to the Conference on Federal-Provincial-Territorial ministers on key national health care issues. Recognizing the shared federal and provincial/territorial obligations to the health care system, one of the main purposes of the Canadian Health Charter is to reinforce the national character of the health system. Federal legislative renewal Finally, the CMA’s prescription calls for the federal government to make significant commitments in three areas: 1) a review of the Canada Health Act, 2) changes to the federal transfers to provinces and territories to provide increased and more targeted support for health care, and 3) a review of federal tax legislation to realign tax instruments with health policy goals. While these three “pillars” will address the broader structural and procedural problems facing Canada’s health care system, there is many other changes required to meet specific needs within the system in the short to medium term. The CMA’s Prescription for Sustainability provides specific recommendations in the following key areas: * Defining the publicly-funded health system (e.g. a more rational and transparent approach to defining core services, a “safety valve” if the public system fails to deliver, and increased attention to public health and Aboriginal health) * Investing in the health care system (e.g. human resources, capital infrastructure, surge capacity to deal with emergencies, information technology, and research and innovation) * Organization and delivery of services (e.g. consideration of the full continuum of care, physician compensation, rural health, and the role of the private sector, the voluntary sector and informal caregivers) Conclusion On balance, the Social Union Framework Agreement has been a positive step forward for social policy in Canada, though its potential is far from being fully realized. The CMA’s proposal for a Canadian Health Charter, a Canadian Health Commission and federal legislative review entail significant changes to the governance of Canada’s health system. These changes would be consistent with the Social Union Framework Agreement and would help “turn the corner” from debate to action on health system renewal. The early, ongoing and meaningful engagement of health care providers is the sine qua non of securing the long-term sustainability of Canada’s health system. Canada’s health professionals, who have the most to contribute, and next to patients – who have the most at stake – must be at the table when the future of health and health care is being discussed. The CMA’s Assessment of the Social Union Framework Agreement ANNEX [TABLE CONTENT DOES NOT DISPLAY PROPERLY. SEE PDF FOR PROPER DISPLAY] SUFA provisions CMA assessment Principles 1. All Canadians to be treated with fairness and equity 2. Promote equality of opportunity for all Canadians 3. Respect for the equality, rights and dignity of all Canadian women and men and their diverse needs 4. Ensure access for all Canadians to essential social programs and services of reasonably comparable quality 5. Provide appropriate assistance to those in need 6. Respect the principles of Medicare: comprehensiveness, universality, portability, public administration and accessibility 7. Promote the full and active participation of all Canadians in Canada’s economic and social life 8. Work in partnership with stakeholders and ensure opportunities for meaningful input into social policies and programs 9. Ensure adequate, affordable, stable and sustainable funding for social programs 10. Respect Aboriginal treaties and rights [#4] Progress towards the objective of ensuring access to essential health services of reasonably comparable quality is difficult to assess. First, there is no agreed-upon definition of essential health services. Second there the development of indicators and benchmarks of health care quality is still in its infancy. However, the CMA is very concerned that the system is not headed in the right direction, with growing shortages of physicians, nurses and other health care providers. According to Statistics Canada’s recently released survey on access to health care services, an estimated 4.3 million Canadians reported difficulties accessing first contact services and approximately 1.4 million Canadians reported difficulties accessing specialized services. [#6]Although there is broad support for the five principles of Medicare, there continue to be a number of longstanding violations of Canada Health Act that are not being addressed, including the portability of medical benefits for Quebec residents. The emergence of privately-owned clinics that charge patients for medically-necessary MRI scans is also cause for concern. [#8] There is no formal, ongoing mechanism for input from stakeholders and the individual Canadians in debates about national health policy issues. (See also #17 below). [#9] Ensuring adequate, affordable, and stable funding for Canada’s health system is essential to its long-term sustainability. During the 1990s, billions of dollars were siphoned out of the system to eliminate government deficits. To put Medicare back on a sustainable path, governments must make long-term funding commitments to meet the health care needs of Canadians. The CMA has recommended that the federal government should significantly increase its financial contribution to restore the federal-provincial partnership in health care, and increase accountability and transparency through a new earmarked health transfer. Mobility within Canada 11. Removal of residency-based policies governing access to social services 12. Compliance with the mobility provisions of the Agreement on Internal Trade [#11] Residency-based policies are generally not an issue for physician and hospital services, where inter-provincial portability is guaranteed through reciprocal billing arrangements. As noted above, however, the portability of medical benefits for many Quebec residents is limited because the province only reimburses out-of-province services at home-province (as opposed to host-province) rates. [#12] Regulatory authorities initiated work towards meeting the obligations of the Labour Mobility Chapter of the Agreement on Internal Trade in fall 1999. A Mutual Recognition Agreement has been developed and endorsed by all physician licensing authorities. Public accountability & transparency 13. Performance measurement and public reporting 14. Development of comparable indicators to measure progress 15. Public recognition of roles and contributions of governments 16. Use funds transferred from another order of government for purposes agreed and pass on increases to residents 17. Ensure effective mechanisms for Canadians to participate in developing social priorities and reviewing outcomes 18. Make eligibility criteria and service commitments for social programs publicly available 19. Have mechanisms in place to appeal unfair administrative practices 20. Report publicly on appeals and complaints [#13-14] Pursuant to the September 2000 Health Accord, the federal government and provinces have developed common health indicators in 14 areas and have released a first slate of reports. However, the usefulness of these reports is hampered by missing data elements on quality of care (access and waiting times in particular) and the absence of a national roll-up to facilitate inter-provincial comparisons. [#15] Continuing federal-provincial bickering about shares of health funding makes it clear that this provision is not being met. [#16] The CMA’s analysis of the Medical Equipment Fund found that incremental spending by provinces on medical technology accounted for only 60% of the $500 million transferred by the federal government for this purpose. [#17] There is no mechanism in place to ensure ongoing input from Canadians and health care providers in national health policy development. The CMA has recommended the creation of a Canadian Health Commission, with representation from the public and stakeholders to provide advice and input to governments on key national health policy issues. [#18] Although there have been proposals to this effect in a couple of provinces, governments currently do not make explicit commitments about the quality and accessibility of health services. In order to reduce the uncertainty Canadians are feeling with respect to Medicare, the CMA has recommended the creation of a Canadian Health Charter that would set out the rights and responsibilities of patients, health care providers and governments. In particular, the health charter would require all governments to set out care guarantees for timely access to health services based on the best available evidence. [#19-20] The Auditor-General recently reported that Health Canada provides inadequate reporting on the extent of compliance with the Canada Health Act. Governments working in partnership 21. Governments to undertake joint planning and information sharing, and work together to identify priorities for collaborative action 22. Governments to collaborate on implementation of joint priorities when this would result in more effective and efficient service to Canadians. 23. Advance notice prior to implementation of a major policy or program change that will substantially affect another government 24. Offer to consult prior to implementing new social policies and programs that are likely to substantially affect other governments. 25. For any new Canada-wide social initiative, arrangements made with one province/territory will be made available to all provinces/territories. 26. Governments will work with the Aboriginal peoples of Canada to find practical solutions to address their pressing needs [#21-25] The requirement for governments to work together collaboratively is perhaps the most important part of SUFA, yet there it is impossible for organizations and individuals outside of government to assess the degree to which these provisions have been met. This so-called “black box of executive federalism” is not serving Canadians well. In the health sector, there are too many examples of governments developing policy and making decisions with little or no input from those who will ultimately have to implement change. To achieve a true social union, the tenets of good collaborative working relationships – joint planning, advance notice and consultation prior to implementation – must be extended beyond the ambit of federal-provincial decision-making. The CMA’s proposal for a Canadian Health Commission would go some distance in addressing these concerns. A key part of its mandate would be to bring the perspective of health providers and patients into national health policy deliberations and decision-making. Federal spending power 27. Federal government to consult with P/T governments at least one year prior to renewal or significant funding changes in social transfers 28. New Canada-wide initiatives supported by transfers to provinces subject to: a) collaborative approach to identify Canada wide objectives and priorities b) Agreement of a majority of provincial governments c) Provincial discretion to determine detailed design to meet agreed objectives d) Provincial freedom to reinvest funding in related area if objectives are already met e) Jointly developed accountability framework 29. For new Canada-wide initiatives funded through direct transfers to individuals or organizations, federal government to provide 3-months notice and offer to consult [#27-28] There have been three new Canada-wide health initiatives supported by the federal spending power: the $500M Medical Equipment Fund, the $800 Primary Health Care Transition Fund and the $500M fund for health information technology. The Medical Equipment Fund was created to respond to a genuine need for more modern diagnostic and treatment equipment. However, objectives were vague, money was transferred with no strings attached, and there was no accountability framework. The result, as the CMA’s analysis has shown, is that a significant portion of the funding did not reach its destination. The jury is still out in the case of the Primary Care Transition Fund. Delivery of this program through normal government machinery will entail a higher degree of accountability than in the case of the Medical Equipment Fund. However, objectives of this initiative may be too broad to have a significant steering effect on the system as a whole. Canada Infoway Inc. is an arm’s length body created by the federal government to disburse the $500M in health information technology funding. While this model has the advantage of being less politicized than government-run programs; accountability to Parliament and to Canadians is weaker. Dispute avoidance & resolution 30. Governments committed to working together and avoiding disputes 31. Sector negotiations to resolve disputes based on joint fact-finding, including the use of a third party 32. Any government can require a decision to be reviewed one year after it enters into effect 33. Governments will report publicly on an annual basis on the nature of intergovernmental disputes and their resolution [#30-33] Federal and provincial governments have agreed to a formal dispute avoidance and resolution process under the Canada Health Act. The Canadian Health Commission recommended by the CMA could play a useful role as an independent fact-finder. Review of SUFA 34. By the end of the 3rd year, governments will jointly undertake a full review of the Agreement and its implementation. This review will ensure significant opportunities for input and feedback from Canadians and all interested parties, including social policy experts, the private sector and voluntary organizations. [#34] Governments have taken a minimalist approach to the SUFA review by opting for an internet-based consultation and closed meetings with invited external representatives. This approach is not sufficient. Future reviews should be more inclusive of all stakeholders. [TABLE END]
Unique challenges of managing pain in older adults
The Canadian Medical Association recommends research into and education for health care providers concerning the unique challenges of managing pain in older adults.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538576
|
__label__cc
| 0.739508
| 0.260492
|
Radical Islamic Terrorism
A Nuclear North Korea
Russia and Vladimir Putin
Enemies Within the Deep State
By completing this poll, you are agreeing to receive breaking news and alerts by email
America is facing turbulent times both at home and abroad.
While President Trump seeks to manage the ongoing war against radical Islamic terrorism, he is facing an unprecedented attack from the Deep State entrenched in Washington, D.C.
At the same time, tensions are rising between global powers.
Vladimir Putin efforts to strengthen Russia’s influence in the volatile Middle East and China’s ongoing land grab in the South China Sea are pressuring American interests.
Combined with an increasingly erratic North Korea, America is facing a global political stage full of danger.
As part of Great American Daily’s ongoing political coverage, we’d like to know which threat you believe currently presents the greatest danger to the United States.
Your response will help us improve our efforts to keep patriotic Americans like you informed of the latest and most important current events facing our country.
© 2018 Great American Daily Press, LLC. All Rights Reserved. All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast, in whole or part, without the prior written permission of Great American Daily Press, LLC.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538577
|
__label__cc
| 0.643397
| 0.356603
|
Job Satisfaction in the Public Service: The effects of public service motivation, workplace attributes and work relations
Jeannette Taylor, J.H. Westover
Discipline of Political Science and International Relations
Public Management Review
Taylor, J., & Westover, J. H. (2011). Job Satisfaction in the Public Service: The effects of public service motivation, workplace attributes and work relations. Public Management Review, 13(5), 731-751. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2010.532959
Taylor, Jeannette ; Westover, J.H. / Job Satisfaction in the Public Service: The effects of public service motivation, workplace attributes and work relations. In: Public Management Review. 2011 ; Vol. 13, No. 5. pp. 731-751.
@article{557acf48d53e47139b43023d6a3500a9,
title = "Job Satisfaction in the Public Service: The effects of public service motivation, workplace attributes and work relations",
author = "Jeannette Taylor and J.H. Westover",
journal = "Public Management Review",
Taylor, J & Westover, JH 2011, 'Job Satisfaction in the Public Service: The effects of public service motivation, workplace attributes and work relations', Public Management Review, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 731-751. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2010.532959
Job Satisfaction in the Public Service: The effects of public service motivation, workplace attributes and work relations. / Taylor, Jeannette; Westover, J.H.
In: Public Management Review, Vol. 13, No. 5, 2011, p. 731-751.
T1 - Job Satisfaction in the Public Service: The effects of public service motivation, workplace attributes and work relations
AU - Taylor, Jeannette
AU - Westover, J.H.
JO - Public Management Review
JF - Public Management Review
Taylor J, Westover JH. Job Satisfaction in the Public Service: The effects of public service motivation, workplace attributes and work relations. Public Management Review. 2011;13(5):731-751. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2010.532959
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538580
|
__label__wiki
| 0.94972
| 0.94972
|
Notre Dame continues record success with NEH Fellowships
Author: Carrie Gates
Two faculty members from the University of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters — Laura Dassow Walls and Sophie White — have been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for 2015.
The fellowships continue the University’s record success with the NEH, which supports advanced research across a broad spectrum of the humanities. Since 1999, Arts and Letters faculty members have been awarded 53 total NEH grants — more than any other university in the country.
Laura Dassow Walls
Walls, the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English, received the fellowship to complete a biography of Henry David Thoreau.
A renowned scholar of American transcendentalism, Walls began working on the book with the support of a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation during the 2010-11 academic year.
“I am grateful for the affirmation the NEH provides,” Walls said. “It confirms your sense that you might have something to say that is important beyond your circle of specialists and gives you the opportunity to say it.”
Walls’ book will be the first comprehensive biography of the life of Thoreau since Walter Harding’s “The Days of Henry Thoreau” in 1965, she said, and will reflect the “immense amount of work” done on Thoreau and his connections in the last 50 years. She plans to publish the book to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Thoreau’s birth in 2017.
“Thoreau carries a deeper, wider message than many other writers,” she said. “He is an American icon who stands for so many different things.”
Sophie White
White, an associate professor in the Department of American Studies, was awarded the fellowship — her second in five years — for her book project, “Voices of the African Diaspora Within and Beyond the Atlantic World.”
“I was thrilled to receive the grant,” White said. “It is a validation of the work I’m doing and also motivation to complete the project. I am very grateful to Notre Dame for all the support it has provided me over the years, especially through the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.”
White, who is a concurrent associate professor in the Department of Africana Studies, the Department of History and the Program in Gender Studies, is analyzing courtroom testimony from enslaved Africans in French colonies, primarily in 18th-century Louisiana.
Individual slaves did not often have an avenue to tell their life stories, White said. But when called to testify in court — either as defendants, witnesses or victims — the enslaved had a rare public forum.
Many slaves seized the opportunity and sought to voice their experiences of slavery and removal from their homelands, White said.
“It is no longer about the court case,” she said. “It becomes about other things they want to share, which is what makes this interesting. This testimony is forced; they have no choice but to appear. But, in spite of that constraint, there is still the potential for an autobiographical narrative.”
Both Walls and White said they are writing their books for a wide, general audience — in keeping with the mission of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
“Endowing the humanities enables professors and specialists to work on projects that connect our literary and cultural heritage to much broader audiences,” Walls said. “It allows us to share that heritage with people who are general readers and enhance their understanding of how we came to be who we are today — how our past carries and shapes our present.”
Originally published by Carrie Gates at al.nd.edu on May 1.
Originally published by Carrie Gates at al.nd.edu on May 01, 2015.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538581
|
__label__wiki
| 0.959546
| 0.959546
|
Evening Update Tuesday 8 December 2020
French Prime Minister Jean Castex and Minister of Health Olivier Veran are expected to hold a press conference at 6pm on Thursday. It's believed that they will address the issue of whether coronavirus numbers are low enough to permit the deconfinement scheduled for next Tuesday, 15 December. President Macron is due to chair a meeting of the Defence Council tomorrow morning.
The prosecution in the trial of those accused of involvement in the Charlie Hebdo attacks in 2015 has requested sentences of between five years and life in prison. Fourteen people are on trial in Paris accused of various forms of support for the three people who carried out the attack against the magazine and also against a supermarket in Paris and a policewoman from Montrouge. The verdicts are expected to be announced next week.
An investigation has been opened after the discovery of a body on the beach in Frejus earlier today. Authorities have said that the corpse of the woman in her forties was discovered by a walker in the area. Police are currently trying to establish the cause of death.
A judicial investigation is continuing into the sinking of a fishing boat off the coast of the Herault department last week. One person was rescued after the sinking of the Romain Luca but two people lost their lives. The wreckage was located by the French Navy at a depth of 60 metres and the two bodies were recovered. The judicial investigation is being carried out under the authority of the Béziers public prosecutor's office.
A man has been rescued off the coast of Carry-le-Rouet in the Bouches-du-Rhône department after his speedboat suffered engine problems last night. The operation coordinated by Crossmed involved the French Navy, Bouches-du-Rhone firefighters and SNSM lifeboat personnel. The Maritime Prefecture said that the man was safe and well and had been brought ashore.
The town hall in Antibes is opening a book of condolance for Valéry Giscard d'Estaing who died on December 2. A national day of tribute will be held tomorrow in memory of the former French president. The City of Antibes Juan-les-Pins is providing a register at the Town Hall on the Cours Masséna starting tomorrow to allow everyone to pay a written tribute. The register will remain available at the town hall until the end of the week.
VINCI Autoroutes are drawing attention to the dangers faced by their employees. The motorway operator said that last night one of their trucks towing a large illuminated sign was hit by a car on the A64 motorway in the Haute-Garonne department in south west France. 48 VINCI intervention vehicles have been struck by other vehicles so far this year. The company says that collisions with emergency vehicles are, in the great majority of cases, the result of drowsiness or a lack of attention on the part of drivers.
The Japanese government has announced new economic stimulus measures worth 73.6tr yen, which is about $708bn. Revised data released today shows that the Japanese economy suffered its worst post-war contraction in the second quarter, shrinking by 8.2%, although the economy started to rebound in the third quarter.
New data has shown a large increase in spending on groceries in the UK. Take-home grocery sales rose by 11.3% during the 12 weeks to 29 November. The figures from data company Kantar show that November was the single largest month ever for UK supermarkets, with £10.9 billion spent over four weeks.
China has removed 105 apps from its app stores. The Cyberspace Administration of China said that all the apps violated one of three cyber-laws. Authorities said that the ban was in response to content the public "deemed offensive".
Cricket...New tests have shown that the two people in the England touring party suspected of having coronavirus do not in fact have the virus. The tour of South Africa was abandoned yesterday. England said that the two have been given the all-clear by "independent virologists in Cape Town and London". England will fly home on Thursday.
Australia have beaten India by 12 runs in the final Twenty20 international in Sydney. India's defeat means that their 10 match T20 winning run has come to an end, but they have still won the series after going 2-0 ahead on Sunday.
Rugby Union... It's been confirmed that England will be playing Australia and South Africa at Twickenham in the Autumn Intenational series next year. The matches will take place in November 2021.
Football..The final group games in the European Champions League are being played tonight and tomorrow. Group E winners Chelsea are at home to Krasnadar while Manchester United need at least a draw to qualify for the knockout phase when they visit RB Leipzig in Group H. Paris St Germain are at home to Istanbul Basaksehir.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538583
|
__label__wiki
| 0.992211
| 0.992211
|
Corey Taylor Announces Debut Solo Album 'CMFT' & Shares Two New Songs
By Taylor Fields Jul 29, 2020
Fans have enjoyed Corey Taylor while fronting Slipknot and Stone Sour, but now they can now rock out to the musician's solo music which has officially arrived in the form of two new singles, along with the announcement of his first solo album on the way.
Taylor announced that his debut solo album, CMFT, will be released on October 2, and shared the project's first two singles, "Black Eyes Blue" and "CMFT Must Be Stopped" which features Tech N9ne and Kid Bookie.
Corey also shared the "CMFT Must Be Stopped" music video, directed by DJay Brawner and features cameos from a few friends including Marilyn Manson, Lars Ulrich, Rob Halford, Chris Jericho, ZillaKami and more. In the fiery visual, Corey has his CMFT belt (is also featured on the album's cover art), while his friends drop in to lip sync the lyrics from their respective homes.
CMFT, which Taylor has said has been "a long time coming," features 13 tracks which are comprised of newly written songs, as well as songs dating back to his teens, and showcases influences including hard rock, classic rock, punk rock, and hip hop. The album was recorded at Hideout Studio in Las Vegas with producer Jay Ruston and his band; Christian Martucci (guitar), Zach Throne (guitar), Jason Christopher (bass) and Dustin Robert (drums). Check out the full track listing below.
CMFT Track Listing:
1. "HWY 666"
2. "Black Eyes Blue"
3. "Samantha's Gone"
4. "Meine Lux"
5. "Halfway Down"
6. "Silverfish"
7. "Kansas"
8. "Culture Head"
9. "Everybody Dies On My Birthday"
10. "The Maria Fire"
11. "Home"
12. "CMFT Must Be Stopped" (Feat. Tech N9ne & Kid Bookie)
13. "European Tour Bus Bathroom Song"
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538585
|
__label__wiki
| 0.588134
| 0.588134
|
You are here: Parliament home page > Parliamentary business > Publications and Records > Committee Publications > All Select Committee Publications > Commons Select Committees > Culture, Media and Sport > Culture, Media and Sport
Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence
APPENDIX 45
Letter, 7 December 2001, from the Director of Sport and Recreation, University of Hertfordshire, to the Clerk of the Committee
Further to your discussion with my colleague Debbie Andalo, I understand that the Select Committee heard evidence of a shortage of 50 metre pools (particularly serving the London region) and of the potential benefits of locating such facilities at University sites.
You expressed an interest in receiving more information about the proposals put forward by the University of Hertfordshire which offers Sport England and the ASA the perfect opportunity to achieve a 50 metre pool (as part of a larger high quality sports development) on a University site in the London region at minimal cost.
The pool is part of a large sports complex that will include a Regional Badminton Centre, four lane cricket centre, fitness and sports injury facilities and sports fields with a capital value of over £16 million. It will undoubtedly become a centre of excellence for certain sports with particular emphasis upon developing talented young people from the region.
These sports facilities will have full access for the community and will have residential and sports science services available for elite performers. The development will be open in summer 2003.
The key factors that we believe make this project particularly attractive for support from Sport England and the ASA are location, need and value for money.
The University campus is located at Hatfield adjacent to junction 3 of the A1(M) and five minutes from the M25.
There is a population of 1.4 million people within a 20 minute drive time of the campus.
Hatfield is 20 minutes by train from Central London and the University's own bus service (which serves the public as well as students) provides a comprehensive network of routes across the county and into North London.
The local community pool is the only one in the district, serves a residential population of nearly 100,000 people plus a rapidly growing business community and consequently suffers from the typical problems discussed at the Committee—conflicts of programming causing dissatisfaction for the public and lack of quality water time at the right time and price for the elite swimmers. Hatfield Swim Club has World Class swimmers and a top quality Head Coach.
The potential development of a 50 metre pool at the University of Hertfordshire has the support of all the surrounding local authorities, the Hertfordshire ASA and would appear to fit with the ASA strategic plan of developing 50 metre pools to serve the London region.
The cost to enhance the University's original pool plans from 25 metre to a 50 metre pool with moveable floor and bulkhead to ensure maximum flexibility of use was estimated to be in the region of £2.5 million.
This compares favourably with the most recent investment by Sport England of £6 million to achieve a 50 metre pool at Loughborough University and, I would suggest, with the likely cost of any development at Waltham Forest, Northampton or anywhere else in the region.
The University requested a positive indication of support in principle from Sport England to enable it to submit an application to the Sports Lottery Fund for funding this additional cost.
I have enclosed some extracts of the relevant correspondence that has occurred since our initial discussions with Sport England and the ASA started in 1998 which evidences that this support was not forthcoming hence the process of application did not proceed beyond the first stage.
I also enclose a copy of the written submission of the Committee from Mr Ian McKenzie, as Secretary of the Hertfordshire ASA, which referred to this project.
Should this submission arouse sufficient interest for Sport England to review their opinion then there is, at the time of writing, a chance of achieving a 50 metre pool to serve the North London and surrounding region very quickly and cost effectively.
However, as construction is starting in January, a swift contact with either Dr Tim Wilson (Deputy Chief Executive) or me is essential.
Prepared 15 January 2002
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538589
|
__label__wiki
| 0.867539
| 0.867539
|
12 Jul 2005 : Column 981W—continued
Nurses (Bedfordshire)
Mrs. Dorries: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many specialist nurses there are in Bedfordshire who deal with (a) coronary heart disease and (b) arrhythmia in young people. [11091]
Ms Rosie Winterton: The information requested is not collected centrally.
Health Technical Memoranda
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what systems are in place to monitor compliance with Health Technical Memoranda (HTM), with particular reference to HTM 2022 on medical gas pipeline systems; and whether she expects these monitoring systems to change with the abolition of NHS Estates, as envisaged in the Department's review of arm's length bodies. [10027]
Mr. Byrne: NHS Estates does not monitor compliance to health technical memoranda (HTM), including HTM2022. It is the responsibility of the health care provider to be aware of all best practice guidance and to manage and monitor medical gas pipeline systems in line with their duty of care and governance arrangements.
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate she has made of the number of available beds required in total in the NHS in England to achieve a national average bed occupancy rate of 82 per cent. [10033]
Mr. Byrne: No such assessment has been made. Occupancy levels in national health service facilities vary, depending on the range and type of services they provide, and the way in which the admission and discharge of patients is managed. The Department does not have targets for occupancy levels, which are for the NHS locally to determine.
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what targets for reduction will be attached to the hospital-acquired infections, other than methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, which are monitored under the mandatory surveillance schemes for NHS trusts. [10030]
Jane Kennedy: The first year's data will provide a baseline for trend analysis and it is too early to decide if targets would be appropriate.
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment she has made of colloidal silver as a treatment for (a) MRSA and (b) other hospital acquired infections; and what research she has commissioned into its use. [9516]
Jane Kennedy: Although colloidal silver has antibacterial properties for treating meticillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other hospital acquired infections it is not used as an alternative to antibiotics because of its toxicity when taken internally. We are not aware of any relevant studies on its efficacy.
12 Jul 2005 : Column 982W
Mr. Lancaster: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans the Minister has to extend the availability of IVF treatment under the NHS. [10279]
Caroline Flint: Following the publication in February 2004 of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence's (NICE) clinical guideline on the assessment and treatment for people with fertility problems, we advised all primary care trusts to offer a minimum of one cycle of in vitro fertilization (IVF) by April 2005 to those who meet the clinical criteria, giving priority to couples with no children living with them, and to make progress to full implementation of the guideline in the longer term. The primary responsibility for the implementation of NICE guidelines rests with the national health service at local level and compliance with NICE guidance by NHS organisations will be considered by the Healthcare Commission during their review and performance assessment processes.
Medicine Imports
Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much medicine the Government imported in the last three years for which figures are available. [9925]
Jane Kennedy: The United Kingdom (UK) world trade in pharmaceuticals between 2002 and 2004 is shown in the following table.
UK world trade—pharmaceuticals
Total imports (millions)
Total exports (millions)
Trade surplus balance
2002 7,558 10,179 2,621
This information is collected and published by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise.
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether patients who have killed staff within the South West London and St. George's Mental Health Trust were classified as extremely disturbed and subject to a recommendation that they should always be approached for treatment by two or more members of staff. [8683]
Jane Kennedy: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on Tuesday 7 July 2005, Official Report, column 587W. There has been one incident where a member of staff at the South West London and St. George's Mental Health Trust was killed by a patient. This case attracted a large amount of media attention and is to be subject to an external independent inquiry. We would not wish to prejudice the findings of this inquiry, which will be made public as soon as is possible. In the meantime, we also have a duty to protect the patient confidentiality of the patient concerned.
Sandra Gidley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether the use of electroconvulsive therapy is proportionately more common in the treatment of
people with mental health problems aged over 65 than in the treatment of people with mental health problems of all ages. [9973]
Ms Rosie Winterton: The latest information available on electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) is that contained in the Department's publication Statistical Bulletin Electro Convulsive Therapy: Survey covering the period from January 2002 to March 2002, England. This was a follow-up to an earlier survey of the period January to March 1999. Both surveys were undertaken to provide data on ECT that are not currently available elsewhere.
The 2002 survey confirmed the continuing downward trend in the number of administrations of ECT. It collected information from national health service and independent sector care settings, including nursing homes, on the total number of administrations of ECT in NHS and independent sector care settings including data on sex, age, ethnicity, legal status and method of consent. It found that in the period January to March 2002:
4.6 people per 100,000 of the population underwent ECT, compared with 5.8 in the 1999 survey period.
The prevalence rates for both men and women were lower in 2002 than in 1999. In 2002 2.8 per 100,000 men received treatment compared to 3.8 per 100,000 in 1999; additionally, 6.4 per 100,000 women were treated in the 2002 survey period, compared to 7.7 in 1999.
The incidence of the use of ECT was shown to rise with age in both of the survey periods. Overall, 13.5 per 100,000 population aged 65 and over underwent ECT in 2002; this compares to a prevalence rate of 5.6 in 45 to 64 year olds, 3.6 for 45 to 44 year olds and only 1.2 for 19 to 24 year olds.
In 1999, the statistics show a similar pattern with 15.1 per 100,000 population aged 65 and over undergoing ECT; this dropped to 8.0 per 100,000 in those aged 45 to 64, to 4.6 in those aged 25 to 44 and again to 1.5 in those aged 16 to 24.
Copies of the 2002 (ISBN: 1 84182 709 6) and 1999 (IBSN: 1 84182 089 X) surveys are available in the Library and on the Department's website at: www.dh. gov.uk/PublicationsAndStatistics/Statistics/Statistical WorkAreas/StatisticalHealthCare/StatisticalHealthCa reArticle/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4086494&chk=QFb R7a.
Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps she will take to ensure that the public are able to compare investment and commissioning decisions of primary care trusts in developing specialist old age mental health services, in accordance with section 2.2.8 of the report, Better Health in Old Age. [7195]
Mr. Byrne: For the first time this year, the Department will be supporting service mapping of older people's mental health services. This exercise is planned for autumn 2005. It is envisaged that similar data collections will be supported annually. Finance data on older people's mental health services will also be included for the first time in this autumn's national finance mapping of mental health services. The results for older adults will be available to the public on the internet.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538590
|
__label__wiki
| 0.720351
| 0.720351
|
Growing Food, Sowing Trouble
We’re not fixing this environmental crisis. One ditch in Indiana could provide a solution.
Shannon Speir and Matt Trentman, graduate students in Jennifer Tank’s lab at Notre Dame, lower themselves into a steep, unmodified section of the Shatto ditch. Workers widened nearly five of the ditch’s eight miles, creating a floodplain that slows and filters the water. (Nathanael Johnson / Grist)
Nathanael Johnson
This story was published in partnership with Grist and The World.
MENTONE, Indiana — If you want to clean up the largest pollution spill in the country, one unaltered by decades of work and billions of dollars, you need to spend a lot of time making tiny measurements. Most of them will only confirm the depressing trend: More and more contaminants are winding their way from farms into rivers and streams.
But in one small watershed in northern Indiana, those measurements have revealed an undeniable improvement in one of the most stubborn environmental crises in the world.
This story is part of a series by the Center for Public Integrity, Grist and The World about how our overuse of fertilizer harms the climate and endangers the public.
On a foggy November morning, between gently rolling fields, Jennifer Tank, a biology professor at the University of Notre Dame, and two of her graduate students dressed in waders lowered themselves into the Shatto ditch, a 45-minute drive from South Bend. They stretched a measuring tape across the water and began taking readings. One of the students, Shannon Speir, held a metal rod with a bulb on the end where the ankle-deep water met waist-high grass. The device registered the streamflow’s pressure against the bulb and transmitted this information to a digital display she had slung over one shoulder.
“Point-oh-two, grass,” Speir called up to the other grad student, Matt Trentman, who jotted down the number indicating how fast water was flowing through the grass at the edge of the channel. Then she moved the rod over an inch and took another measurement. After doing that all the way across the ditch and filling plastic tubes to test the water back at the lab, they moved a dozen yards upstream to a drain pipe conveying water from a nearby field for another set of measurements. Students working with Tank and her collaborator, Todd Royer, a scientist at the Indiana University, Bloomington, have been at this every two weeks for the last seven years. Add that to the expensive devices automatically measuring water quality every half hour and the storm-chasing measurements Trentman makes when it starts to rain.
“Occasionally we do sampling every hour for 24 hours to see how things change throughout the day,” Trentman said, pencil in one hand, aluminum clipboard in the other. It’s a mountain of drudgery bringing microscopic focus to an unremarkable swath of land. This bit of Indiana is small in size, but large in the promise it represents: By braving sleet, pre-dawn hours and the occasional rogue muskrat, a team of scientists has been able to show that it’s possible for farmers to keep their fertilizer from running off their land and causing problems downstream.
After 13 years and a million dollars in state, nonprofit and federal funding, the data show a clear decline in nitrogen and phosphorus flowing out of this watershed during the critical springtime thaw. These two nutrients fertilize crops, but when they wash into the water, they fertilize algae blooms and cause a host of problems. In other words, the chemicals we rely on to grow food often end up poisoning the planet and threatening the lives of many species on it, including ours.
As far as I can tell — and I spent a lot of time looking — there’s only one place in the country where conservation measures have found a fix for this dilemma: the Shatto ditch.
The Shatto ditch drains 5 square miles of northern Indiana. It begins in low hills and travels 8 miles, with water seeping up from the ground and trickling down pipes protruding from the earth into the ditch. Then its water flows to the Tippecanoe River and from there to the Wabash River, the Ohio River and finally to the Mississippi River, carrying fertilizer washed off fields along the way.
Large amounts of nitrogen, one of the fertilizer nutrients that cause problems when washed off fields, are applied in the Corn Belt.
So much fertilizer flushes out of Corn-Belt ditches that it forms an oxygen-starved “dead zone” at the point where the Mississippi enters the Gulf of Mexico. Depending on the year, the size of this dead zone runs from 2,000 to 8,000 square miles, from the size of Delaware to that of New Jersey. Before reaching the ocean, fertilizers feed algae blooms that turn lakes into toxic slime; evaporate into the air in the form of asthma-triggering, climate-warming gases; and contaminate drinking water, causing blue baby syndrome, which prevents infants from absorbing oxygen. In 1997, the federal government formed a hypoxia task force in an effort to stem the flow of fertilizer pollution. Today, the government spends about $6 billion every year on the problem, but all that money has not made a detectable difference in the dead zone, the regular algae blooms in Lake Erie and the health risks posed by fertilizer.
Even if you trace the mess upstream to small creeks and ponds, it’s hard to find any place that’s managed to clean itself up. Back in August, I’d set out to see if I could find a success story, one that might offer a template for others to follow. I started by contacting the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the federal agency formed after the Dust Bowl to help farmers take care of their land. The agency pointed me to Kutztown, Pennsylvania, where after 10 years of painstaking work, farmers and environmentalists had cleaned up the town’s drinking water enough to turn off a machine that had been removing fertilizer from the town well. I thought I’d found my story, until I learned that, after a couple rainy years, Kutztown had to turn the machine back on. Fertilizer pollution had returned to historic highs.
After several more dead ends, I finally found my way to the Shatto ditch, where a team run by Tank and Royer had documented lasting improvements in the area over the past seven years. Even during spring showers, they’d seen the sort of drop in pollution that would be needed to clean up the dead zone roughly 1,000 miles south — and that’s despite more rainfall, the main driver of nutrient runoff.
It’s clear there was a real change in this watershed. What was happening in Indiana? I made plans to go and see for myself.
It all started as a modest project by a collection of nonprofits, local agencies and farmers to clean up the Tippecanoe River, one of the most important rivers in the United States for ecological diversity and one of the last remaining healthy homes for the Midwest’s shellfish. It’s home to nearly 50 species of mussels, including threatened and endangered species with fantastic names: sheepnose, clubshell, fanshell, rabbitsfoot and snuffbox.
In 2006, The Nature Conservancy proposed widening the Shatto ditch to keep these mussels from getting smothered under silt. The wider ditch would act more like a natural creek, with a floodplain that would allow high water to spread out and slow down during storms. The slower the water moves, the less sediment it carries.
But before bulldozers started digging into corn and soybean fields to widen the ditch, dozens of people and organizations had to get on board with the plan. Nothing would work without the cooperation of the people who owned the land and farmers who would have to give up around 15 feet of cropland on either side of the ditch for the expansion. And the best way to approach landowners was through the Kosciusko County Soil and Water Conservation District, a local agency run by a board of farmers and residents.
The project also couldn’t get anywhere without the county surveyor, Mike Kissinger, in charge of maintaining all the drainage ditches. The Natural Resources Conservation Service, or NRCS, helped secure federal grants, and scientists like Tank took on the duty of testing whether anything worked.
This coalition managed to widen the first half mile of the ditch in 2007. Then they doubled down, aiming to widen the rest of it and simultaneously convince the farmers whose land straddles the waterway to plant cover crops that might catch fertilizer before it left their fields.
A cover crop is simply something grown over the winter, when fields are usually bare. Rye grass, clover and other plants hold fertilizer and soil with their roots, preventing it from washing downstream. Initially, 12 percent of fields draining into the Shatto ditch had cover crops, which the group managed to increase to 67 percent. Nationwide, just 4 percent of farmland grows cover crops.
Read more of the series
Farming’s growing problem
Lake Erie turns toxic every summer. Officials aren’t cracking down on the source.
Gulf shrimpers fight for their livelihoods in a fertilizer-fueled dead zone
A common fertilizer can cause explosions. Uneven regulation puts people at risk.
Bob Foltz, who had been farming in the area for 65 of his 82 years, was already planting cover crops before the project began. But he was dead set against losing land to the second stage of the ditch. “I stated before they even dug this damn ditch that cover crops would be more efficient,” he told me.
The group proposed putting all of the floodplain on the far side of the ditch where it ran past Foltz’s field, which meant he’d lose a lot less land. Foltz begrudgingly allowed the bulldozers through his land, but remained dubious. “To me, it’s just too damn much money,” he told me, never mind that the government would be paying the cost.
Kissinger made the case to farmers that widening the ditch would save them money in the long run. In theory, no one will ever have to scoop mud out of this ditch again. “It starts to silt up periodically and you have to go in and dip it back out every 5, 8, or 15 years,” Kissinger said. “In the long run, we think it’s going to be a tremendous savings.”
After backhoes finished moving mud to widen another 4 miles of the ditch in early 2018, the biggest flood in years hit the area. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s going to blow out,’” Tank, the Notre Dame professor, recalled. “But instead the floodwaters rose out onto those bare floodplains and slowed down, the particles settled and we saw these streaks of sand forming.”
It’s basic hydrology. As water loses speed, it drops more of the dirt and sand it’s carrying, forming a rippled pattern on the streambed. Galloping, muddy floods become clear-running rills.
Even Foltz was impressed. He stopped in at the Soil and Water Conservation District office and said, “That thing really does work for flood control.”
The wider ditch and cover crops also succeeded in cleaning up the floodwater, which wasn’t entirely surprising. “We already know what works. I think we have identified the tools we’re going to use to address the problem,” Royer said. The trick is in getting enough landowners to embrace them.
Shannon Speir fills a vial with water from the Shatto ditch for later analysis at the lab. (Nathanael Johnson / Grist)
As I talked to the people involved in the project and then drove around northern Indiana to meet them in person, I organized the stories they told me about why it had worked into three categories: meetings, momentum and money. No one emphasized meetings, per se: Instead they talked in vague terms about “the power of partnerships.” I confided to Jamie Scott, a farmer on the Kosciusko County Soil and Water Conservation District board, that all this fuzzy talk hinted at a fraught process. In my mind, partnerships meant meetings, and in my experience community meetings are dominated by the loudest, most self-serving voices.
A smile spread over Scott’s face as I spoke. “Everything you are describing is what happened in this watershed,” he responded.
There would be more obstacles in the way. One member of the group — with the clout to stop the project — had gotten the contract to excavate the first section of the ditch and assumed that he’d do the rest of the work, but didn’t get the job. When NBC showed a video featuring the project during a Notre Dame football game, some people were upset that it didn’t mention their roles. People with strong personalities, like Mike Long, a farmer who had a different idea for the design of a portion of the new ditch, clashed with more soft-spoken sensibilities.
“There’s times people would have liked to have taken him out back and dug a hole and buried him,” Scott said. “There’s other times it wouldn’t have got by without him.” Every time a conflict threatened to blow up the group, they managed to smooth things over.
I realized that bromides about partnerships were designed to avoid airing petty disputes. In the end, the ability to weather those disputes was the key to success. “Everybody could have gotten too frustrated and left, but they didn’t,” Scott said. “You got to have the people to say: There’s the goal. Forget about the clutter, forget about the squirrels, everything distracting us. That’s how this project got done.”
Those meetings only worked because many farmers had already embraced cover crops. The idea had momentum: The practice had been bubbling up through American agriculture long enough to have gathered steam. In an area where people aren’t always keen on “big government,” it helped that cover crops were not imposed by scientists, regulators, or environmentalists. The NRCS — long seen as a trustworthy advisor of farmers — had been zealously proselytizing the benefits of cover crops for years. The most innovative farmers had had ample time to experiment with cover crops, endure initial failures and figure out what worked. Foltz and Long were already true believers who could tick off a list of benefits they were seeing: better soil, less erosion, better nutrient availability, fewer weeds and pests.
“It takes several years to get the soil opened up and the earthworms working,” Foltz said, “but now we think cover crops are giving us an extra 10 to 15 bushels of corn an acre, and that adds up real quick.”
Scott took me to one field planted with grasses as well as sunflowers, hemp, fat turnips and thick-rooted radishes — some 20 species in all. He pushed a digging fork into the ground and leaned on it to expose a head-sized clot of soil. “There is just solid roots to that soil!” he said. “Look at all the earthworms. Look at those worm holes. If it rains 3 inches tonight, this soil isn’t going anywhere. With a plowed field, if we get 3 inches that soil’s movin’.”
All told, nearly 70 percent of the Shatto farmland — roughly equivalent to 600 football fields — was covered with ryegrass (and a few other cover crops) for six winters on end. The effects were dramatic. The water flowing out of the pipes that drained precipitation from the fields fell by about half, and the nitrates flowing out of those pipes fell between 80 and 50 percent, depending on the year.
Sign up for our Watchdog newsletter to hear about our latest stories.
“The cover crops are grabbing the nutrients,” Tank said. “They are not coming out when the water is flushed out.”
The project could have still fallen apart if it didn’t also come with piles of money. Contributions from The Nature Conservancy, the state and the federal government covered the cost of the two-stage ditch digging and the university scientists making thousands of measurements. Federal dollars paid for a subsidy of $45 for every acre planted with cover crops. “Without incentives, it would have been a tough sell,” said Darci Zolman, a staffer at the county soil and water district.
This year, the $45 cover-crop subsidy ran out, and some of the farmers decided they’d plant them on fewer acres. This suggests that the money is crucial to replicating Shatto’s success and getting the lion’s share of farmers in the United States to use cover crops. But that wouldn’t necessarily mean taxpayers would have to fork over more money; farmers already get more than $11 billion in subsidies every year. The government could simply stipulate that farmers have to take conservation measures to receive federal money.
Long, the farmer with the big personality, said that the government has been giving farmers subsidies without asking them to take care of their downstream neighbors for too long. “Now I voted for Trump, don’t get me wrong, but farmers have gotten kind of socialized under the Trump administration because he keeps giving us money,” he said. “For what? For doing nothing. I firmly feel that if there’s gonna be a government subsidy program it needs to be tied to environmental improvement. That’s it. I’m against subsidies just to keep the poorer managers afloat.”
Jamie Scott, a farmer on the Kosciusko County Soil and Water Conservation District board, in a field covered by a diverse mix of cover crops. (Nathanael Johnson / Grist)
To start cleaning up the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, you’d need to bring a similar combination of meetings, momentum and money to every watershed in the Mississippi River Basin — that is, expand what happened in northern Indiana more than 200,000-fold. When I asked people working on the Shatto ditch project how they’d recommend doing that, they quailed at the size of the challenge.
“We kind of laughed about the amount of work it’s taken over the last 14 years, just to get this off the ground,” said Chad Schotter, Kosciusko County district conservationist for the Natural Resource Conservation Service. To do the same thing for the entire Mississippi basin, he continued, “I don’t know. It’s going to take a lot of boots on the ground.”
The Shatto ditch is a triumph, but it may take more than incentives and neighborly persuasion to get 70 percent of fields in the Mississippi basin under cover crops and build floodplains for every drainage ditch. Meetings, momentum and money alone probably won’t cut it.
Enforcing laws and regulations is the more direct route. Back in 1999, a major study of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone found that the cheapest way to staunch the flow of fertilizer would be to identify the worst culprits and switch those fields from widely-spaced row crops to something more densely planted like wheat. “If I were Tsar and had a Cossack army to back me up, I’d start with the marginal land and buy out the leakiest acres,” said Otto Doerring, the Purdue University economist who led that study. But without an armed cavalry, or even much political will in the Corn Belt, politicians have stuck to voluntary measures, rather than imposing unpopular top-down rules.
“Find a problem anywhere of this size that has been solved through individual action — there’s no precedent,” said Chris Jones, a research engineer at the University of Iowa who works on fertilizer pollution. When I first met Jones in 2014, he thought all the voluntary measures farmers were trying would make a dent in the problem. But as pollution only got worse in Iowa, he changed his mind.
If cover crops don’t become the norm, the problem is sure to get worse. The most severe nutrient leaching happens during drenching storms, and those are happening more frequently.
“If you have a couple significant storm events over the course of a year it can really mask the effect of all the conservation practices,” said Royer, the Indiana University scientist. “That’s really concerning, because we are moving into a climate that’s probably going to have more of those intense storms. The challenge is only going to grow.”
The beautiful idea behind voluntary conservation practices like cover crops is that they might align the self-interest of farmers with the national interest in cleaning up fertilizer pollution. Getting farmers to see it as a necessary part of keeping their businesses running “would be even better than a magic bullet,” Tank said. Demonstrate that these practices work for both the farmers and their downstream neighbors, and they’d spread on their own.
That’s already happening. Neighboring landowners who have seen Long’s success have asked him to farm their fields, and acquaintances approach him at church to ask for advice. As Scott was giving me a tour in his red pickup, there was a check made out to him for his cover-cropping services sitting on the armrest between us. He has a business helping farmers manage 100,000 acres of cover crops throughout the region.
There are market forces behind cover crops now. Crop-duster airplane pilots are making extra money dropping seed into corn and soy fields in autumn, so that cover crops can get a head start before harvest. Seed companies and consultants profit by helping cover crops spread.
And maybe the very act of adopting conservation practices will open the door to other policies. The farmers I talked to in Indiana were genuinely concerned with cleaning up their mess. Experimenting with cover crops can open your eyes to the role of a farm as part of a larger system, Scott said.
When I asked him to elaborate, he told me about a friend of his who farms land downstream, where two rivers meet. “He’s sitting right there between between the White and the Wabash, and I mean, he floods all the time,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “His dad flooded maybe 1 out of 10 years, but now he’s to the point where they’re flooding 8 out of 10 years. And I told him one day, ‘Man, I’m sorry.’
“He’s like, ‘There’s nothing you can do about it.’
“I said, ‘There is something I can do about it. I feel like we are part of your problem.’”
It’s clear that leaving land bare and muddy, with hard soil from years of plowing, increases flooding during storms. Allowing fertilizer to escape in runoff hurts people downstream: the shrimpers in Louisiana, the lakeside residents and vacationers whose waterways turn slimy green. The state of Iowa alone sends tons of nitrogen fertilizer into the Mississippi River each year: Enough to fill 4,800 railroad tanker cars, about 13 per day on average, Jones calculated. The factories that make all that fertilizer emit tons of greenhouse gases, and the fertilizer-fueled algae blooms emit tons more.
Shut off this firehose of waste, and we’d be improving habitats, health and the makeup of the atmosphere. It might also save farmers trainloads of money. No one is saying the kind of improvement seen in the Shatto ditch is easy, but maybe it’s worth the struggle.
This article is a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity, Grist — a nonprofit media organization covering climate, justice and sustainability for a national audience — and The World, a radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter.
Read more in Environment
The Labor Department won’t take steps to protect health care workers from the coronavirus
The U.S. Department of Labor has rejected pressure to issue worker protections that nurses are demanding. The hospital industry wants it that way.
Michigan advisory panel members: halt water shutoffs amid COVID-19 spread
Panel borne out of Flint water crisis hopes to stop a new public-health disaster
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538591
|
__label__wiki
| 0.612789
| 0.612789
|
There are a number of coed Club Sport options for men and women on campus.
The Archery Club of Notre Dame is open to ALL staff members, students (undergraduate and graduate), and their families within the Notre Dame, St Mary’s, Holy Cross communities. Anyone with an interest in archery is welcome, from competition shooters to those who have never shot archery before. Instructors, facilities, and equipment are available. The ND Archery Club is an official member of USA Archery and was founded in 2017.
All staff and students of Notre Dame, St. Mary's and Holy Cross are welcome to join the Badminton Club of Notre Dame (BCUND). Whether you've played competitively or have no prior experience to the sport, come as you are and prepare to have lots of fun!
The ND Bowling Club enjoys recreational bowling three times a week at Chippewa Lanes in South Bend, and also supports men’s and women's competitive teams. The competitive teams are sanctioned by the United States Bowling Congress, USBC, and tryouts are held each fall.
The Climbing Club offers a chance for Notre Dame students, faculty, and staff of all experience levels to climb. Trips to Red River Gorge, Kentucky are led by club officers twice each semester, and all required equipment for climbing outdoors is provided by the club.
Notre Dame Cycling competes in USAC road, mountain, and cyclocross races as a proud member of the Midwest Collegiate Cycling Conference. Despite the team’s historic successes, results are just half the mission. We seek to fully develop racers of all levels on and off the bike with emphasis on the team and representing our beloved University with pride. The Notre Dame cycling club is composed of riders of all skill levels. Any student with interest in the sport of cycling is welcome to join the club regardless of athletic background. Throughout the year, the club hosts group rides where all are welcome to come and ride. Anyone with a bike is welcome to join and the club owns loaner bikes for students interested in trying the sport.
The Disc Golf Club works to enhance the disc golf experience, improve the skills of members, and promote the sporting ideals of disc golf. Etiquette, fair play, and inclusive participation are also emphasized. Everyone is welcome.
The Equestrian Club consists of two levels of membership: those who compete in events throughout Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois, and members that ride weekly, but do not compete. The club practices at Lucky Horse Equestrian Center, located 20 miles from campus in the town of Niles, MI, with a local coach, Kerry Hilgendorf. The club offers a weekly lesson for 12 weeks a semester to riders of all levels, from introductory to open fences. Undergraduates are eligible to compete in any of 10 regular season shows as members of the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA), Zone 7, Region 4. They have won many regular season honors, including High Point and Reserve High Point Team at several horse shows, and they consistently have riders win High Point or Reserve High Point Rider at those shows too. Riders have qualified for all post-season levels of competition, at Regionals, Zones and Nationals. Consistently one of the top teams in Region 4, the Equestrian team again garnered many honors this past 2018-2019 year, overall ending as Reserve High Point Team. They sent 8 riders to Regionals and 4 to Zone finals.
The Notre Dame Club Field Hockey team is a competitive club sport team that accepts people of all skill levels from beginners to experts. Many of its members played throughout high school, however, the club encourages anyone to join. Club Field Hockey is comprised of students from Notre Dame and St. Mary’s College. The team also allows males to join. The main season is in the Fall, with practices 2-3 times a week on Ricci Family Fields from 5:00 to 6:30 pm and several home and away games scheduled from September through November. During the spring semester the team practices one or two Sunday nights per month in Loftus (the indoor turf practice facility). Additionally, in the spring, they participate in the National Field Hockey League tournament in Virginia Beach, VA.
Notre Dame Figure Skating is a competitive team that consists of both Intercollegiate and Synchronized Skating. As members of the Midwestern conference, the synchronized skating team competes in 4 competitions a year while the Intercollegiate team competes in 3 competitions a year. The team will have practices throughout the year focusing on improving skating skills while having fun continuing in the sport
The Fishing Club of Notre Dame is devoted to gathering a community of students and faculty passionate about all types of angling. Over the last several years the club has participated in Fall and Spring Steelhead Tournaments on the Pere Marquette River in Michigan and the Ice Box Bass Tournament in Indianapolis, but also organizes weekend getaways, as well as afternoon trips to Saint Mary’s and Saint Joe’s lakes on Notre Dame’s campus.
Club Futsal is a Co-ed club designed to provide players with the opportunity to get involved in competitive-style play in the form of small-sided soccer scrimmages. The Notre Dame Club Futsal is a Co-ed club designed for those who have a passion for playing smaller-sided soccer. The club is open for all players from every skill level. We provide a competitive environment for players to enjoy kicking around and demonstrating their skillset during intra-club scrimmages. As a relatively new club, we are also looking for future ambassadors to expand the club and potentially develop participation in a competitive league with other universities.
Gaelic Athletic Association
Our main goal is to bring the Irish sports of Hurling and Gaelic Football to the home of the Fighting Irish
The Golf Club of Notre Dame is to provide undergraduates of Notre Dame, St. Mary’s and Holy Cross the opportunity to play golf on a regular basis in an organized and fun environment. Members can choose whether to join in order to compete to represent the club team in the Regional and National Tournaments hosted by the National Collegiate Club Golf Association, or just to play for fun, improve their game and enjoy the game of golf. In addition to the weekly rounds of stroke play golf at the Warren Golf Course, there will be a wide variety of golfing events to take part in throughout the semester.
The Gymnastics Club provides gymnasts, and those striving to be gymnasts, an opportunity to train, learn, and compete. The club is open to students of all three schools—Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s, and Holy Cross. Practices are held every weekday, year-round, and competitions are offered, but not required of team members.
We are a competitive jump rope team focused on introducing new jumpers to the sport and building their skill sets in single rope, double dutch, and wheel ropes. In addition to being a great workout, our practices are focused on preparation for performances around Notre Dame and South Bend, for workshops with the Notre Dame Center for Arts and Culture, and for competition against other universities including Stanford, UNC, Ohio State, and many others. Check out our Instagram! @notredamejumprope
Notre Dame Martial Arts Institute takes the best of the martial arts world – defense, discipline, and enjoyment – and offers it to students from all backgrounds and ability levels. Nearly every member advances each year. The club is non-competitive and welcomes all interested students.
The Nordic Ski Club strives to offer cross-country skiing opportunities to both new and experienced skiers. New skiers benefit from an initially non-competitive, educational environment that gives adventurous high school athletes the opportunity to invest themselves in a winter sport, while experienced skiers train and compete across the upper Midwest at national competitions like the American Birkebeiner and North American Vasa. The team trains year-round with ski practices at local parks as soon as snow conditions permit, and races typically occur on weekends throughout the first half of the spring semester. Membership is open to Notre Dame, St. Mary’s, and Holy Cross students.
The Racquetball Club seeks to provide an organized environment for students to learn and play the game. This includes biweekly meet-ups to play pick up games as well as monthly tournaments for prizes.
The Running club of Notre Dame is a rapidly-growing co-ed athletic club for runners of all fitness and commitment levels from Notre Dame, St. Mary's, and Holy Cross. In affiliation with the National Intercollegiate Running Club Association, we compete against other collegiate clubs from all over the country. With a cross country season in the fall and an indoor and outdoor track season in the spring, both culminating with national meets, we train and race year-round. If you'd rather run just for fun, we have a lot of non-competitive members as well. Aside from running, we put on a number of social events, including a formal, a Rundies awards ceremony, team dinners twice a week after practice, and hangouts with the team. Come see how our welcoming family atmosphere manages to make running fun!
We give all students of Notre Dame, St. Mary's, and Holy Cross the opportunity to get on the water and improve their sailing skill while at school. We host all levels of skill ranging from national competitors to people who had never touched a boat before joining the team. Our goals are to make sure that everybody can improve their skills regardless of their starting point in a fun environment and also to be competitive in collegiate regattas both in the midwest and throughout the country.
Ski & Snowboard club competes in Slalom, Giant Slalom, and Snowboarding in the Midwest Collegiate Ski Association (MCSA). Try outs are held at the beginning of the spring semester.
Spikeball Roundnet Club, Notre Dame (SRCND) is excited to bring Spikeball to Notre Dame's campus! Our mission as a coed club is to provide an opportunity for students of the University of Notre Dame, Holy Cross College, and Saint Mary’s College to learn and play Spikeball, regardless of experience and skills, in both a friendly and competitive environment. Our goals are to have regular practice sessions, set up open campus wide tournaments for fundraising and promotion, and travel to or host other colleges to compete in intercollegiate tournaments.
The ND Squash Club is a student led organization that offers both casual play and competitive tournaments and travel for those interested in each. We compete in the College Squash Association and usually make 3 or 4 trips to tournaments every year to qualify for CSA Nationals at the end of the season.
The Notre Dame Swim Club is a competitive swim team comprised of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s, and Holy Cross students. We offer afternoon practices Monday through Friday at the Rockne Memorial Pool. Our practices and swim meets are not mandatory, which allows our swimmers to maintain a healthy school, swimming, and social life balance. The club travels regionally throughout the year to compete with other universities and travels to the College Club Swimming Nationals meet every April. Our team prides itself in our family atmosphere and our desire to keep swimming fun!
We are a budding club committed to forming players’ technical table tennis abilities while maintaining a friendly learning environment. We welcome both experienced players who want to join our ranks as we compete in 3rd official season within the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association, as well people with no prior table tennis experience who just want to hit around and have fun.
Notre Dame Club Tennis provides an opportunity for Notre Dame, St. Mary's and Holy Cross students to continue playing competitive and recreational tennis throughout college. The competitive team travels throughout the Midwest to compete as a coed squad against other collegiate tennis clubs within the United States Tennis Association's Tennis On Campus Midwest region. In recent years, the team has traveled to tournaments in Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio and has participated in the USTA Tennis On Campus National Tournament in Orlando, Florida. The club also partners with the South Bend Racquet Club to host a BuddyUp Tennis program to share the sport with children with Down syndrome on Saturday's in the Spring. Both the competitive and recreational team practice an equal amount in the evenings at the Eck Tennis Pavilion.
Founded in 2009, the Notre Dame Triathlon Club is focused on providing training for individuals on campus to help them prepare for triathlon competitions. This club is open to all students of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s, and Holy Cross, and encourages all who are interested in getting in shape and meeting new people.
The Notre Dame Ultimate Club combines a commitment to competitive excellence with a fun-loving atmosphere, and provides a great opportunity for camaraderie to all interested students. The Notre Dame Ultimate Club has both a men’s team and a women’s team (play is not coed). Each year, the club travels extensively, and typically plays several tournaments over the course of each semester.
Founded in 2008 and revived in 2013, Notre Dame’s Waterski Team is soaring to new heights. We compete in USA Waterski’s three-event collegiate tournaments consisting of slalom, trick, and jump events in both the fall and spring seasons. The Irish turned in an all-time best performance at the 2018 Great Lakes Conference Championships and are looking forward to the team’s future in the coming years. We practice on a private lake just thirty minutes from campus. Most importantly, we welcome new members of all abilities to take to the water with our seasoned corps of skiers to learn, train, and have an amazing time while doing so.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538598
|
__label__wiki
| 0.636611
| 0.636611
|
Poppy is the author of "A Bard's Lament." She lives in Enoshima and likes to read novels and play video games, especially open-world RPGs.
Leonardo DiCaprio is an American actor who has charmed our television screens since the early 1990s and continues to be a popular actor today. He has won a large number of well-deserved awards, the most recent (as of August 2017) being the Academy Award for Best Actor for his work in The Revenant (2015).
According to his website, DiCaprio has been in 27 feature films to date and been nominated or won 206 awards. He is most certainly a successful Hollywood actor.
He has appeared in various TV shows as well as movies, including Parenthood which ran from 1990 to 1991, and Growing Pains from 1985 to 1992. Since his early appearances, DiCaprio has established himself as one of Hollywood's most well-loved actors.
Aside from his acting work, DiCaprio is also an enviromental activist. He has appeared in a lot of movies, and here are my top 5 favourites.
5. Blood Diamond (2006)
Blood Diamond tells the story of 1990s Sierra Leone ravaged by civil war. White South African mercenary (DiCaprio) and black Mende fisherman (played by Diimon Hounsou) join together to track down a precious gem that could transform their lives.
DiCaprio brought an already good script to life with his acting and his South African accent, which is a difficult one to imitate. I first watched this interesting movie in history class in school and it always stuck with me. Although the story is fictional, it sends a powerful story as to where diamonds really come from and the true price of them.
Listal
4. Titanic (1997)
Titanic is based on the true story of the famous huge ship, the RMS Titanic, that sunk after hitting an iceberg in 1912, killing between 1,490 and 1,635 people. Although the movie has some accuracy, the main characters, Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (DiCaprio) are fictional.
Rose is the daughter of a wealthy family and betrothed to an equally wealthy gentleman but is unhappy with her life. When she contemplates suicide, she meets Jack, an adventurous poor boy who loves to sketch and travel. Love blossoms amidst one of the most well-known ship sinkings in history.
It remains as one of the most famous movies of all time. DiCaprio charmed audiences with his fun-loving character, Jack, who saved Rose in more ways than one. It's a tear-jerker that's great to watch with family or as a couple.
I first saw this movie when I was a child and my cousin cried thinking that DiCaprio really had died. It's one that I re-watch every couple of years and deserved its Academy Award for Best Picture.
3. Shutter Island (2010)
Shutter Island is a fantastic movie set in a fortress-like insane asylum on a remote island. After a patient seems to disappear from a locked room, Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his assistant (Mark Ruffalo) travel to the island to investigate. However, it seems that there are deeper secrets in the asylum and Teddy has to face his own fears to solve the mystery.
This action-packed thriller always keeps you guessing and is weird, entertaining and exciting all at the same time. I recommend watching it with friends and see if you can guess the ending!
2. Django Unchained (2012)
Django Unchained also stars Jamie Foxx and tells a powerful story of black slavery in the 1850s. An escaped slave (Foxx) sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal slave owner in Mississippi (DiCaprio).
The movie tells a fictional story based on real life events and history. Some of the scenes are a bit upsetting but it's one of those movies you won't forget. DiCaprio plays a convincing role of a merciless rich slave owner who the audience just loved to hate. Fantastic performances were also given by Jamie Foxx and Samuel L Jackson.
New DVD Release Dates
Inception is one of those movies that you can watch again and again. The unique story is about Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) who has the rare ability to be able to enter people's dreams and steal secrets from their subconcious. This rare gift costs Cobb everything he loves but there's a chance for him to go back home if he can perform inception... the concept of planting an idea in one's mind.
This movie has some other favourite actors of mine such as Tom Hardy and Ken Watanabe, making the very clever story come to life. It's a somewhat mind-blowing movie with unique concepts and requires you to watch it more than once to get your head around it. This, in my opinion, is Leonardo DiCaprio's best movie.
Leonardo DiCaprio only seems to be getting better with time and has played many great roles that fans continue to enjoy. At only 42 years old, he still has many years of acting ahead of him and we hope to see more of this handsome Hollywood star in upcoming titles.
Poppy (author) from Enoshima, Japan on October 25, 2017:
Thank you for commenting :) I haven't seen Catch Me If You Can, so I'll have to watch it and add it to this list. I agree, he's a great actor.
Thank you also for sharing that you lived in Japan, that's really cool! Would you like to visit again?
Patricia Scott from North Central Florida on October 25, 2017:
He is a favorite of mine...my favorite movie of his is "Catch Me if you Can"....what I like about him is I feel he becomes the character....he makes me believe....and I do not feel he is 'acting.' Well done. thank you for sharing. Angels are on the way.
As an aside I lived in Japan on Tachikawa Air Base with my husband and daughter for 5 years in the seventies. Loved coming to Tokyo. Loved all this Japanese and still do.
Catherine Giordano from Orlando Florida on October 24, 2017:
My son loved Leonardo DiCaprio in "Catch Me If You Can." It is a really fun movie. Leonardo has made so many great movies. You mentioned a coupe that I have missed. I'll have to check for them on Netflix.
Poppy (author) from Enoshima, Japan on August 10, 2017:
Yeah there are definitely many DiCaprio movies to choose from. Thank you so much for commenting, it means a lot :)
Laura Smith from Pittsburgh, PA on August 09, 2017:
This is a good list. You could easily do another top five, and the movies would be equally as good. I just re-watched "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" last night, and his performance was not only Oscar-worthy but seemed to take on its own life. Arnie Grape feels like he's walking the earth separate from DiCaprio, still climbing trees and refusing to take a bath.
Inception is definitely my favourite, too! Thank you so much for your comments!
Mamerto Adan from Cabuyao on August 06, 2017:
I'm never a Titanic fan, but I love inception and blood diamond.
Top 9 Movies for Jim Carrey Fans
5 Great Movies for Seth Rogan Fans
8 Awesome Movies for Gerard Butler Fans
Top 5 Rachel McAdams Movies
Top 10 Leonardo DiCaprio Movies of All Time
By Mare-sensei
15 Hottest Male Actors Who Are Over 50 Years Old
Top 5 Villain Songs in Disney Movies
Top 5 Saddest “Coronation Street” Deaths
The 5 Sexiest Men in Movie History
By Sychophantastic
4 Movies Where Comedians Acted Serious and Did an Amazing Job
Top 10 Deaths in the “Saw” Movie Franchise
Top 10 Greatest Johnny Depp Movies of All Time
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538599
|
__label__wiki
| 0.936905
| 0.936905
|
Speak to an expert 0203 389 9786
Five night stay – Glorious Gleneagles
Login or Register to save your favourites
Home > Experiences > Five night stay – Glorious Gleneagles
Take full advantage of everything on offer at Gleneagles with this fully comprehensive Reglar experience. Sumptious Manor bedroom with obligatory full Scottish breakfast every morning. An evening of fine dining at their prized award-winning restaurant the Strathearn. A round of golf with lunch at the Dormy Clubhouse. 80 minute spa treatment and afternoon tea. A whisky masterclass and a one hour of off-road driving (not in that order!). Horse riding or a shooting lesson to round off this superb eclectic mix of high-energy pursuits and relaxing downtime.
Five nights’ accommodation in a Manor Room
Dinner on two evenings in the 2 AA Rosette Strathearn Restaurant
One round of golf
Lunch in The Dormy Clubhouse
80-minute spa treatment in the Spa at Gleneagles
Afternoon Tea on one day
Whisky Masterclass
One hour all terrain off road driving lesson
Your choice of either Horse Riding or Shooting Lesson
“A superb eclectic mix of high-energy pursuits and relaxing downtime“
Full pre-payment required at the time of booking. Should you wish to make a change to your booking – it can be amended up to 48 hours prior to arrival.
Mr Mrs Ms Other
Preferred arrival date *
Select: January 2021 Tue 19/01/2021 Wed 20/01/2021 Thu 21/01/2021 Fri 22/01/2021 Sat 23/01/2021 Sun 24/01/2021 Mon 25/01/2021 Tue 26/01/2021 Wed 27/01/2021 Thu 28/01/2021 Fri 29/01/2021 Sat 30/01/2021 Sun 31/01/2021February 2021 Mon 01/02/2021 Tue 02/02/2021 Wed 03/02/2021 Thu 04/02/2021 Fri 05/02/2021 Sat 06/02/2021 Sun 07/02/2021 Mon 08/02/2021 Tue 09/02/2021 Wed 10/02/2021 Thu 11/02/2021 Fri 12/02/2021 Sat 13/02/2021 Sun 14/02/2021 Mon 15/02/2021 Tue 16/02/2021 Wed 17/02/2021 Thu 18/02/2021 Fri 19/02/2021 Sat 20/02/2021 Sun 21/02/2021 Mon 22/02/2021 Tue 23/02/2021 Wed 24/02/2021 Thu 25/02/2021 Fri 26/02/2021 Sat 27/02/2021 Sun 28/02/2021March 2021 Mon 01/03/2021 Tue 02/03/2021 Wed 03/03/2021 Thu 04/03/2021 Fri 05/03/2021 Sat 06/03/2021 Sun 07/03/2021 Mon 08/03/2021 Tue 09/03/2021 Wed 10/03/2021 Thu 11/03/2021 Fri 12/03/2021 Sat 13/03/2021 Sun 14/03/2021 Mon 15/03/2021 Tue 16/03/2021 Wed 17/03/2021 Thu 18/03/2021 Fri 19/03/2021 Sat 20/03/2021 Sun 21/03/2021 Mon 22/03/2021 Tue 23/03/2021 Wed 24/03/2021 Thu 25/03/2021 Fri 26/03/2021 Sat 27/03/2021 Sun 28/03/2021 Mon 29/03/2021 Tue 30/03/2021 Wed 31/03/2021April 2021 Thu 01/04/2021 Fri 02/04/2021 Sat 03/04/2021 Sun 04/04/2021 Mon 05/04/2021 Tue 06/04/2021 Wed 07/04/2021 Thu 08/04/2021 Fri 09/04/2021 Sat 10/04/2021 Sun 11/04/2021 Mon 12/04/2021 Tue 13/04/2021 Wed 14/04/2021 Thu 15/04/2021 Fri 16/04/2021 Sat 17/04/2021 Sun 18/04/2021 Mon 19/04/2021 Tue 20/04/2021 Wed 21/04/2021 Thu 22/04/2021 Fri 23/04/2021 Sat 24/04/2021 Sun 25/04/2021 Mon 26/04/2021 Tue 27/04/2021 Wed 28/04/2021 Thu 29/04/2021 Fri 30/04/2021May 2021 Sat 01/05/2021 Sun 02/05/2021 Mon 03/05/2021 Tue 04/05/2021 Wed 05/05/2021 Thu 06/05/2021 Fri 07/05/2021 Sat 08/05/2021 Sun 09/05/2021 Mon 10/05/2021 Tue 11/05/2021 Wed 12/05/2021 Thu 13/05/2021 Fri 14/05/2021 Sat 15/05/2021 Sun 16/05/2021 Mon 17/05/2021 Tue 18/05/2021 Wed 19/05/2021 Thu 20/05/2021 Fri 21/05/2021 Sat 22/05/2021 Sun 23/05/2021 Mon 24/05/2021 Tue 25/05/2021 Wed 26/05/2021 Thu 27/05/2021 Fri 28/05/2021 Sat 29/05/2021 Sun 30/05/2021 Mon 31/05/2021June 2021 Tue 01/06/2021 Wed 02/06/2021 Thu 03/06/2021 Fri 04/06/2021 Sat 05/06/2021 Sun 06/06/2021 Mon 07/06/2021 Tue 08/06/2021 Wed 09/06/2021 Thu 10/06/2021 Fri 11/06/2021 Sat 12/06/2021 Sun 13/06/2021 Mon 14/06/2021 Tue 15/06/2021 Wed 16/06/2021 Thu 17/06/2021 Fri 18/06/2021 Sat 19/06/2021 Sun 20/06/2021 Mon 21/06/2021 Tue 22/06/2021 Wed 23/06/2021 Thu 24/06/2021 Fri 25/06/2021 Sat 26/06/2021 Sun 27/06/2021 Mon 28/06/2021 Tue 29/06/2021 Wed 30/06/2021July 2021 Thu 01/07/2021 Fri 02/07/2021 Sat 03/07/2021 Sun 04/07/2021 Mon 05/07/2021 Tue 06/07/2021 Wed 07/07/2021 Thu 08/07/2021 Fri 09/07/2021 Sat 10/07/2021 Sun 11/07/2021 Mon 12/07/2021 Tue 13/07/2021 Wed 14/07/2021 Thu 15/07/2021 Fri 16/07/2021 Sat 17/07/2021 Sun 18/07/2021 Mon 19/07/2021 Tue 20/07/2021 Wed 21/07/2021 Thu 22/07/2021 Fri 23/07/2021 Sat 24/07/2021 Sun 25/07/2021 Mon 26/07/2021 Tue 27/07/2021 Wed 28/07/2021 Thu 29/07/2021 Fri 30/07/2021 Sat 31/07/2021August 2021 Sun 01/08/2021 Mon 02/08/2021 Tue 03/08/2021 Wed 04/08/2021 Thu 05/08/2021 Fri 06/08/2021 Sat 07/08/2021 Sun 08/08/2021 Mon 09/08/2021 Tue 10/08/2021 Wed 11/08/2021 Thu 12/08/2021 Fri 13/08/2021 Sat 14/08/2021 Sun 15/08/2021 Mon 16/08/2021 Tue 17/08/2021 Wed 18/08/2021 Thu 19/08/2021 Fri 20/08/2021 Sat 21/08/2021 Sun 22/08/2021 Mon 23/08/2021 Tue 24/08/2021 Wed 25/08/2021 Thu 26/08/2021 Fri 27/08/2021 Sat 28/08/2021 Sun 29/08/2021 Mon 30/08/2021 Tue 31/08/2021September 2021 Wed 01/09/2021 Thu 02/09/2021 Fri 03/09/2021 Sat 04/09/2021 Sun 05/09/2021 Mon 06/09/2021 Tue 07/09/2021 Wed 08/09/2021 Thu 09/09/2021 Fri 10/09/2021 Sat 11/09/2021 Sun 12/09/2021 Mon 13/09/2021 Tue 14/09/2021 Wed 15/09/2021 Thu 16/09/2021 Fri 17/09/2021 Sat 18/09/2021 Sun 19/09/2021 Mon 20/09/2021 Tue 21/09/2021 Wed 22/09/2021 Thu 23/09/2021 Fri 24/09/2021 Sat 25/09/2021 Sun 26/09/2021 Mon 27/09/2021 Tue 28/09/2021 Wed 29/09/2021 Thu 30/09/2021October 2021 Fri 01/10/2021 Sat 02/10/2021 Sun 03/10/2021 Mon 04/10/2021 Tue 05/10/2021 Wed 06/10/2021 Thu 07/10/2021 Fri 08/10/2021 Sat 09/10/2021 Sun 10/10/2021 Mon 11/10/2021 Tue 12/10/2021 Wed 13/10/2021 Thu 14/10/2021 Fri 15/10/2021 Sat 16/10/2021 Sun 17/10/2021 Mon 18/10/2021 Tue 19/10/2021 Wed 20/10/2021 Thu 21/10/2021 Fri 22/10/2021 Sat 23/10/2021 Sun 24/10/2021 Mon 25/10/2021 Tue 26/10/2021 Wed 27/10/2021 Thu 28/10/2021 Fri 29/10/2021 Sat 30/10/2021 Sun 31/10/2021November 2021 Mon 01/11/2021 Tue 02/11/2021 Wed 03/11/2021 Thu 04/11/2021 Fri 05/11/2021 Sat 06/11/2021 Sun 07/11/2021 Mon 08/11/2021 Tue 09/11/2021 Wed 10/11/2021 Thu 11/11/2021 Fri 12/11/2021 Sat 13/11/2021 Sun 14/11/2021 Mon 15/11/2021 Tue 16/11/2021 Wed 17/11/2021 Thu 18/11/2021 Fri 19/11/2021 Sat 20/11/2021 Sun 21/11/2021 Mon 22/11/2021 Tue 23/11/2021 Wed 24/11/2021 Thu 25/11/2021 Fri 26/11/2021 Sat 27/11/2021 Sun 28/11/2021 Mon 29/11/2021 Tue 30/11/2021December 2021 Wed 01/12/2021 Thu 02/12/2021 Fri 03/12/2021 Sat 04/12/2021 Sun 05/12/2021 Mon 06/12/2021 Tue 07/12/2021 Wed 08/12/2021 Thu 09/12/2021 Fri 10/12/2021 Sat 11/12/2021 Sun 12/12/2021 Mon 13/12/2021 Tue 14/12/2021 Wed 15/12/2021 Thu 16/12/2021 Fri 17/12/2021 Sat 18/12/2021 Sun 19/12/2021 Mon 20/12/2021 Tue 21/12/2021 Wed 22/12/2021 Thu 23/12/2021 Fri 24/12/2021 Sat 25/12/2021 Sun 26/12/2021 Mon 27/12/2021 Tue 28/12/2021 Wed 29/12/2021 Thu 30/12/2021 Fri 31/12/2021January 2022 Sat 01/01/2022 Sun 02/01/2022 Mon 03/01/2022 Tue 04/01/2022 Wed 05/01/2022 Thu 06/01/2022 Fri 07/01/2022 Sat 08/01/2022 Sun 09/01/2022 Mon 10/01/2022 Tue 11/01/2022 Wed 12/01/2022 Thu 13/01/2022 Fri 14/01/2022 Sat 15/01/2022 Sun 16/01/2022 Mon 17/01/2022 Tue 18/01/2022 Wed 19/01/2022 Thu 20/01/2022 Fri 21/01/2022 Sat 22/01/2022 Sun 23/01/2022 Mon 24/01/2022 Tue 25/01/2022 Wed 26/01/2022 Thu 27/01/2022 Fri 28/01/2022 Sat 29/01/2022 Sun 30/01/2022 Mon 31/01/2022February 2022 Tue 01/02/2022 Wed 02/02/2022 Thu 03/02/2022 Fri 04/02/2022 Sat 05/02/2022 Sun 06/02/2022 Mon 07/02/2022 Tue 08/02/2022 Wed 09/02/2022 Thu 10/02/2022 Fri 11/02/2022 Sat 12/02/2022 Sun 13/02/2022 Mon 14/02/2022 Tue 15/02/2022 Wed 16/02/2022 Thu 17/02/2022 Fri 18/02/2022 Sat 19/02/2022 Sun 20/02/2022 Mon 21/02/2022 Tue 22/02/2022
Number of nights *
Number of adults *
I agree to my contact details being stored and used to receive communications from Suites and Villas. Click here to view our Privacy Policy
For the love of travel
If you love inspiring travel ideas as much as we love curating them; then subscribe to our regular newsletters to be kept up-to-date on new additions to our collection and ideas for your next adventure.
Get inspired and stay up to date with the world of travel and get early access to great travel offers by subscribing to Your World, our free newsletter
I agree to my contact details being stored and used to receive communications from Suites and Villas by letsgo2. Click here to view our Privacy Policy
Exceptional holidays reimagined
hello@reglarcollection.com
7 Bell Yard, London, WC2A 2JR
© 2020 The Ickenham Travel Group All rights reserved. The air holidays and flights shown are ATOL protected by the Civil Aviation Authority. Our ATOL number is ATOL 4950. Protection extends primarily to customers who book and pay in the United Kingdom. Click on the ATOL logo for verification. Reglar Collection is a division of Ickenham Travel Group PLC. Registered in England: 7 Bell Yard, London. WC2A 2JR. No. 986305. VAT Reg No: 222910006.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538600
|
__label__wiki
| 0.891743
| 0.891743
|
Big Soda Enlists Little Soda Against Sugar Water Tax
Scott Lucas | August 22, 2014 | Story Politics
Here's a picture of a new billboard that the opponents of Proposition E, the tax on soda that San Francisco will vote on this fall, just put at the corner of Pacific and Sansome near Jackson Square (and right around San Francisco's office). Is it a little sneaky to use the face of a small business-owner tø argue for the interests of massive soda companies? Probably a little bit.
But it's also yet another early sign that the fight over Supervisor Scott Wiener's proposal to put a two cent per ounce tax on sugary beverages like soda, will face tough opposition in its attempt to garner 2/3rds support from the city's voters.
The billboard features Taylor Peck, the co-owner of The Fizzary, a soda boutique, in the Haight and the Mission, and is paid for by the No on E campaign. That group, in turn, has funding from the American Beverage Association California Political Action Committee. It's a billboard paid, in part, by Coke and Pepsi that uses the guy who sells Dr. Brown's Kosher Root Beer, Filipino Sasparilla, and espresso coffee soda. Astroturfing? You bet. It's a lot easier to be sympathetic to the local than it to the giant multinational corporation.
That's not to say that Peck isn't entitled to give his point of view. He is. But it's also a case of a front-guy doing the work of Big Soda companies.
Though the billboard doesn't give any reasons in opposition to the tax, it's not hard to put it together. The group's website argues that, "a new tax that would only serve to drive up grocery prices and make it even more expensive to live and work in San Francisco." In other words: Soda companies would lose money.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538608
|
__label__wiki
| 0.952002
| 0.952002
|
Renter, Heal Thyself
Evelyn Nieves | November 17, 2014 | Story Politics
Ted Gullicksen
On a humid afternoon in early October, the headquarters of the San Francisco Tenants Union looked like a crisis center after a natural disaster. Anxious renters packed the front parlor of the Victorian flat. The air smelled sweaty. Phones buzzed and beeped.
Ted Gullicksen was fielding calls in his back office, from which he and his staff—one other person—empowered a small army of volunteers to assist tenants. In his 26 years as executive director of the Tenants Union, he had never seen so many renters afraid of losing their home. Every month of 2014 had set a record—more than 300 tenants had sought help in September, Gullicksen said, and panic was becoming the norm. “The dot-com boom of the early 2000s was a Scud missile,” he said. “This tech boom is the neutron bomb.” If he was stressed over the deluge—and how could he not be?—he never let it show. He even helped out with one-on-one counseling sessions with renters when he could spare the time, a challenge during the campaign season.
Election time is a big deal at the Tenants Union—and vice versa. For decades, the organization has been a political and social force in San Francisco, commanding the respect of city hall and courted for endorsements, in large part because of its track record of getting laws passed that protect renters. It started in 1992 with a ballot measure that cut annually permitted rent increases in half, a victory that led Gullicksen to introduce a 1994 measure that removed the rent-control exemption from buildings with four or fewer units. When that passed, the soft-spoken, bespectacled activist insisted that the Tenants Union put a measure on the ballot in every even-numbered election year.
Gullicksen, who moved to San Francisco from Massachusetts in 1985 to be a community organizer and “change the world,” seemed to have hit on a winning formula. A fellow longtime advocate for low-income tenants, Randy Shaw, director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, once described him as the rare activist who could spend one day lobbying supervisors about legislation and the next occupying a building.
By October, Gullicksen was working seven days a week on this year’s big ballot push, Proposition G, designed to discourage speculators from buying multi-unit buildings to flip at huge profit. Opponents, fueled by donations from realtors’ groups, spent more than $2 million to defeat the measure; the Yes on G campaign raised just $200,000 for its get-out- the-vote effort. Nevertheless, Gullicksen sounded confident. “We’ve still got the numbers,” he said while catching up on paperwork in his office on Sunday, October 12. “Two-thirds of San Franciscans rent. We have a large constituency.”
In fact, Gullicksen insisted, the housing crisis had only made the tenants’ movement stronger. “We have volunteers who were never involved in politics or causes before,” he said. “Now, they want to do something to save their homes and neighborhoods.” He was smiling, as usual, and petting his little whitish terrier mix, Falcor (named for the luck dragon in The Never Ending Story), who was curled up on his lap.
Two days later, Gullicksen was found in his bed in his Bayview apartment, apparently having died in his sleep. He was 61 years old.
The outpouring of public grief was unrestrained, the kudos from city leaders universal. “Ted dedicated his life to the fight for the rights of tenants and for affordable housing in San Francisco,” Mayor Ed Lee said in a statement issued swiftly after news of Gullicksen’s death hit the Internet. “His advocacy over the decades helped to put in place some of the strongest tenant protections in the country.”
Activists heralded a posthumous achievement: a law, passed by the Board of Supervisors on October 21 in a 7–4 vote, that will regulate buyouts, the practice of landlords offering tenants money to vacate a unit. Gullicksen had argued that buyouts not only gave landlords a loophole in the city law that forbids evictions except for just cause, but also made it impossible to track the true number of displacements. Supervisor David Campos, who sponsored the legislation, called the new law “another part of Ted Gullicksen’s incredible legacy of protecting tenants.” Organizers rechristened the Yes on G campaign, calling it Yes on Gullicksen as a reminder to work harder for their mentor’s last ballot measure.
But Proposition G failed. On Election Day, voters soundly rejected it, 54 to 46 percent. Gullicksen’s allies tried to put a good face on the outcome, arguing that considering the money spent by their opponents, the result was actually encouraging.
But the defeat of Prop. G only makes more pressing the questions that the political class has been pondering since Gullicksen’s death: Can the tenants’ movement withstand the blow? Who can replace him? Gullicksen was not only a passionate activist; he was a gentle, modest man. Again and again, tributes on his Facebook page marveled at his humble demeanor, his unwillingness to take personal credit for the Tenants Union’s achievements, his dedication to the cause, his reliance on a bike for transportation, his secondhand wardrobe, his smarts.
In an open letter on its website, the Tenants Union (calling itself “Ted Gullicksen’s University of Activists”) pledged to honor his legacy by “sharing his love of San Francisco, for all people everywhere, for social justice, and for positive action to reach it.” Whether a new leader or leaders with Gullicksen’s unique abilities will emerge remains to be seen.
Originally published in the December issue of San Francisco
Follow Evelyn Nieves on Twitter @enievesAP
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538609
|
__label__cc
| 0.563031
| 0.436969
|
UCSF Study Says Drinking Soda Will Make You Die Sooner
Scott Lucas | October 21, 2014 | Lifestyle Story City Life
A telomere.
Coca-Cola could be killing you. That's according to a team of UCSF researchers, who have found evidence that regular consumption of sugary sodas is associated with a shortened life span. In the medical field, this would be known as a bad thing. Technically speaking.
The group tracked a sample of 5,309 adults in the United States, aged 20 to 65 years, asking them to count their beverage consumption and comparing that data with the length of individuals' telomeres, a chromosomal sequence that mirrors the body's aging. The shorter the telomeres, the shorter one's lifespan and the greater one's chances of developing chronic diseases. Those people who had consumed a 20-ounce sugared soda daily (which 21% of the study's participants did) were found to have aged an additional 4.6 biological years over those who did not. That effect was found independent of sugar-sweetened soda's effects on obesity. The study found no association between aging and the consumption of artificially sweetened sodas or non-carbonated beverages like fruit juice.
“Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened sodas might influence disease development, not only by straining the body’s metabolic control of sugars, but also through accelerated cellular aging of tissues,” said Elissa Epel, the study's lead author, in a statement. The study used telomere length data that had been collected by the laboratory of Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2009 for her work on aging.
Efforts to tax sodas and other sugary beverages to reduce consumption are on the ballots this November in San Francisco and Berkeley. We can't imagine the study will come up at all during debates about those. Nope, not a chance.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538610
|
__label__wiki
| 0.730884
| 0.730884
|
Home > Dedman School of Law > Law Journals > SMU Law Review > Vol. 71 (2018) > Texas Gulf Sulphur 50th Anniversary Symposium Issue
Unintended Consequences: The Link Between Judge Friendly’s Texas Gulf Sulphur Concurrence and Recent Supreme Court Decisions Misconstruing Rule 10b-5
Margaret V. Sachs, University of Georgia School of LawFollow
In his Texas Gulf Sulphur concurrence, Judge Henry J. Friendly coun- seled the federal district courts concerning the numerous pending satellite class actions that had been filed under Section 10(b) of the Securities Ex- change Act and Rule 10b-5. In the course of so doing, he argued forcefully that private Rule 10b-5 litigation should be curtailed. Finding his argument convincing, the Supreme Court issued four major decisions restricting the Rule between 1975 and 1994, while nonetheless expanding it in Basic Inc. v. Levinson. Congress responded by blessing both aspects of the Court’s jurisprudence – imposing its own set of restrictions in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the PSLRA) and the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 as well as deciding to leave Basic intact after contemplating an override.
Emboldened by Congress’s double ratification, the Court has since restricted private Rule 10b-5 litigation on three separate occasions with monumental consequences. Judge Friendly would not have approved of these restrictions, since they rest on misreadings that ought to have been discerned. In Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd., for example, the Court extracted from Section 10(b) a “transactional test” designed to curb the Section’s extraterritorial reach. The test assumes that Section 10(b) ex- tends to over the counter transactions due to the unavailability of exchange venues for the transactions in unregistered securities to which the Section refers. But that analysis ignores the reality that exchanges could serve as hosts for such transactions when Section 10(b) was enacted, as the face of the original Exchange Act makes apparent.
Thereafter, in Janus Capital Group, Inc. v. First Derivative Traders, the Court imposed an “ultimate authority test” to determine who can “make” a materially misleading misstatement or omission that violates Rule 10b-5(b) and Section 10(b). The test typically attributes “ultimate authority” to a single maker, thereby conflicting with the PSLRA’s proportionate liability provision. That provision assumes that many cases will involve multiple violators by deeming each violator liable only for the percentage of damage that the jury found it to have caused.
Finally, in California Public Employees’ Retirement System v. ANZ Securities, Inc., the Court denied securities class action plaintiffs access to an equitable tolling doctrine available to their antitrust counterparts. That denial assumed that when drafting the antitrust limitation provision, Congress knew that a “statute of repose” bars equitable tolling but that a “statute of limitation” does not. That assumption is flawed. Although Congress enacted the antitrust limitation provision in 1955, it did not become aware of the statute of repose/statute of limitation distinction until 1982, according to a Supreme Court decision issued three years prior to ANZ.
Any prospect of a course correction may turn on whether securities law academics become more vigilant overseers of the Court’s Rule 10b-5 restrictions. There is also the possibility that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the only current Justice with experience on securities regulation’s “Mother Court,” will put that experience to use by guiding her fellow Justices through the securities law thicket.
Margaret V. Sachs, Unintended Consequences: The Link Between Judge Friendly’s Texas Gulf Sulphur Concurrence and Recent Supreme Court Decisions Misconstruing Rule 10b-5, 71 SMU L. Rev. 947 (2018)
Securities Law Commons
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538616
|
__label__cc
| 0.503821
| 0.496179
|
3 December 2020 / ACN Newswire
Hidden Arbitrage Opportunities behind Privatisation of CIMC-TianDa (0445.HK) May Significantly Increase Probability of Approval
HONG KONG, Dec 3, 2020 - (ACN Newswire) - On 30 November, CIMC-TianDa issued a joint announcement regarding, among other matters, the dispatch of privatisation scheme circular.
According to the announcement, Sharp Vision, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CIMC, and Expedition Holding, as the joint offerors, made a privatisation proposal to CIMC-TianDa. The privatisation price is HK$0.266 per share, a 20.36% premium to the closing price of HK$0.221 on the last trading day.
Assuming that Sharp Vision will not exercise the right to convert its convertible bonds, the joint offerors and their concert parties hold 12.574 billion shares, representing approximately 75.58% of the issued share capital of CIMC-TianDa, while independent shareholders hold 4.064 billion shares, representing approximately 24.42% of the issued share capital. The maximum amount of cash consideration required to effect the privatisation proposal will be HK$1.082 billion.
As shown in the announcement, the joint offerors and their concert parties have appointed ABCI Capital, Zhongtai Capital and Donvex Capital as their joint financial advisers (FA) in connection with the privatisation proposal. In its announcement issued on 19 October, CIMC-TianDa has appointed Gram Capital Limited as the independent financial adviser to advise the Independent Board Committee.
The fact that a total of four financial companies provide professional advice in a privatisation case of this magnitude is groundbreaking, which reflects the determination of the joint offerors and their concert parties for a successful privatisation scheme.
As shown in the shareholding structure, Sharp Vision is a wholly-owned subsidiary of CIMC, while Expedition Holding is wholly-owned by Macao QiXin Investment Management Limited whose shareholders are CNIC of SDIC, TUS-S&T Service Group, and Tus-Financial Group. These three SOEs are strong shareholders with extensive experience and professional talents in the fields of international investment and M&A, national strategic investment, private equity investment in emerging industries, start-up investment, asset management, and financial investment banking services. The combination of QiXin Investment and the four competent financial advisers demonstrates the resolution of CIMC and SDIC in succeeding the privatisation deal.
CIMC-TianDa plans to be privatised by way of a scheme of arrangement, a higher probability of success
There are two main ways to privatise a listed company in Hong Kong - one is by way of a scheme of arrangement and the other is by way of a voluntary general offer.
These two privatisation ways share one thing in common, which is that the controlling shareholders, as the joint offerors, and their concert parties, don't get to vote, even if they hold a majority of shares. In fact the success of a privatisation proposal depends on the votes of independent shareholders.
The difference is that, in the case of privatisation by way of a voluntary general vote, it requires not only the approval of independent shareholders through voting at the extraordinary general meeting (EGM), but also that independent shareholders should, on the basis of their shareholdings, accept the offer made by the offerors. When the offer period ends, the offerors will have to obtain acceptances which in aggregate represent no less than 90% in value of the shares for which the offer is made.
It is quite a demanding requirement to satisfy. Some shareholders may find the offer price unattractive, while others may not even notice the offer information. As a result, the threshold for privatisation by way of a voluntary offer is very high, which is generally less appealing to independent shareholders.
Relatively speaking, privatisation by way of a scheme of arrangement in Hong Kong stock market stands a higher probability of success.
Based on public information on the HKEX website, from January 2019 to September 2020, 33 privatisation offers had been announced by companies listed on the HK's stock exchange (excluding those made by H-share companies). Among which, all the 11 privatisation proposals announced in 2019 were completed with shares delisted. For the 22 offers announced during the nine months ended 30 September 2020, one offer closed without being privatised, seven were successfully completed, one is pending listing withdrawal, and 13 are ongoing. Out of the 33 privatisation offers, only three were made through voluntary general offers, while the remaining 30 were made by way of schemes of arrangement.
Moreover, based on the SOE privatisation cases, it can be concluded that privatisation by way of a scheme of arrangement is more likely to succeed. We'd like to elaborate on it with two typical examples, a successful one and a failing one. On 27 September 2018, Sinotrans Shipping (0368.HK) made an announcement, proposing the withdrawal of its listing and privatisation by way of a scheme of arrangement. At the EGM held on 13 December 2018, 99.3% of the shares held by independent shareholders were voted in favour of privatisation, and only 0.7% of the shares were voted against it. At the Court Meeting held on the same day, 95.8% of the votes held by independent shareholders voted in favour of privatisation, while only 2.0% voted against it. As the conditions were fulfilled, the listing of Sinotrans Shipping on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange was withdrawn on 16 January 2019 and the privatisation was completed.
Another SOE privatisation proposal is that on 12 December 2018, Harbin Electric Company (1133.HK) and its parent company, Harbin Electric Corporation, made a joint announcement that Harbin Electric Corporation would make a voluntary conditional cash offer to acquire all the issued H Shares of Harbin Electric Company (i.e. by way of a voluntary general offer). The H Share Offer was HK$4.56 in cash for each H Share. In the following process, although the deal was approved at the general meeting of shareholders, the offer failed to meet the 90% threshold for acceptance of independent shares within the prescribed period, thus declaring the privatisation unsuccessful. The company's share price plunged from around HK$3.80 all the way to the lowest HK$1.45, with a cumulative decline of over 60%.
The latest quotation of Harbin Electric, which is still listed, is HK$2.52 per share, lower than the privatisation offer price proposed by the offeror two years ago. The market risks associated with a failed privatisation offer can be extremely significant. Unless the assets of the target company are of particularly high quality, or unless the majority shareholders and their concert parties believe that the timing is right, the chances of going private again are actually slim.
State-owned enterprise privatisation adopts the more successful, more reliable and much easier approach. Actually, it should also exemplify the deep sense of responsibility of any offeror to safeguard the interests of all shareholders.
However, we could return to the analysis of the privatisation case of CIMC-TianDa. the Company chose the scheme of arrangement for its privatisation proposal in accordance with its circular.
For the priviatisation under a scheme of arrangement, two conditions as below shall be firstly fulfilled:
(1) at the Court Meeting of privatisation, the scheme shall be approved by more than 75% of the votes cast by the independent shareholders present at the meeting;
(2) at the Court Meeting of privatisation, the scheme shall not be against by more than 10% of the votes cast by the independent shareholders present at the meeting.
In addition, we are required to pay attention to the matters in relation to the place of incorporation as it is necessary to satisfy relevant requirements stipulated by that place apart from the above two conditions to undertake the privatisation by the way of a scheme of arrangement. Many investors are often hindered by blind spots due to lack of professional expertise, ultimately influencing their investment decisions and judgments, which is common for the privatisation at Hong Kong share market.
We would take the privatisation of CIMC-TianDa as an example. The circular indicates that the Company is a listed company incorporated in Cayman Islands. In accordance with Section 86 of Companies Law of the Cayman Islands, a listed company in Cayman Islands has to fulfil the requirement for proposed privatisation: more than 50% of the shareholders present at the Court Meeting approve the privatisation proposal, no matter the number of the shareholding held by such shareholders, commonly referenced to as Clause of "Head Counting".
Under this situation, where the privatisation proposal is approved by voting at the general meeting and the court meeting and other conditions for privatisation have been fulfilled (Clause of "Head Counting"), the independent shareholders could just await until the listed company takes over their shares in accordance with the remaining procedures and returns them the considerations. In conclusion, once the conditions of the privatisation have been fulfilled, the shareholding of independent shareholders shall be taken away ultimately. No matter whether these independent shareholders have participated in the voting or voted against the proposal, they shall comply with the final resolution passed by the general meeting and the court meeting on the basis of the "Majority Rule".
Where the companies incorporated in PRC are desirous to undertake privatisation by means of a scheme of arrangement, they don't have to abide by the Clause of "Head Counting". Meanwhile, in accordance with the Company Law of the People's Republic of China, the shares of the medium and small shareholders shall not be taken over by mandatory offer. Regarding the listed companies registered in mainland China, the independent shareholders are protected to proactively submit their application of acceptance for their shares in accordance with relevant offer and transfer their shares to an offeror even the privatisation is approved by votes at the general meeting. Otherwise, the independent shareholders who have not accepted the offer will become the shareholders holding the non-negotiable shares after their listed company delists in accordance with the privatisation procedures.
Identifying the arbitrage opportunities behind the privatisation, the "winner-takes-all" will elevate the success rate of privatisation
With the above discussions, we could observe that the listed companies registered in Cayman Islands have the strength to approach privatisation more easily and they are privatised more completely if they succeed in privatisation. Moreover, it is important that it is easier for them to achieve cohesion and win-win situation with independent shareholders and avoid the chance of intense wrangling and severe confrontation.
Coming back to the perspective of market and transactions, it is more likely to produce the fixed mode of arbitrage as it is more predictable. In other words, it is more likely to attract leading investment companies or individual and investment organisations to increase the share capital to facilitate the approval of relevant proposal and realise the expected return of the consideration in the offer of privatisation in short term.
With conclusion and summarisation of numerous privatisation cases, we found that as long as the privatisation proposal is implemented by means of a scheme of arrangement(instead of the voluntary general offer), companies are the listed companies registered in Cayman Islands(required to comply with Section 86 of the Companies Laws of Cayman Islands) and the dominant controlling shareholders and their persons acting in concert work together to expedite and implement such project, the implied essence is "winner-takes-all" under the principle of the privatisation.
Now we could consider and reason from the perspective of a qualified leading investment company or individual or a professional organisation and approach to understand purely in terms of expected rate of return or expected annualised rate of return and assets allocation.
As the circular demonstrates, the court meeting and the EGM shall be convened within this month. If it is approved successfully, the shareholding of each independent shareholders shall be delisted on the stock exchange with the procedures on 25 January of next year and effect on the same day as expected. The independent shareholders are expected to receive the cash cheque paid by the offerors and their concert parties of the privatisation on or before 1 February of next year.
At the court meeting and the EGM, if the privatisation proposal is passed, alternatively, after the "Showdown", the subsequent procedures shall be followed as routine and the uncertainties will be eliminated. On that basis, the share price of CIMC-TianDa is likely to soar close to HKD 0.2666 per share after the proposal is passed and it is the period to realise fastest growth of the rate of return.
So now let's do some calculations. Based on the closing price of CIMC-TianDa at HK$0.245 on 1 December, the privatisation implied an absolute return of 8.57% after the resolution was passed. We will roughly take 8% as the expected rate of return for the calculation. From 2 December to 28 December (the first trading day when the voting result is announced), there are only 27 calendar days. The expected annualised rate of return appropriately exceeds 100%., It is impossible not to attract their attention from large capital allocation perspective.
If they do, the biggest risk they face is actually the rejection of the privatisation proposal. Then just work hard in the direction to get the privatisation proposal passed. What should we do? It's very simple. There are only three action points: (1) Observe market trends and seek for conspirators; (2) Buy the shares, attend the general meetings and court meetings as independent shareholders, and vote in favor of the privatisation proposal; (3) Reasonable assumptions and verification, analysis shows that investors who buy into the first two ideas are mostly shareholders.
In fact, the most critical point is the third point, we might as well have a logical deduction.
If independent shareholders expect that the privatisation proposal will not be passed (or the probability of passing is low), the most favorable option for them (in order to avoid risks) is to sell at the current price, rather than to hold onto the shares and wait until the general meeting and the Court Meeting to cast an objection. Because based on rationality and human nature, they most likely will not harm themselves. Therefore, those who will not sell but will vote at the shareholders meeting can be regarded as a negligible small group.
The second type refers to those who hold onto the shares but will no vote at the shareholders meeting, which we can ignore as they will not affect the polling result.
The third type refers to those who have sold the shares. Since shares have been sold, the person loses the voting right and has no impact on the result.
The last type refers to the major crowd, who are holding onto or are continuous buying, and are joining the shareholders meetings to cast the votes. Given their motives and reasons are very sufficient and necessary, which have been discussed above, we will skip the explanation here.
To come to a direct and simple conclusion: opponents will tend to sell; investors who are in favor of the privatisation proposal and can obtain their expected returns on the basis of approval, or form a sound arbitrage model, will prefer hold onto or to continuous buy the shares.
This is driven by the underlying rule of "winner takes all". Under this rule, the probability of the privatisation proposal being passed has been repeatedly blessed and consolidated on the basis of the relatively high probability.
After the announcement of the privatisation proposal of CIMC-TianDa on 4 October, its trading volume continued to be dynamic, as opposed to its previous silent status and the stock price was stable. From a trading perspective, once an investor is willing to sell, then there are always investors on the other side willing to buy. Because the selling power is always lower than the buying power for position accumulation within a certain price range, this causes the stock price to trade sideways. The relatively larger trading volume than the previous period indicates the continuous trading momentum.
Understanding the logic and motives behind the trading and knowing the "calculations" of the core traders in the market is the best answer and explanation for understanding this phenomenon.
We believe, even ordinary investors who will not participate in the voting, should consider the free-rider strategy - a bold attempt to ride on the privatization of CIMC-TianDa for some profits.
Hemp Advocates Believe Incoming Biden Administration Will Signal More Opportunities for Hemp Industry: Hemp, Inc. Reports
LAS VEGAS, NV, Dec 4, 2020 - (ACN Newswire) - Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP), a global leader in the industrial hemp industry with bi-coastal processing centers, reported today hemp advocates believe the
Moonstake Collaboration Webinar: "The future of blockchain: the case of Neo3"
SINGAPORE, Dec 3, 2020 - (ACN Newswire) - Moonstake will hold a joint webinar with NEO, "The future of blockchain: the case of NEO3" on 3rd of Dec, 2020. It will be held
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538618
|
__label__cc
| 0.656075
| 0.343925
|
Winter woes, goodbye, closed ski slopes open
Jan. 22, 2005, midnight | By Caitlin Garlow | 15 years, 12 months ago
A guide to the best and most accessible ski slopes in the area
Around the winter holidays, many Blazers and their families look for a fun and exciting outdoor activity on the local ski slopes of the area. However, as a result of the recent plight of warm winter weather and daily showers the Washington area has been experiencing this winter, skiers have been forced to either endure slushy slopes or to find an alternative activity.
Luckily for winter enthusiasts, Martin Luther King Day weekend gave the first showing of real temperature drops for the area and allowed area ski resorts to cover the trails with a solid base of machine-made snow. For those looking to take advantage of currently-falling natural snow, here's a guide to the best slopes in the area.
Whitetail Ski Resort: Mercersburg, Pennsylvania
Whitetail is an easy 90-minute drive from the Washington, D.C. area. The resort features 19 different slopes for skiers and snowboarders and a half-pipe for snowboarders. Snow tubing is also available for children older than five and adults. Ski slopes are open from 8:30 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. weekdays, weekends and most holidays, and tubing is open from 4:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Prices for lift tickets vary depending on the amount of time a skier is planning to stay at the resort. Lift tickets range from $37 for a four-hour period to $42 for an eight-hour period. Weekend and holiday rates cost $7 more. Whitetail had closed many of its slopes due to rainfall last week, however, 16 of their slopes have been opened as of Jan. 22, and they are expecting to open more later in the week.
For more information on housing accommodations, lessons and more, click here.
Ski Liberty: Fairfield, Pennsylvania
Ski Liberty is a slope frequented by many in the Washington area because of its proximity. The resort is about 65 miles from D.C., less than 90 minutes away. Ski Liberty has 16 ski slopes, which snowboarders are permitted to use. Ski Liberty offers lift tickets for a bit cheaper than Whitetail, at $35 for a four-hour flex, and $40 for an eight-hour flex. Ski and snowboard rental prices are around $30 for a four-hour period. Snow tubing is also available for those who are looking for a somewhat more mellow winter thrill. Ski Liberty does not have the facilities for cross-country skiing, however. Snow-making is in progress all over the mountain this week, and 80 percent of trails are open, according to the Ski Liberty observation team, which has been predicting one of the best weeks of skiing this week, an improvement over the last week of "soft snow with bare patches."
For more information on Ski Liberty hours, rates and forecasts, click here.
Wisp Resort: McHenry, Maryland
Wisp resort boasts 22 slopes, more than either Ski Liberty or Whitetail, though to have the opportunity to ski a few more slopes, Blazers have to make the three-hour trek to the Deep Creek Lake area. As of Jan. 22, 20 of Wisp's 22 slopes were open, due to the temperature drop and the "9 to 12 inches of natural snow" that Wisp received last weekend, according to Wisp associate Carol Gidd. Wisp lift tickets cost $39 on weekdays, $49 on weekends and $52 on holidays. The resort also features a tubing slope and a snowboarding park, both of which are open this week.
For weather updates, trial maps and other information, click here.
Hidden Valley Ski Resort: Hidden Valley, Pennsylvania
Hidden Valley Resort has been named one of the 50 finest hotels and resorts in the region by the Atlantic Monthly. Under a four-hour commute from the D.C. area, Hidden Valley is worth the drive, as they offer 28 downhill ski slopes for skiers and snowboarders and cross-country skiing as well. Twelve lifts take skiers up the mountain starting at 9:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. in the evening. Snow boards and downhill skis can be rented for a $20 fee per session; cross country skis cost $20 per day. Weekday lift tickets at Hidden Valley are also considerably cheaper than at other ski resorts; juniors (6-17) can ski for a nine or ten-hour session for $24; adults (18-64) can ski with a $30 lift ticket. Weekend and holiday rates are $35 for juniors and $45 for adults. As a special discount on Tuesdays, Hidden Valley offers $15 lift tickets for any session, any age.
For more information on skiing at Hidden Valley Resort, click here.
Seven Springs Mountain Resort: Champion, Pennsylvania
As the number one rated ski area in the mid-Atlantic, according to Ski Magazine, Seven Springs Mountain Resort urges all skiers to come out and enjoy the excellent skiing weather made possible by a weekend of winter wonder. Dick Barron reported on Seven Springs' Snow Watch that, "We had a great night of snow-making and grooming! We will continue around the clock to make snow even during ski sessions!” Champion only had an inch of natural snow last weekend and has been supplementing it with machine-made snow throughout the past week. And with the help of this weekend's natural snowfall, all 31 trails were open as of Jan. 22. Weekday lift tickets are $34 for adults and Saturday and holiday tickets are $45 for a day or twilight session. Ski rentals are $23 for a day or twilight session, and snowboard rentals are $29 per session. Seven Springs also offers snow tubing, snowshoe tours, snowmobile tours, snow cat rides (rides in the back of the snow-grooming machine) and sleigh rides. Seven Springs offers a wide variety of beginner and intermediate trails for those who are still working on their snowplow. Seven Springs Mountain Resort is a four-hour drive from the D.C. area.
For more information on rates and weather conditions at Seven Springs, click here.
Caitlin Garlow. Caitlin is a second-semester senior at last. Her favorite things include making fun of her homeless sister and hunting down her clothes in other people's closets. More »
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538622
|
__label__cc
| 0.630695
| 0.369305
|
Braunschweig, Nurnberg relegated; Hamburg may save themselves in playoff game
By Kirsten SchlewitzMay 10, 2014, 11:38 AM EDT
The last week of Bundesliga action wrapped up with all nine matches kicking off at the same time on Saturday. There was plenty of excitement to be found in nearly every match, but in the end, nothing changed. The same teams remained in the same European positions…and the same teams found themselves in the relegation places.
TSV Eintracht Braunschweig
Braunschweig came up and are going right back down. The bottom Bundesliga side earned just 25 points from 34 games, putting in a measly 28 goals in the process. They hadn’t scored in their last four matches, all of which they lost. From the start, when they lost their first four in a row, it never looked as though Braunschweig would survive – and their performance on the final day, a 3-1 loss to Hoffenheim, was no exception.
Nurnberg put up a fight at the death, when Josip Drmić scored in injury time. Too bad Schalke had already scored four goals and put Nurnberg’s future out of doubt. This side were incredibly good at collecting draws this season, winding up with eleven to their name, but with just five wins it didn’t help them much. Neither did their seven-game losing streak that finished off Nurnberg’s season.
HSV lucked out. Had either Braunschweig or Nurnberg put up a fight and secured a win on the final day, Hamburg would’ve been automatically relegated. Instead they’re headed to the German relegation playoff, where they’ll get a chance to save themselves. They won’t know their opponents for the two-legged playoff until tomorrow, when the final 2. Bundesliga matches are played out. It looks like it will be SpVgg Greuther Fürth, who were relegated from the Bundesliga last season, but if they beat Sandhausen and Paderborn lose to Aalen, HSV may face Paderborn instead.
Oh, and in case you’re curious, Cologne have already clinched automatic promotion and will play in the top division next season.
Check back in to Pro Soccer Talk later today for a more detailed Bundesliga report, outlining the final week’s games and showcasing the teams that will play in Europe next season.
Follow @KDS_Football
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538625
|
__label__wiki
| 0.738458
| 0.738458
|
Warren Wilson College Athletics
701 Warren Wilson Rd Asheville, NC 28815
Division 3 North Carolina Southeast
Private Very Small Developing team
I'm interested in this program!
Email coach
Mathes Mennell
Mennell most recently served as the Head Coach at UNC Asheville from 2015-2019. During his time at UNC Asheville, the team qualified for two Big South tournaments and finished the 2016 regular season ranked third in the conference, the program’s highest finish since 2001.
Prior to UNC Asheville, Mennell was the Associate Head Coach at Loyola Marymount University from 2006-2015. During his time with the Lions, he helped Lions win two West Coast Conference championships and make five NCAA College Cup appearances.
Mennell was an assistant coach with both the men’s and women’s program at LMU from 2002-06. He helped the women’s team get to the NCAA Tournament in 2002 and 2006.
Prior to LMU, Mennell was an assistant coach at the United States Air Force Academy in 1996-1997 and 2000-2002.
Mennell is a 1996 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy with a Bachelor of Science with a concentration in Humanities. He completed his Master of Arts degree in General Education from Loyola Marymount University in July of 2007.
A USSF “A” licensed coach, Mennell has also been very active in youth soccer for over 24 years. He has worked in variety of impact roles across the spectrum of the youth soccer landscape. He served as the USYS Region IV Head Coach for Boys ODP, worked with the Los Angeles Galaxy U16 and U18 Academy, and he was the Director of Coaching-Older Boys for the LA Galaxy-South Bay Soccer Club. He is currently on staff at ABYSA/Highland Football Club here in Asheville.
A standout goalkeeper at Air Force from 1992-1995, he led the Falcons to a top-20 ranking during all four seasons he played. In 1993, he backstopped USAFA to the best NCAA College Cup finish in school history in 1993 with a record of 15-5-1 with the Falcons reaching the quarterfinals.
Mennell served as the Falcons’ team captain in 1995 and was named the Most Inspirational Player in 1994 and 1995. He was also named First Team All-MPSF in 1994 and earned honorable mention accolades in 1993 and 1995. He was also named All-America by the National Strength and Conditioning Association in 1995.
Upon graduation from USAFA in 1996, he continued to play, spending time in the USL’s A-League with the Colorado Foxes and the USL’s Premier League Pikes Peak Stampede. He was also called up to the Colorado Rapids of Major League Soccer in 1996. Mennell was the starting goalkeeper for the All-Air Force team in 1996 and 1999, leading both teams to the Gold Medal in the U.S. Armed Services Championships. In 1996 he was the starting goalkeeper for U.S. All-Armed Services Team that qualified for C.I.S.M. World Championships.
A native of Bristol, Tennessee, Mennell attended Bristol Tennessee High School, graduating in 1991.
How can I contact this coach?
Our College Bound Athletes simply need to click any of the Email Coach button on our website. If you are a College Bound Athlete, simply LOGIN at the top right of the page and then this button will take you right to the page where you can contact the coach.
If you are not a College Bound Athlete yet, you can sign up here. By becoming a College Bound Athlete, you'll get full access to our College Recruiting Platform and we'll guide you through the entire process. To learn more about our service, click here
I'm intersted in this program...now what?
That is fantastic news! Finding schools you're interested in is a huge piece of the puzzle. Now, it's time to reach out to this college coach to let them know!
Soccer in College gave me the resources to get my profile out to many college coaches. The site is easy to use and is a contributor in helping me land my college scholarship.
- Callie ThomasWhat are others saying?
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538626
|
__label__wiki
| 0.637846
| 0.637846
|
Social & Economic Inequalities
The Social Impact of Economic Inequality
If politicians are serious about tackling inequality they need to properly overhaul the tax system – here’s how
It's time to tax for gender justice
How did the Brazilian economy help to elect Bolsonaro?
Behind SA’s brutality
‘Unprecedented’ Rise In Infant Mortality In England Linked to Poverty
Increasing economic inequality is a defining challenge of our time. In recent years, it has triggered analysis and reflection by many scholars, politicians and others on its causes and consequences on economic growth and efficiency, politics and democracy, human rights, individual behaviors, access to health, social cohesion and environmental degradation. The perception that the top 1% of income earners are gaining at the expense of the other 99% has resulted in widespread public debates in many countries on the social and political repercussions of inequality.
Inequalities in income and wealth are often blamed for the deepening anxieties of the middle class in many developed economies. Market power among business elites and multinational companies – in pursuit of higher profits – are one of the key drivers to inequality as access to resources remain in the hands of powerful business groups, and not in the hands of the people and their elected representatives. Serious doubts are therefore raised on the claims that globalization, technological developments and the “invisible hand” of capitalism and economic liberalism have liberated humans from disease, poverty and inequality.
It has long been assumed that GDP growth would address income inequality and lift people out of poverty. But economic growth can often be disproportionate and unequal, adversely affecting marginalized and disadvantaged groups in society. If economic growth does not lead to an equitable spread of its benefits, most citizens specifically the collar workers, the hard-working middle class and rural dwellers will not enjoy commensurate improvements of their living standards. In many countries, this has contributed to the rise of a crisis of legitimacy of governments and a crisis of democracy that has facilitated the surge of populism as well as the return of exclusionary forms of nationalism.
However, with the global financial and economic crisis that swept the world in 2007-2008, inequality has risen in all world regions. 1 In response to the adverse impact of the crisis, governments worldwide introduced fiscal austerity programs to reduce public at the expense of ballooning levels of sovereign debt that strangle economic growth. As highlighted in the latest report of the UN’s “World Social Situation” 2, popular dissent is increasing while trust in governments is plummeting “as people believe they are bearing the brunt of crises for which they have no responsibility and feel increasingly disenfranchised.” It is estimated that national governments have spent an astonishing USD 117 trillion to save the financial system and to bail out banks that were on the brink of bankruptcy but precious little to support the youth. No surprise that people took to the streets in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Greece and Cyprus to protest against draconian austerity measures imposed by governments to cover up for the failures of the banks and the financial system.
In this regard, it is foreseen that the adverse impact of austerity measures could further impact socio-economic living conditions in Europe; Oxfam estimates that an additional 15-25 million people in Europe could live in poverty by 2025. Professor Stiglitz has likewise suggested that “austerity has only crippled Europe’s growth, with improvements in fiscal positions that are always disappointing. Worse, it is contributing to inequality that will make economic weakness longer-lived, and needlessly contributes to the suffering of the jobless and the poor for many years.”
It is evident that economic inequality has had adverse economic, social and political impacts for social stability and cohesion, political participation, poverty reduction, as well as the enjoyment of human rights. In addition, economic inequalities impede the enjoyment of social, cultural and economic rights, thus contributing to persistent socio-economic disadvantages among social groups. As states are in need of fiscal stability to secure the provision of welfare benefits and redistributive fiscal policies to maintain social security, the dwindling of public resources impedes their ability to deliver basic public services. For instance, in the case of Greece, more than two million people – equivalent to 20% of the population – did not have access to adequate health insurance as underlined by former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order Professor Alfred de Zayas. Tackling global income and wealth inequality therefore requires important shifts in addressing its root causes
In the outcome document of the 2012 Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development entitled “The Future We Want,” decision-makers committed themselves to achieve sustainable development by promoting “sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth”, creating greater opportunities for all social segments of society so as to reduce inequalities. Social inclusion was likewise a key outcome. In this connection, it was emphasized that “sustainable development must be inclusive and people-centred and recognized that broad public participation was essential to promoting sustainable development goals.” Appropriate measures to address the rise of economic inequality could include resource mobilization for social investment, distribution of income and wealth through targeted social transfers, progressive income taxation as well as the extension of social protection and decent work standards.
Governments are therefore required to address income and wealth inequality, and to prevent its further deterioration. They must build on a human rights and a people-centered approach that enables states to ensure the full enjoyment of human rights on a non-discriminatory and equal basis – among its citizens – in line with the provisions set forth in the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Agenda.
1 “Across the OECD, since 1985 the Gini has increased in 17 of 22 countries (…),” according to Professor Stiglitz (see page 5 of his book entitled “The price of inequality: How today’s divided society endangers our future.”)
2 United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs, “Inequality matters: Report on the World Social Situation.“ Pages 22-23. New York, 2013. Accessed 14 January 2019. PDF.
Blerim Mustafa, Project and communications officer, the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue. Postgraduate researcher (Ph.D. candidate) at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester (UK).
By : Blerim Mustafa
Date : September 23, 2019
Source : Inter Press Service News Agency
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/09/social-impact-economic-inequality/
Inequality has shot to the top of the agenda across the political spectrum. Politicians, activists, and even billionaires increasingly call for more radical measures to tackle the problem.
Britain’s Conservative government proclaimed the end to austerity in its September spending review. Its party conference also discussed providing more equal access to education and social services, along with plans to increase the minimum wage.
Meanwhile, the Labour party vouched to raise taxes on corporate profits, incomes of the richest earners, and transactions in the financial sector. At its recent party conference, it announced an expansive programme of free public services.
Until recently, the opposite kind of measures were a priority. Lowering taxes for both business and the wealthy, and rolling back public spending in favour of free market competition were seen as a lasting legacy of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
Some argue that inequality is necessary to give people incentives to compete and innovate, ultimately making the economic pie bigger for everyone. Thatcher halved the tax rate on highest incomes in the UK from 80% to 40%, where it has hovered since. And public spending as a proportion of UK GDP fell from nearly 50% in the mid-1970s to less than 40% in the early 2000s.
But at the same time inequality levels have become untenable. In the UK, the richest 1% owned 20% of all personal wealth in 2012 and earned nearly 12% of pre-tax national income in 2016. The numbers are even higher in the US, and are also increasing globally, including in India and China.
Average economic growth may be ticking upwards but there are too many visible disparities in societies where record levels of homelessness co-exist with a high and rising number of empty homes.
Addressing the problem
More information on the scale of inequality – and its consequences – has put pressure on politicians to address the problem. In fact, elements of both the Labour and Conservative parties’ proposals are needed. Complementing tax increases with higher public spending has more potential to successfully reduce inequality in the long-run than either of these policies alone.
Advocates of higher taxes note that resources accumulated by the rich are largely saved and invested in personal assets such as luxury houses or yachts rather than reinvested in innovation and jobs. Similarly, an increasing portion of corporate profits is not spent on production: productive investment has withered despite corporations building up record cash reserves.
The poorest earners bear a greater tax burden than the rich. So there is merit – and scope – to increase rates on the highest earners to redistribute economic resources more fairly.
Taxing wealth not income
But this is only part of the solution. Many economists, inspired by Thomas Piketty’s seminal work Capital, argue for explicit taxes on wealth. As the billionaire Bill Gates has pointed out, most resources of the rich are contained in their assets rather than in their income streams, and so taxing wealth directly would be more effective in curbing inequality.
It is also vital to tighten the screws on the way transfers of wealth are taxed. For instance, inheritance taxes are in desperate need of reform, as they currently raise notoriously low amounts of revenue.
Another proposal for taxing wealth transfers targets the financial sector. Short-term speculative trading between financial institutions was responsible for triggering the 2007-08 financial crisis. Taxing financial transactions could reduce the instability that results from risky financial activity by increasing the costs of speculation. This kind of tax could also lower inequality by making risky financial instruments less desirable and decreasing the potential gains available to financial elites.
Preventing inequality from the get-go
Tax reform is much needed. But even with strong political will, taxes tend to be avoided and evaded through legal and illegal means respectively. A more comprehensive strategy is required, focused on “predistribution” – this means preventing inequalities from developing in the first place.
Current proposals for predistribution policies rightly target housing – one of the biggest financial concerns for people. Home ownership gives a boost to household wealth, but it may also make it more unstable if backed by large mortgage debt.
The 2007-08 crisis showed the pitfalls of relying on private markets to supply housing, with many families experiencing big losses as house prices plummeted. Even programmes such as Help to Buy – which makes it cheaper for first-time buyers to put down a deposit on a home – relies on private developers to supply housing and has been widely criticised for fuelling inequality.
In a recent paper, I found that people do not benefit equally from holding assets such as housing supplied by private providers. Women, people of colour, millennials and low-income families experience lower improvements in their financial well-being from holding wealth compared to others. This is because they are more financially vulnerable and their access to wealth, as well as the way that the value of this wealth changes over time, is not just down to individual decisions but is largely influenced by economic policy and the way in which financial markets operate. So a careful strategy of public provision of key assets is needed to support more vulnerable people and reduce inequality.
Politicians have started to notice the importance of these types of policies. The Labour party has committed to build a million new homes and regulate the private rental market if elected. In the US, Bernie Sanders, a 2020 US presidential election hopeful, is promising “housing for all”, and similar initiatives have been mentioned by other candidates.
One initiative alone won’t fix inequality – a large overhaul is needed. A successful strategy should be comprehensive, complementing tax reform with predistribution policies. There are many potential difficulties to consider, but with political will in place, the time is ripe for systemic change.
By : Hanna Szymborska (Lecturer in Economics, The Open University)
Date : October 2, 2019
Source : The Conversation
http://theconversation.com/if-politicians-are-serious-about-tackling-inequality-they-need-to-properly-overhaul-the-tax-system-heres-how-124240
Unfair tax systems hit women and girls the hardest. We need to make corporations pay their share.
This article is part of the 'Advancing gender just economies' series, presented by ourEconomy, ActionAid, FEMNET, Womankind Worldwide and Fight Inequality Alliance.
Last week, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) convened a High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development (FFD). FFD is the process supporting the financing of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development made up of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other UN development and human rights frameworks and conventions including Beijing Platform for Action. This is the first high-level dialogue since the adoption of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda in 2015, where feminists, women’s rights organisations and civil society campaigned for an inclusive intergovernmental body within the United Nations to reform international tax rules to finance public services and to realize gender equality.
Why do these financing decisions matter to gender equality and women’s rights? With close to a decade remaining for the curtains to fall on Agenda 2030, this is where states show if they are putting their money where their mouth is and decide where the money for the SDGs is coming from and what actions will be prioritized. Women’s voices go largely unheard in the policy debates dominated by global capital. While States accommodate corporate demands for tax incentives, the needs of women and demands to tax corporations fairly are neglected. Women face challenges due to inadequate financing for and provision of public services, as regressive tax policies and underfunded public services perpetuate women’s disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work.
In Agenda 2030 world leaders committed to recognising and valuing unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls and tackling inequalities. Where the money comes from to make this a reality and what areas are prioritised are quite telling. For example, UN Women estimated that National Action Plans for Gender Equality had funding gaps of up to 90% in 2017. Tax is a gendered issue, meaning unfair tax systems threaten the realisation of women’s human rights and Agenda 2030. They further contribute to increasing levels of gendered socio-economic inequality—exacerbated by the global fiscal austerity trend. Progressive tax revenue through domestic resource mobilisation is critical to addressing structural and systematic global inequalities and making it possible for countries achieve women’s human rights.
From tax avoidance to tax and development justice
The High-level dialogue includes prime ministers, finance ministers, high ranking representatives of international finance institutions, private sector and a few civil society ‘experts’, and aims “to renew global commitment to financing at the highest political level.” It further aims to “encourage public and private investment to align with the 2030 Agenda, and promote new and innovative initiatives that target gaps in financing sustainable development.” Yet, in spite of ‘combatting illicit financial flows’ (IFFs) being on the agenda, the private sector is seen to play a big role in addressing this financing ‘gap’, rather than as a source of progressive tax income.
Current rigged economic structures and systems allow corporates to dodge taxes, shifting income to tax havens and contributing significantly to the vast levels of IFFs leaving developing countries. These illicit financial flows allow multinational corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share in tax. More than 65 percent of IFFs are proceeds from commercial activities, with countries missing out on at least USD600 billion in public revenue annually and an estimated USD20-30 trillion sitting in tax havens. Africa loses 5.5% of GDP to IFFs, which is larger than the total of foreign direct investment and official development aid (ODA) combined.
Increasingly, states are favouring privatisation of essential services and infrastructure. The World Banks’ 2015 Maximizing Financing for Development agenda, ‘From billions to trillions’, is directing public tax payer funds through development banks to the private sector to deliver services, more so in low income countries. The current trend in privatisation and its impact on the right to essential services is well documented, including how it undermines women’s rights and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Tax is by far the most important revenue stream for developing countries, and is already dwarfing development aid in many contexts. In Africa in 2012, collected tax revenue was 10 times the amount of overseas aid received. Yet states could raise more to increase their budgets. In particular, it is critical for developing countries to raise taxes from Transnational Corporations (TNCS), as corporate income tax makes up 16 percent state revenue compared to just over eight percent in high income countries.
The Addis Ababa Action Agenda and Agenda 2030 ‘commit governments to take the necessary measures to raise resources for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls’. Not only is financing for gender equality vital in its own right, it is a missing piece to the realisation of SDG 5 on Gender Equality and the rest of the UN’s 2030 Agenda.
The impact of tax policies on women’s human rights
Despite these commitments, austerity measures pushed by international financial institutions (IFIs) have been implemented around the world. Policies include changes to how taxes are collected, privatising public goods, freezing public sector wages, reducing social security and reforming pension systems. Such austerity measures widely impact the enjoyment of social and economic human rights, particularly for women who are the most affected by all forms of tax injustice, the privatisation of public services and unemployment.
The current system based on a neoliberal vision of a small state and low taxes has evidently led to a race to the bottom in terms of labour standards, safety and environmental regulations, and tax rates, not to mention the current climate crisis. Combined with the failure of decision-makers and states, especially in the Global North, to create binding corporate accountability frameworks, there is widespread environmental pollution, social insecurity, land grabbing and forced displacement, but also illicit financial flows and tax abuse. The impact of corporate impunity on women’s lives is well documented. Low tax collection by governments means there are fewer resources to spend on public services and social security. It is more likely to be women who fill the gap with their bodies and time. This especially affects the most vulnerable women.
Women subsidize the economy with their unpaid work, performing the majority (76.2 percent) of global unpaid care and domestic work, estimated at $10 trillion a year worldwide or 13 percent of global GDP. Women’s disproportionate unpaid care burden is a root cause and driver of gender inequality and has a profound impact on women’s ability to earn an income and realise the full spectrum of their human rights.
Making taxes work for women
We need a just distribution of resources for a fair global economy. Fiscal choices have gendered impacts. Consequently, states should ensure resources are used to promote redistribution and do not increase the burden on women. Resourcing feminist and women’s rights movements is also vital in supporting women’s rights. To increase the amount of revenue raised from wealthy individuals and corporations we need national and global tax reform. In order for states to fulfil their obligations they must introduce progressive taxation using maximum available resources to achieve women’s rights.
Global Alliance for Tax Justice* (GATJ), a growing movement of civil society organisations, activists and trade unions, states that ‘Tax policies and systems manifest and exacerbate the patriarchal and other discriminatory structures that disadvantage, marginalise and disempower women.’ It demand that states:
Meet international commitments to maximise available resources – notably through progressive and gender-just taxation.
Reform tax laws so that they do not discriminate against women and ensure tax and fiscal policies recognise and serve to represent, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work.
End harmful tax practices, illicit financial flows, and ensure that multinational corporations pay their share.
Support the establishment of an inclusive intergovernmental UN Global Tax Commission, where all countries have a seat at the table and equal say in determining international tax rules.
With 2019 being the 75th anniversary of the Bretton Woods Institutions, and the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action and five years of progress made on the SDGs in 2020, this High-level Dialogue on FFD is an opportunity for states and the global community to address the barriers that prevent the economy working for all including all women and girls. Let’s hope they take it.
If you are interested to learn more about how tax justice can support women’s rights:
Sign the Global Alliance for Tax Justice Bogota Declaration on Tax Justice for Women's Rights and read 7 Reasons Why We Need #TaxJustice for Women’s Rights.
Read Womankind Worldwide’s Working towards a just feminist economy: The role of decent work, public services, progressive taxation and corporate accountability in achieving women’s rights.
Read about how a UN Binding Treaty on Business and Human rights can enable women’s rights in Women’s Rights Beyond the Business Case: Ensuring Corporate Accountability.
*The Global Alliance for Tax Justice is a growing movement of civil society organisations and activists, including trade unions, united in campaigning for greater transparency, democratic oversight and redistribution of wealth in national and global tax systems. We comprise the five regional networks of Africa, Latin America, Asia-Australia, North America and Europe, which collectively represent hundreds of organisations.
By : Caroline Othim & Roosje Saalbrink
Source : Open Democracy
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/its-time-tax-gender-justice/
Conventional wisdom sees economic anxiety as central to the rise of the far-right around the world, yet Brazil last year elected Jair Bolsonaro despite impressive results in terms of growth, poverty, and wage disparities in the 2000s. Essentially, the Rousseff years failed to address falling competitiveness in manufacturing, inflation in services, and a distributive conflict affecting those on middle incomes, while an increase in debt-to-GDP allowed the subsequent crisis to be blamed on fiscal profligacy. Cuts in public expenditures then combined with external factors to slow any recovery, and Bolsonaro found electoral success by linking economic stagnation to corruption amongst the entire political establishment. But Bolsonaro’s response has been disastrous, and its disappointing results could prove to be his undoing, writes Laura Carvalho (University of Sao Paulo).
Recent polling by IGM Chicago suggests that there is strong agreement amongst European economic experts that “rising inequality is straining the health of liberal democracy” and that “enacting more redistributive expenditures and policies would be likely to limit the rise of populism in Europe”. Indeed, from threats to democratic capitalism posed by the decline of the middle class in Branko Milanovic’s Global Inequality to the role of austerity in explaining support for Brexit in a recent empirical paper by Thiemo Fetzer, the topic has become increasingly important across various strands of economic literature.
When it comes to the specific role of globalisation, Dani Rodrik has tried to understand how different shocks give rise to left-wing (economic) populism or to right-wing (cultural) populism, depending on the particular societal cleavages highlighted by politicians. While trade liberalisation and immigration might set the stage for an emphasis on identity cleavages, as in Europe or the United States, financial liberalisation would tend to lay the ground for a focus on income cleavages, as in Southern Europe or Latin America.
But then we have Brazil, a commodity-exporting economy that benefited greatly from Chinese growth in the 2000s and earned widespread recognition for reducing poverty and wage disparities through redistributive policies. If we accept the conventional wisdom on the role of economic anxiety in the rise of the far-right, how are we to understand the election of Bolsonaro in 2018?
From boom to chaos: Brazil’s economic meltdown
Like many other Latin American economies, Brazil took advantage of the commodity-price boom of the 2000s to expand government spending in health, education, infrastructure, and social protection, yet it still managed to reduce its public debt-to-GDP ratio during Lula’s administrations. The higher growth rates of both consumption and investment between 2006 and 2010, which represented a rapid recovery from the Global Financial Crisis, were accompanied by strong job creation in the construction and service sectors, as well as by impressive wage gains for low-skilled workers.
The expansion of the cash transfer program Bolsa Família – from 3.6 million recipients in 2004 to 12.8 million in 2010 – and the rise in real minimum wages of 5.9 per cent per year during this period also helped to increase the meagre share of national income accruing to the bottom 50 per cent from 12.9 per cent in 2004 to 14.3 per cent in 2014.
But by the time Brazil reached its highest real GDP growth rate during that period – 7.5 per cent in 2010 – the economy was already facing difficult challenges.
First, the country’s manufacturing sector, which had been losing density since trade liberalisation in the 1990s, was losing additional competitiveness due to a strong currency appreciation and the higher penetration of Chinese imports after the Global Financial Crisis.
Second, higher wage growth was leading to an acceleration in services inflation, which meant high interest rates needed to be maintained in order to attract foreign capital, further appreciate the currency, and suppress inflation of tradable goods.
Third, a distributive conflict was becoming apparent, as the reduction of inequality was due to a fall in the share of income going to the middle of the distribution, with the bottom 50 per cent and the top one per cent experiencing the strongest gains.
When Dilma Rousseff took office in 2011, the plan was to address the lack of competitiveness in Brazilian manufacturing through a real depreciation of the exchange rate and various measures aimed at reducing the cost of production, including tax exemptions and controls on energy tariffs. As the external scenario deteriorated – with the end of the commodity-price boom and the European periphery crisis – this set of measures proved highly ineffective in boosting the country’s exports and preventing an economic slowdown.
Moreover, when combined with the slower growth of tax revenues caused by the economic slowdown, the high cost of these subsidies contributed to a deterioration of the fiscal stance. While public investment, which had grown 27.6 per cent per year in real terms during the boom period of 2006-2010, remained almost stagnant in 2011-2014 the increase in public debt relative to GDP in 2014 allowed for a dominant view to be built around the idea that the crisis was caused by the government’s fiscal profligacy.
Austerity, inequality, and Bolsonaro’s election
Since then, many of the same problems facing the Western world seem to have converged on Brazil, only starting with a far higher level of social vulnerability.
The economic agenda has focused almost exclusively on cutting public expenditures. With a sharp drop in oil prices – from $85 per barrel in late 2014 to $25 in early 2016 – hitting the balance sheet of the Brazilian oil company Petrobras and the rest of the economy, the government reduced federal investment by more than 35 per cent in 2015. At the same time, the Central Bank raised interest rates in response to an inflation acceleration, which was mainly driven by a rapid adjustment in previously controlled energy tariffs and fuel prices.
After a real GDP contraction of 8.2 per cent in 2015-16, the Brazilian economy has been going through the slowest economic recovery in its history. And this despite all the beautiful promises about a boost in investor confidence following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the Congressional approval of a constitutional ten-year freeze on real federal spending. If the economy continues to grow at the same pace as it has since 2017, Brazil will only return to its pre-crisis real GDP level by 2025, more than ten years after the peak.
Last year’s presidential elections thus occurred in a context of mounting frustration and economic anxiety: unemployment had doubled – from 6.5 million people in 2014 to 13.2 million in 2017 – and inequality was rising twice as fast as it had fallen in the 2000s.
The Workers’ Party lost more votes between 2014 and 2018 among households with intermediate levels of income. These are precisely the groups that did not benefit so much from the boom but did suffer significant losses during the crisis, as has been argued by Amory Gethin and Marc Morgan.
To make matters worse, the crisis period coincided with the largest corruption investigation in Brazilian history (known as Lava Jato, or Operation Carwash), which facilitated the simplistic yet understandable perception amongst the general population that corruption itself was the cause of the economic meltdown. Rather than blaming immigrants or Chinese manufacturers, responsibility for the economic slowdown was attributed entirely to the political establishment and the left.
From this perspective, it becomes easier to understand how, in contrast to other far-right candidacies around the world, Bolsonaro was elected through the combination of his well-known morally conservative discourse and an ultra-liberal economic platform: getting rid of a corrupt state in all areas (except public security) was sold as a solution to all of the country’s problems.
What remains to be seen is whether the disastrous results of Bolsonaro’s agenda for the vast majority of the population, who would clearly benefit from a strong labour market and still rely on public services and social safety nets, will also prove to be his downfall.
Laura Carvalho is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Sao Paulo and holds a PhD in Economics from the New School for Social Research. Besides writing weekly columns for Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, Laura published the best-selling book "Valsa Brasileira" on the Brazilian economic crisis. Her academic research focuses on the relationship between economic growth and income distribution.
Source : London School of Economics Latin American and Caribbean
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2019/10/02/how-did-the-brazilian-economy-help-to-elect-bolsonaro/
Contemporary South African society has been constructed on the idea of difference. Race and gender differences are intrinsically tied to our history of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. During apartheid, these differences were cast into national laws designed to maintain a structure of division and control.
Differences between South Africans and other Africans are rooted in this history and institutionalised and naturalised through borders, policies and laws.
Gender and sexual differences are cemented in and regulated by customary, legal and religious principles that determine who belongs and who does not belong to the nation. Access to citizenship and political rights is thus volatile and leads to various forms of racial, xenophobic and gender violence.
It would seem that xenophobic sentiment and gender violence have become deep-rooted and cemented in social consciousness. How do we explain the recent assault of a grade 10 learner from the Democratic Republic of the Congo at Salt River High School who collapsed from beatings and suffered multiple injuries to her abdomen? She had been receiving threats for months after she was appointed as a class monitor, and her mother had been concerned for her safety after her daughter repeatedly reported bullying incidents associated with her being from another country. Yet, accounts of the events tell different stories. The Western Cape education department says there is no clear evidence that it was a xenophobic attack.
Similarly, the government’s and civil society’s responses to the latest xenophobic attacks have neither been decisive nor conclusive. Government was quick to frame the events as criminal attacks. On international platforms and in communications to embassies, delegates affirmed that South Africa is not a xenophobic country, and that the majority of South Africans do not have prejudices against people from other African countries.
On the other hand, some civil society groups pointed to the particular socioeconomic conditions that characterise black people’s lives in South Africa, showing a picture coloured by poverty in a country with one of the highest inequality rates in the world.
The contradictory relationship of solidarity in some instances and hostility at other times between poor and working-class locals and migrants points to the limitation of the poverty hypothesis.
It is estimated that one in five womxn experience violence in their lifetime and one in nine have been raped. Last year, more than 20 300 womxn were murdered, a rate that is five times higher than the global average. Womxn and children are violated and killed in their homes, in offices, churches, schools and on the streets. This is against a backdrop of womxn having organised in their neighbourhoods, schools and workplaces, and in local and national structures to prevent gender violence — and the establishment of 92 dedicated sexual offences courts since 2013.
These numbers reflect the local picture of sexual and gender-based violence, which is a global epidemic. Recently, the #TotalShutDown movement, the #SandtonShutdown, and globally the #MeToo movement, among many, have again directed public attention to systemic sexual and gender-based violence. These movements and campaigns have sought to foreground the ubiquity of violence against womxn and children and critique male violence or violent masculinities.
How are we to understand the steady rise of this violence and what interventions might be taken to reverse or mitigate the spread of xenophobic and gendered violence?
Between October 8 and 11, the faculty of humanities at the University of Cape Town will host a series of performances, workshops and panel discussions to explore different strands of the issue and have nuanced, honest dialogue.
A key thread in these conversations will be an interrogation of citizenship and the governance of difference. In spite of attempts to undo the legacy of colonial statecraft, the exclusive model of belonging continues to inform dominant ideas about society. Statehood and sovereignty are conceived of as the governance of an assemblage of historically distinct, often antagonistic male-headed “tribes” and races.
In this formulation, womxn’s roles are confined to biological and cultural reproduction while men are the “real” citizens who are there to protect their nation and “their” womxn.
Accordingly, the control of womxn and their bodies becomes the basis for maintaining sovereignty with laws and policies overly preoccupied with sexual relationships, sexual orientation and constraints on reproductive rights. Indeed, violence against womxn and violence against individuals who do not conform to traditional gender roles are commonplace. Those who are seen to challenge historical models of imperial racist heteropatriarchy are considered irresponsible citizens and subject to discipline and punishment.
Violence against womxn and violence against people perceived to be foreign has once again brought questions of inequality and belonging to the fore. Reactions and analysis often decouple the embodied forms of violence from practices and sentiments that undergird, precede and mediate them. The question of who belongs and to whom the polity belongs lingers across post-colonial Africa.
While racialised inequality remains a primary contradiction in South Africa, the national question anchored on citizenship and its accompanying rights have assumed prominence in the public sphere.
Dr Shose Kessi is acting dean of the faculty of humanities at the University of Cape Town. Simon Rakei, Dr Asanda Benya and Dr Faisal Garba are in the university’s sociology department.
By : Shose Kessi, Asanda Benya, Faisal Garba, Simon Rakei
Source : Mail & Guardian
https://mg.co.za/article/2019-10-04-00-behind-sas-brutality
Infant mortality rate (IMR) has risen for the last four years in England, yet the role of increasing levels of child poverty in explaining these trends has been unclear. Rising infant mortality is unusual in high income countries, and international data show that infant mortality has continued to decline in most rich countries in recent years. Infant mortality is a sensitive indicator of the changing overall health of societies and, as such, acts as an early warning system for future adverse trends.
Given the urgent need to understand this extremely concerning trend in England researchers from the University of Liverpool, University of Leeds and Newcastle University conducted an analysis of trends in infant mortality in English local authorities over a 17-year period, 2000-2017 with the aim of providing an explanation for this rise.
The researchers grouped 324 local authorities into 5 categories (quintiles) based on their level of income deprivation with Quintile 1 being the most affluent and Quintile 5 the most deprived. A statistical model was then used to quantify the association between regional changes in child poverty and infant mortality during the same period.
The researchers found that sustained and unprecedented rise in infant mortality in England from 2014-2017 was not experienced evenly across the population. In the most deprived local authorities, the previously declining trend in infant mortality reversed and mortality rose, leading to an additional 24 infant deaths per 100,000 live births per year, relative to the previous trend.
There was no significant change from the pre-existing trend in the most affluent local authorities. As a result, inequalities in infant mortality increased, with the gap between the most and the least deprived local authority areas widening by 52 deaths per 100,000 births. Overall from 2014-2017, there were a total of 572 excess infant deaths compared to what would have been expected based on historical trends. The researchers estimate that each 1% increase in child poverty was significantly associated with an extra 5.8 infant deaths per 100,000 live births.
The findings suggest that about a third of the increases in infant mortality between 2014 and 2017 may be attributed to rising child poverty, equivalent to an extra 172 infant deaths.
Professor David Taylor-Robinson, the lead author on the research, University of Liverpool, said: “This study provides evidence that the unprecedented rise in infant mortality disproportionately affected the poorest areas of the country, leaving the more affluent areas unaffected.
“Our analysis also linked the recent increase in infant mortality in England with rising child poverty, suggesting that about a third of the increase in infant mortality from 2014-17 may be attributed to rising child poverty.
“These findings are really concerning given that child poverty is rising. It is time for the government to reverse this trend establishing a welfare system that protects children from poverty.”
“We know that child poverty has a myriad of adverse impacts on other aspects of child health that will have repercussions for decades to come. In the context of increasing health inequalities in England, policies that reduce poverty and social inequalities are likely to reduce the occurrence of infant mortality and that of many other adverse child health outcomes.”
Dr Paul Norman, University of Leeds, said: “The data shows us an unprecedented rise in the deaths of children under one year of age, but our next step is to examine the gestational age and the number of weeks at which infants die, to learn more about when key interventions may be needed or when they are being missed. This will inform the urgent action needed by national and local governments, and help drive the health and social care policies needed to reduce infant mortality rates.”
By : Eurasia Review
Source : Eurasia Review
https://www.eurasiareview.com/04102019-unprecedented-rise-in-infant-mortality-in-england-linked-to-poverty/
Global Health Crisis: COVID-19
Photo by freestocks (Unsplash)
Global Health Crisis
For more stories about the pandemic, please visit our COVID 19 page. Photo by Adam Niescioruk (Unsplash)
Pedagogy Series
Photo by: Changbok Ko (Unsplash)
Photo by: Sam Balye (Unsplash)
International Sociological Association
Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology
University Complutense
Phone: (34)91352 76 50
Fax: (34)91352 49 45
The ISA is a member of the International Social Science Council and enjoys a status of the Non-Governmental Organization in formal associate relations with UNESCO and special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. The ISA is also a member of the International Council of Science.
Back to ISA Main Site
Contact Us | Home
Powered by Capability Cloud
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538627
|
__label__cc
| 0.70624
| 0.29376
|
How a UPenn interviewer tells the difference between authentic vs. packaged students
How to pick out “packaged” candidates from a crowd of applicants. Unfairness in the college admissions process. Changes in the admissions landscape. Biggest surprises for college applicants. Best piece of advice for Penn hopefuls. Get answers from Dave Min, Penn Wharton alumni, Penn admissions interviewer, UCI law professor, and congressional candidate, in this week’s latest insider interview. This is a continuation of our interview from last week. To catch up on last week’s interview, click here.
Exclusive Insider Interview: University of Pennsylvania, Admissions Interviewer
SocratesPost: “I feel like college admissions sometimes skews toward those who seem more mature at age 17 — the people who really know themselves and show passion at 17. Have you noticed any sort of unfairness in the college admissions process?”
Dave at Penn: “I mean, is there a racial component to some of this? Perhaps, because as Asian Americans, we tend to be shier. We’re finding ourselves, particularly if our parents were immigrants and that’s something I always try to keep in mind as well. They’re young and they will blossom. There’s often a sense that because everybody now knows you’re supposed to do the following things, you need to have extracurriculars and all. It’s not so much maturity, but it’s an authenticity thing. I remember talking to one guy who was very young, but it was just the passion which — I forgot if it was tennis or something — was lacking. You’re getting a sense of getting to know somebody beyond their listed accomplishments. And I believe that if you want to succeed in a college environment, you need to be excited about learning and you need to be excited about your pursuits. Too many people who go to college, particularly somewhere far from home, are just used to checking the boxes and I don’t think, pedagogically, that’s going to work.”
SocratesPost: “How do we encourage students to find what they love and actually enjoy learning rather than just check the boxes for admissions?”
Dave at Penn: “Yeah, I’ve got young kids and that’s the trillion dollar question. How do you get them excited? I know at the end of the day, grades and test scores are a big piece of this. And if you don’t have the requisite grades and test scores, you’re not even going to be in the conversation. To the extent that those interviews mean anything, it’s only when you sort of pass the [grades and test] bar. And some people are so far past the bar that the interview is not going to matter and some people are so far below the bar that the interview is not going to matter. It is that sort of small subset of people that are in that gray area where the interviews might make a difference. I say you need to focus on your studies and your test scores and that just means practice. That means work ethic.
And that’s easier said than done. I was not the hardest working kid myself. I was able to escape by my intelligence and I did not learn a good work ethic as a kid. So I’m cognizant of people that are too much like me at the same time. But as far as your extracurriculars, I say encourage your kid to find something he actually likes rather than force him to do things they don’t, because that matters. If you’re a master violinist, like you’re the lead first violin in a major orchestra, that’s got to mean something, right? Even if you don’t love it, that’s still a pretty damn impressive accomplishment that will stand out.
But at the same time if you’re just kind of indistinguishable as far as your extracurricular activities, we have grade inflation that we’re seeing, we also have extracurricular inflation where everybody seems to be doing like 25 different activities.”
SocratesPost: “Right, everyone is doing the same 25 activities and they have the same title. If you’re not a secretary, you’re a president.”
Dave at Penn: “Exactly. So, the way you distinguish yourself is by going the extra mile. It’s the person that has the title but is able to articulate what they were doing. If you’re helping the homeless, tell me what exactly you’re doing. Don’t just tell me you went every Saturday because your parents told you to, right? If you’re passionate about it, go start up something. Go start an initiative to collect canned food. Start up some kind of annex to the charity you’re working for. Those are the people that go that extra mile because they’re passionate about it and I think you’re only going to do that if you’re really excited about it.”
SocratesPost: “How do you tell the difference between the students who were told by parents, counselors, or teachers to go start something versus students who just came up with it on their own, organically?”
Continue to read how this Penn interviewer can tell the difference between students with real motivation and the students who just follow directions. Learn Dave’s take on the changes in college admissions and his best piece of advice for applicants. See a sneak peek of my questions below.
Read the full article now! →
SocratesPost: “Earlier, you said you submitted your application for Penn and had mailed in that application. That’s not how it works anymore. What have you noticed about the changing landscape on college admission? And what should parents and students be aware of now that wasn’t relevant to someone applying in the past?”
SocratesPost: “Do you think that will start with the private schools, or would it be a change amongst public schools, too?”
SocratesPost: “What is something that you find students or parents are surprised to learn during the college app process that they just did not see coming?”
Mercy at SocratesPost: “So, how does the incoming college freshman navigate that? And is it the responsibility of themselves or of their advisors, their parents? If they have a consultant, their consultant to help them be aware of that when they’re choosing?”
SocratesPost: “Yeah, basically. Thousands of high schoolers are dying for a chance to study at Penn or similar schools. What type of student do you think Penn is more suited for?”
SocratesPost: “Is that because of their GPA for grad school?”
SocratesPost: “To wrap up, what is your best piece of advice for high school applicants vying for a spot in their school of choice?”
What should you NOT say in an admission interview?
Do I have any chance into the Ivy Leagues without sports but arts & music instead?
How should anti-social students approach ECs?
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538629
|
__label__wiki
| 0.61375
| 0.61375
|
Opposition in Plovdiv city council launches renewed attack on Plovdiv 2019 Foundation, Balkan Pride
Written by The Sofia Globe staff on April 1, 2019 in Bulgaria - Comments Off on Opposition in Plovdiv city council launches renewed attack on Plovdiv 2019 Foundation, Balkan Pride
A group of opposition members of Plovdiv city council is petitioning for a special meeting of the council to demand the resignation of the Plovdiv 2019 Foundation leadership and the cancellation of the Balkan Pride event scheduled for July as part of the city’s European Capital of Culture programme.
The petition has gathered 21 signatures out of the 51 members of Plovdiv city council. It was initiated by the nationalist VMRO and the minority Union for Plovdiv councillors, and is being backed by the Bulgarian Socialist Party, other nationalist councillors and two independent members of the council.
This is the latest twist in the targeting of the Balkan Pride event, previously criticised by the nationalists and the Bulgarian Socialist Party, and a campaign by these groups against Plovdiv 2019 Foundation artistic director Svetlana Kuyumdzhieva.
The Balkan Pride event and the Plovdiv 2019 Foundation leadership were the target of homophobic graffiti daubed on the foundation’s headquarters in March. Earlier, stickers attacking the planned Balkan Pride event were put up illegally in the city.
Organised by the GLAS Foundation, Balkan Pride is described on the Plovdiv 2019 Foundation’s website as a project focusing on human rights and the struggle for equality, “seeking to present a contemporary reading of Balkan traditions in the context of global society and our digitalised reality”.
An exhibition, a public discussion and a Balkan Pride musical event will present photos, artefacts and audiovisual installations from pride parades in big Balkan cities, including Sofia.
“The project challenges certain stereotypes, but also aims at a dialogue between different social, age and ethnic groups in order to improve urban culture and expand public horizons. Organisers of pride parades in Thessaloniki, Belgrade and Bucharest will also take part.”
Speaking at a news conference on April 1, VMRO city councillor Stefan Posliiski said: “We decided to call a special meeting of the municipal council, because the cup runneth over – we realised that the notorious Balkan Pride exhibition in July would show photos from gay parades from all the Balkan countries. That’s why the exhibition is no different from holding a gay parade in Plovdiv”.
Alexander Sidi, a member of Parliament from Plovdiv for the nationalist United Patriots, was quoted by the website marica.bg as saying: “No one says what the true name of the GLAS Foundation is, it’s ‘Gays and Lesbians Accepted in Society’…we are against this exhibition and we will fight against it with all legal, and if need be, illegal means”.
Dani Kanazireva, the leader of the Union for Plovdiv, which has six seats on Plovdiv city council, said that the Plovdiv 2019 Foundation “only formally” fulfilled its obligation to submit quarterly reports to the council. “These are accounting reports of which nothing is understood,” she said.
Kanazireva said that there was no dialogue, communication and transparency between the foundation and society. Besides Kuyumdzhieva, other resignations could be requested at the special council meeting, she said.
VMRO leader Borislav Inchev said that radical changes to the leadership of the foundation are needed to save the cause of the Plovdiv European Capital of Culture 2019 initiative.
According to the rules of procedure of Plovdiv city council, the special sitting should be scheduled within seven days, with an agenda in accordance with the petition for it to be held.
In March, after the graffiti incident at the Plovdiv 2019 Foundation headquarters, GLAS released an open letter to Plovdiv mayor Ivan Totev.
GLAS Foundation head Simeon Vassilev said: “The attempts of political parties in the city to derive dividends on the back of the cultural programme will discredit Plovdiv 2019. Hate speech, discrimination and misunderstanding contradict the very idea of the European Capital of Culture”.
The lies and seeking of media sensations already had had a negative impact on the city, the vandalisation of the Plovdiv 2019 Foundation facade and the insults and threats against the director of the foundation and the LGBTI community being the most recent example, Vassilev said.
“Plovdiv and its residents have always and rightly prided themselves on their spirit of acceptance and peaceful co-existence between different ethnicities and minorities. We therefore call on you to condemn the politicisation of the European Capital of Culture initiative and the attempts at party dictates on the Plovdiv 2019 programme, and to take measures to preserve public order and municipal property in order to carry out the various events of the cultural calendar of the city,” the GLAS Foundation open letter said.
Kuyumdzhieva said in March that any attempt at external and political intervention in the content of the European Capital of Culture 2019 programme was unacceptable. “Such attacks on the programme can only be treated as manifestations of censorship and discrimination, for which there are responsible authorities at national and European level,” he said.
She said that the main goal and concept of the Plovdiv European Capital of Culture 2019 programme was “to show different aspects of contemporary society, to include diverse communities and minorities, to include art and culture in helping and protecting basic human rights of the first and foremost value in the great European family – freedom”.
(Archive photo of Plovdiv municipal headquarters: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
Bulgarian Jewish organisation Shalom condemns antisemitic daubing of Plovdiv synagogue
Mayor of Bulgaria’s Plovdiv: Police to assist in controlling access to big stores after reports of crowding
Covid-19: Five to be fired over deaths of patients left waiting outside hospital in Bulgaria’s Plovdiv
Bulgaria’s biggest open-air ice rink to open in Plovdiv on December 1
'Code Orange' dangerous weather warning for 6 districts in Bulgaria on January 12
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538630
|
__label__wiki
| 0.718988
| 0.718988
|
Ariel Borujow on Intuitive Approaches to Mixing and the Changing Role of the Engineer
Grammy-winning mix engineer trusts Sonarworks Reference 4 as a crucial part of his signal chain
New York, New York, December 17, 2019 – Ariel Borujow has made his career on learning how to intuitively understand vibe across a diverse range of musical genres. From his earliest days at New York City hip-hop destination studios Greene St. Recording and Daddy’s House Recording Studio to his more recent work with chart-toppers like Mac Miller and Madonna and electronic music mainstays like Keys N Krates, Moon Boots, Pat Lok, and CID, the Grammy Award-winning mix engineer has developed an approach based on personal connection and mutual artistic enthusiasm that has helped him to reach inside the creative minds of his clients and bring their ideas to life in his mixes. Having worked steadily over the past few decades, Borujow has seen this approach become even more relevant as relationships between mix engineers and artists has changed with the increasing amount of technology at their fingertips which allow them to chase this vibe earlier in the process than previously possible.
Borujow’s artist-first approach comes from the genuine enthusiasm he has for developing these relationships. At the start of each project, he typically has a series of conversations with the artist to establish what vibe they are trying to accomplish. Understanding the intent helps him to know what elements bring to the forefront. “Being a good mix engineer is being part-sonic psychiatrist and part-conductor of an orchestra,” he said. “You’re really trying to bring the best emotion out of the artist and let the art dictate how it’s supposed to sound.”
Although building this kind of rapport has always been a part of his process, Borujow is quick to note how much this relationship has changed from when he was first working as an engineer at the tail end of the analog-era in the late 1990s. “Back then you had to book time in a studio to record, and once you had a rough mix you had to book another one to do that mix and you were really starting from scratch when you sat down to mix,” he explains. “Now, since artists are working in the same DAW as you, they’ve created the vibe for you and it’s more about honoring what they’ve made and finding the best way to bring it forward.”
Bringing the artist’s intent forward for Borujow means trusting his intuition and choosing the right tools for the job, while ensuring that the latter doesn’t get in the way of the former. “Some people are so dependent on the tools, and to me mixing really isn’t about the technical aspect,” he said. “It’s all about your feel and gut instinct and ensuring that you’re really listening and are trusting your ears. If you can capture that feel and it comes across on all mediums, then you’ve done a good job.”
Translating the feel
Borujow currently does most of his work in Pro Tools from his private studio, using a Slate Raven Desk as well as an Avid S3 16-Channel mixing console. For monitoring, he favors a pair of Yamaha NS10 monitors as well as a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50X headphones, both calibrated using Sonarworks’ Reference 4 plugin. Borujow was an early adopter of Reference and sees it as a key part of his setup, that allows him to completely trust what he’s hearing and focus on mixing. “Not having to spend hours and hours in the studio is great, and I’m finishing my mixes in a quarter of the time that it used to take me,” he said. “You’re only as good as what you hear and the more neutral your room is, the better you’ll be able to do that. I really believe in what they’ve done with Reference because they’ve made it possible for any room to be on par with a professional facility without having to spend thousands of dollars.”
In addition to using the plugin in his own studio, Borujow says it’s also allowed him to work on-the-go with headphones, saving him valuable time while still giving him the same high-quality results. This also has the added benefit of allowing him to experience his work as many of his new clients do – as many of them work exclusively in headphones as well – and ensure that their mixes and chosen vibe will translate regardless. “It’s one of those things that you definitely need if you’re mixing, and there’s no reason that anyone with a studio shouldn’t have it” he said.
All photos credited to Mark Rossi.
For more information about Ariel Borujow, please visit: http://www.arielborujow.com/
For more information about Sonarworks Reference 4, please visit www.sonarworks.com/reference.
Steve Bailey Public Relations, Hummingbird Media, Inc.
steve@hummingbirdmedia.com
191217-SW-ArielBurojow.docx 100 KB
Glen Robinson Takes an Analog Approach to Recording With Digital Technology
Award-winning producer, mixer and engineer brings an in-depth understanding to the latest digital tools
Grammy-Winning Engineer Jared Kvitka Trusts Sonarworks Reference 4 for Monitoring
Engineer to Artists like Iron Maiden, Black Country Communion and Joe Bonamassa, and Instructor at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences, Depends on Sonarworks
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538632
|
__label__wiki
| 0.827026
| 0.827026
|
Tampa Airport Unveils Images of $928 Million Planned Upgrades
Jamal Thalji, Tampa Bay Times
- Jan 28, 2014 7:00 am
Lagging behind international airports, especially those in Europe and Asia, U.S. airports are now pouring millions into upgrades that makes the hubs brighter, more entertaining places to fly into or connect.
— Samantha Shankman
Tampa International Airport plans to make its main terminal more spacious. Tampa International Airport
The airport plans to transform its current observation desk into an entrance area for a new tram that transports people from the main terminal to a new rental car facility. Tampa International Airport
Glass walls be put in the shuttle lobbies to allow more natural sunlight to enter the airport. Tampa International Airport
The shuttle lobbies will be moved back to create a more spacious main terminal. Tampa International Airport
Take a glimpse at the future of Tampa International Airport:
When renovations of the main terminal are finished by 2017, it will be turned into a sleeker, brighter, more modern and more wide-open space.
There will still be kiosks and free-standing counters in the center of the terminal, but the storefronts will be gone. Instead, they’ll be pushed up against the walls, freeing up space in the center to make the new terminal more airy.
The entrances to the airside shuttles will be pushed outward to free space inside the terminal. New outside spaces will also be created. The new colors will be lighter too.
The changes were demonstrated in new artist renderings shown to the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority on Monday.
The board, which oversees the airport, approved an amendment to the 2014 capital budget on Monday to pay for the $928 million needed to upgrade, expand and add to the airport in the next three years.
“This is a significant step toward making our 20-year vision for Tampa International Airport a reality, as well as putting thousands of people to work and contributing to the Tampa Bay region’s economy,” said airport chief executive officer Joe Lopano in a prepared statement. “These initial projects will help us decongest roadways and curbsides, allow rental car companies to grow, and begin to set the stage for the doubling of passenger capacity projected over the next couple of decades.”
The airport plans to spend $122.5 million to redo the main terminal and revamp all of its concession options, bringing in a newer — and bigger — lineup of restaurants, bars and shops to the main terminal and eventually the airsides as well.
But the main thrust of the project will be new construction: The airport plans to spend $318.7 million on a consolidated rental car facility that will be built 1.3 miles south of the main building and $417.5 million on an automated people mover to connect it to the terminal.
This is the first, nearly $1 billion phase of what will be several decades of construction at the airport. Eventually, the airport plans to spend $4.1 billion on new construction and to upgrade and perform maintenance on existing airport infrastructure like runways.
In December, the Aviation Authority voted to hire Texas firm Austin Commercial to design and oversee construction. But the firm has pledged to hire workers and firms from the Tampa Bay area to do the work.
The new rental car facility, automated people mover and terminal renovation is expected to create about 8,000 jobs and have an estimated $320 million economic impact on the community over the next four years.
(c)2014 the Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Fla.). Distributed by MCT Information Services.
Tags: design, tampa
Photo Credit: A rendering of the new Tampa International Airport. Tampa International Airport / Facebook
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538634
|
__label__cc
| 0.628279
| 0.371721
|
Don’t Get Stuck With Your Employee’s Student Loan Debt
Published: May 26, 2015 Last Updated: Aug 5, 2019 by Ed Lieber In Employment 2
Did you know that some of your current or former employees may have outstanding student loans that you can be on the hook for?
Federal and state laws penalize employers that do not comply with wage-garnishment orders. That’s right. You can be sued for the amount of a loan that an employee owes. Interest and attorneys’ fees can also be added to the amount of the defaulted loan. And although it happens rarely, you may actually be found in contempt of court … and potentially put in jail.
You face this spectrum of risks if you’re a sole proprietor — that is, an unincorporated business owned and run by one individual.
Sole proprietors are not required to have a registered agent — a third-party company that handles garnishment orders as part of its services. Registered agents also apprise clients of filing and compliance deadlines, among other services. Other kinds of companies — such as LLCs, S Corporations or C Corporations — are required by law to have a registered agent.
Ultimately, however, “the burden of the [wage garnishment] collection falls on the employers to make sure the garnishment is taken care of in payroll,” Jason Erb, director of strategic alliances for small business at CT, told Small Business Trends in an exclusive interview.
CT would know. The company offers incorporation, registered agent and other services for small businesses. Established more than 120 years ago, it has the largest team of compliance specialists in the U.S. as well as about 1.6 million clients. CT has a presence in every state.
Right now the U.S. has about 18 million sole proprietors, which translates to roughly 80 percent of small businesses nationwide. That’s a lot of companies at risk of defaulting on wage-garnishment, which has been on the rise for years, Erb said.
“Since 2008 we have been seeing a large rise in garnishment,” Erb said. He described the trend as part of the fallout from general economic conditions. “The world gets tighter and it gets harder to pay back your debts.”
Of all the loan debt you could be liable for, student loan debt is the largest.
This month around 1.8 million students will graduate with a bachelor’s degree from an American college, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. This adds hundreds of millions of dollars to the grand total of $1.31 trillion in outstanding student loan debt in this country.
The Department of Education reports that $1 billion has been collected each year over the past several years through garnishment, a 40 percent increase since 2006.
Only about 63 percent of student loan borrowers seem to have avoided delinquency or default, according to a New York Federal Reserve study that also noted:
“Student loan debt is the only form of consumer debt that has grown since the peak of consumer debt in 2008. Balances of student loans have eclipsed both auto loans and credit cards, making student loan debt the largest form of consumer debt outside of mortgages.”
Erb himself was once a small business owner who collided with a considerable garnishment-related issue. He’d founded a consulting firm in New York and one year was liable for more than $10,000 in ungarnished wages for a former employee.
“He was already gone. I should have known better,” Erb said.
Small businesses without adequate compliance resources may regret not hiring a registered agent, Erb said.
He described federal and state garnishment legislation is a “complex web” that could cost a “significant” amount of money.
Garnishment orders are typically delivered to businesses via their registered agent, which is tasked with ensuring the client company is in compliance.
Erb in fact tells his sole proprietor clients to go all the way, meaning not only hire a registered agent but form an LLC or incorporate.
“This will give you extra protection against liability,” he said. “As an Inc., you have to have a registered agent.”
Otherwise, “it’s on you as the business owner.”
“No matter how small your business is, with issues like wage garnishment you are playing in the same league as a Johnson and Johnson.”
The related fees are not that significant, Erb said, especially when compared to what you without a registered agent.
“As a sole proprietor, whatever liability hits the company hits you because you are your business.
“I always tell people do the extra step—do it right at the beginning. Use a reputable third-party agent. Don’t use your lawyer or CPA,” he added.
Erb said he’s heard “too many stories” about people working hard to grow their own business only to be sidetracked by one of these thorny issues that can severally sideline.
“Even if you’re by yourself and just starting out that is your personal income at stake,” he said.
Bolstering your HR person or staff is not the answer either because directly raising the issue of student loan debt may put you at odds with certain laws, depending on your state. Also, the employee may not even know there is a garnishment order hanging over his or her head.
If you think you can nip this entire problem in the bud by not hiring college students, think again.
“It’s not just the younger students coming out of school who are defaulting,” Erb said. “Anyone with a student loan debt that hasn’t been paid” will be subjected to wage garnishment.
“The problem is not going to go away,” Erb said.
CT’s website offers further information about hiring a registered agent, as well as how to incorporate.
Debt Photo via Shutterstock
Declining Millennial Entrepreneurship Not Caused by Student Debt
Devbridge Launches TeamOS at SXSW To Foster Employee Engagement Through Transparency
The Single Best Employee Benefit Your Small Business Can Offer
ProTips: 5 Ways to Scale Customer Support Without Breaking the Bank
Ed Lieber
Ed Lieber is a staff writer for Small Business Trends. He is a journalist and marketing copywriter with 20 years of experience writing, editing and managing for print and digital vehicles.
This is the reason why background checks are a must. It’s just a little weird that you have to pay for the loans of your employees.
Don't Make These Small Business Wage Garnishment Mistakes
Conduct Competitive Research
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538635
|
__label__wiki
| 0.953867
| 0.953867
|
NZ vs PAK | Had the opportunities to win in the series but we didn't take them, regrets Misbah-ul-Haq
Pakistan lost the Test series 0-2 against world's no. 1 New Zealand
Pakistan head coach Misbah-ul-Haq made no excuses after a comprehensive Test series loss in New Zealand and admitted that Pakistan didn't take chances that came their way to win the series. He also added that the team deserves every bit of criticism, given they are expected to perform better.
Pakistan's horrible SENA run of recent years continued in New Zealand as they were whitewashed by the Kiwis 2-0 in the Test series. Pakistan, who were already hit by the injury of their star batsman Babar Azam, also missed the services of the likes of Imam-ul-Haq and Shadab Khan, which came as big blows and impacted their displays.
Despite all the setbacks, Pakistan's gritty batting almost bailed them out of a tricky game in the first Test as the game looked likely to end in draw but then New Zealand bulldozed the visitors to snatch a win. However, in the second Test, there was no contest at all, with the hosts winning the Test and the series easily.
Pakistan head coach Misbah-ul-Haq, reflecting on the series loss, stated that the team deserves to be criticised for its poor performances and rued not winning games from good positions.
"We deserve to be criticised for our performances. When people expect good performances from you and you don't deliver they are justified to criticise you," Misbah said in a podcast issued by the Pakistan Cricket Board, reported TOI.
"The way we fought hard in the first Test was very good and everyone expected a similar performance in the second Test but that didn't happen. We had opportunities in the series to win matches but we didn't take them," he said.
The former Pakistan skipper also highlighted the issue of not being able to finish games, which has been a recent problem for the Men in Green, just as has been fielding, which again came under the scanner in the Test series.
"This is something we have to look at as to why we can't cross that line between winning and losing a match. I have seen it happen many times in recent matches," he said.
"These things ultimately affected the result of the series. We need to improve our fielding."
Pakistan are set to lock horns with a young South African side at home, which is slated to be a big series for the return of cricket in the country. Misbah added that for the high profile series, they will look at domestic performances to pick players.
"We will look at making changes according to the home conditions and the South African team. We may also consider top performers from the ongoing Quaid-e-Azam Trophy for the South African series," he concluded.
Misbah Ul Haq
Pakistan Cricket Team
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538637
|
__label__cc
| 0.719258
| 0.280742
|
How to Form a Holding Company
Do You Own Multiple Businesses?
Many small business owners have several businesses. If you are in that situation, you may want to consider setting up a holding company as an overall entity. The reason for doing that would be to keep the liability of the businesses separate, and manage them together.
What is a Holding Company?
A holding company is a company (usually a corporation) that owns a controlling interest in one or more companies, called subsidiaries. A holding company might be called an “umbrella” company or a parent company. The holding company doesn’t do anything except manage the companies under its umbrella.
A holding company can own subsidiary companies that hold:
Shares of stock in a corporation
Securities, like stocks, bonds, and mutual funds
Intangible assets like patents and copyrights
Vehicles or equipment
In other words, anything that has value
Each type of asset could be set up as a separate business. For example, you could form one business to hold real estate, and another to hold a fleet of delivery vehicles.
What are the Types of Holding Companies?
A holding company holds part of another company’s stock.
A parent holding company owns enough stock (usually 51%) to control election to the board of directors.
A holding company is considered a personal holding company (PHC) under IRS rules if it meets two tests:
An Income Test: At least 60% of the company’s adjusted ordinary gross income for the tax year is from dividends, rent, interest, and royalties
A Stock Ownership Test: If five or fewer individuals own a majority of the company’s stock at some point during the latter half of the tax year
A PHC may be subject to a special PHC tax if at least 60% of its adjusted ordinary gross income for the tax year is PhC income. Schedule PH for the corporate tax return is used to determine if this tax must be paid.
Do I Need a Holding Company?
If your multiple businesses are very small with few assets (like an online business), it seems a lot of expense and trouble to form a holding company. Another possibility is to form just one company and then to have several “projects” within that LLC. You could then file a fictitious name (“doing business as”) designation for each of these projects.
The advantage of a holding company over separate companies is that losses in one company can be used to offset profits in another, while still keeping the liabilities separate.
How Do I Start a Holding Company?
Before you start a holding company, you’ll have to decide what type of company legal structure you want. The two most common types of companies are LLCs and corporations. Starting a holding company as an LLC or a corporation is a fairly painless task, but you should get the help of an attorney to make sure you do it correctly.
As you set up your holding company, you will need to find a board of directors to manage the holding company and oversee the subsidiaries. These people should be familiar with the holding company concept.
Are There Restrictions on LLC’s Owning Corporations?
Different business legal entities can own each other, but there are restrictions. From the standpoint of a state, there are usually no restrictions – an LLC can own a C corporation, for example. The restrictions come from the IRS. If an LLC is an owner of a corporation, the LLC must elect C corporation tax status.
An LLC cannot own an S corporation because only individuals and certain trusts and estates can own this type of corporation.
A sole proprietorship is not eligible to own another company because it isn’t registered with a state and its tax status is limited.
This article on Who Can Own a Business has more detailed information on what kinds of companies or individuals can own businesses.
Is a Holding Company Liable for Acts of a Subsidiary?
In general, the liability of a holding company for one subsidiary’s actions relates to the degree of control the holding company has over the operations of the subsidiary. In United States v. Bestfoods, in 1998, the Supreme Court held unanimously that a holding company isn’t liable for acts of a subsidiary if the parent didn’t actively participate in, and have control over, the actions of the subsidiary, but there are exceptions, and state laws govern these issues.
The most important exception is if the corporate veil is pierced, meaning that the action was outside the normal activities of a business (fraud or negligence, for example). In this case, the owners of both the subsidiary and the holding company could be sued.
More important, if you set up the individual companies within your holding company correctly, the liability for debts won’t affect all the others. For example, if one subsidiary is set up to own real estate, and it goes bankrupt, the other companies should not be affected by the bankruptcy.
What about Taxes for Holding Companies?
The individual business entities each file their own tax report and the reports. Each business files a tax return, and the losses and gains of each business are added up and placed on the holding company’s tax return. So a loss by one entity can be used to offset a profit by another on the holding company’s tax return.
This is a complex issue, with liability and taxes to consider. Before you form a holding company, talk to an attorney and a CPA who are familiar with the laws and accounting for holding companies. Discuss your current situation and future plans to make sure everything you do is according to all federal and state laws and regulations
A holding company is a business entity—usually a corporation or limited liability company (LLC). Typically, a holding company doesn’t manufacture anything, sell any products or services, or conduct any other business operations. Rather, holding companies hold the controlling stock in other companies.
Although a holding company owns the assets of other companies, it often maintains only oversight capacities. So while it may oversee the company’s management decisions, it does not actively participate in running a business’s day-to-day operations of these subsidiaries.
A holding company is also sometimes called an “umbrella” or parent company.
A holding company is a type of financial organization that owns a controlling interest in other companies, which are called subsidiaries.
The parent corporation can control the subsidiary’s policies and oversee management decisions but doesn’t run day-to-day operations.
Holding companies are protected from losses accrued by subsidiaries—so if a subsidiary goes bankrupt, its creditors can’t go after the holding company.
Understanding Holding Companies
A holding company typically exists for the sole purpose of controlling other companies. Holding companies may also own property, such as real estate, patents, trademarks, stocks, and other assets.
Businesses that are completely owned by a holding company are referred to as “wholly-owned subsidiaries.” Although a holding company can hire and fire managers of the companies it owns, those managers are ultimately responsible for their own operations.
Benefits of Holding Companies
Holding companies enjoy the benefit of protection from losses. If a subsidiary company goes bankrupt, the holding company may experience a capital loss and a decline in net worth. However, the bankrupt company’s creditors cannot legally pursue the holding company for remuneration.
Consequently, as an asset protection strategy, a parent corporation might structure itself as a holding company, while creating subsidiaries for each of its business lines. For example, one subsidiary may own the parent corporation’s brand name and trademarks, while another subsidiary may own its real estate.
This tactic serves to limit the financial and legal liability exposure of the holding company (and of its various subsidiaries). It may also depress a corporation’s overall tax liability by strategically basing certain parts of its business in jurisdictions that have lower tax rates.
If a holding company is set up correctly, the debt liability of one subsidiary won’t impact any others; if one subsidiary were to declare bankruptcy, it would not impact the others.
Holding companies can also serve the purpose of protecting an individual’s personal assets. With a holding company, those assets are technically held by the corporation, and not by the person, who is consequently shielded from debt liabilities, lawsuits, and other risks.
Holding companies support their subsidiaries by using their resources to lower the cost of much-needed operating capital. Using a downstream guarantee, the parent company can make a pledge on a loan on behalf of the subsidiary. Ultimately, this can help companies obtain lower-interest-rate debt financing than they otherwise would be able to source on their own. Once backed by the financial strength of the holding company, the subsidiary company’s risk of defaulting on its debt drops considerably.
Example of a Holding Company
An example of a well-known holding company is Berkshire Hathaway, which owns assets in more than one hundred public and private companies, including Dairy Queen, Clayton Homes, Duracell, GEICO, Fruit of the Loom, RC Wiley Home Furnishings and Marmon Group. Berkshire likewise boasts minor holdings in The Coca-Cola Company, Goldman Sachs, IBM, American Express, Apple, Delta Airlines, and Kinder Morgan.
What Is an Independent Subsidiary?
Can an LLC Buy the Rights to Another Company?
Subsidiary vs. Joint Ventures
What Do Companies Call Consolidated Income Statements?
Is the Owner of a Corporation Considered a Shareholder?
What Factors Are Used to Determine if the Equity Method of Accounting Is Appropriate?
Successful entrepreneurs with multiple small businesses are typically concerned with limiting liability, streamlining management and retaining ownership control over each entity. Using a holding company can sometimes be the solution to all three concerns. The company works as an umbrella to give you centralized control over your endeavors while maintaining the liability firewall between each business.
A holding company is a corporation or limited liability company that holds a controlling ownership interest in other companies or the assets that those companies use. Typically, a holding company simply holds equity interests or assets, rather than actively engaging in business, such as selling goods or services. Another name for a holding company is a parent, and the companies under it are called operating companies or subsidiaries.
Centralized Control
Entrepreneurs who want to open multiple small businesses can use a holding company to centralize control. The entrepreneur can set up the holding company and designate himself as the sole owner. Each business can be set up separately with the holding company as the owner. In this way, the holding company is the central repository of the equity interests in those companies, and the entrepreneur can select executive management for each company while retaining the ability to direct each entity.
Limiting Investment
Using a holding company also enables you to raise money and create partnerships for each individual entity without losing overarching control of the business conglomerate. An equity investor can invest in one of the companies under the holding company without interfering with any of the others. If you had simply created a single company with multiple divisions or projects, an investor would take an interest in your whole business empire instead of just a single project that is set up as its own business.
Limiting Liability
One of the best uses of a holding company for small-business owners is to further limit liability. Creditors of a corporation or an LLC can go after anything that the entity owns. If you’re in a high-risk business, you can use a holding company to own all of the assets that your business needs to operate, such as real property, vehicles and equipment. The holding company leases those assets to the operating company, so if the operating company gets sued, it owns very little that can be used to satisfy a judgment. The operating company can easily be closed and declared bankrupt, and you can set up another business that leases the exact same assets from the holding company.
Creating an interlocking ownership structure for multiple small businesses using a holding company is a sophisticated endeavor with significant tax consequences that are tied to your legal structure choices and tax elections. For example, special personal holding company tax rules apply to corporations but not necessarily LLCs that are used as holding companies. Consult with qualified legal and tax professionals before setting up your businesses.
Do Limited Liability Partnerships Have Subsidiaries?
What Advantages Are Offered If I Open a Business As a Corporation?
The Advantages of Having a Closed Corporation Company
About Consolidating Businesses
Can an LLC Own Stock in a C Corporation?
A holding company is a business entity that has no operations and does not conduct any activities. It owns assets. These assets could be shares of other companies, hedge funds, real estate, trademarks, patents or units in partnerships. Grouping companies together under a holding company gives them advantages they would not have when operating as separate entities.
Limitation of Risks
Subsidiaries are protected from problems occurring in other companies. A plaintiff who wins a judgement against one subsidiary cannot attach the assets of the other companies. The holding company would also not be liable if it had not guaranteed the debts of the subsidiary.
If a subsidiary takes a risk and fails or goes into bankruptcy, the loss will not affect the holding company. It can simply sell its shares in the failed subsidiary.
Consolidation Tax Advantages
If the holding company files a consolidated tax return, the losses incurred in a subsidiary can be offset against the profits of the other subsidiaries. The net result is a lower tax bill for all the companies as a group.
Generally, subsidiaries can pay dividends to the holding company without creating a tax liability. After the holding company receives the cash, disbursements could be allocated to the stockholders of the holding company or to better investment opportunities in the other subsidiaries.
Special Skills Add Value
The holding company may have special skills and know-how that could be used to further advantage in other subsidiaries to increase their value. One subsidiary could have customer relationships that would benefit the related companies by expanding their sales.
The combined financial strength of the group might be used to obtain more favorable financing terms than if the subsidiaries were standing on their own. Subsidiaries in the same industry could combine their buying power to extract better prices from vendors and better credit terms.
Pooling together the fiscal resources of the holding company and its subsidiaries will enable the company to take on large-scale projects.
More Control With Less Capital
Creating a holding company allows the firm to control more businesses with smaller amounts of capital. A holding company could obtain control of a company by acquiring 51 percent of its stock. In some cases, it could be possible to assume control by purchasing only 25 percent of a company when ownership is diverse, and this purchase would make the holding company the largest shareholder.
Not having to purchase 100 percent of a corporation enables a small business owner to control more companies with smaller investments.
Setting up a holding company is an excellent way for a small business owner to diversify his operations without taking unnecessary risks. Combining the resources of a holding company and its subsidiaries creates synergies in purchasing power, financing terms and the ability to invest in larger projects.
When considering the best state to form a holding company, it’s important to examine the laws in each jurisdiction. 3 min read
Updated July 1, 2020:
When considering the best state to form a holding company, it’s important to examine the laws in each jurisdiction. Some business owners prefer to start a company in their home state, while others choose a business-friendly state with specific tax advantages, such as Delaware.
This type of company, often a corporation, owns a controlling share percentage in another company, which is known as a subsidiary. Sometimes a holding company is called a parent or umbrella company. Holding companies can be created to hold assets, property, or stock. The subsidiaries are only administrative entities and do not own the assets in question.
When forming a holding company, you need to understand regulations about what types of businesses can own other businesses. These rules are established by the IRS. An LLC can own a C corporation if it elects corporate tax status, but may not own an S corporation. A sole proprietorship cannot own another company.
If you would prefer not to create multiple businesses, you can set up a single limited liability company (LLC) and then set up a doing business as (DBA) name for each separate project that needs its own identity. This is a good option if your business is small and has few assets.
You can easily start an LLC in most states. Check out the office of the Secretary of State where you live to learn more about the requirements.
Where Should I Form My Holding Company?
Many small business owners ask themselves about the least expensive and most advantageous location for their business entity. Experts say that the most business-friendly states in the U.S. have some or all of the following benefits:
Advantageous business statutes and laws,
Low tax filing fees,
Low or no income tax for businesses,
Low or no sales tax,
Regulations and taxes for franchises.
You may also want to consider whether you want to live and work in the state in question. While you can certainly establish a foreign entity, this typically carries higher fees and more extensive filing requirements. Keep in mind that unless you establish a physical office in the state, you’ll still be subject to taxes and requirements in the state where you are located. If you’re open to moving your holding company, consider the following states:
South Dakota has the benefits of legal protection from business liabilities, limited filing requirements, no corporate or personal income tax, and no capital gains tax. In addition, the state boasts plenty of open space, limited crime, and an affordable cost of living.
Wyoming businesses pay no personal or corporate income tax and the state offers tax exemptions to businesses that purchase raw materials for manufacturing. Groceries and gas are also free from state sales tax, and no capital gains tax is enforced, which makes it a popular location for debt collection and real estate investment businesses.
Nevada does not enforce individual or corporate income tax and does not tax corporate dividends. The state has established one of the nation’s best business court systems, which minimizes the time and cost involved in litigation. Businesses can exchange stock for real estate, personal property, services, or capital. You’ll also enjoy access to both natural beauty and the bright lights of Vegas.
Florida does not charge individual income tax and does not charge state taxes to S corporations. The state also has a sophisticated online service system for businesses, which makes online filing a breeze. Business to business software sales are also tax-exempt. If you love warm weather and lots to do, Florida could be the place for you.
What Is a Series LLC?
The series LLC is a popular type of holding company among real estate investors, particularly those who own multiple properties in several different states. This structure is a single umbrella limited liability company that contains multiple subsidiary LLCs, each for a separate property. Only certain states allow the formation of a series LLCs, and most require you to establish a registered agent in each state where you own property. Currently, this type of business entity can be formed in:
If you need help with the best state to form a holding company, you can post your legal need on UpCounsel’s marketplace. UpCounsel accepts only the top 5 percent of lawyers to its site. Lawyers on UpCounsel come from law schools such as Harvard Law and Yale Law and average 14 years of legal experience, including work with or on behalf of companies like Google, Menlo Ventures, and Airbnb.
holding company:
a company that owns a controlling portion of the stock of other companies for the purpose of controlling and managing their operations.
There are two types of holding company: the pure holding company, which confines its functions to the holding of interests in other companies, and the mixed holding company, which in addition carries on its own operations in such areas as industry, trade, transportation, and finance. The holding company is an integral part of the holding system. Holding companies head trusts and large concerns in all capitalist countries; some monopolies, primarily multinational monopolies, are headed by a system of holding companies. The British and Dutch petroleum monopoly Royal Dutch-Shell, for example, is controlled by two holding companies: the British firm Shell Transport and Trading and the Dutch firm Royal Dutch Petroleum. These two corporations own shares in two other holding companies: Shell UK, Ltd., in Great Britain and Shell Petroleum N. V. in the Netherlands, which together own or hold shares in more than 500 companies, either directly or through their subsidiaries. Unilever, a British and Dutch trust that manufactures food products, soap, and perfume, has a similar complex structure.
Holding companies, which may simultaneously comprise such firms as industrial concerns, commercial banks, and insurance companies, represent one of the organizational forms of the financial oligarchy. An example of such an organizational structure is provided by two banks of the Federal Republic of Germany—Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank—and the Belgian bank Société Générale de Belgique, which head financial groups of the same names. On the average, each of these banks owns shares in and controls the operations of 150 companies, including finance, investment, insurance, commercial, industrial, and transportation companies and companies in the service sector.
Trusts and large concerns make extensive use of holding companies in their internal organizational structure; by this means they control and direct groups of subsidiaries, which are classified by a distinguishing feature, such as location, economic sector, or commercial activity. For example, Exxon, the largest petroleum monopoly in the capitalist world, includes approximately ten holding companies, which head subsidiaries operating in such areas as Africa and the Middle East. Monopolies often create such holding companies in countries with low tax rates in an effort to maximize profits.
The development of holding companies marks an intensification in the concentration of production and capital, since it fosters the subordination of small and medium-sized companies to large corporations.
Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster’s page for free fun content.
LLCs are formed to protect assets and limit liability. Forming a single LLC protects the owners (members) from personal liability for debts and obligations of the LLC. As long as the LLC is properly formed (including a solid operating agreement) and managed, creditors of the LLC can only look to the LLC’s assets to satisfy claims against the LLC. Creditors cannot require the members to pay LLC debts from personal assets.
If an LLC owns a single asset, one LLC is often enough to provide liability protection. But what if the LLC owns multiple assets? Most experienced real estate investors own multiple properties. Holding these properties in a single LLC opens them all up to liability. If a lawsuit arises in connection with one property, a successful judgment creditor can look to the other properties to satisfy the debt.
When an LLC owns multiple assets, liability protection can be enhanced by separating those assets into different “containers” of liability. Separation of assets helps isolate liability, so that a creditor with a claim against one asset cannot also look to the other assets to satisfy the claim. The holding company structure is the traditional way to segregate assets into separate containers.
The Holding Company Structure
The holding company structure helps confine liability for each asset to the asset. Here’s how it works:
One LLC is organized to serve as the parent holding company.
The business owners hold all interests in the parent LLC.
Separate subsidiary LLCs are formed to hold title to each high-risk asset (such as rental property) or business line.
The parent holding company owns the subsidiary LLCs.
High-risk assets are transferred into the subsidiary LLCs.
In the above example, the real estate investor owns three properties (one commercial and two residential rental properties). The investor forms four LLCs—one to serve as the parent LLC and three to serve as subsidiary LLCs—and places the real estate into subsidiary LLCs. If a lawsuit arises against a subsidiary LLC, the plaintiffs can only look to the assets of the LLC. For example, if Property 1, LLC, is successfully sued, the creditor can only look to the commercial property to satisfy the judgment. The creditor cannot look to the two residential properties that are owned by separate LLCs.
The holding company structure has been around a while and is fairly common in real estate transactions. Compared to series LLCs (discussed below), the protection offered by the holding company structure is relatively certain and applies in all states. As long as each LLC is properly formed and operated, the legal protection offered by the holding company structure is well-settled.
Comparison to Series LLCs
Series LLCs are a relatively new form of LLC designed to provide similar protection to the holding company structure, but without requiring the formation of multiple LLCs. Instead of forming a parent LLC and multiple subsidiary LLCs, real estate investors can form a single series LLC and establish multiple series of assets within the LLC.
The goal of a series LLC is to separate assets so that the debts and obligations of one asset cannot infect other assets of the same company. Each series of a series LLC serves as liability container. Liabilities of one series are generally limited to the assets held by that series.
Series LLC Structure
You can read more about series LLCs in our discussion of Series LLCs.
Free Attorney Consultation!
We provide free e-mail consultations to answer your questions about LLC formation and domestication. Get help from a licensed LLC attorney today.
Q. I’m interested in setting up a holding company under an already-established LLC. How do I do this? Are there step-by-step outlines and financial projections available?
Basically, a holding company is a company organized with the intention of acquiring equity ownership in other companies, so if you have an existing LLC you could generally acquire equity ownership of other companies through the LLC, effectively making it a holding company. Holding company structures and company acquisitions can vary, so we aren’t aware of any outlines or step-by-step blue prints with financial projections that business owners can rely on in every conceivable situation when establishing holding companies and acquiring equity ownership in other companies through those holding companies.
As to holding company requirements and startup considerations in general, we have provided the information below; however, you may find it beneficial to consult with your lawyer and tax advisor or CPA to review your holding company plans and thoroughly evaluate all of the legal and tax considerations.
Holding company requirements
There are several ways to create a holding company. The regulatory, governance, and other potential requirements for starting a holding company would depend on the legal business structure (corporation, LLC, etc.), whether you plan to solicit outside investors, whether you have employees, and other factors. Nina Kaufman explains for Entrepreneur:
“In creating any business for any purpose, you have both tax as well as legal factors. Deciding on the form of entity for your holding company depends on a number of issues. For example, what’s your personal tax situation? Do you envision bringing in other owners—especially passive investors—into the holding company? And once you buy these businesses, what plans do you have to continue to operate them? … All of these factors, and more, go into weighing which form of entity will be right for your situation. Another important factor to consider when you buy these businesses is your expertise in the industry.”
Holding company start-up considerations
As we discussed above, a holding company is basically a company organized with the intention of acquiring equity ownership in other companies. The holding company may not develop or market any products or services on its own. However, an operating company that buys other companies is also a form of holding company but is often referred to as a parent company. The following articles discuss potential holding company startup issues, including these basic steps:
Determine the industries you want to focus on.
Develop a business plan that clearly defines your acquisition strategy.
Create a corporate entity.
Arrange financing sources.
Network to find opportunities:
Holding company investment model
Generally speaking, buying other businesses requires a significant amount of equity capital since buyouts can seldom be financed 100%. Some wealthy individuals may have the financial resources to start a holding company with their own money and commercial loans. Other holding companies may raise money from private investors or by selling equity ownership (stock/membership certificates) to the public. Also, it is possible to start an operating company and then use the surplus working capital and financial leverage of that business to start buying other companies. To help determine what holding company business model and structure would be more effective for your situation, you can review the following example investment model and large holding companies:
Example holding company investment model:
Example publicly-owned holding company:
Example private holding company (investment firm):
Should I Form a Holding Company For My Business?
According to the Key Small Business Statistics report by industry Canada, small businesses with 1-4 employees have a 60.5% survival rate and 5-19 employees have a 66.4 % survival rate in the first 5 years of operation. For those that continue to operate, part of their success can be accredited to efficient tax-planning initiated through holding companies.
Holding companies can be an ideal business structure to help protect your business interests now and in the future.
In this post, we will explain what a holding company is and touch upon the primary benefits of forming this entity behind the operational structure of your business, which includes asset protection, capital gains exemptions, tax savings, and succession planning.
Simply put, a holding company is a parent corporation that owns assets of other companies, but do not actively participate in the daily business operations of a business.
It’s the operating company that produces and sells the goods and/or services instead of the holding company.
What type of assets can holding companies own?
A holding company can own a wide range of assets and the most frequently owned business assets may include:
Shares of stock of other corporations
Equity and hedge funds
Interest earning investments
Intellectual property (trademarks, patents, copyrights)
Real estate properties, land
Why incorporate a holding company?
Through a holding company, there are a variety of strategies that business owners can utilize to help limit liability risks, minimize taxes, and protect assets.
The following are 4 primary reasons to form a holding company:
1. Asset Protection from Creditors
By creating a holding company, excess earnings/monies from the operating company can be withdrawn to the holding company (usually in the form of tax-free dividends) to shelter against creditor claims.
The holding company will be able to use these dividends as an investment vehicle to generate assets safely out of the reach of creditors.
Also, if the operating company ever requires a loan to purchase assets, they can borrow the funds from the holding company to do so. This arrangement will allow the holding company priority claim of the debt on the assets over external creditors.
2. Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption Claims
The lifetime capital gains exemption (LCGE) of $866,912 as of January 1, 2019 can be claimed to offset a capital gain on the sale of shares of a qualified small business corporation (QSBC).
This is a lifetime cumulative exemption. This means that you do not have to claim the entire amount at once but you can claim any part of it when you dispose of qualifying property.
What Type of Property Qualifies for Exemption?
There are three types of property that can give rise to the capital gains exemption:
The sale of Qualified Small Business Corporation shares;
The sale of farming property; or
The sale of fishing property
What are the requirements for a qualified small business corporation?
It is best to consult with your accountant or lawyer to determine whether or not your business is qualified for exemption. However, basic conditions that need to be met include:
The sale of your business must be a share sale
No one but the owner or related person must have owned the shares for two years prior to the sale.
50% or more of the business’s assets must have been used in an active business in Canada for 2 years prior to the sale.
At the time of sale, 90% of the value of the business’s assets must be used to generate active business income or the assets must be shares or debt in other qualifying small business corporations.
3. Income Splitting & Deferring Taxes
Especially beneficial for family-owned businesses, holding companies offer the ability to split income amongst adult family member shareholders and provide flexibility in the timing of that income payment.
As mentioned earlier, an active corporation can extract earnings to the holding company by the way of dividends. Family member shareholders who may be in the lower income brackets can take advantage of their lower marginal tax rates on those dividends.
Another advantage of a holding company is that it allows shareholders control of when income is actually earned and ultimately, defer when taxes are owed.
4. Estate Planning Tool
A holding company can aid with the transition of your business assets to future successors. Although not suitable for all business owners, there are various strategies that may be considered as part of a business succession plan.
One of these strategies is an estate freeze. With the help of a holding company, an estate freeze allows the business owner to limit the value of the business’s assets, transfer all future growth of the business to his/her successor while maintaining control of the business.
Forming a holding company can be a complex and complicated matter which requires input from both accounting and legal professionals. If you have more questions relating to holding companies or other legal matters, don’t hesistate to give us a call at (778) 565-4700.
The preceding content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or professional advice. To obtain such advice, please contact our offices directly.
Best Business of 2020
Patrola Law is proud to be selected as one of the best law firms in Surrey on Three Best Rated in the following categories:
Starting a Holding Company
Investment holding companies, as the name implies, exist solely to hold investments. Investment holding companies do not offer any products or services to the public, including financial planning services. Holding companies are essentially a vehicle for individuals or partners to make personal investments under the umbrella of a legal company, adding a layer of liability protection for highly-speculative investments or making transfer of multiple financial assets easier in estate planning. You can start your own investment holding company by forming a strategy and filing the proper paperwork.
Form an initial investment strategy. Determine exactly which types of investments you wish to hold. Investment holding companies can invest in stocks, bonds and other securities, as well as real estate, annuities, loans and other alternative investments. Create a plan for a balanced portfolio, hedging your favored risks with investments with inverse value correlations. The decisions you make in this step will affect decisions you make in subsequent steps.
Select a form of business organization. The types of investments that you choose to hold will influence the ideal form of organization for you. As mentioned, if you plan to hold highly-speculative, highly-leveraged investments, such as real estate and foreign currencies bought on margin, seriously consider choosing a form of organization that offers liability protection, such as a limited liability company or S-corporation.
Register your business in your state. Submit the required registration documents for your chosen form of organization. Contact the secretary of state’s office in your state for guidance on the exact documents and procedures required for your business type.
Ask a representative from the secretary of state about any licensing requirements in your state for investment holding companies, or go to the Small Business Administration’s Business Licenses and Permits page on their website to find a list of state licensing authorities (see Resources).
Obtain start-up financing. The amount of financing you need will depend on the decisions you made in step one, as well as the ambitiousness of your growth plans. If you plan to hold mostly real estate, for example, you might need to obtain several large mortgages at once from a single lender. If you plan to favor stocks, you might decide to start with a small bankroll and work your way up, or start with a larger bankroll to employ your proven strategy on a large scale right away.
Build your initial portfolio. With your start-up capital in hand, purchase your initial assets according to the asset allocation plan you developed. At this point you are officially up and running. Continue to monitor your investments, using capital gains and other investment income to finance progressively more and larger holdings.
Businesses that have developed significant assets often choose to hold those assets in a separate, sometimes subsidiary company. Doing so can provide liability, taxation, and organizational advantages. From real estate and equipment to intellectual property, many businesses large and small are structured as a series of connected companies.
Liability protection and tax mitigation are key reasons businesses hold assets in a separate company. It can keep the assets of your business protected from the liabilities of the operations. The asset holding company is not responsible for any of the activities of the business and so the liability of the operations of the business is less likely to reach the assets of the holding company. Additionally, the character of the income changes, resulting in potential income tax savings.
The owners of the company holding the assets are not necessarily the same as the owners of the operational business. Often, the assets are held by a group of investors that lease these assets to the operations company. In other cases, the asset holding company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a parent company and the operations are conducted through another subsidiary. Large companies like Berkshire Hathaway operate using this model.
Different business structures have different taxes, so holding the assets of the business in one structure and housing the operations in another can have tax advantages. Discuss the specifics of your setup with legal and accounting experts to determine the best route for your operations. Particularly if your business is taking on money from outside investors, they may have certain structures they prefer for comfort, liability, and taxation purposes.
Having your business operations organized into discrete buckets also provides cleanliness of ledgers for your finances and can help you operate your different businesses separately. A larger company that is a manufacturer and also distributes may split those two functions into separate entities and allow each to operate and grow on their own. A smaller services company starting a separate product line may want to form their product as a separate company to help keep the income and operations of the two separate.
Forming an asset holding company is similar to forming any other company. You file your basic incorporation documents with the Secretary of State, adopt your operating agreement or by laws, and get an EIN from the IRS. The details in your operating documents will vary depending on the purpose and structure of your company, whether you have a parent company holding subsidiaries, or the investors holding the assets are different from those running the operations. Bringing an attorney in to help you structure the company, draft the documents, and transfer the assets helps you to maximize the benefits associated with this structure. An attorney will also provide you with an operational roadmap for the future of the company.
← How to Trademark a Logo → How to Make a Burnt Bread Hunger Games Charm
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538638
|
__label__wiki
| 0.848084
| 0.848084
|
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Bjoerndalen goes for Olympic history Monday morning
By Lorenzo Reyes February 16, 2014 6:12 pm
Ole Einar Bjoerndalen (Jack Gruber-USA TODAY Sports)
Men’s biathlon 15km mass start, 1 a.m.
Originally scheduled for Sunday, fog in the mountains delayed the event for Monday. Norwegian Ole Einar Bjoerndalen is attempting to become the most-decorated career Winter Olympian, seeking his 13th medal.
If the fog continues to be an issue, further rescheduling may be needed, but another one to watch for the podium is France’s Martin Fourcade, who already has two gold medals so far in the Sochi games.
Women’s ice hockey, USA vs. Sweden: semifinals, 7:30 a.m.
The winner of this game goes for the gold medal, while the loser goes for the bronze. Amanda Kessel’s brother Phil scored a hat trick against Slovenia Sunday. As in all family rivalries, she’ll want to top her brother. It’s going to be tough to do that, but it’s safe to say the Kessels will settle for a victory.
If the Americans can secure a victory, they’re guaranteed at least a silver medal, and could add to the USA’s medal count.
Although the U.S. is off of its pace from the 2010 Vancouver games, the USOC isn’t worried.
Men’s snowboard cross semifinals, 5:04 a.m
Nick Baumgartner is a three-time Olympian who has never won a medal and will attempt to do so Monday morning. The semifinals start at just after 5 in the morning, but don’t change the channel; the finals are set to begin shortly after.
Trevor Jacob is the American with the best credentials, but will have to get past Italy’s Omar Visintin.
biathlon, Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, Olympics, USA women's hockey, Winter Olympics, Olympics
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538639
|
__label__cc
| 0.711825
| 0.288175
|
Steve Clancy
Web developer and sometimes blogger
Visiting the Real Stars Hollow: Washington Depot, CT
Posted on May 13, 2008 by Steve Clancy
Feeling bored in my apartment this weekend, I decided I needed to take a trip and find someplace new to spend a day. In trying to think of where to go, I came up with the idea of searching for the real Stars Hollow, CT. Stars Hollow is the fictional town that played host to the Gilmore Girls, a television show which I embarrassingly admit I used to watch. On the show its portrayed a quaint little town with lots of quirky characters and it kind of shaped my expectations of Connecticut when I moved up here. I did a quick search on the Wikipedia and discovered that show creator Amy Sherman-Palladino based Stars Hollow on the real-life town of Washington Depot, CT. And less than an hour away, it seemed perfect for a quick weekend pilgrimage.
Its wrong to compare Stars Hallow to Washington Depot simply based on their appearance. Stars Hollow is actually a Warner Bros. backlot set that was built decades earlier for films like The Music Man. So it was not meant to look like Washington Depot. Still when I arrived in the town center there were all the familiar elements: a town hall, churches, small businesses, and a central lawn. One iconic piece that did appear to be missing was a gazzebo. In comparison to the Warners’ orderly “Midwestern town” set, Washington Depot has a slightly more rambling feel set on the side of a hill. The buildings were also smaller than their television counterparts – none of the businesses were built more than a story high. Washington Depot also seems much more remote than Stars Hollow. Although it was only 20 miles away, I drove almost an hour through rural areas on winding roads to get there.
When I originally hatched my plan, I thought I would go through the town with my videocamera asking to locals about the show and whether they thought their town could be Stars Hollow. I realized that would be pretty annoying though, so instead I decided I would just try to take in as much as I could on my own. I started out with lunch at a local cafe called Marty’s. Not quite a Luke’s diner, this was more of an upscale cafe with a lot of interior design going on. There were bookshelves, dining room tables, and I ate my turkey club in a armchair at a coffee table. The food was pretty good though and the people were very friendly. Afterwards I took a walk around the shopping area and there were plenty of Stars Hollow staples: a bookstore, a antique furniture shop, a post office, a small market, and a hardware supply store. I stopped in at a gift shop called Fancy That! in search of the perfect Mother’s Day gift (still looking). After seeing most of the local fair and getting lost driving around a few times, I decided to head back.
I think the biggest thing difference that struck me about Washington Depot was it seemed higher class than Stars Hollow. I could not envision a teenage mother like Loralai Gilmore fitting in here easily and eventually owning a home. Most of the homes looked quite large and expensive and the stores were a little pricier. I did see an inn that may have been the model for the Dragonfly on the show, but it looked a little fancier than the TV bed and breakfast. Rory would not have had to gone far for a prep school education, there was a boarding school called The Gunnery right in the center of town. A couple students from there were actually getting some coffee when I was at Marty’s. Washington Depot definitely makes a model small town with just about everything you would really need and none of the excess of suburbia.
I’m not sure how I would make out in a place like Washington Depot. If I thought Bristol was boring, I imagine I would feel even more shut in in Washington Depot. If you’re looking to get away from it all though, its a very nice area. Still it was a fun to explore a little part of the state I knew nothing about and be able to tell people about it.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged amy sherman-palladino, connecticut, gilmore girls, stars hollow, washington depot by Steve Clancy. Bookmark the permalink.
95 thoughts on “Visiting the Real Stars Hollow: Washington Depot, CT”
stephen clancy on May 13, 2008 at 10:22 pm said:
From one Clancy to another- you wrote well but find more worthy topics
Scott E. Digital on May 22, 2008 at 7:37 pm said:
Gilmore Girls, huh?
Real men watch ‘Charmed’.
Fiona on July 23, 2012 at 11:17 pm said:
That is a disgusting view and how would you say that to another man when you know well enough you’ve watched Gilmore Girls otherwise you wouldn’t even be on this page criticising someone elses take on this show’s town. Apparently your view of anything would be a vulger egotistical one considering you watch charmed for the skimpy clothes these women wore on their show. Charmed is an empowering show for women mostly,and someone of your taste ,of coarse,does not comprehend these siplistic facts who has no choice but to opinionate something that refers to nothing other than your own stupidity!
S on January 8, 2014 at 3:23 pm said:
Old thread, but I just had to say: You do realize he was kidding, right? As in he was implying that both “Gilmore Girls” and “Charmed” are generally not shows that men admit to watching – whether or not skimpy clothing is involved (and by the way… generalizing much?). He was poking fun at himself by admitting that he watches “Charmed”. Way to blow that out of proportion…
monica j cochran on July 24, 2008 at 4:38 pm said:
i think it would be osome to go to the as u say stars hollow the place where the gilmore girls did thier set im glad to say im a big fan of the hole cast but my favorit out of the hole cast was loreli and rory i would love to one day go and check out the place where it was all done i think it would be fabulas and a great trip i hope one day i can
IM PROUD TO SAY IM AM A BIG FAN OF THE GILMORE GIRLS. MY HUSBAND BOUGHT THE HOLE SET FOR ME AND IM ALWAYS WATCHING THEM THEY ARE MY FAVOITE SHOWS TO WATCH . AND PERSONLY I THINK IT WOULD OSOME TO VISIT WHERE THEY DID THE WHOLE GILMORE SET I WOULD LOVE NOTHING BUT TO TAKE A TRIP TO THE PLACE WHERE IT WAS ALL DONE AND I DONT CARE WHO THINK THIS IS LAME . I WOULD ALSO LOVE TO MEET THE WHOLE CAST I DONT REALY HAVE A FAVORIT I PERSONLY LOVE THE WHOLE CAST SO I COULD SAY IT ENOUGH I LOVE THE SHOWS AND THE CAST LIKE I SAID IM A BIG BIG FANE IF I COULD WATCH THEM MORE THAN I ALREADY DO I WOULD SINCERLY MJC
kate. A on July 16, 2011 at 8:51 am said:
RIDE ON SISTER!!
I JUST GOT THE WHOLE SET FOR MY BIRT
theres nothing wrong with LOVING gilmore girls or charmed, i woud love to see the set, and the town look alike. =)
serina on July 22, 2012 at 6:19 pm said:
Omggggggg I’m sooo with you my dream is to go to washington depot and live there I always wanted the gilmore girl life it’s my favorite show in the world I haveeeee everyone season on tape it is amazing I big big big fan
lori on January 21, 2016 at 3:59 pm said:
I agree. I want to visit this town as well…if there were such a place…now I am setting out to visit this area…ON my bucket list…lol
AND IV BEEN LOOKING AT THE OTHERS COMENTS AND NO REAL MEN DONT WATCH CHARMED REAL MEN WATCH WHAT EVER THEY WANT
elizabeth on September 16, 2014 at 7:17 am said:
I to want to live the Gilmore Girls life and live in stars hollow that is how much I love the show and I have to go see Washington Post one day
Charlie on March 21, 2015 at 11:03 am said:
I really want too live in stars hollow I act just like lorali and my best friend (more like sister) acts just like Rori and my other best friend acts just like suci
gilmoregirls on August 5, 2008 at 3:08 pm said:
You bought the whole set? how?
annon on August 5, 2011 at 4:55 pm said:
1. go to the video store
2. pick up the video sets all seasons
3. walk to the cashier
4. pay the cashier
5. leave store
Lindsay on March 27, 2014 at 9:46 pm said:
Awesome response.
adonny on August 21, 2008 at 8:34 am said:
i have the complete series as well. you can get it at any major big box store.
steve, do you happen to remember what the inn that looked like the dragonfly was called? there are a few in town and i was curious as to which one it is.
Kathy Strong (uk) on September 26, 2008 at 12:31 pm said:
Its a beautiful day here in England, and i have only recently come across the Gilmore Girls amongst our tv programmes, my daughter is an avid watcher of the programme too! she’s just left college and has had more time during the summer to devote to time out with the Gilmore girls in between summer jobs!, but i find the programme uplifting and charming.I found myself wishing to have the opportunity to visit Stars Hollow and wondering if there was such aplace! lo and behold i log on to the internet and find this page! and others!! so you are not the only person who wonders about the places we see on programmes!Lucky you to be that close to visit! I too would love to meet the cast who knows perhaps One day!
Suzy Webb on October 8, 2008 at 8:20 pm said:
Thanks for checking out the real Stars Hollow. I’ve been wanting to do the same, but don’t live close enough to just take a drive there. I’m glad you described and compared the set with reality because I think I needed to know what the town was really like before I visit – might have felt a little disappointed if I didn’t know the truth before I got there!
P.S Don’t be afraid to admit you liked the show! I know other guys who like it too. (If you really have to, just say it’s because the girls were hot! lol)
Andreia on October 16, 2008 at 8:34 pm said:
Acho que é um insulto para a história da televisão alguém dizer que acho embaraçoso admitir que via Gilmore Girls.
ESCREVE SOBRE TELEVISÃO QUANDO SOUBERES APRECIAR UMA ÓPTIMA SÉRIE COM UM EXCELENTE ARGUMENTO!
Lena on November 5, 2008 at 4:11 pm said:
I love the GG and was so sad that it has been cancelled. Amazon has the complete collection of all the series, I highly recommend it. My 12 year old daughter watches them over and over and I actually think by watching it together we have become closer, because we talk about the issues and laugh along with the show together. It is a very good, real, thoughtful show, and I sure hope television picks up something half as good as GG was, because I don’t love anything that is on TV nowadays…….I guess nothing good can last forever. Anyway, thanks for sharing, I am glad to see fellow fans. It is a pilgrammage I thought about taking, and I guess I am kind of glad I didn’t, I love Stars Hollow as it is in my mind, from the show. I would be expecting to run into Luke, or Miss Patty or Kirk, you know?
M3!!! on November 24, 2008 at 9:27 pm said:
I LOVE GILMORE GIRLS!!!…I HOPE I HAVE DAUGHTER LIKE RORY…=]]
Jen on December 7, 2008 at 12:18 am said:
I love Gilmore Girls. That is my favorite show.
welly nelly on December 14, 2008 at 9:45 pm said:
hey omg all i ever wanted was to live in stars hollow like the gilmore girls.I love the gilmore girls ive seen like ever show.Its my fav show!!!Lourilie is my role moddle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hannah on December 19, 2008 at 6:59 pm said:
hey, i just watched the season 1 in 2days. i love gilmore girls. i hoping that there would be a season 8 coming out, guess not 🙁
squeegy bechime on December 28, 2008 at 1:56 am said:
OMG OMG OMG OMG I CANT BELIEVE THERE IS AN ACTUAL STARS HOLLOW BUT ITS NOT CALLED STARS HOLLOW 🙁
I HAVE THE WHOLE SEVEN SEASONS AND ME AND MY FRIEND HAVE PLANS TO GO TO STARS HOLLOW AND EAT CHEESEBURGERS AT LUKES BOOHYA BUT THERE IS NO LUKES:(
Pingback: 2009 Year in Review - Steve Clancy
Barry on January 2, 2009 at 2:45 pm said:
You should never be embarrased to admit you watch something that is critically acclaimed, well respected, and always on “Best Of” lists. Gilmore Girls was a brilliant, fantastic show. Nothing embarrasing there.
Thanks for the article. I’ve always wondered about this place.
Christyne on January 4, 2009 at 2:59 pm said:
Let me start off saying that I love Gilmore girls, and I am sooo addicted to it! I have the complete series and I watch it over and over all day everyday. I have always wanted to go on the set of Gilmore girls and to Washington Depot, to compare the two and to see what Amy and Dan got their inspiration from. Thanks so much for going there and writing about it, hopefully one day I can go and see it for myself. And if I do I would want to run into some quirky people like Kirk or Babette or even Miss Patty.
Christyne
P.S. Next time please include more pictures because I couldn’t really imagine it, I would just think of the Gilmore girls set.
Hollie (UK) on January 9, 2009 at 1:01 pm said:
Wow here i was sitting thinking how amazing would it be to actualy go to stars hollow and meet all the cast from Gilmore girls. and turns out im not the only one.
i love the gilmore girls and i am so sad that the show got cancelled.
how ever i will soon be buying the whole boxset to supress my sadness lol.
glad to see others feel the same
charliebrown on January 12, 2009 at 11:21 am said:
Its good to see that there are so many Gilmore Girl fans out there. I absoloutely love the series-i have the first 3 seasons and have been watching whenever i get the chance. I’m going to Connecticut in a few weeks and i am really hoping to go and see the Gilmore Girls set and Washington Depot. I’m just addicted. I’m gutted that there isn’t going to be a series 8, but hey we’ll always have the first 7 seasons when we want to take a trip to Stars Hollow. I would love to meet the whole cast-i think they are an inspiration.
Sinead on January 14, 2009 at 9:22 am said:
Got hooked on the gilmore girls when it first came out, have all the box sets and really wanted to visit washington depot or even new haven and hartford. was going to try and tie it into my next trip to the states (from ireland). Still think i might am really greatfull someone else did first so at least i know what to expect!!!
would love to see more pictues.
Judi Ord on January 14, 2009 at 5:21 pm said:
I only came across the Gilmore Girls in December 08 on a lazy afternoon chasing channels. I just got into it in a big way and darn it’s finished. It’s now on at the silly time of 8:30am. So I miss it. I’ve found out how to get the box set of all 7 series though, so that’s on my shopping list.
I love the whole cast they’re a funny, interesting, mad uplifting bunch. Plus I’m on the look out for a Luke to make my life complete. However, it’s not likely I’ll find him in my mad Dibley like village in Lincolnshire.
Tina on January 15, 2009 at 8:37 pm said:
OMG OMG OMG OMG Like totally…..me and my mom and friend and her mom want to go on a road trip so i thought we cld all go to stars hollow…..so here i am doing research nd theres no star hollow!!!! watta bummer!!
manika on January 15, 2009 at 9:15 pm said:
i love the gimlmore girl set i love the kemistry of rory and lorlie and i hope that me and my mom will be like that when i grow up to be rorys age and i hope my first boy friend is like den and i really want to move to a small town like stars hollow so can i wish i can move there when i am out of collage
SusienMaggs on January 18, 2009 at 11:23 pm said:
We are all GG freaks! But we love it. My mom and I watch and re-watch all of the shows, we tivo them and practically know most of the scripts. Honestly, we sound like 2 kooks, but we are very intelligent and balanced chicks. And- we think it was a BIG mistake to cancel this series so abruptly. There were SO many unique characters in this town. The series, always known to be quirky, could have easily taken a whole new story line- by referencing how Lorelai and Rory go on with their lives-outside of Stars Hollow. The series could have easily been geared to feature the exceptional eclectic group of actors/acresses; Kirk, Gypsy, Babette, Miss Patti, Lane, Zach, Mrs. Kim, Sooki, Jackson, Michelle, Tayler, Paris, and Lorelai’s parents could have easily been intertwined into the scripts. We loved being invited into Lorelai and Rory’s life, but we think what all GG fans loved even more was being able to sit back and be transported to life in a town such as Stars Hollow. Seeing the town square decorated for every holiday, waiting to see what party or whacky event would be held next in the town. The story lines were whacky and wonderful. And with a little creative writing, this wonderful series could have had a much longer run.
T.C. on March 5, 2009 at 4:13 pm said:
Interesting take on Washington Depot. It must have changed somewhat from the time that I was last there. I used to do a lot of kayaking in the 80’s and the Shepaug River, which runs through/near Washington Depot, was a favorite early spring destination for use whitewater fans. Back then, it was a pretty dead place, with nothing to recommend it. To quote Harry Chapin, “I spent a week there one afternoon”…
Pingback: Is Stars Hollow Real?
Stephanie on April 12, 2009 at 11:18 pm said:
I am a 36 year old mom with an eighteen and 12 year old daughter(s). I had my first daughter early like Lorelai but it’s my 12 year old who is a complete Rory and we have a relationship just like them. Anyway I live in a small town in MO and it is nothing like Stars Hollow. I just got into the show this year and record episodes everyday. I am actually trying to find a small town that does resemble Stars Hollow so I can relocate. I love the look of the town. If anyone has any information please let me know. And real men do watch Gilmore Girls how else are they supposed to know how to treat their moms, wives, and daughters?
ED on April 16, 2009 at 8:08 pm said:
MY SON-IN -LAW WORKS AT THE “WB” AND MET EVERYONE ON THE ‘GILMORE GIRLS” SHOW. HE SAID ALL THE CAST WAS REALLY NICE AND SOCIABLE TO THE CREW. HE REALLY MISSED THEM ALL WHEN THE SHOW ENDED…
L on March 13, 2013 at 1:25 pm said:
Realize he probably has no input but I think the series was never properly ended. I,and many of you,would love a movie explaining their lives NOW. I really am not obsessed but I truly loved the series. I would even provide a script idea. They deserve a proper ending.
George on May 28, 2009 at 7:47 pm said:
After a bit of research, I have found quite a few similarities in their processes, such as their use of town selectmen, and town meetings. It is really surprising how small they really are. Living here in Phoenix, I forget how quaint life can really be. I would love to wisk my family away to a small town like that. Maybe someday when I win the lottery.
carmie on May 29, 2009 at 2:38 pm said:
hi i’m from the Bahamas and I am a BIG FAN of the GILMORE GIRLS
I loved every moment every minute and I want to buy the who dvd set. the ladies were all fantastic and it use to feel like they were girls right down the street where i live and I related very well
it was a great show and if they can still put the show on tv am sure I’d be right in the front of my set.
Charlotte on June 1, 2009 at 9:34 am said:
I love Gilmore Girls and also am intrested in visiting the warner brothers set but i have been told they have dismanteld it and are using it for other films now. i live in England Uk an would love to visit Washington Depot some time. i am also intrestie in geting pictures of the set of stars hollow but cant seam to find any, did you get any pictures from your trip maybe you could set up a fan site for guilmore girls as the only 1 i can find is rubbish.
renee on June 3, 2009 at 10:36 pm said:
My daughter and I still love them. Watch them all the time. Maybe we should all write wb and try to get them to restart the series…original cast of course.
Molly on September 11, 2009 at 1:01 pm said:
I thought they were starting up Gilmore Girls again, and then nothing… What happened? I use to watch this show in high school, i was such a huge fan. I still watch it in the afternoon, but i’m rather sad that they made a big deal about the new season and then it never came on, anyone know what happened?
Serena on October 1, 2009 at 2:06 am said:
To Molly,
It turned out that the “starting up again” was actually going to be reruns of the originals, but with deleted scenes. ABC Family was very sneaky about how they handled that & I think there are many disappointed people out there.-Myself included.
bethany on October 9, 2009 at 8:58 pm said:
I’m from connecticut, born and raised. Stars hollow is such a fairytale world compared to CT. Connecticut is so cut and dry. There is no gray area like the idea of an ideal quaint town where one can afford to live. Also, where people wouldn’t be snooty. Sadly in this state its either too expensive or ghetto and unsafe. I live in a terrible area here and I’m actually moving out of CT in a few weeks ….finally! Its hard to find a safe and afforadable place here to raise a family. I found my stars hollow in maine. But. I will forever loves gilmore girls. I could watch it over and over and over.
cherie b on March 6, 2011 at 7:52 pm said:
Where in maine did you find your stars hollow?
Brittany on December 2, 2012 at 7:06 pm said:
Not true! CT has many quaint, cute new england towns! It is a bit pricey in many places but the people in plenty of areas are friendly.
Mike on October 13, 2009 at 12:18 pm said:
Maybe you should try getting a life. What a tool! Gilmore girls?????
Jeffrey Walston on June 18, 2011 at 11:47 am said:
I hate to say it, but you are the one that may need to get a life. I am a 26 year old male with a beautiful girlfriend, and I will tell you that the Gilmore Girls is one of the best and most inspirational shows I have ever seen. Real men watch the Gilmore Girls, and whatever else will give them the inspiration to make it through the hard times of life. I will admit that I am looking for my own Stars Hollow, and I really hope that I can find it one day. Mike, try to learn to open your mind to the ideas of different people. You won’t get much in life by passing biased criticism on people that have done nothing at all to you. If that’s what your into then get off the internet and try talk radio.
To my fellow GG fans, it is a very sad thing that the show has come to an end, but at least there are seven wonderful seasons to remind us there is that perfect, fairytale town where life is manageable.
Susan on January 3, 2010 at 5:27 am said:
HI there from far away Germany!
My son(!) and I are huge fans of the GG and he gave me the first set of DVD’s when the series ended… I have just ordered the last set at Amazon now and I expect we will be watching it over and over again. Only yesterday did we say how much we would love to visit Stars Hollow – but I had wondered already if there was such a place at all…. Maybe it’s just as well it doesn’t exist – it can be better at times to hang on to phantasies and ideas… we love to dive into the world of Lorelai and Rory – it is quaint, funny, and it teaches …. everyone who is willing to be a little “different” and live it!
DEBBIE on January 9, 2010 at 1:58 pm said:
My daughter and I also one Saturday morning decided to find out where exactly Stars Hollow was and maybe plan a trip there in a Jeep of course; dressed as Lorelei and Rory would. My daughter started me watching the show and I love it and asked my husband for the whole series for Christmas I GOT IT!!!!! We don’t live to far away to go see it for ourselves, but in reading I think we would have wanted it exactly how it is in the show. Knowing it is probley not doesn’t seem to matter, time spent with my daughter Stars Hollow look-a-like or not, any adventure with her means everything! I want the same relationship with my soon to be going to collage daughter. “I WILL FOLLOW”
Robbo on January 19, 2010 at 2:49 pm said:
Hi i am from Australia and I love the Gilmore Girls – I have all the series on DVD and I have watched them over and over – I never tire of them and still get a laugh out of the banter between Lorelai and Rory or Kirk and his crazy antics. I am planning a trip to the USA this year and I am planning to find Stars Hollow, the real Stars Hollow, and Conneticut is where I will be starting the search – looking forward to what I find!!!!!!!
Missing the Gilmore Girls but I can always spend time with my fictional friends watching the DVDs!!
Ggfan on January 21, 2010 at 3:43 pm said:
If she was basing the show of Washington depot she clearly wasn’t basing the physical location of Washington depot for stars hollow it doesn’t fit any of the descriptions of near by towns they talk about specifically it is not 30 miles from Hartford nor 30mins from new haven and not near new London which is also mentioned it should be noted that the physical location is more in the range of deep river, Ct.
Katie Whitacre on June 15, 2017 at 1:48 pm said:
Hi Ggfan! Late to this thread so you may never see this (!), but, I completely agree. In fact, in the pilot when Rory is going to Chilton for her first day, they show an outside shot of the Gelston House inn and restaurant, which is just a little north of Deep River. For those of you not from Connecticut, Deep River and the Gelston House are southeast of the capital, Hartford, while Washington Depot/possible Stars Hollow location is west of Hartford. So I always wondered if Rory took a bus 30 minutes east from Stars Hollow to Hartford, and then another rode another 30 minutes east of Hartford, past the Gelston House, to get to Chilton?! But on the other hand, they reference Woodbury (they thought about going out there for Lorelai’s bachelor party when she was engaged to Max, I think), and Luke references his boat being down in Bridgeport…which are all on the Washington Depot/west of Hartford side, so that contradicts Chilton being near Deep River. But, reminding myself that it’s fiction usually clears up any confusion about this. 🙂 I also agree with other posters who say that the town doesn’t look like Washington Depot; indeed, the set at Warner Brothers actually doesn’t look like a small Connecticut town at all. The buildings are definitely too high, and too “developed” (built with concrete and big facades)….and sometimes you can see the California hills in the background! They also sometimes use the wrong lingo for the highways, like, “I’ll take the 91.” Maybe that’s a California thing; people don’t usually say “the 91” here in CT…we say I-91 or I-84. But this doesn’t dampen my love for GG! And I do appreciate the other touches they incorporated, like the accurate CT license plates, and the CT Dept of Transportation buses. And the weather…the autumn and winter they managed to create on the WB lot were the best. “I smell snow!!!!”
lucii on April 2, 2010 at 11:56 am said:
I love Gilmore girls and to be able to see stars hollow or the cast or anything like that would be amasing and i m=am a big fan and i love the show and all the cast but Lauran Graham (lorelai) and Alexis Bledel (Rory)
Anna. on April 8, 2010 at 7:27 am said:
My daughter and i have been watching the Gilmore Girls over and over as we have the whole 7 series. It has been great this year as we are at an age parellel to Loreli and Rory’s lives and have a great time discussing the different topics.. I feel like watching the show allows us to enter into their world for a while and we find people in our area that remind us of the characters in the show.
I love Luke and the hot and cold relationship between him and Lorelie until yes the final hour where they cant help but be together.What an event. Would love to have known how they all end up..We will never know..Sad! But still enjoy..
Chels on April 9, 2010 at 5:19 pm said:
Thank you for writing this, I’m glad someone had the nads to check out the creds of the mythical Stars Hollow berg. I agree there is nothing wrong with liking a critically acclaimed, intelligently written show. On that note, all the typos in the comments are stunning.
alicia on May 3, 2010 at 7:55 pm said:
my girl friend and I did the trip too the town that you want is New Milford. There are several towns that make up Washington Depot Milford is just up the road. And Lukes is a place some where in the middle called the chuck wagon the locals call it up chucks!!!! WE LOVED IT and are going back in a little
Pingback: “Gilmore Girls:” Dragonfly Inn and Scenes from Stars Hollow
Todd Fox on June 23, 2010 at 2:22 pm said:
Woodbury is mentioned as a neighboring town. In nearby Southbury, there is a street named Lorelei Road. A significant figure in Woodbury town history is named Sukie.
I know both Washington and Bethlehem, both of which border Woodbury. Bethlehem has a green which is much like the one in fictional Stars Hollow. It is also known as “The Christmas Town” which suggests the star of Bethlehem. Also, at Christmas there is an enormous town festival which would remind you of the goofy festivals on the green in Stars Hollow.
Woodbury town meetings can be a hoot. At a recent town meeting there was a discussion about crows feeding from the dumpster outside a local restaurant. This was brought up as a potential wetlands issue, since the dumpster was on a stream. Ultimately though, the crows were determined to be a land use issue.
Lorelei might have bought her house in Washington “at the right time” of course. Property taxes are low, so she’d have more money to put in to her mortgage! The depot is a charming town with lots of activities, if you’re in the know about when and where, but the layout of Bethlehem is more suggestive of Stars Hollow. So is the goofy, but wonderful Christmas Fair.
When Luke moved to Litchfield, Loreli commented that he had moved to “another county. This threw a monkey wrench in out theory that Woodbury or Bethlehem might be the model since they, along with the depot are all in Litchfield County.
I agree with Alicia that New Milford CT is also a “likely suspect”. Great green and old Victorian houses within walking distance.
Lisa M on July 6, 2010 at 2:55 am said:
Im from Australia. I adore the GG. Whenever Im low, I can watch that show and feel uplifted. I wish I was Lorelai living in such an uncomplicated and slow paced, peaceful place. Too bad it doesnt exist. Kirk just cracks me up every time.I have finished the whole series which is sad. Id love to see another series but I suppose that was a natural conclusion.I was thinking of travelling to Conneticut too but probably wont now.And dont say ‘Get a Life’ becuase I have a very nice one. It’s just nice to contemplate such a positive utopia in this very negative and violent world.
Lily Evans on July 20, 2010 at 10:14 pm said:
the cast of Gilmore Girls are very pretty, i wish i could marry one of them.,””
Orla ( Ireland) on July 28, 2010 at 4:42 pm said:
Glad to see I’m not the only major fan of the Gilmore Girls! I’ve been watching it since the early noughties and I absolutely love it. Because I live in Ireland, it was hard for me to watch all 7 series, because certain tv channels only showed some series. I first started watching in on RTE 1 ( 1 of our national channels), however they only showed the first few series. A few years later I discovered it on Nickelodeon, but they too only showed a few series. It wasn’t until about a year ago that I found out that E4 ( a british tv channel) constantly show reruns off all 7 series consecutively. So once the final episode is aired, the next day E4 goes right back to the first episode again. Its BRILLIANT! Although its been a bit of a struggle to see all the episodes, its definitely been worth it!!! 😀 I love watching gilmore girls episodes especially if I’ve had a bad day, it always puts me in a good mood. I too would love to visit ‘the real stars hollow’. However even just a trip to Connecticut in the autumn or winter would be good enough for me!
Orla (“,) (major gilmore girls fan!)
DJLonS on August 16, 2010 at 2:52 pm said:
Lauren Graham is on my “list” so needless to say I watched Gilmore Girls too. “Ok” show, very funny writing though.
Mandy Mae on August 24, 2010 at 11:29 am said:
Umm..the Dragonfly was NOT a bed and breakfast. In season three, the Inn catches fire and they talk about activities they can do to stay open and decide to settle as a bed and breakfast for a short time. By the next episode, it’s back to being an Inn.
Kristy Cato on September 7, 2010 at 11:49 pm said:
WOW! This is great , I am looking for a small town to move to, so that i can just sit and write. Being a Big fan of the Gilmore Girl’s i decided to look up Stars Hollow Just to see if really exsisted. That’s when I found your article, it was great!
Now,for all those guys out there who won’t admit they liked the show, grow up! It was a great show!
Theresa on October 21, 2010 at 12:15 pm said:
My daughter and I just LOVE the Gilmore Girls. I purchased the box set as a Christmas gift. She absolutely loved it. We watch the reruns every day. This show has inspired my Daughter to “reach for the stars” Her aspirations are Harvard, Yale, Colombia or Princeton. We have already toured Harvard and Yale is next on our to visit list. We are also planning to visit “Stars Hollow” while we are in the area. SO EXCITED!!!
Suzanne (uk) on April 11, 2011 at 10:13 am said:
I felt compelled to tell, I luv luv luv the Gilmore Girls. As they say it’s “feelgood perfection”. Best show on telly.
Rebecca Blanchette on April 14, 2011 at 9:34 pm said:
Check out my blog, I also wrote a piece on visiting Washington Depot!
http://newenglandhippie.tumblr.com/post/4616459119/the-real-stars-hollow-washington-depot-connecticut
Melissa Beyette on June 18, 2011 at 1:21 pm said:
i thought your story was very good, i enjoyed reading it!
Sarah on August 4, 2011 at 8:42 pm said:
Gilmore Girls is my favorite show as well, and I am very sad that it went off air. Thanks for reviewing the town. It sort of disappoints me that Washington Depot seems sort of pricey and I have these unrealistic expectations to move there and have conversations similar to those on GG with people like Jess or Luke or Bebbett.
(Gilmore Girls was filmed in Canada…)
I suppose that I should keep looking for a small town. I’m not considering this one…sounds a bit ridiculous, in my opinion. I just need to keep looking, I suppose. Thanks again for going to this town for us all and writing a review – it was so badly needed.
the “real” stars hollow is Unionville, Ontario canada…the “idea” for the show came to the creator while visiting washington depot, ct…
there is a description here…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionville,_Ontario
also, “Rory” WOULD HAVE had to go far…the boarding school in washington depot is second class…she was supposed to go to one of the “top tier” prep schools to get her into Harvard/Yale…NOT likely at the Gunnery…
The school Rory attended is after CHoate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, CT mixed with wILTON in MA, hence the name “Chilton.” I live in the town where Choate is, Wallingford (a very cute New England town with Victorian style homes in the downtown area & some nice small business) and the school is very prestigious. Many IVY leagues and famous people have attended, i.e. some of the Kennedys. On Rory’s first day at Chilton she is actually holding a Choate schedule. Although one big difference is that Choate is a boarding school with students from all over the world (I believe Wilton & “Chilton” are day schools) and Choate does not have that specific of a uniform although they do have a strict dress code (I believe Wilton & obviously Chilton does have a uniform)!
another website for the “town”
http://smallhomebigstart.blogspot.com/2010/02/unionville.html
Luke+Lorelai4Ever! on October 9, 2011 at 4:20 pm said:
I’d always wondered what the “real” Stars Hollow is like. I worship Gilmore Girls and ever since watching the first episode, I’ve wanted to live in Stars Hollow. It was an amazing show and I’m sad it got cancelled. It would be really cool if there was a new kind of “visit” back on Stars Hollow on TV, just to see where Luke and Lorelai’s relationship led to 10 years later, if Rory and Dean ever got back together, or even to find out if Kirk and Lulu got married. Did Liz and TJ stay together? Did Jess write any more books? What of Lorelai and Suki’s friendship? And what about Emily and Richard? What newspaper did Paris end up working for?
–Luke+Lorelai4Ever! <3
PS: If you're going to bother leaving a comment on any blog or website, I suggest learning how to spell first. I'm only 14 and I can spell better than most of you people!
Well remeber Paris finally chose to become a doctor! As for all your other questions its good to have an open mind for all possibilities! To be young and still wonder,is to keep your minds inner intelligence and thoughts circulating. Its possible to write to the station that supported the wonderful Gilmore Girls and plead them to persue some follow up! That would be exciting and wonderful for all Gilmore fans!
Hailey on January 1, 2012 at 12:37 am said:
The BEST show ever!! I watch this show every single day! I feel like this could be like an everyday life. I wish they continued until Season 8. It kind of ends on a cliff hanger! 🙁 i have watched all 7 seasons at least twice and I’m only 12. My dream car is Lorelai’s tan jeep wrangler! I have begged my mom for three years to get me that Jeep Wrangler for my 16 birthday!!!!
Carolyn on January 4, 2012 at 9:02 pm said:
I love gilmore girls!!! Do people really live in this town? Are there stors that are open? And hotels or bed & breakfasts?
Aida Hadzic on February 7, 2012 at 4:52 am said:
We are mother and daughter from Bosnia, who worship Gilmore Girls, and are planning to visit the “real Stars Hollow” in March. The daughter is now a sophomore at Wesleyan University, CT, and I, the mother, am coming to visit her from Bosnia during spring break in March. One of the items on the agenda is to find the “real Stars Hollow”. Needless to say, we have watched all the seasons of GG so many times, almost know it all by heart. I would appreciate any additional suggestions – Washington Depot seems to be the place and I am so grateful for this blog report. But would Bethlehem or Woodbury or Southbury (I want to see the Lorelei Road sign) be better, or should we combine them all? Any suggestion of the residents of CT who love GG would be truly appreciated!
Heather on March 27, 2012 at 10:59 am said:
Washington Depot is not the sole inspiration for Gilmore Girls. Stars Hollow is an amalgam of several small Connecticut towns including Washington Depot, Essex, and Collinsville. If you’re looking for the true feel of Stars Hollow quirky middle-class yankee town, your best bet is Collinsville. It has the quaint little shops, the strolling minstrel, drum circles, farmers markets, unusual festivals, the busybody(s), and even the inane town meetings. Some of the town families have been there for hundreds of years, but new comers are always welcome, as long as they don’t try to change the overall vibe (McMansion-ites are endured, not really welcomed).
Pingback: Totally T.V Thursday – Gilmore Girls! | not exactly hip
I started watching Gilmore Girls when I was a young teenager and it became my sanctuary! I recorded what I could on cassete and religiously watched every day repeats,I had my first daughter in 2006 then my first son in 2007 and my last 2011,they all know the opening song and once they hear it they run to the tv all stand in front and are either singing or dancing with the music as it plays through,amazing,what I love they love and once they comprhend its contents I will buy them each a copy of all seven seasons! I finally found and own all seasons myself! Yay! Still is my number 1 show of my lifetime!
r.gallagher on August 5, 2012 at 10:22 pm said:
I lived in washington depot on the bank of the shepaug river., which at its very best today is but trickel.when it was a great little town with everybody knowing everyone. but now all that remains of this is the new york establishment and their commercialism. a town torn apart and gone forever with not much to show of its illustrious past. a tragic ending to a beautiful town.
Melissa on September 11, 2012 at 6:32 pm said:
Please everyone, start watching Amy Palladino’s newest show that even has the same music Gilmore Girls had. Bunheads had its first few shows this summer and I really hope to see it come back. So if you have the capability to see them “on demand”, do so!
Tammy Gilbert on February 10, 2013 at 4:10 pm said:
i just started to watch The Gilmore Girls and lov it so much i am starting from the 1st season so i could catch it all. i wish i could move to that Stars Hollow now it looks so nice . and to be in that small town that u can walk to any where sounds so good . thanks God for reruns. Tammy Gilbert ,va
Pingback: 30 Reasons To Love The Northeast | The Etnovyr
Pingback: 30 Reasons To Love The Northeast | My Doggy
Carol on November 17, 2013 at 8:07 pm said:
I miss the GG so much . I miss the entire cast and the town of Stars Hollow. I own the entire box set and have watched the series over and over. No show has ever left such an impression on me and no show ever will. I pray that each and every cast member whom I miss sooo much , is happy and doing well in their lives.
colorgirl2502 on June 25, 2014 at 9:20 pm said:
Love the GG! I own the complete series as well (thanks to my wonderful husband). If I could, I would move to Stars Hollow. I grew up in a small town and miss that sense of community. Thanks for checking out Washington Depot. I really appreciate your compare/contrast description of the town. I hope I can visit it one day as well. Too bad it is not an hour road trip for me. 🙁
lorie toscano on July 1, 2014 at 4:03 am said:
I’m a GG superfan! I think this TV show is excellent. I have the complete series, too. I’d love to live in a place like Stars Hollow if I could… Anyway, I think Gilmore Girls show deserves more than five stars.
YStockwell on July 3, 2014 at 10:05 am said:
I am so glad I am not alone! My Daughter and I used to watch Gilmore Girls every Tuesday night during the shows run. Really good memories!
Lauren on September 25, 2014 at 9:23 pm said:
I was born and raised in Washington. Just to be clear folks, the name of the town is Washington, not Washington Depot. The depot is a small section of the town in a valley. While it is “quaint” and beautiful, the life of the town is slowly a disappearing due to the rise of weekenders, mostly from NY. the high cost of living has made it so young families cannot afford to live there, which is contributing to the rapid declining enrollment in the public schools. It has now become a second home to the wealthy. Steve, I’m glad you enjoyed your visit. Also glad you didn’t interview people about the show, they probably wouldn’t have had any idea what you were talking about. Most people don’t know that the show was based on Washington. I still live in CT and visit Washington. If you want to see the hidden gem in town, head over to steep rock.
Leave a Reply to cherie b Cancel reply
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538644
|
__label__cc
| 0.567059
| 0.432941
|
Unjustifiable
Chief and Matty Weber have a spirited debate over how much blame should go around for America’s past indiscretions. Joel Elconin of Benzinga joins the discussion before talking ‘buy the dippers’, NFL injuries and more. Kenny Polcari, Director of NYSE Floor Operations at O’Neil Securities and a contributor to CNBC, talks retail sales and how North Korea appears to be backing down. Audrey Johnson of HomeSource Realty believes real estate as an investment is still a sound strategy. John Neal of PTI Securities & Futures‘ Peoria, AZ location talks $GLD, $SLV and natural gas.
North Korea Backs Off Guam Missile-Attack Threat
JOEL ELCONIN
Joel’s introduction to trading was in the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index futures pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Also, during his time at the CME, he was involved in Index Arbitrage as well as trading foreign currency futures and options. From 1994-1999 he was a proprietary trader for Olde Discount Corporation. Following his tenure at Olde Discount, he founded the Detroit office of Bright Trading, LLC. His responsibilities included trader recruitment, orientation and education as well as the day to day management of the office. He held this position office until 2003. Since 2003, Joel has been an independent trader researching and developing proprietary indicators and trading systems for the equities and futures markets. In 2007, Joel joined JC Trading Group as a Market Consultant and trading supervisor. He provides daily market commentary at www.premarketinfo.com. Joel obtained his Bachelor of Art in Political Science from the University of Michigan in 1985. Also, he is a graduate of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Continuing Education Program. He also holds his Series 7 and 63 licenses and is a licensed real estate broker.
Kenny Polcari
In the realm of institutional financial services, Kenneth Polcari stands out as a go-to expert in starting up, turning around, and growing investment operations to consistent profitability and world-class service. His background in managing institutional relationships and directing trading strategies has given him the steely drive, inventiveness, and perseverance to prevail in the most volatile economic climates.
Currently Mr. Polcari is Director of NYSE Floor Operations at O’Neil Securities, Inc – the B/D division of Wm. O’Neil & Company out of Los Angeles, CA and represents the interests of global institutional asset managers that need to access the world’s equity markets. He is a Board Advisor/Markets Expert for The Integral Board Group and a speaker on behalf of The American College. Prior to this he was a Managing Director for 15 yrs at Icap Corps, LLC- a British based Inter-dealer Broker. Earlier in his career, Mr. Polcari served as Senior Vice President, member New York Stock Exchange and division manager with Salomon Brothers directing their NYSE Division during the heady bull market of the 1990’s. In addition to managing the division, he helped design an equity technology platform that automated and enhanced trading functions and significantly improved productivity. Mr. Polcari gained a reputation for superior management skills, client service and relationship building, as well as a savvy insight in risk mitigation.
Mr. Polcari has leveraged his superior communication and presentation skills and is a “CNBC Exclusive Contributor/Market Analyst”. You can find him giving market commentary from the floor of the NYSE across a range of their US programming including “The Half-Time Report”, “Power Lunch” and “Closing Bell” in addition to giving US market commentary to CNBC Asia and CNBC/Italy. In addition he is oft quoted in major print media outlets that include the WSJ, FT, Reuters and regional local and International publications.
He is an engaging public speaker that seeks to help the industry and the public understand current market structure and trends as well as institutional investment styles. Topics include the Evolution of the U.S. Equity Markets & the Role of Technology, Rules And Regulations, Policy Initiatives as well as
The Impact of 9/11 on the U.S. Financial Markets.
Mr. Polcari received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a major in Finance, from Boston University. He holds FINRA Licenses in Series 7, 24, 27, 55, and 63.
Active in the financial community, he is as a member of the Security Traders Association (STA) and has served on its Trading Rules Committee. In addition he is a board member of the National Organization of Investment Professionals (NOIP), the Security Traders Association of NY (STANY) and the National Security Traders Association. Leadership roles include past president of the Independent Floor Brokers, former governor of the NYSE, former member of the Market Performance Committee, the Technology Committee, and the FACTS Program. He is also a supporter of a variety of charitable causes including the Members Handicapped Children’s Fund, The Headstrong Project, the Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Society, American Cancer Society, and The Spaulding Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation Hospital. He lives in Westchester County, NY with his wife – also a former member of the NYSE – and is the father of two daughters.
Mr. Kenny Polcari is a member and Director of NYSE Floor Operations on behalf of O’Neil Securities, Inc. representing the interests of institutional asset managers needing access to global equity markets. In addition to his role as an Adjunct Professor at the Boston Graduate School he is also a Markets Expert at Integral Board Group, LLC. His decades long experience in the equity markets and his position on the floor of the exchange gives him and his clients a unique view of the daily market action. Mr. Polcari is a veteran equities trader, a CNBC exclusive contributor / market commentator appearing across a range of CNBC Global programming, an engaging speaker and champion of the U.S. capital markets and can be found working with the financial media, industry conferences and investor events helping public audiences understand the markets. In addition to CNBC – media highlights have included Bloomberg, CNN (domestic and international), ABC, Fox, Reuters, AP, BBC, WSJ, Financial Times, Yahoo Finance. Additional international credits include Der Spiegal, China Business and RAI. He is well known for his daily boots-on-the-ground market analysis. Every morning, Mr. Polcari publishes a large-audience newsletter starting with insights on the day’s market action and ends with a recipe to serve the mood of the markets. Earlier in his career, he served as Managing Director at ICAP Corps, LLC and was Senior Vice President, member New York Stock Exchange and division manager with Salomon Brothers directing their NYSE Division. Mr. Polcari graduated from Boston University School of Management with a BS/BA degree with a concentration in Finance. He is a frequent lecturer on topics such as the Evolution of the U.S. Equity Markets & the Role of Technology, Rules And Regulations, Policy Initiatives as well as The Impact of 9/11 on the U.S. Financial Markets.
AUDREY JOHNSON
Audrey Johnson is the Founder of HomeSource Realty out of Orland Park, IL. With an extensive trading background to go along with her real estate expertise, Ms. Johnson offers a unique perspective on the housing markets. Contact Audrey today!
Categories: Bonds | CBOE | Chicago | China | CME | College Football | College Tuiton | CPI | Cubs | Debt | Donald Trump | Dow Jones | Earnings | Economy | Education | Energy | Federal Reserve | Foreign Policy | Fundamentals | Futures | Gas Prices | Gold | Government | Housing | Illinois | Inflation | Interest Rates | Janet Yellen | Japan | Markets | Mortgage and Lending | NASDAQ | National Security | NFL | Oil | Options | Phoenix | Racism | Real Estate | Regulation | S&P 500 | Savings and Loan | Silver | Stocks | Taxes | Technicals | Vietnam | Warfare | World War 2
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538645
|
__label__wiki
| 0.76218
| 0.76218
|
StudyBoss
Study Like a Boss
Essay Outlines
StudyBoss » Olympics » The 1988 Olympics in Seoul
The 1988 Olympics in Seoul
The 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, proved to be one of the most exciting Olympic games of all time. World records fell in everyday of the 14-day event; in every sport ranging from shuttlecock to track and field, records fell like dominos. The most competitive sport in the 1988 Olympiad was the men’s 100-meter dash, with a field consisting of the ten fastest men in the world, at the time. World record holder Ben Johnson, who shattered the world record by thirteen hundreds of a second a month earlier, and 1984 Olympic 100-meter dash champion, Carl Lewis, highlighted the field.
The winner of this race would carry with him the title of being the “Worlds Fastest Man”. As the competitors lined up at the starting line, they knew the race would be over in less than ten seconds. The gun sounds off and the start is clean. Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson are tied for the lead at the thirty-meter mark but the next seventy-meters would prove to be the most disappointing seventy-meters in Carl Lewis’s life. After the thirty-meter mark, Ben Johnson pulled away from Carl Lewis and the rest of the field with little effort and crossed finish line first, winning the race by seven meters over Carl Lewis.
Seven meters is an eternity in the 100-meter dash. Ben Johnson now had the title of “Worlds Fastest Man”. Four days later that title and his medal would be stripped from him. The International Olympic Committee had found evidence that Ben Johnson had been using anabolic steroids, a substance banned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), which are the two governing bodies for amateur athletics. Ben Johnson was not only stripped of his medal but was indefinitely suspended from competing in track and field.
He ran his fast times by using a banned substance but still it was a man that did it, not a machine. This is why steroids should be legalized in all athletic competition. Steroids, which are also referred to as anabolic androgenic steroids, are drugs that are derived from the male hormone testosterone. Steroids promote muscle growth and lean body mass. Steroids have many medical uses. They are used to treat asthma, arthritis; Addisons Disease, and certain skin ailments. Many athletes abuse steroids to boost their performance.
This use and all non-medical use of steroids are illegal in the United States. Though non-medical use of steroids is illegal in the United States, laws regulating steroid use are inadequate. Steroid testing procedures are also inadequate and easily cheated. The word steroid calls to mind a 350 pound lineman who not so long ago weighed 275 pounds and two thirds of it was fat and now he is all muscle. True, football players depend on drugs a lot in their everyday life, but the real problem is in the Olympics.
It is no secret that almost every Olympic athlete uses steroids in training sometime or another. Dozens of coaches and athletes that were interviewed by Sports Illustrated say that the Atlanta Olympics were a carnival of experiments in the use of performance enhancing drugs. (Over the Edge, Sports Illustrated, April 14, 1997) Athletes are a walking laboratory, and the Olympics have become a proving ground for scientists, chemists and unethical doctors, says Doctor Robert Voy, director of drug testing for the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) at the 1984 and 88 games.
The testers know that the drug gurus are smarter than they are. They know how to get under the radar. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) hoped to fool athletes by brining in a new piece of equipment for testing. The original machine done with a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, was replaced by a much newer and advanced tester, the high-resolution mass spectrometer that would supposedly be able to catch all athletes who had used steroids in the last two or three months.
Unfortunately the two point five million dollar drug testing effort was in fact completely ineffective. Even if the IOCs equipment were the cutting edge of technology, eliminating drugs from the Olympics would be no small challenge. All athletes have to choose: Do I want to compete at a world-class level and take drugs, or do I want to compete at a club level and be clean, says Keeps Koran, the editor of the Dutch edition of Runners World Magazine. (Over the Edge, Sports Illustrated, April 14, 1997)
The days of an athlete simply turning in a bottle of someone elses urine are over. The officials are required to watch the athlete urinate. Even thats not foolproof: Cases have been reported of an athlete urinating before an event, inserting a catheter up his or her urethra, and using a turkey baster to squeeze someone elses urine out. (Over the Edge, Sports Illustrated, April 14, 1997). In 1994 it was found that two million Americans or 0. 5 percent of the adult population, said that they had used anabolic steroids, according to the National Institution on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
Steroid use by adolescent boys has decreased slightly in the past seven years because of the wider availability of over the counter performance enhancing drugs but has doubled over the past seven years for adolescent girls and could be as high as 175,000 nationwide. Why? More girls are competing in sports than ever before, and they have a strong incentive to seek any edge they can. Since 1972 the Federal Government has required colleges and universities to expand womens athletic scholarships to reflect more closely the number of women athletes, stated Christina Gormans article, Girls on Steroids, in the August 1998 issue of Time.
To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:
StudyBoss. (May 2019). The 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Retrieved from https://studyboss.com/essays/the-1988-olympics-in-seoul.html
“The 1988 Olympics in Seoul.” studyboss.com. 05 2019. 01 2021. .
StudyBoss. May 2019. The 1988 Olympics in Seoul. [online]. Available from: https://studyboss.com/essays/the-1988-olympics-in-seoul.html [Accessed 18 January 2021].
StudyBoss. The 1988 Olympics in Seoul [Internet]. May 2019. [Accessed 18 January 2021]; Available from: https://studyboss.com/essays/the-1988-olympics-in-seoul.html.
Steroid use in Major League Baseball
Should Steroids Be Banned?
What are anabolic steroids
Should Steroids Be Banned From Society
Anabolic Steroids, A Synthetic Form Of The Chemical Testosterone
The Ancient Olympics
The Nazi Olympics
2000 Olympics Swimming
The Olympics in Athens in 2004
Categories Essay Tags Olympics, Steroids Post navigation
The Work of Pierre August Cot and Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Renaissance Rebirth short break or transition
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538647
|
__label__wiki
| 0.887748
| 0.887748
|
Tamea in Press
Golden Visa in Portugal
Golden visa FAQs
Invest In Portugal
Buying in Portugal
Selling in Portugal
Non-Habitual Residency
Welcome to Portugal
Welcome to Lisbon
Welcome to Porto
Welcome to Algarve
Find Your Neighbourhood
Property sales figures in Portugal rise 16.6% in 2018 to reach 10-year high
The most recent statistics from INE on Portugal's Real Estate market
178,691 homes were sold in Portugal in 2018, 16.6% more than the previous year. This is the highest figure in the last 10 years, since 2009, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE). The number of licensed buildings increased by 17.6% compared to the same period last year, and 22,200 buildings were licensed.
"Of the total operations carried out, 85.2% corresponded to existing accommodation, 0.7% more than the previous year. In 2018, the average price of single-family homes sold in Portugal was 996 euros per metre squared (which is 93 euros per square foot), representing an increase of 6.9% over the previous year.
The average price of housing exceeded the national value in the Algarve (1,523 euros/m2 or 141 euros/sq ft), Lisbon Metropolitan Area (1,333 euros/m2 or 124 euros/sq ft) and Madeira Autonomous Region (1,207 euros/m2 or 112 euros/sq ft)," concludes the INE.
The number of licensed buildings increases by 17.6%
The number of licensed buildings in the country grew by 17.6% compared to the previous year, which is 22,223 buildings. "New licensed buildings reinforced their predominance in 2018, being 68.9% of the total licensed buildings (+0.7% with respect to 2017)," says the INE website.
Building rehabilitation works, including refurbishment, extensions and reconstruction of homes, grew by 11.7% in annual terms, with a weight of 25.3% in 2018 (26.5% in 2017). "The number of licensed homes (28,321) increased by 30.3% over the previous year (+19.0% in 2017).
The number of new homes built as family residences was 20,205, 38.9% more than the previous year (+24.5% in 2017)," explains the institute.
Completed projects grew by 19%
The data revealed by Statistics Portugal also allow us to conclude that, in terms of finished works, there has been a 19% increase in the number of completed buildings compared to the previous year, which corresponds to 13,483 buildings, the majority of which are new (73.6%). Residential buildings represent 72.2% of the total number of completed buildings.
"The number of completed homes (15,570) increased by 36.3% over the previous year (+13.1% in 2017). Finished rehabilitation works grew by 10.6% (2.6% in 2017), and their relative weight of the total decreased by 2% to 26.4% in 2018," says the INE, pointing out that, by type of work, new construction works took the longest to complete (22 months), compared with refurbishment works (11 months).
TAMEA GOLD INTERNATIONAL - SOCIEDADE DE MEDIAÇÃO IMOBILIÁRIA, UNIPESSOAL LDA
Avenida da Liberdade 245 | 9E | 1250-143 | Lisboa | Portugal
AMI: 14075
Lisbon Apartments for Sale
Lisbon Buildings for Sale
Lisbon Developments
Find Your Neighbourhoods
Keep me updated with the lastest news :
© 2018 Tamea International
Our website, like many others, uses cookies to help us customise the user experience. Cookies are important to the proper functioning of a site. To improve your experience, we use cookies to remember log-in details and provide secure log-in, collect statistics to optimize site functionality and deliver content tailored to your interests.
Agree and Proceed
Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool. DUBAI +971 (0)555 718 260 LONDON +44 (0)7525 040 777 LISBON HQ Mercado da Ribeira, Av. 24 de Julho,Escritório Piso 1, 1200-479, Lisboa, Portugal +351 911 012 466 Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool. Created with sketchtool.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538648
|
__label__cc
| 0.551306
| 0.448694
|
confant Pride and Conflict of Law in Sophocles' An
confant Pride and Conflict of Law in Sophocles’ An
Subject:Law
University/College: University of Chicago
tigone Antigone essaysAntigone - Pride and Conflict of Law
Sophocles' Antigone, in its later phases is no longer about the conflict of law; It is about stubbornness and self will, about the sin of refusing to listen; about a man who has never been told.
Conflict of law, presents the initial disturbance within Thebes. Creon, King of Thebes, refuses to bury the body of Polynices, for in his eyes Polynices is 'his country's enemy' Antigone pg.131. Thus, despite breaking the laws of the gods, Creon holds his power higher than that of God and heavens and enforces his law. As the story follows, Sophocles expands on the ignorance presented by Creon and Antigone, and it is also found that it is impossible to defeat an ignorant man, or woman in argument. It is this ignorance, that establishes the notion of the sin and punishment that both Creon and Antigone face due to their stubbornness and self will.
Antigone holds her love of family, and respect to the dead, elevated beyond the laws of Creon, whom she believes, has no righteous justification to close his eyes to the honor of the deceased. In her determination to fulfill Polynices' rights, she runs directly into Creon's attempts to re-establish order. This leads to encounters of severe conflict between the dissimilarities of the two, creating a situation whereby both Creon and Antigone expose their stubbornness and self will.
It is Antigone's morals, which drive her to betray the laws of man, in order to honor the laws of God. Knowing and comprehending the consequences of defying Creon's ruling do not restrain the intensity of Antigone's self will, yet it feeds her hunger to achieve her principles. Losing sight of her future, Antigone allows her stubbornness to consume her life, taking with it, the prospect of marriage, motherhood and friendship. As the story continues, we find that Antigone focuses more on the need to establish her human ethics in spite of Creon, rather than proving the incorrectness of man defying god's laws.
Following the unlawful burial of Polynices, Antigone openly admits to Creon the knowledge of the following punishment by carrying out such a defying act. "I knew it naturally, It was plain enough." Antigone pg.138. With the intention of gratifying the laws of the gods, Antigone holds neither guilt nor regret as she feels that she has brought justice to the eternal rest of her brother. Antigone rejects her life in a deeply heroic yet tragic stand, certain that this is all that she can do to prove the intensity of her self-righteousness.
Creon's judgment over the living and dead infuriates Antigone, and on many occasion we encounter their conflicts, which are based not only on their differences- but also on many of their similarities.
In an almost reflective similarity to Antigone, Creon advances to extreme measures in order to fulfill his need to repair and strengthen his territory. "He was concerned with re-establishing the social order which the shocking news of Jocasta's and Oedipus's incest had fractured, and which the civil war between their sons had almost ruined." Charles Paul Segal 'Conflicts of Antigone' pg. 46. Creon prides himself to be a powerful dictator and leader within the Theban society. He rules his city with the contention that his law is the only law. As opposed to Antigone's stubbornness, Creon's is far more illogical and dominatingly based. Indeed, Sophocles demonstrates the 'sin of refusing to listen, and about a man who has never been told' supremely through Creon's character.
On many occasion Creon speaks of honor and goodness overruling evil, 'I am determined, that never, If I can help it, Shall evil triumph over good' Antigone pg.131-132. Yet he ceases to identify the hypocritical aspect of his decisions, to defy the laws of God, in order to pursue his own beliefs of mankind.
It is towards the later stages of the story that Creon's inability to hear and listen to advice is increasingly evident. Teiresias enters this ordeal, offering advice to Creon. Despite his outreach, Creon bemuses Teiresias and neglects to listen to the importance of his words. 'You have given a son of you loins, To death, in payment for death' Antigone pg. 154. Once again Creon is warned by the chorus that Teirasias' words are not to be taken lightly, it is then that Creon steps down and adheres to the given advice, 'Now I believe, it is by the laws of heaven that man must live'. This change of attitude arises because Creon believes that this is the best course of action for his city, and for himself. For the reason that Creon had still not changed for the benefit of others, but more so to accompany his power, the deaths of Antigone, his son Haemon, and wife Eurydice end his personal happiness.
The ignorance and stubbornness encountered through Antigone and Creon prove to be the greatest tragedy, as it is this that leads to their demise. Antigone's self will and determination lead to suicide as a final ultimation that she believes will burden Creons existence, and shed light to her morality and religious beliefs. It is Creons negligent nature that fails him. His greed for power and authority over his city, confine his ability to see beyond his own thoughts and judgment. This is his ultimate sin, as it leaves him with a great deal of power and authority, yet this is meaningless when the love of family is lost at the expense of gratification of mans laws, in conflict with the laws of heaven. While Creon has the expectation of his words to be carried out, it is his own words that have significant meaning as they are words that capture his downfall.
"There is always someone who is ready to be lured in the hope of gain" Antigone pg.132.
confant Pride and Conflict of Law in Sophocles’ An specifically for you
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538655
|
__label__cc
| 0.679966
| 0.320034
|
Title: They Were Doing Their G-D Jobs
Subtitle: On Policing
Topics: black bloc, g20, police, Protest, repression, resistance
They Were Doing Their G-D Jobs
On Policing
In the days following the mass police assaults on organizers, demonstrators, and bystanders during the G8/G20 events, even as comrades linger in squalid detention centres and jails, a troubling notion is taking shape, seemingly gaining traction, among activist circles as well as some sectors of the general public more broadly. This notion suggests that the police in Toronto acted in a way that was somehow atypical or out of the ordinary. Even more there is a sense that the police could have “kept order.” Some public discussion suggests that policing during the G8/G20 reflects a breakdown, a failure to carry out their duties “properly.” Incredibly, during a rally in support of people in detention, Naomi Klein suggested that the police “Do your goddamned job!” In response many in the crowd chanted “Do your job! Do your job!” Elsewhere, and even more incredibly, Judy Rebick has suggested that the were police failed to do their jobs properly in not arresting perceived black block participants: “What they could have done is arrest the Black Bloc at the beginning before they had a chance to be part of the bigger crowd and that's what they didn't do.” Some seem to believe that the police were supposed to be there to protect them or that the police provide the means for “protest” to take place.
The concern here is that the discussion is being framed in a rather liberal framework that presents a proper, even desirable, form of state policing, a good way of policing against a bad, that police in Toronto presumably strayed from.
While it is certain that the police job is a goddamned one, should activists really be calling on the police to do it? Think about what that would actually mean. More than this, though, the police during the G8/G20 (as during APEC in 1997 and Quebec City in 2001) WERE doing their job. They were doing what they were and are instituted and structured to do. This is not a case of the system going awry, breaking down, going off the rails or being over the top. This is a case of the system doing precisely what it is organized to do (and in a rather limited way).
The related argument is that the task ahead is then to get the police back to doing it right, to doing their job, to act properly as police. Thus calls for public inquiries that will supposedly shame the police or find them to have acted inappropriately or hold them accountable (to whom?/ to themselves?/to Harper?). Historically the more brutal the police, the less the allegiance of the citizenry. They know this.
In earlier ages the ruling classes were rather more direct about what the job of the police involved (they wrote it down without concern since most non-elites were not taught to read anyway). The term “police” itself comes from the Greek “polis”—the city. The institution was created to regulate the working classes and poor (the so-called dangerous classes) who were moving to cities after having been violently displaced from their communal lands (and who were rightly pissed about it and did not want jobs in the deadly factories). Look at the legislation that founded the first modern police forces in France and Germany. The royal edict of 1667 that founded the first modern police under Louis XIV in France stated clearly that the job of police was: “purging the city of what may cause disturbances, procuring abundance, and having each and every one live according to their station and duties.” Procuring abundance simply means ensuring the condition for economic exploitation. Having people live according to their station and duties is as clear an expression of maintaining class inequality as you can get. In Germany the language was similar and included urban planning and surveillance of prices among police functions.
Canadian state history, despite popular perceptions and mythologies, is replete with examples of the police—municipal, provincial and federal—“doing their jobs” in mass arrests, detentions, beatings, even killings of non-elites from various backgrounds (but particularly against indigenous communities and worker's strikes). Only a short sample would include: the Red River Rebellion, the Northwest Rebellion, the Winnipeg General Strike, the On to Ottawa Trek, the FLQ “crisis,” the Quebec General Strike, Solidarity BC, Oka, Gustafsen Lake, Ipperwash, the OPSEU strike of 1995, June 15, Sun Peaks, Six Nations. And on and on so it has gone up to the present. Did the police not do their jobs in these cases?
In all of these instances, people were being restored to their station as the ruling classes saw it. Techniques, dress, language, and certainly public relations have changed. But, at root, the job of the police remains. And that is a job that we should be looking to abolish rather than restore.
More privileged audiences can tend to forget or overlook these foundation of policing while their effects are typically imposed on the poor, and indigenous people on an ongoing basis. When more privileged sectors are subjected to police violence, as during protests like APEC 1997 or the G8/G20, calls are raised for returning the police to their supposed “proper” place, and discussions of appropriate or inappropriate behaviour emerge, rather than calls for, say, abolition of the police as an institution.
The real issue is the existence of a standing private property army tasked with ensuring that non-elites are maintained in their station. The rising wave of direct actions is not about defiance of law and order—rather it is a challenge that the regime of rule itself is illegitimate. Their order is not ours and the order they are tasked with keeping is not one we want kept (at demonstrations or otherwise). For those who think police let the crowds get out of control, that does a disservice to us and our capacities. And why would organizers not want to get out from under police control anyway?
That the police are not forced to reveal their role more openly regularly, is, perhaps, a testament to our own incapacity in threatening to break out of our roles and station (partly what the black bloc is all about). We do not want to suggest that current policing has simply “gone off track” or “become corrupted.” Appeals to propriety suggest that there is a proper and legitimate role for the police institution—the job of policing.
Were the police at the G8/G20 (or APEC or Quebec City or June 15, 2001 or Vancouver 2010) doing their jobs? The answer is resolutely: “Yes.” Do we want them to do their job “more properly,” “more appropriately,” “more effectively?” “Hell, no.”
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538661
|
__label__wiki
| 0.695665
| 0.695665
|
Back to Artzine
Alice Mong, Executive Director, Asia Society Center Hong Kong, March 26, 2015
March 26, 2015 by Artshare Editor
Alice Mong, Executive Director of Asia Society Center, Hong Kong. (Image courtesy of the Hong Kong Arts Association).
Our Conversation Series features intimate interviews with leading experts from around the world: collectors, curators, artists, gallerists, and museum directors.
I am Alice Mong. I am the Executive Director of Asia Society Hong Kong Center. Asia Society Hong Kong Center has been in Hong Kong since 1990, and we are one of the premiere hubs of art and cultural, business and policy educational organisation here in Hong Kong.
What is Asia Society’s link with art?
We really now have a gallery space, that we can really fulfill the mission of Hong Kong’s place in the global art market, art space. Unlike New York, we are not a museum, we are a gallery space, but what we’ve been able to do similar to our colleagues in New York is put together really groundbreaking unique exhibitions for the Hong Kong audience.
Could you share with us some highlights of the gallery?
Just this past year, 2014, we were able to do three really groundbreaking exhibitions. The first one in 2014, we worked with the Italian Brera Gallery from Milan, bringing here to Hong Kong first time ever a masterpiece by the famous Italian artist Caravaggio. And then we were able to partner with Chinese contemporary artist Xu Bing to have mounted his first solo exhibition here in Hong Kong. Then we concluded 2014 with this wonderful ‘Temple, Scrolls, and Divine Messengers’ [exhibition], which featured two really rare artifacts that rarely leave Israel.
How do not-for-profit art spaces help shape the Hong Kong art scene?
Even if you just have an art market, I think the art world is very two dimensional. You need a vibrant non-profit like Asia Society Hong Kong, Asian Art Archive, Para Site. You need the parallel to that. And if you think about it, these organisations are also supported by artists, by collectors, by galleries. Without their support, I think we would not be able to exist. So you need both to have a vibrant cultural city.
What is the place of Hong Kong globally as a cultural hub?
I think Hong Kong is coming up. I don’t think Hong Kong is there yet, like New York and London. But if you look at New York and London, it took them over a hundred years, almost two hundred years to get to where they are. So for Hong Kong, we are seeing the creative talents these days. I think twenty years ago, I’m not sure we would have seen. I know twenty years ago when I lived here, there weren’t that many people who thought that they could become an artist that could earn a living being an artist. So you see that now, and I think in another decade, I really do think that Hong Kong is going to be up there with New York, London, Tokyo and other cities. It’s not there yet, but I think, for example, whether it’s Art Basel Hong Kong or whether it’s M+, all the plans that we are hearing right now will help Hong Kong to become a very important art and cultural center in the next decade.
What do you think of the sharp growth of private museums in China?
The private museum is a really interesting phenomenon. But again it’s not unique. Many of the museums I think in the Unite States and Europe started off as private museums. And whether the families, or foundations, or other corporations will help support it eventually, that remains to be seen. These private museums are all relatively new. I think they all came up within the last couple of years. I think they can sustain themselves if they start thinking about creative exhibitions and creative programming. It’s one thing to build a museum and you have the artwork there, and people come to see it once. But how do you get them to come back? I think depending on the vision of these individual founders of these private museums. I think some will survive really well, and I’m not sure some will. Not all of them will survive equally well.
Any views or opinions in the post are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the company or contributors.
Art Fair Tokyo 2015...
Interview with Naohiko Kishi & Takahiro Kaneshima of Art Fair Tokyo...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538662
|
__label__cc
| 0.616523
| 0.383477
|
CAUSATORS
Indians bag five medals at physics Olympiad
admin@nie.com
Publish Date: Jul 26 2016 2:31PM
Updated Date: Jul 26 2016 2:31PM
Studying physics or exploring the theory of relativity may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but Indian students seem to have taken a liking for the complex subject and are moving towards top positions in international physics olympiads.
In the 32nd physics olympiad held in Antalya, Turkey, the Indian team bagged three gold and two silver medals.
India stood second among the 70 countries that participated in the olympiad.
This year, the National Standard Examination in Physics (NSEP) will be held on November 18. Those who pass the NSEP will have to appear for the Indian national physics olympiad. Only five make it to the indian team.
More From RISING-STARS...
Congratulations...!!!!!
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0013.json.gz/line1538663
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.