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THE ENTERTAINER: Video game streamer Matt Gregory with his streaming set-up. Mike Richards GLA060118GAME
Meet the Gladstone man paid to play video games
by andrewthorpe
8th Jan 2018 5:54 AM | Updated: 8:14 AM
IT'S the career every young gamer dreams of.
Matt Gregory, known online as Anthropic, gets paid to play video games.
The 24-year-old Gladstone resident is a streamer - someone who plays games for a live online audience.
While the concept may seem strange to those who didn't grow up surrounded by gaming culture, it is fast becoming one of the most popular - and lucrative - forms of online entertainment.
The top streamers in the world are international celebrities, hauling in millions of dollars a year.
Mr Gregory broadcasts on the popular Twitch platform, playing for hours every night, seven days a week, with thousands of followers.
And while he's not yet able to call it his full-time job, his subscriber count has grown considerably over the past few weeks.
50 people now pay him $5 a month to ensure he keeps his channel growing.
"I'd like it to be my full-time job, but I'm looking after (one-year-old daughter) Ellie full-time, so that's my real job," he laughed.
"It's a hobby that I make a little bit of money from."
Skilled gamer: Matt Gregory streams for hours every night.
Mr Gregory said most people did not recognise streaming took a lot of work to be successful.
Streamers compete for viewers in a crowded online marketplace, with rivals all across the world - and there's always someone doing something new and different.
"I used to think it was about being the best person at the game, but that's not true at all," Mr Gregory said.
"We (Australia) have our own eSports team, and some of them have tried to stream, but because they're professional players people don't connect with them the same way.
"Every moment, something funny has to happen to keep people watching, otherwise (viewers) just click off.
"I'm constantly changing and improving... it takes a lot more experience than I think people realise."
STYLIN': Matt Gregory with daughter Ellie in front of his streaming green screen. Mike Richards GLA060118GAME
To keep his followers engaged with his content, Mr Gregory interacts with fans on social media, produces a highlights video each month and makes sure he's always doing something fresh and different on his stream.
He switched from playing competitive multi-player games like League of Legends and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds to the role-playing classic Skyrim recently for a change of pace, allowing him to get a little more creative with the characters he inhabits.
He uses a green screen to ensure viewers have an unimpeded view of the games he's playing, and keeps a stack of props and gimmicks on hand (including a Rubik's Cube and plastic money) ready to be called on at any time.
He also tries to distinguish himself visually from his competition.
"It's a character I've made that I always wear a bowtie," he said.
"If you look on the browse page on Twitch you see thousands of gamers, and I wanted to stand out."
Something different: Matt Gregory likes to shake things up.
While some of his family were skeptical when he started the hobby two and a half years ago, they came around as his channel started to find success.
"Mum didn't believe it until she started seeing how much money I was making and how many followers I had," Mr Gregory said.
"I told her to compare it to macadamia nut trees, (which) take 10 years before they produce any nuts.
"So that's a big time investment before you're getting any return."
Role-playing: The games Matt Gregory plays aren't all multi-player or competitive.
But as with everything on the internet, streaming is not all fun and games.
Producing any kind of content and putting it in the public eye opens the door to those who use the cover of anonymity to harrass people.
Mr Gregory said dealing with online abuse was a skill he learned like any other.
"Most trolls or people that have malicious intent are just looking for attention... so when people come in to my chat and be like 'You're fat', or 'You suck' (or worse), I just ban them," he said.
"I used to get defensive (but) it's not worth even that five minutes, because it lowers the hype and the positivity of the stream, so it makes all the other viewers feel bummed out."
Online gaming recently made international headlines after an American man was charged with making a hoax 911 call about a "hostage situation" late last month.
The call was allegedly designed to lead authorities to the home of another man he was arguing with over Call of Duty - a harassment tactic known online as "swatting".
Police officers arrived at a different home and fatally shot a 25-year-old man.
Mr Gregory said he was aware of the incident and was careful not to divulge too much information about himself online.
"I think that I'm glad I'm in Australia, our police wouldn't just come and shoot me," he said.
Always entertaining: Streamers have to constantly keep their audience's attention.
Though anyone with a webcam and a powerful enough PC can begin streaming, Mr Gregory said a good internet connection was vital.
"It was really terrible when I started - I mean, it wasn't terrible, I got a lot of followers, but I was playing without NBN," he said.
"I had a 1MBps upload on normal ADSL2.
"When we were looking for a house, my wife was pregnant and I was streaming ... she wanted a bigger house for a baby, and I wanted NBN."
Mr Gregory said he felt "blessed" to be part of what he said was a generational change in entertainment.
"It's just like TV but it's not controlled by big business," he said.
"It's independently owned, people broadcast their own content, and people watch because they connect."
Click here to watch Anthropic's live stream, usually between 8pm and 1am every night.*
*WARNING: Mature language.
Cheap as chips: Gladstone rents lowest in the nation
Teen with a passion for maths scores high OP1
‘Bikini streamers’ banned for being too sexy
Premium Content Special reason behind Gladstone gamer's dramatic weight loss
editors picks games and gadgets online gaming streaming
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Open Section Doctor (4)
Qualified, late specialism training (3)
You are looking at 1-4 of 4 books for:
Oxford Clinical Imaging Guides x
Download complete list of books in this Oxford Clinical Imaging Guides Collection (.pdf) (.xls)
75 chapters
Focused Intensive Care Ultrasound
Marcus Peck and Peter MacNaughton (eds)
This book is written for clinicians who are new to ultrasound and those who want to progress further from the basics to more advanced-level scanning. Consequently, it covers a broad range ... More
This book is written for clinicians who are new to ultrasound and those who want to progress further from the basics to more advanced-level scanning. Consequently, it covers a broad range of subjects, and its text is divided into five sections. Section 1 is imaging-based. Chapters in Section 1, such as physics, machine setting, and sonoanatomy, provide the foundation that underpins the rest of the book. Section 2 is structure-based. Chapters in Section 2 cover cardiac, lung, abdominal, and vascular anatomy and enable the reader to start scanning in these areas. Section 3 is problem-based. Chapters in Section 3 cover the major differential diagnoses and algorithmic approaches to ultrasound assessment of the most common clinical presentations, including shock, dyspnoea, trauma, cardiac arrest, sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and many more. Section 4 is procedure-based. Chapters in Section 4, such as thoracocentesis, lumbar puncture, and percutaneous tracheostomy, cover the technical and non-technical aspects of invasive procedures performed in critically ill patients. Section 5 is governance-based and covers how to deliver a safe and effective service.Less
Point of Care Ultrasound for Emergency Medicine and Resuscitation
Paul Atkinson, Justin Bowra, Tim Harris, Bob Jarman, and David Lewis (eds)
Point-of-Care Ultrasound for Emergency Medicine and Resuscitation (Oxford Clinical Imaging Guides) focuses on the day-to-day utility of point-of-care ultrasound in emergency medicine. The ... More
Point-of-Care Ultrasound for Emergency Medicine and Resuscitation (Oxford Clinical Imaging Guides) focuses on the day-to-day utility of point-of-care ultrasound in emergency medicine. The book explains how clinicians can safely and accurately use ultrasound for the diagnosis and management of shock, acute presentations, and phases of key conditions. The book begins with a summary of cardiac ultrasound before continuing through the chest, moving down to the abdomen, and finally considers the major vessels and soft tissues. Paediatric and pre-hospital ultrasound, as well as practical procedures, are also addressed. Each chapter begins at a basic level and moves on to higher-level skills. The book is highly illustrated with annotated diagrams showing structures and explaining how to interpret findings. The text is written in a user-friendly fashion with short paragraphs and headings. Technical terminology is explained throughout. A short section in each chapter outlines ‘core’ and ‘advanced’ applications. Each chapter has a clear ‘how to scan’ summary. The book reflects the content and skills included in current curricula for ultrasound use in national and international emergency medicine.Less
Practical Perioperative Transoesophageal Echocardiography (3 edn)
David Sidebotham, Alan Forbes Merry, Malcolm E. Legget, and I. Gavin Wright (eds)
Practical Perioperative Transoesophageal Echocardiography, 3rd edition, is a concise guide to the use of transoesophageal echocardiography (TOE) for patients undergoing cardiac surgical and ... More
Practical Perioperative Transoesophageal Echocardiography, 3rd edition, is a concise guide to the use of transoesophageal echocardiography (TOE) for patients undergoing cardiac surgical and interventional cardiological procedures. The text is aimed at anaesthetists and cardiologists, particularly those in training and those preparing for examinations. Three-dimensional imaging is integrated throughout the text. New to the third edition are chapters on mitral valve repair, aortic valve repair, TOE in the interventional catheter laboratory, and TOE assessment of pericardial disease. The first three chapters address the fundamentals of ultrasound imaging: physical principles, artefacts, image optimization, and quantitative echocardiography. Chapters 4 and 5 cover standard views, anatomical variants, and cardiac masses. Chapters 6 and 7 address left ventricular systolic and diastolic function, respectively. The subsequent eight chapters form the core of the book and deal with the cardiac valves and the thoracic aorta. Emphasis is placed on those aspects relevant to cardiac surgery; therefore, the mitral and aortic valves are afforded particular prominence. The role of three-dimensional imaging for the mitral valve is highlighted. Chapter 17 covers the emerging role of TOE for patients undergoing procedures in the catheter laboratory and covers topics such as transcatheter aortic valve replacement and edge-to-edge mitral valve repair. Chapter 18 provides an overview of the common congenital abnormalities encountered in adults. Two chapters address the important subjects of thoracic transplantation and mechanical cardiorespiratory support. Finally, Chapter 21 brings many threads from previous chapters together to describe the role of TOE in assessing haemodynamic instability.Less
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The Mathematical Theory of Bridge
Translated by Alec Traub, Revised and Corrected by Giles Laur�n
by: �mile Borel
Andr� Ch�ron
$75.00 $60.00 £40.00
134 Probability Tables, Their Uses, Simple Formulas, Applications & 4000 Probabilities
Originally published in 1940, and revised in 1954, this classic work on mathematics and probability as applied to Bridge first appeared in English translation in 1974, but has been unavailable for many years. This new edition corrects numerical errors found in earlier texts; it revises the previous English translation where needed and corrects a number of textual and typographical errors in the 1974 edition. Tables have been included again in the text, as they were in the original edition. The chapter on Contract and Plafond scoring has been retained as continuing to serve its intended purpose. The chapters on shuffling, although no longer applicable to Duplicate Bridge, are included for the benefit of those interested in the mathematics of all card games. All, it is hoped, without too many new errors being introduced.
�mile Borel
�mile Borel (1871-1956) made contributions to mathematics, it can be argued, that introduced our era of probabilistic, quantitative decision making, so adaptable to the computer and thereby so pervasive today. He published more than fifty papers on probability between 1905 and 1950. Between 1921 and 1927 he published papers on game theory and was first to define games of strategy, publishing various papers and finally, Applications aux jeux de hazard in 1938, of which this book formed a part.
Andr� Ch�ron (1895-1980) was a top-ranked chess player of the generation of Capablanca (1888-1942); both he and Capablanca turned to bridge as a �more interesting game� in the 1930s.
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From Increased Car Insurance Minimums to New Education Policies, New Laws Took Effect July 1
Posted by Mineral County Independent News | Jul 11, 2018 | News | 0 |
By Megan Messerly, The Nevada Independent
It’s been more than a year since the end of the 2017 legislative session, but some laws are only now taking effect.
Several education-related laws officially kick in today, meaning that they will be in place for the upcoming school year: High schools are allowed to offer a civics exam to their students next school year in preparation for a requirement that will go into effect for the following school year; graduating high school seniors will be able to receive a STEM or STEAM seal affixed to their diplomas at the end of the 2018-2019 school year if they meet certain requirements; and high school ethnic and diversity studies courses will have to meet certain standards.
There are also new minimum standards for car insurance, new rules for the state on interacting with companies that boycott Israel and extra requirements to protect Native American burial grounds.
Here’s a rundown of some of the laws that took effect Sunday.
SB308: Minimum standards for car insurance
Starting Sunday, car insurance in Nevada is required to cover a minimum of $25,000 for bodily injury to or death of one person in any crash, $50,000 for bodily injury to or death of two or more persons in any one crash and $20,000 for injury to or destruction of property of others in any one crash. The minimum standards were previously $15,000, $30,000 and $10,000, respectively.
SB452: Vehicle titles
There is a new procedure for anyone who does not have a title for a car and is unable to provide information to the Department of Motor Vehicles sufficient to establish his or her legal ownership of the car. The person may file a bond with the DMV equal to one and one-half times the value of the vehicle, allow the DMV to inspect the vehicle and authorize the DMV to conduct a vehicle history search through the relevant crime information systems.
The bond must protect prior and subsequent owners or lienholders of the vehicle against any expense, loss or damage because of the issuance of the title. The bond must be returned by the DMV at the end of three years unless the DMV has been notified of any action to recover on the bond.
SB176: Mandatory body cameras for police officers
All uniformed police officers who routinely interact with people are required to wear body cameras while on duty starting today. They were previously allowed, but not required, to do so.
The new law requires each law enforcement agency to adopt policies and procedures governing the use of body cameras and mandates that any video recorded by a body camera must be retained by the agency for not less than 15 days. It also requires agencies to adopt disciplinary rules for officers who intentionally manipulate video recorded by a body camera.
The law applies to all sheriff’s offices, metropolitan police departments, police departments of any incorporated city, any department, division or municipal court of a city or town that employs marshals and the Nevada Highway Patrol.
In order to pay for the body cameras, all counties in Nevada are allowed to impose certain surcharges on telephone lines and mobile telephone services.
SB322: High school civics exams
This new law requiring high school students to take a civics exam in order to graduate will be phased in this coming year. The law allows public high schools to require that every student take an exam of no less than 50 questions that is identical to the civics portion of the naturalization test adopted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of the Department of Homeland Security.
Starting in July 2019, the civic exams will be mandatory and students will not be allowed to graduate high school without having taken the exam.
SB200: Computer education in elementary school
Students in public school will now be required to receive instruction in computer education and technology before beginning sixth grade. The Department of Education is required to, in consultation with the Advisory Council on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, review all instruction in computer education and technology and make recommendations to the state board about whether the instruction should be approved.
The definition of computer education and technology has also been expanded to include computer science and computational thinking. The law also ensures that teachers receive ongoing training in computer science, education and technology.
Other portions of the law went into effect last year, while others still won’t kick in until 2020 and 2022. Starting in 2020 students will be able to apply one unit of credit for a computer science course to a science or math requirement when applying to a public university or college in Nevada, and in 2022, schools will be required to offer at least one computer science course and make efforts to increase the enrollment of underrepresented students in that course.
SB212: Expanding the Safe to Tell Program
This new law requiring stricter investigation requirements for school administrators who receive bullying reports officially goes into effect today, though the state’s new 24-hour anonymous school safety and anti-bullying hotline and reporting app “Safe Voice” has already been up and running.
Under this law, each public school must appoint a team of at least three members of the staff to receive notice of any report submitted to the Safe to Tell program to the school. The team is required to include a school counselor, psychologist, social worker or similar person and a school administrator.
Information reported to the Safe to Tell program must be forwarded to that team, law enforcement agencies and others. The director of the Office for a Safe and Respectful Learning Environment within the Department of Education is also required to provide the members of that team training about the appropriate response to such a report.
Although prior law required the state to operate a hotline or call center to receive reports, this bill required the establishment of a support center including a hotline, website, phone app and text messaging app. School districts are required to print the number of the hotline on the back of each student and staff identification card and post the number in certain locations around the school.
Schools are now also required to include a plan for providing counseling services into their overall school crisis or emergency plan.
SB241: STEAM and STEAM seals on high school diplomas
Students who are deemed highly proficient in science, technology, engineering and math will be able to graduate next year with a STEM seal attached to their diploma, while students proficient in science, technology, engineering, the arts and math can receive a STEAM seal.
In order to receive the STEM seal, students must receive a 3.25 grade point average or 3.85 grade point average; have earned at least four credits in science, four credits in math and one credit in computer science, engineering, manufacturing, electronics or a related subject; and have earned a certain minimum score on an advanced placement, international baccalaureate, SAT or ACT exam in math and science.
To receive a STEAM seal, students must meet the same grade requirements as necessary for a STEM seal; have earned at least three credits in science, four credits in math, one credit in computer science and one credit in fine arts; and have earned a certain minimum score on an advanced placement, international baccalaureate, SAT or ACT exam in math and science.
SB107: Setting standards for ethnic and diversity studies courses
This new law requires the Council to Establish Academic Standards for Public Schools to establish standards of content and performance for ethnic and diversity studies for high school students. The bill went into effect last May for purposes of adopting necessary regulations and performing any administrative functions needed to carry out the law but takes full effect today.
The new standards are required to examine the culture, history and contributions of the African American, Hispanic American, Native American, Asian American, European American, Basque American and any other communities the council decides to include; emphasize sensitivity toward all races and diverse populations; and be written in a way that allows school districts or charter schools to modify the content to reflect the demographics of the community they serve.
School districts or charter schools offering courses in ethnic and diversity studies are required to comply with these new standards.
SB132: Individual graduation plans
This new law requires the board of trustees of each school district (and permits the governing bodies of any charter school) to adopt policies allowing for the creation of individual graduation plans for students who are not likely to graduate on time, have scored poorly on the college and career readiness assessment and have attended or will attend school in another country as a foreign exchange student for at least one semester.
Students with such a plan are allowed to remain enrolled in high school for up to three semesters after the date on which he or she was supposed to graduate. School districts are allowed to withdraw individual graduation plans if the students are not making sufficient progress.
Any students who receive below a certain level on their college and career readiness assessments are required to enroll in the maximum number of units of credit per semester allowed by the school in which he or she is enrolled unless his or her plan specifies otherwise.
School counselors are required to establish and annually review specific educational goals for each student in consultation with his or her parents. Schools must also ensure that the student and his or her parents are aware of certain information about postsecondary and vocational education, including the average college and career readiness score of students admitted to each community college, state college or state university and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
SB391: Nevada Promise Scholarship
The Nevada Promise Scholarship provides last-dollar financial aid to students enrolled in any of the state’s community colleges. Though parts of the law have been slowly going into effect over the last year, the final provisions of the bill take effect today and students will be able to receive the scholarship starting this fall.
SB26: Limits on companies that boycott Israel
Local governments and the state’s purchasing administrator may no longer enter into contracts with companies unless the contract includes a written certification that the company is not engaged in and agrees for the length of the contract not to boycott Israel. The treasurer is also now required to identify so-called scrutinized companies — those that boycott Israel — in which any public fund invests money and prepares an annual report on the investment of such money to submit to the governor and the Legislature.
The treasurer is also required to divest all direct holdings from such companies from the assets he or she manages, as well as request that the manager of any indirect holdings consider divesting from those companies so long as doing so is consistent with his or her fiduciary responsibilities. The law also requires the Public Employees’ Retirement Board to identify scrutinized companies in which it has direct holdings and prepare an annual report.
SB244: Preservation of Native American burial sites
This law, which goes into full effect today, prohibits a person from excavating a site on private lands that is a prehistoric Native American burial site unless the person first obtains a permit from the director of the Nevada State Museum. Permits are not required if the person has obtained a permit under federal law for the same purpose.
The state museum director and the Office of Historic Preservation are required to establish a process for repatriation of prehistoric Native American human remains and funerary objects. Remains and other items are to be returned to the closest culturally affiliated Native American tribe.
Anyone who willfully removes, mutilates, defaces, injures or destroys a Native American cairn or grave will be fined $2,000 for the first offense and $4,500 for the second or subsequent offence. The knowing and willful removal, mutilation, excavation, defacement, injury or destruction of a historic or prehistoric site or the trafficking of cultural property obtained from state land without a permit carries a fine of $1,000 for the first offense and $3,500 for second and subsequent offenses.
The law also expands the membership of both the Board of Museums and History and the Commission for Cultural Centers and Historic Preservation to include a member appointed by the governor with the recommendation of an enrolled member of a Nevada Native American tribe.
AB387: Social workers continuing education
Starting Sunday, social workers are required to complete two hours of evidence-based suicide prevention and awareness instruction every two years in order to renew their annual licenses. Previously, social workers were required to complete two hours of instruction every year. The new law expires on June 30, 2026.
AB413: Electronic notary publics
Electronic notary publics may now use audio-video communication to complete an electronic notarial act. The electronic notary public is required to record the electronic notarial act and inform all persons participating that the act is being recorded. Electronic notary publics are required to describe each act in an electronic journal, protect the electronic journal at all times and provide for the lawful inspection of the journal.
PreviousNew Road That Connects Sparks and Reno Opens Friday
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Baseball alumni weekend on tap
Area 51 Festival Wraps up in Nevada
Horsford Raising, Spending Money at a Quick Clip
Geothermal Drilling Continues at Mineral County High School
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Kenny Cooper Comes Home to MLS
Posted on January 17, 2011 by Robert Hay
Welcome back Kenny!
The past few weeks U.S. soccer fans have bemoaned the loss of national team players like Edson Buddle and Robbie Findley, players who, while not top-notch international players, are U.S. nationals whose presence gave MLS some respectability internationally. However, while we on this site and others were complaining about the losses, we have not had a chance to celebrate a major pick-up for the American league. Former FC Dallas forward Kenny Cooper is leaving Bundesliga 2 and signing with the Portland Timbers.
For newcomers to MLS, Cooper was named a 2008 Best XI and finished second in the Golden Boot race that year, notching 18 goals (fourteen of which either tied a game or gave FC Dallas a lead). Cooper is a second generation American soccer player and was in the Manchester United youth development system until he was released to pursue his MLS career in 2006. After three years in Dallas he went overseas to Munich 1860 for two years and scored three goals in fifteen matches.
The Kenny Cooper story is also an important one for prospective U.S. internationals. Once considered a replacement to Brian McBride at forward for the U.S. men’s national team, he scored the game-winning goal in a 2009 CONCACAF match against Panama and has ten caps overall, scoring four goals. However, his last call-up was in 2009 and he has not played under Bob Bradley since he moved to Europe, due mostly to injuries and distance from MLS.
Personally, a move to MLS looks to be a chance to reinvigorate his career in the place where he had his greatest success. Admittedly, injury plagued his German career but he seems at this point to fit best into MLS. And he could not have landed in a better place – Portland recently draft Darlington Nagbe and also have USSF 2 forwards Eddie Johnson and Bright Dike, so they need an experienced scorer. The acquisition bolsters their attack if Cooper can find his FC Dallas form, as well as his health. Also, MLS in this case is reversing the trend – bringing a talented American national in the prime of his career back to the domestic league, instead of exporting him. From a USMNT perspective, he is fortunate to play a position of desperate need for Bradley’s team, but if he wants to compete for a roster spot he will have to not only compete with World Cup experienced Jozy Altidore, Edson Buddle, and Robbie Findley but hold off up-and-comers like Juan Agudelo.
But what do you think? Can Kenny Cooper replicate or come close to his 2008 season? Does he still have a place on the USMNT? And did he make the right move coming back to MLS?
This entry was posted in Kenny Cooper, MLS Talk and tagged Bob Bradley, Darlington Nagbe, Edson Buddle, FC Dallas, Jozy Altidore, Juan Agudelo, Kenny Cooper, Portland Timbers, Robbie Findley. Bookmark the permalink.
8 Responses to Kenny Cooper Comes Home to MLS
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Victorian Poetry
Protesting Success: Tennyson's "Indecent Exposure" in the Periodicals
Kathryn Ledbetter
West Virginia University Press
pp. 53-73
10.1353/vp.2005.0018
Buy Article for $20.00 (USD)
Victorian Poetry 43.1 (2005) 53-73
[Access article in PDF]
Protesting Success:
Tennyson's "Indecent Exposure" in the Periodicals
Five poems in seven periodicals comprised Tennyson's entire list of publications for the year 1868: "The Victim" in Good Words (January 1); "The Spiteful Letter" in Once a Week (January 4); "Wages" in Macmillan's Magazine (February); "1865-1866" in Every Saturday (U.S., February 22) and Good Words (March); and "Lucretius" in Macmillan's Magazine (May) and Every Saturday (U.S., May 2). The output worried Swinburne, who pleaded to Lord Houghton: "Cannot you, as a friend of Mr. Tennyson prevent his making such a hideous exhibition of himself as he has been doing for the last three months? I thought there was a law against 'indecent exposure'?"1 Such attitudes suggest that periodicals generally published inferior literature, and that writers whose works appeared in them devalued both literary quality and reputation through unsophisticated exposure in the mass media. Tennyson outwardly concurred, repeatedly claiming to hate publishing in periodicals. He typically returned a negative answer to editors' requests, as in this letter to an unidentified correspondent on May 25, 1859: "It is so contrary to the wont of my whole life to write in Magazines that I cannot accept your proposal, but I will become your subscriber—at least for a year."2 Upon learning that Thackeray was to be the editor of a new monthly magazine, the Cornhill, Tennyson wrote to him on November 6, 1859:
I am sorry that you have engaged for any quantity of money to let your brains be sucked periodically by Smith, Elder and co.: not that I don't like Smith . . . but that so great an artist as you are should go to work after this fashion. Whenever you feel your brains as the "remainder biscuit" or indeed whenever you will, come over to me and take a blow on these downs where the air as Keats said is "worth sixpence a pint."
(Letters, 2:245)
He tells American publisher James Ripley Osgood, who may have been soliciting poems for any of the publications owned by Ticknor and Fields (April 4, 1867): "I am not in the habit of inserting poems in the English Magazines, and why should I in the American?—particularly as in this unhappy condition of [End Page 53] international Copyright law the English Magazines would immediately pirate any thing of mine in yours"(Letters, 2:457 and n.).
In spite of Tennyson's frequent public complaints about periodicals, from his first adolescent contributions of "Timbuctoo" to the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal (July 10, 1829) and early poetry for literary annuals (The Gem, 1831; Friendship's Offering, 1832 and 1833; Yorkshire Literary Annual, 1832; The Keepsake, 1837; and The Tribute, 1837), periodicals brought Tennyson exposure to new readers, improved his financial status with increasingly higher fees, and, later when he became Poet Laureate and literary celebrity, provided him with an outlet for trumpeting opinions on his latest political cause. Indeed, Tennyson's entire career is inseparable from a dependence on the very format he supposedly hated, and generations of scholars have largely ignored or devalued important contexts provided by periodicals, misled by Tennyson's protestations and prejudice against the genre. Tennyson and Victorian periodicals were partners and interdependent commodities, sharing in the profits, the popularity, and the proliferation of culture.
Yet scholars continue to speculate about Tennyson's occasion for comparatively prolific periodical publications in 1868. For example, Charles Tennyson suggests that "feeling uneasy at his long lack of contact with the public, and not yet ready with enough work for a new volume, he published a series of poems (the fruits of his increased activity) in periodicals."3 Alternately, Robert Bernard Martin cites the fear of financial distress caused by the recent purchase of Aldworth and plans for a new house. According to Martin, Tennyson was also
genuinely worried about the dry season of his creativity, which sometimes made it seem possible there would never be another volume of poetry. It was common gossip at the time that Tennyson...
Buy Digital Article for $20.00 (USD)
Buy Complete Digital Issue for $30.00 (USD)
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Tag: Santa Clara
Mpelembe > Santa Clara
Tag Archives: Santa Clara
Euphoria in the San Francisco bay Area as thousands arrive for the Super Bowl
February 7, 2016 NFLCalifornia, Carolina Panthers, Charlotte, Chris, City: San Diego, City: Santa Clara, Ian, Katelyn, Levi Strauss & Co., Levi's Stadium, Pac-12 Football Championship Game, Paris, San Diego, Santa Clara, Santa Clara California, soldiers standing guard, Sports, Sports in California, Sports in the United States, Super Bowl, Super Bowl 50, Super Bowl 50 halftime show, United Statessmbale
Fans arrive at Levi’s stadium in Santa Clara ahead of Super Bowl 50.
Broncos and Panthers take field for photos ahead of Super Bowl 50
February 7, 2016 NFLCam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Carolina Panthers season, Darian Stewart, Denver, Denver Broncos, In American football, In American television, Jared Allen, Levi's Stadium, Louis Vasquez, Mike Tolbert, National Football League, National Football League playoffs, National Football League rivalries, National Football League season, Peyton Manning, Professional sports leagues in the United States, Ron Rivera, Santa Clara, Sports, Super Bowl, Super Bowl 50, Super Bowl curse, T.J. Ward, Thomas Davis, Thomas Davis Sr., United Statessmbale
The Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers take field at Levi’s Stadium for photos ahead of Super Bowl 50.
At $4.8 million per 30 seconds, advertisers go all in for the Super Bowl
February 5, 2016 NFLAdvertising, Amazon, American Football League, ANHEUSER - BUSCH, Bud Light, Budweiser, Busch, Celebrity, Christopher Walken, Cuteness, Entertainment/Culture, Helen Mirren, Honda, HYUNDAI, Jeanine Poggi, Kia Motors, MICHAEL SPRAGUE, National Football League, National Football League controversies, Netflix, Professional sports leagues in the United States, QUICKEN LOANS, Ryan Reynolds, Santa Clara, Sports in the United States, Steven Tyler, Super Bowl, Super Bowl 50, Super Bowl Ad Meter, Super Bowl commercials, Television advertising, The Super Bowl, Willem Dafoesmbale
Celebrity, comedy, cars and cute animals continue to dominate Super Bowl advertising.
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Sir Albemarle Bertie
1755-1824. He was born on 20 January 1755, the illegitimate son of Peregrine Bertie, the 3rd Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven.
Having been commissioned lieutenant on 20 December 1777, Bertie served at the Battle of Ushant on 27 July 1778 as first lieutenant of the repeating frigate Fox 28, Captain Hon. Thomas Windsor. On 10 September the Fox was captured by the Junon 32 and Bertie became a prisoner of war prior to returning to England in the following January. Almost immediately he gave evidence at the politically-charged court-martials upon Admiral Hon. Augustus Keppel and Vice-Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser with great favour to the former, and at an apparent detriment to his career. Even so, he was promoted commander on 3 June 1780 and he had the Merlin 18 from May 1781.
On the change of the government he was posted captain of the frigate Crocodile 24 on 21 March 1782, and serving in the Channel he fought an inconclusive action with the privateer Prince de Robecq 28 on 25 April. He removed to the Recovery 32 shortly afterwards, which frigate he commanded at the Relief of Gibraltar on 18 October 1782, and which was eventually paid off in the ensuing spring.
Bertie briefly recommissioned the Nymphe 36 in October 1787, paying her off two months later, and in May 1790 he commissioned the frigate Latona 38 to be paid off at the end of the year, having been attached to the Grand Fleet during the Spanish Armament. From August 1791 he captained the thirteen-year-old Edgar 74 as a guardship at Portsmouth, and during the same year he sat on the Bounty court-martial, one of the accused from the mutiny of 28 April 1789 being his kinsman, Midshipman Peter Heywood.
The fleets in close action at the Battle of the Glorious first of June – but Bertie was criticised for engaging from distance
He retained the Edgar at the commencement of the French Revolutionary War and took the East India convoy out to Cape Finisterre under the orders of Rear-Admiral John Gell during April 1793, thereby sharing in the capture of the French privateer General Dumourier and her exceedingly rich Spanish prize, the St. Jago on 14 April, for which he was reported as receiving 56,000, or 8m in today s money. He then participated in the Channel fleet cruise between July and August
On 26 February 1794 he was appointed to the newly commissioned Thunderer 74 which fought at the Battle of the Glorious First of June. His ship was the only one of the fleet not to suffer a single casualty and at one point, when it was considered that she was engaging from too far to windward, he suffered the ignominy of being ordered to close with the enemy by Admiral Thomas Graves. In 1795 the Thunderer joined Commodore Sir John Borlase Warren s expedition ferrying French Royalist forces to Quiberon Bay, but although she was detached when this officer learned of the French fleet being at sea she arrived too late to participate in the Battle of Lorient on 23 June 1795. After returning to the French Royalist expedition Bertie led four gun-boats up the River Vannes to destroy a sloop and a cutter, and following a spell in the Bay of Biscay under the promoted Rear-Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren he left the Thunderer in March 1796.
He commissioned another new ship in August 1798, the Renown 74, serving in the Channel and being present under the orders of Rear-Admiral Charles Morice Pole in the blockade of five Spanish sail of the line at Rochefort during the campaign caused by the Brest fleet s breakout on 25 April 1799. From the end of the year he commanded the Windsor Castle 98 in home waters, briefly carrying the flag of Rear-Admiral Sir Charles Cotton that winter before leaving her in the following summer. During May 1801 he commissioned the captured Guillaume Tell as the Malta 80, serving in the Channel and then Bantry Bay until April 1802 when she was paid off at Plymouth after suffering a dangerous fire whilst guarding the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour off St. Helens. His calmness and sagacity in persuading the crew to remain aboard and prevent the blaze from reaching her magazine earned him great credit.
After the resumption of hostilities in 1803 Bertie had the Windsor Castle 98 once more at Portsmouth. He was promoted rear-admiral on 23 April 1804 and flew his flag off Ireland and in the Channel from May to November 1807 aboard the Foudroyant 80, Captain Norborne Thompson, and from the latter month to May 1808 in the Channel aboard the Bellerophon 74, Captain Edward Rotheram.
He was further advanced to the rank of vice-admiral on 28 April 1808 and subsequently appointed commander-in-chief at the Cape, going out a month later in the Leopard 50, Captain James Johnstone, and arriving in August. His flag remained on this vessel until March 1810 when it was removed to the Boadicea 38, Captain Josias Rowley, and later in 1810 he hoisted it aboard the Africaine 38, Acting-Captain Charles Gordon. During this period he convened the court-martial of Captain Robert Corbet at that officer s request on 3 February 1809 following complaints of cruelty from the crew.
Towards the end of the year he controversially assumed command of the forces at the lucrative capture of Mauritius, taking advantage of the fact that the French had already been weakened by Commodore Rowley s brilliant campaigning from July. By the time of his arrival the choice of a landing site had already been decided, and it was understood that the enemy forces could barely provide any resistance. To make matters worse Mauritius was beyond the limits of his authority, and in taking command he superseded Vice-Admiral William O Brien Drury, the commander-in-chief in the East Indies station, who had masterminded the whole operation. Not surprisingly Drury considered himself to be insulted and injured and upon Bertie s return to the Cape he found himself recalled to England, his fragile reputation having been further damaged by a dispute with the local commissioner of the navy.
Bertie s request for a court martial into his conduct was disdainfully rejected by the Admiralty but within a year, following another change of government, he found himself back in favour with his elevation to a baronetcy on 9 December 1812. Even so he was never employed again, and instead retired to his estate at Donnington, Berkshire. By then he had at least redeemed some credit by his advocating of a baronetcy for the deserving Rowley.
On 4 June 1814 Bertie was promoted admiral, on 2 January 1815 was created a K.C.B. and he died on 24 February 1824 at Donnington Priory, Berkshire.
He married Emma Heywood of Maristow, Devon, on 1 July 1783 and had two daughters and a son, Lyndsey-James, who entered the Army. His wife died in March 1805. His nephew, Captain Bertie Cornelius Cator, the son of his illegitimate sister, was born in 1787, served with him at the Cape, and was posted captain in 1814.
Bertie was related to the Heywood family, which no doubt was of some significance in the pardoning of young Peter Heywood when Bertie sat on the court martial into the loss of the Bounty. He was also a friend of Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson. He was regarded as benevolent but his reputation suffered greatly as a result of his avaricious behaviour at Mauritius.
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Home / 2004 / August / Two UCSC graduate students...
Two UCSC graduate students receive grant for marine ecology research
Two graduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are among the winners of the 2004 Mia J. Tegner Memorial Research Grants in Marine Environmental History and Historical Marine Ecology. Seth Newsome, a Ph.D. candidate in Earth sciences, and Daniel Monson, a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology, will use their $5,500 grant to investigate historical changes in the diets of killer whales during the past century.
The Tegner grants are awarded specifically to help scientists document the state of marine populations and ecosystems prior to large-scale human impacts such as industrial fishing, whaling, and pollution. The 11 grants made this year were chosen from among 86 proposals from scientists in 16 countries. The grants were announced last month by the Marine Conservation Biology Institute of Redmond, Washington.
Newsome and Monson are teaming up to investigate a controversial hypothesis regarding the ongoing collapse of marine mammal populations in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. Over the past few decades, populations of pinnipeds (seals and sea lions) and sea otters in this region have declined dramatically, but the ultimate cause of the declines remains unclear. The "killer whale predation hypothesis" holds that the depletion of whale populations by industrial whaling forced killer whales to change their diets, relying less on baleen whales as a food source and eating more pinnipeds and sea otters instead.
The hypothesis is supported by indirect and circumstantial evidence, but Newsome and Monson hope to find stronger evidence for a shift in killer whale diets by analyzing the isotope composition of killer whale teeth. Isotope analysis of an animal's tissues can yield clues to its past diet because of natural variability in the abundance of rare isotopes of elements such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. The teeth of killer whales are built up in layers deposited over an animal's lifetime, and the isotope composition of each growth layer should reflect the animal's diet at the time it was deposited.
Newsome and Monson have worked with colleagues at the National Marine Mammal Lab to obtain about 90 killer whale tooth specimens from museum collections. They have grouped the specimens to represent three relevant time periods: 1900 to 1950, 1950 to 1970, and 1970 to 2003. They plan to section teeth and analyze individual growth rings using a mass spectrometer in the Stable Isotope Laboratory at UCSC.
Newsome has also been investigating the role that changes in productivity may be playing in the decline of the Bering Sea ecosystem. In addition, he has been working with Paul Koch, professor of Earth sciences, and Diane Gifford-Gonzalez, professor of anthropology, to study historical changes in populations of northern fur seals along the California coast over the past 5,000 years, using isotope analysis of remains left at middens by native people.
Monson earned his M.S. in marine sciences at UCSC in 1995, studying sea otter populations with James Estes, adjunct professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. He has been a research wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center since 1996 and has returned to UCSC to pursue his Ph.D., with professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Terrie Williams as his adviser. He has extensive experience as a field biologist studying a variety of marine mammals in Alaska and California.
The Tegner grants honor the memory of Mia J. Tegner, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who lost her life in 2001 while carrying out research off southern California. She studied the ecology of kelp forest communities and abalone populations and was particularly interested in understanding how marine populations and ecosystems have changed as a result of human activities. This pioneering research earned her appointments as a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation and as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Mia J. Tegner Memorial Research Grants were started by the Marine Conservation Biology Institute with funding from the Oak Foundation, the Christensen Fund, and the Weinstein Family Foundation.
The Marine Conservation Biology Institute is a nonprofit science organization dedicated to advancing the science of marine conservation biology and promoting cooperation essential to protecting, restoring, and sustainably using the living sea.
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Home World Israel Is Israel’s Supreme Court An Enemy of The State?
Is Israel’s Supreme Court An Enemy of The State?
Nurit Greenger
Sun January 13, 2013
As if it is not enough that since the state was established Israel has enemies who have tagged to her like a brand, the Jewish state also has a Supreme(High) Court that is the enemy of the state, for which it works but disobeys.
In Israel the Supreme Court is above the law while it drafts and enacts the law.
The reason to this Op-Ed is that I read in the Israeli papers: ‘Supreme Court overturns decision barring Arab MK Zoabi from running for Knesset’…that ended my silence of much dismay about the legal system in Israel.
First it is a confused system; it relies on Ottoman, British, Jordanian, and Israeli law. That is what one can call obfuscating law that has a huge margin to err.
Israel’s Supreme Court
Just about every publicized decision the Supreme Court in Israel takes makes no sense whatsoever. More so, it appears to be a clear cut subversive to the state it works for. It ignores the policy of the government and just about every law the legislative power – the Knesset – passes it does not comply with even though its job is to represent the interest of the state. The way the Supreme Court acts borders a pure case of soft tyranny.
In fact the way the Supreme Court in Israel operates is a clear case of a state within a state; the Supreme Court in Israel is its own state within the state of Israel.
In one recent case, the Supreme Court of Israel was after Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberam for alleged illegal activities for sixteen years but only now, an hour before elections, it has found “enough evidence” to make the minister resign. Is it a case in which the Supreme Court wants to affect election by weakening the Right and strengthening the Left it supports and represents?
Is Minister Lieberman more of a criminal than treasonous Arab MK Hanin Zoabi, who is a clear case of a traitor and has no interest in Israel other than to see her destruction!? I do not think so.
Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein is his own head of state. Hardly any decision this legal autocrat takes makes any legal sense. He has his own agenda of a king in his own kingdom.
The headline, ‘AG rejects all petitions seeking to bar parties, Arab candidate from elections’ (http://www.timesofisrael.com/ag-rejects-all-petitions-seeking-to-bar-parties-arab-candidate-from-elections/) is disturbing if the Israeli law cannot find Zoabi to be unfit to be a member of the Knesset. According to Weinstein’s law, the Balad MK Zoabi, who, in 2010 joined the anti-Israel flotilla to Gaza, can run for Knesset again despite her actions which are ‘bordering on the forbidden’.
In Lieberman’s case, he could no longer tolerate the Supreme Court’s harassment, that went on for years, over alleged illegal activities, that unfortunately more often than not characterize political bureaucrats’ behavior, and thus he resigned.
The Declaration of Independence of Israel defines the state as a ‘Jewish state’, not as it is defined today a ‘Jewish democratic state.’ Aharon Barak, former President of the Supreme Court, made a quasi no man’s land grab and changed the original definition. If I try to change the definition structure I would face indictment. And why the Knesset did not oppose and stopped Barak? Because everyone, including the Prime Minister of Israel, are very afraid that if they act against the Supreme Court, whoever opens his mouth to object, the court will open a criminal case against him or her and thus end his or her career.
Likud MK Ofir Akunis expresses chagrin over Weinstein’s verdict regarding Zoabi, and so should every Israeli who is concerned with good citizenship of loyalty to the state.
“It is clear that much of the public in Israel has lost faith in the judges and does not recognize the legal system as a moral one. The judges have adopted an authority that was never given to them, in order to shape the public’s agenda” he claimed.
It is interesting to know that the Supreme Court Justices are appointed – not elected – by the Judicial Selection Committee. The Selection Committee is composed of nine members: Three Supreme Court Justices, including the President of the Supreme Court, two cabinet ministers, one of them being the Minister of Justice, two Knesset members, and two representatives of the Israel Bar Association. The committee is chaired by the Minister of Justice.
Though the three organs of the state-the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government-as well as the bar association, are all represented in the Judges’ Nominations Committee that is shaping the judicial body, through the manner of judicial appointment, carried out by an agreement of all the authorities together, the outcome is totally different.
Conclusion: the Supreme Court in Israel took over the country and it is forcing its rule in a dictatorial and intimidation manner. It wrongly translates and obfuscates the laws the Knesset passes and it acts to subvert the state.
There is an urgent need in Israel to elect enough Knesset members who will agree to pass laws that will end the Supreme Court tyranny and end their power to determine the borders of the state of Israel. And that needs to be the Knesset first priority as in reality it is either a safe and secure democratic state of Israel or the tyranny of the Supreme Court, but it cannot be both.
For not making a change in the way the Supreme Court’s system operates, Israel is allowing the courts to intimidate the government, politicians and citizens and make the fairness of the law a dangerous twist of reality from which all of Israeli society suffers.
Not being able to dismantle the Supreme Court and annul its power grab, Israeli society suffers from a Stockholm Syndrome.
Explanations are needed. We all know the reality but it appears that only few support doing anything about the Supreme Court syndrome Israel suffers from.
So, can anyone in Israel explain to me this Supreme Court illogic?
The enlightenment of Israel would have a bitter end.
During the 2006 second Lebanon War, Nurit Greenger, referenced then as the “Accidental Reporter” felt compelled to become an activist. Being an ‘out-of-the-box thinker, Nurit is a passionately committed advocate for Jews, Israel, the United States, and the Free World in general. From Southern California, Nurit serves as a “one-woman Hasbarah army” for Israel who believes that if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.
Get notification of new stories by Nurit Greenger, in your Email.
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Israel News from PR Newswire
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Griffith News
Griffith Film School
Griffith Film School salutes the Oscars
Published February 29, 2016 February 29, 2016 AuthorContributed
Dr George Miller AO receiving an Honorary Doctorate from Griffith University in 2008.
The movie Mad Max: Fury Road has become Australia’s most successful film in the history of the Academy Awards.
After being nominated in 10 categories the film, directed by Dr George Miller AO, won six Oscars at the 88th Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
While Dr Miller may have missed out on the Best Director Award, his wife Margaret Sixel won best Film Editing. Griffith Film School graduate Mandy Eyley was an Assistant Editor on the film. Mandy graduated with a Bachelor of Film & Screen Media Production in 2009.
The film also won Oscars for; Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing.
Dr Miller did win an Oscar for Happy Feet in 2007. He was also nominated for an Oscar for Babe (1996 Best Picture and Best-Writing – screenplay based on material from another medium), and Lorenzo’s Oil (1993 Best-Writing – screenplay written directly for the screen). He also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture for Babe in 1996.
In recognition of his outstanding contributions to film, Dr Miller was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1996 and was the recipient of the Queensland Advanced Expatriate Award in 2007. He has also been a member of the jury at the Cannes film festival in 1988 and 1999, Patron for the Australian Film Institute (2001-2004), Patron of the Brisbane International Film Festival, and Co-Patron for the Sydney Film Festival (2003).
In 2007, Dr Miller took time from his busy schedule to record a special welcome for the opening of the Griffith Film School building at South Bank.
In his welcome, he praised the foresight of the Queensland Government and the University in establishing the Film School in its wonderful location, and acknowledged the contribution of Griffith animation graduates to the making of the award winning animation film, Happy Feet.
Griffith awarded Dr Miller an Honorary Doctorate of the University in 2008.
Categories Griffith Film School, News articlesTagged Bachelor of Film & Screen Media Production, George Miller, Griffith Film School
Environmental Futures Research Institute
Hook, line and sinker: Is your fishing trip injuring coastal raptors?
Fishing equipment is the deadliest threat faced by coastal birds of prey a new study published in the Journal of Raptor Research has found.
Music student up for Young Australian of the Year
Griffith University student William Clarke and his brother Daniel have been nominated for the upcoming Young Australian of the Year awards for their conservation work. The pair launched a campaign to help protect critically endangered orangutan populations in Borneo and Sumatra. William and Daniel were named 2021 Queensland Young Australians of the Year late last year, […]
Griffith Sciences
World’s oldest cave art discovered in Indonesia
A team of Griffith University archaeologists has shared in the discovery of what may be the world’s oldest known cave painting, dating back to at least 45,500 years ago. Uncovered in South Sulawesi during field research conducted with Indonesia’s leading archaeological research centre, Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional (ARKENAS), the cave painting consists of a figurative […]
Human rights advocate inspires next generation
Dr Shahram Dana is using the lessons he learnt at the United Nations to inspire the next generation of crusading legal eagles. A deeply personal passion The senior law lecturer is a lifelong advocate of international human rights, a passion instilled at an early age. As members of the Baha’i Faith, Dr Dana’s parents fled […]
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Spartan Newsroom (https://news.jrn.msu.edu/tag/cherries/)
Tart cherry insurance program may arrive next year
By Capital News Service | February 22, 2013
By JUSTINE McGUIRE
LANSING – Last year’s tart cherry loss has inspired a flurry of activity to explore federal crop insurance to protect Michigan growers. Wayne Wood, president of the Michigan Farm Bureau, said, “The reason they didn’t have crop insurance before is that it’s such a small industry, and small companies couldn’t make the investment and do the research to justify the policy.”
According to the Risk Management Agency, the majority of specialty crops – like tart cherries – in the state aren’t eligible for insurance. They include asparagus, cucumbers, squash, Christmas trees, sweet corn, strawberries, honey, celery and maple syrup. “And quite frankly, when you haven’t had an event like this since 1945, are you really going to buy insurance?” Wood said. “The demand was low and the demand is high today, as you would expect.”
Many specialty crops do have insurance programs, like apples, blueberries, potatoes, grapes, onions, peaches and tomatoes.
Kid power behind push for cherries as state fruit
LANSING — Pucker up, Michiganders. Tart cherries could be the newest state symbol. The journey to honor the tart cherry began several years ago in Wendy Gravlin’s fourth-grade class at Gallimore Elementary School in Canton. “Even fourth-graders have a voice,” she told her students before they wrote letters to state officials asking them to make tart cherries the official fruit of Michigan. While learning about state symbols, the students noticed that Michigan hadn’t designated a fruit, unlike some of its neighbors.
Some (not all) state wines heading for China, Asia
By EDITH ZHOU
LANSING – Significant growth in the wine-grape industry and wide availability of cherries have created a boost in Michigan wine production and its appearance in other states and even other countries. “The industry is growing fast—nine wineries were added to our list last year,” said Karel Bush, promotion specialist at the Michigan Grape and Wine Industry Council. According to Bush, the state has more than 150 wineries with more than 100 of them using home-grown fruits. And half are located along the Lake Michigan shoreline from Traverse City to Southwest Michigan. Bush said both the quality and the quantity of this year’s wine is very good.
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Educators 1 [-]
Newspapers 1 [-]
Byrd, Charlene Hodges, 1929-2009 1 [-]
Cummings, Ida R. (Ida Rebecca), 1868-1958 1 [-]
Douglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895 1 [-]
Grimké, Francis J. (Francis James), 1850-1937 1 [-]
Hodges, Joyce Ethel Cummings, 1903-1971 1 [-]
Shimm, Erminie F. (Erminie Florence), 1867-1936 1 [-]
Shimm, Sarah A., 1843-1885 1 [-]
Thomas, Elizabeth N. (Elizabeth Nelson), d. 1932 1 [-]
Washington, Booker T., 1856-1915 1 [-]
Washington (D.C.) 1 [-]
topic: "Churches"
name:"Morgan State College"
name:"Bearden, Romare, 1911-1988"
object-type: "Archival materials"
Charlene Hodges Byrd collection
smithsonian online virtual archive
Byrd, Charlene Hodges, 1929-2009
Shimm, Erminie F. (Erminie Florence), 1867-1936
Thomas, Elizabeth N. (Elizabeth Nelson), d. 1932
Cummings, Ida R. (Ida Rebecca), 1868-1958
Morgan State College
Hodges, Joyce Ethel Cummings, 1903-1971
Grimké, Francis J. (Francis James), 1850-1937
Bearden, Romare, 1911-1988
Washington, Booker T., 1856-1915
Douglass, Frederick, 1817?-1895
Shimm, Sarah A., 1843-1885
inclusive dates
bulk dates
43 Linear feet (35 document boxes and 39 oversize boxes)
The Charlene Hodges Byrd collection measures 43 linear feet, and dates from circa 1750-2009, with the bulk of the material dating from 1880-1960. The collection documents the personal life and professional career of Charlene Hodges Byrd, an African American teacher from Washington, D.C., along with material for several related families from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Family members prominently represented include Sarah A. Shimm, teacher and essayist under the name Faith Lichen; her daughters Erminie F. Shimm and Grace E. Shimm Cummings, both teachers; and Byrd's mother, Joyce Ethel Cummings Hodges, also a teacher. Correspondence and writings chiefly discuss family life, religion, race, education, and the relationship with Frederick Douglass and his family. The collection is arranged in 10 series: Biographical Material, Correspondence, Writings, Subject Files, Financial and Legal Records, Printed Material, Volumes, Memorabilia, Textiles, and Photographs.
Charlene Hodges Byrd collection, circa 1750-2009. National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution.
Series 1. Papers related to biographical and family histories of the Byrd, Cummings, Davage, Dews, Hodges, Shimm, Spruill, and Thomas families. Material includes family trees; school diplomas and certificates; programs; awards; marriage and divorce papers; funeral documents; and obituaries.
Series 2: Chiefly letters from family and friends regarding family news, financial matters, school, work, neighborhood affairs, church events, travel and the weather. The majority of the letters are addressed to Charlene Hodges Byrd, Grace E. Shimm Cummings, Ida R. Cummings, Elizabeth Dews Hodges, Joyce Ethel Cummings Hodges, Erminie F. Shimm, Sarah A. Shimm, and Elizabeth N. Thomas. Other correspondence includes letters from Booker T. Washington, Bessye Beardon, Charlotte Davage, Amelia Douglass, and Harrell S. Spruill. There are also a number of greeting cards, postcards, and empty envelopes.
Series 3. Writings include essays, speeches, papers written for school, teacher's notebooks, and a diary of Erminie F. Shimm, 1903. Topics include education, Frederick Douglass, religion, race, Africa, and the temperance movement.
Series 4. Subject files on Charlene Hodges Byrd's involvement with Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority; Book Lovers of Charleston, West Virginia, a women's book club organized in 1923; Church Women United radio program; and The Links, Inc., a volunteer service organization. The papers on Liberia relate to missionary work, and were probably gathered by Erminie F. Shimm; and the Shimm-Thomas Collection are papers related to the deposit and later return of family items housed as a collection at Morgan State College.
Series 5. The financial and legal records include invoices and receipts, bank books, real estate tax assessments, deeds, and wills. There is also material related to the estate of Erminie F. Shimm.
Series 6. Printed materials includes books, pamphlets, newspapers, newsletters, clippings, invitations and programs. The books and pamphlets are chiefly school yearbooks and newspapers and other texts related to religion, politics, music, and poetry. Also included is a copy of Frederick Douglass's autobiography and a printed copy of his speech "The Race Problem." The clippings include obituaries, articles about Charlene Hodges Byrd and her husband Charles R. Byrd, essays by Sarah A. Shimm under the name Faith Lichen, and articles on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The invitations and programs are primarily for school graduations, weddings, social events, and funerals. Other printed material includes newsletters; business cards; calling cards; postage stamps, chiefly from Liberia; and blank postcards. The binder on Frederick Douglass was prepared by Byrd and her goddaughter for the West Virginia School Studies Fair, and includes copies of Byrd family artifacts.
Series 7. Autograph books, guest books, and scrapbooks. The autograph book of Grace E. Shimm Cummings includes autographs from Amelia Douglass, Lewis B. Douglass, Charles R. Douglass, W. H. Clair, and Francis J. Grimke. The scrapbook of Grace E. Shimm Cummings and Erminie F. Shimm consists primarily of clippings, and was assembled from an old teacher's book with a student registration and punishment pages still intact at the back.
Series 8. Miscellaneous items in the collection including artwork, a coin purse, a piece of handwoven cloth belonging to Catherine Nelson's great grandmother, and leather hair curlers.
Series 9: The textiles are chiefly christening gowns, children's garments, and an apron. Several garments belonged to Joyce Ethel Cummings Hodges, Charlene Hodges Byrd, and Elizabeth N. Thomas. There is also a doll that belonged to Amelia Douglass's niece, Kitty Cromwell.
Series 10. Photographs include pictures of Charlene Hodges Byrd, Joyce Ethel Hodges Cummings, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Dews Hodges, Charles Gilmor Cummings, Grace E. Shimm Cummings, Erminie F. Shimm, and other friends and relatives of the Byrd, Hodges, Cummings, Douglass, and Shimm families. Subjects are primarily portraits and candids, along with some wedding, baby, and school pictures. While some of the photographs are annotated, many of the individuals are unidentified. Included are vintage photographs, cabinet cards, cartes-de-visites, tintypes, daguerreotypes, and negatives.
Biographical / Historical
The Shimm, Thomas, Cummings, Hodges, Davage, and related African American families chiefly lived in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. Numerous family members worked as teachers, barbers, or in the service industry. They were active in local churches and service organizations, and had established friendships with local church leaders as well as with Frederick Douglass and his family.
The Shimm and Thomas families were located in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. The Thomas family can be traced back to Philip Nelson, who owned property in Leesburg, Virginia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Family genealogical papers list Nelson as a descendent of British Admiral Horatio Nelson. This lineage, however, is not supported in publically available family histories of Horatio Nelson. Philip Nelson and his wife Araminta had five children: Catherine (b. 1805?), William, Levi (b. 1820?), Henrietta, and Grayson.
Catherine Nelson married Elias E. Thomas (b. 1816?) of Virginia in 1840. They wed in Philadelphia and had five children: Levi Nelson (b. 1841), Sarah (1843-1885), Edward (b. 1844), Elizabeth (1848-1932), and Charles (b. 1851).
Sarah Thomas married William Y. Shimm (b. 1841), a barber in Reading, Pennsylvania, on July 26, 1863. They had 2 daughters, Erminie (1867-1936) and Grace (1865-1910). The Shimms lived in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but had moved to Washington, D.C., around 1871. Sarah was a teacher and a writer who published under the name "Faith Lichen." Her writings, primarily essays and commentaries about race and politics, were printed in several newspapers including The National Republican, The Celtic Weekly, The People's Advocate, and The Sunday Morning Gazette.
Sarah's sister Elizabeth was also a teacher in Maryland. Her brother Charles was a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and a graduate of the first class at Howard University's law school.
Erminie and Grace Shimm became teachers in the Washington, D.C., public school system. Erminie was active in her church and supportive of missionary work in Liberia. Grace married Charles Gilmor Cummings, a pastor in Alexandria, Virginia, on July 9, 1902. They had one daughter, Joyce Ethel (1903-1971), and second child in 1905 who died in infancy. Grace died in 1910 of heart failure. After her death, Grace's sister Erminie and Charles's family helped raise Joyce Ethel in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland.
Joyce Ethel Cummings Hodges graduated from Morgan College in 1924, and received her master's degree from Howard University in 1931. She taught at Douglass High School in Baltimore from 1924-1964. Joyce Ethel married Charles E. Hodges (1900--975) in 1927 and they divorced in 1953. The couple had one daughter, Charlene (1929-2009).
Charlene Hodges Byrd grew up in Washington, D.C., but attended the Northfield School for Girls in East Northfield, Massachusetts, for high school, graduating in 1946. She received her bachelor's degree from Connecticut College in 1950, and her master's degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago in 1951. She married Charles R. Byrd (1919-2004) in 1952. They had one son in 1954, but he died four days after birth. Byrd soon began a career as a teacher and education administrator, eventually working for Kanawha County Schools in Charleston, West Virginia. She was also active in her local community as a member of the Book Lovers of Charleston, West Virginia; Church Women United; and The Links, Inc.
Charles E. Hodges was born Bridgewater, Virginia, where his father was a minister. He graduated from Morgan College in 1923 and received his master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1943. He was a teacher and served as principal of the North Street School in Hagerstown, Maryland. After he and Joyce Ethel divorced in 1953, he married Elizabeth Dews (1913-1999) in 1955.
Elizabeth Dews Hodges, born Elizabeth Virginia Waumbeeka, was adopted by James Edward (1889-1954) and Sarah Virginia Dews (1888?-1964) in Washington, D.C., in 1920. She graduated from Miner Teachers College in 1939, and worked as a teacher in Annapolis, Maryland, at Wiley H. Bates High School for 34 years. She was awarded a medal for her work there by the Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge in 1959. Elizabeth was active in local organizations in Maryland and Washington, D.C., including the SE/NE Friends of the Capitol View Branch Library; Eastern Star Chapter 4; Mount Ephraim Baptist Church; National Museum of Women in the Arts; National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples; and the Columbia Lighthouse for the Blind.
The Davage family is descended from Sidney Hall (b. 1818?) and Charles Davage (b. 1815?). Sidney was a former slave at the Perry Hall mansion in Baltimore, and was manumitted by 1840. She married Charles, a coachman, on April 12, 1842. They had five children: Eliza Jane (1843-1913), Sophia (b. 1847), Charlotte (b. 1849), Charles (b. 1854), and Hester (b. 1845). Their daughter Eliza Jane married Henry Cummings (b. 1830?). They had seven children: Harry Sythe (1866-1917), Charles Gilmor (1870-1924), William (b. 1882), Ida R. (1868-1958), Estelle (1874-1944), Carroll (b. 1875), Francis (b. 1872), and Aaron (1864?-1932).
Harry Sythe Cummings, a lawyer in Baltimore, became the city's first African American City Council member. He was first elected in 1890 and served intermittently until his death in 1917, often working on issues related to education. Cummings also delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention in 1904 seconding the presidential nomination of Theodore Roosevelt. He married Blanche Conklin in 1899, and they had three children: Harry S. Jr. (b. 1905), Lucille (d. 1906), and Louise.
Charles Gilmor Cummings graduated from Drew Theological Seminary in 1898, and was a pastor in Alexandria, Virginia and elsewhere. After the death of his wife Grace in 1910, he married Rosa Catherine Bearden, grandmother of artist Romare Bearden, in 1912.
Ida R. Cummings graduated from Morgan College in 1922, and was the first African American kindergarten teacher in Baltimore. She was also active in local organizations, and was president of the Colored Fresh Air and Empty Stocking Circle; chairman of the Woman's Section Council of Defense in Baltimore during the World War, 1914-1918; and president of the Woman's Campaign Bureau of the Colored Republican Voters' League of Maryland.
Access to collection requires appointment.
African Americans -- Maryland
African Americans -- Photographs
African American families
African Americans -- Pennsylvania
African American -- Social life and customs
African American women journalists
African Americans -- Education
African American churches
African American educators
African Americans -- Washington (D.C.)
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Leamington sign loanee Dunbar on permanent deal
Oct 3, 2017 | More News
Leamington FC loanee Kieran Dunbar has joined on a permanent basis from AFC Telford United.
The former Birmingham City, Fleetwood Town and Stalybridge Celtic youngster made his debut in the 2-1 victory at FC United of Manchester and has played an integral part in every game since, helping Brakes to pick up more league points and progress in the FA Cup.
Dunbar scored his first goal for the club against Bradford Park Avenue in the last league game, which helped seal the club’s first home win of the season.
Read more at: http://www.leamingtonfc.co.uk
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Soham take Williams on dual-registration
Feb 6, 2017 | More News
Soham Town Rangers have signed Saul Williams on dual registration from St Neots Town.
The 22-year old only recently joined the Saints from Dunstable Town, having previously been connected with a number of clubs including Arlesey Town, Kettering Town, Hitchin Town, Hayes & Yeading United, Paulton Rovers, Oxford City, Bishops Cleeve, Forest Green Rovers and Tottenham Hotspur.
Williams made his Soham debut during Saturday’s 1-1 draw away to Witham Town.
Source: Soham Town Rangers
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In March 1980, Congress passed legislation authorizing the North Country National Scenic Trail.
Recommended as part of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission Report in the early 1960’s and supported by President Johnson’s “Natural Beauty Message” in 1965, subsequent federal studies and reports led to the enactment of the National Trails System Act of 1968. In addition to establishing the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail as the first National Scenic Trails, the Act also called for further study on 14 similar potential projects, one of which was the North Country Trail.
In 1971, a combined federal-state task force was assembled to study the feasibility of the North Country Trail. In 1973, Tom Gilbert joined the study support team. He was a new hire at the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, and was assigned to develop materials to support public meetings to be held across the northern tier of states where the North Country Trail was being proposed. Tom Gilbert later became the first Superintendent of the North Country National Scenic Trail for the National Park Service.
The authorized route that the NCNST follows today differs significantly in many areas from some of the initial proposals. Some of the early proposed route highlights and suggestions included transecting Ohio through Columbus to the Michigan/Indiana border, following the Lake Michigan shoreline, a large loop in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and following the length of the Sheyenne River in North Dakota. The Trail’s current route was – and continues to be – the direct result of public input received during those early and subsequent public meetings. Uniting eight states, the North Country Trail immerses the hiker in the best natural features and cultural heritage the North Country has to offer.
In March 1981, about 12 volunteers gathered at the bank in White Cloud, Michigan to discuss forming an organization: a major nonprofit partner with the National Park Service in building the North Country National Scenic Trail. Dues were set at $20. Lance Feild, the newly appointed President of the North Country Trail Association, was the first to make his payment as member #1. Headquarters was the Birch Grove Schoolhouse in White Cloud. The Association has since moved headquarters to Lowell, Michigan, grown to a dozen staff and thousands of volunteers and members.
Header photo provided by Western Michigan Chapter.
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Posts Tagged ‘1972’
The Fogelberg Files: Home Free
Posted: January 10, 2021 in 1970s, 1972, Dan Fogelberg, Fogelberg Files
Tags: 1970s, 1972, Dan Fogelberg, Fogelberg Files, Hickory Grove, Home Free, Stars, The River
Life’s complexities during the early ‘70s seem simple and straightforward from today’s perspective, almost quaint and naive: We are stardust; we are golden; a new Eden is within reach. Though Joni Mitchell wrote the “stardust” and “golden” lines in “Woodstock,” much of the ethos can be credited to Crosby, Stills & Nash, whose 1969 debut ushered forth a softer sound that demanded more attention than their louder compatriots. They emphasized matters of the heart and soul, and even their political pontifications came, at least in part, from within. It was an est seminar set to song, just about, but long before that self-help movement joined the mainstream. While their 1970 collaboration with Neil Young, Deja Vu, added darkness to their light, the est quality remained. They were authentic and in touch with their inner selves.
Both albums helped give life to a new sub-genre of rock music, one that usually found itself in the crosshairs of critics: soft rock. It was “wooden music” (aka acoustic) or a wooden-electric mix with country flourishes and, sometimes, an orchestral backing. This wasn’t the folk and folk-rock of the early and mid-‘60s or even the folk-pop practiced by Simon & Garfunkel, though elements from all proliferated within soft rock. It was mellow, sensitive, soul-baring stuff – and, depending on the wordsmith, either illuminating or cliched. One of its biggest pluses, however, was that songs could be cross-marketed, as they fit multiple radio formats on the increasingly competitive FM band.
By 1972, soft rock was all the rage – Carole King, Don McLean, Neil Young, America and Cat Stevens topped the album charts that year, while Neil Diamond, Don McLean, Melanie, Nilsson, Gilbert O’Sullivan and Neil Young topped the singles charts with soft-rock songs. Also releasing albums that fell, at least in part, within the soft-rock realm: Jackson Browne, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Loggins and Messina, and Paul Simon.
I start there, in this look at the debut from Dan Fogelberg, to add a little context. Music is never made in a vacuum; it’s generally a reaction to or a continuation of a larger trend. Such is the case with Home Free, which was released in October of that year. In many ways, it is a stereotypical soft-rock affair, sporting contemplative (if, at times, grammatically suspect) lyrics and sensitive sounds, harmonies galore and even sumptuous strings that accent the melodies, which often seem simultaneously familiar and not.
That’s not a knock. Consider this: He was likely 21 when he recorded the album; and probably younger when he wrote some of the songs. As such, I cut him – as I would any young artist – some slack because of that; he was still in the process of becoming. Plus, recorded in Nashville with producer Norbert Putnam, it just sounds great. Among the album’s personnel: David Briggs of the legendary Nashville Cats; and Buddy Spicher and Weldon Myrick of the equally legendary Nashville A-Team. Neil Young fans should also recognize the name of the drummer, Kenny Buttrey.
The album fades in – as if replicating the gradual awakening of the day – with “To the Morning,” about the promises each new day brings. Lyrically, it’s somewhat slight (“And it’s going to be a day/There is really no way to say no to the morning/Yes it’s going to be a day/There is really nothing left to say but come on morning”), but it does capture an element of life lost long ago: “Waiting for mail/Maybe a tale from an old friend or even a lover/Sometimes there’s none/But we have fun thinking of all who might have written.”
Even when the lyrics are clunky, it’s not much of an issue: A great case in point: “Hickory Grove.” It’s a lush, lush song that features suspect wordplay (“Hickory Grove, make the sun/Rise slower I don’t have much time/Hickory Grove, watch me run/down through the years of my prime”), but it doesn’t matter. You – or, at least, I – get lost in Fogelberg’s vocals, the melodies and overall production.
Of the “familiar”: As evidenced by “Hickory Grove,” the CSN influence is profound – and not just with the harmonies. In fact, “Stars” borrows its guitar refrain and melody from “Helplessly Hoping” while spinning a heartfelt ode to a long-lost lover (“For stars fall every time a lover has to face the truth/And far too many stars have fell on me.”) As with “Hickory Grove,” it’s a lovely song. By the time it ends, however overt the influence, you don’t care.
Other songs, such as “Looking for a Lady” and “Anyway I Love You,” are well-produced but – yes, I’m repeating myself here – lyrically slight. I could go on, and perhaps I should, but instead I’ll end with what is – for me – the album’s stand-out track: “The River,” which closes the set. It’s somewhat at odds with the nine songs that precede it, evolving from a piano-led tributary into a raging river accented by raucous guitars. Again, read by themselves, the lyrics aren’t the best – but matched to those guitars? And with his full-throated delivery? It’s damn good.
At the time of its release, the album didn’t do well in the charts – it peaked at No. 210 in early 1973. However, thanks to the success of his following albums, his label re-released it…and it went platinum. (Sales in excess of a million, for those not up on such things.) Overall, I find Home Free a solid first outing with – as I like to say – glimmers of greatness. My main criticism, which is likely evident from what I’ve already written: the lyrics. They remind me of the (bad) verse I and fellow classmates penned in my freshman poetry-writing class. That aside, as a whole, the album is worth more than a few spins – so long as you don’t listen too closely.
Here’s the track listing:
One thing to note: From what I’ve read, the original mix of Home Free is only available on the original LPs, 8-tracks and cassettes or the 2006 double-CD set of Home Free and Souvenirs from the Beat Goes On label; Fogelberg and Putnam remixed it for its release on CD in the late ‘80s. AllMusic’s’ Richard Foss details how those changes impacted the songs.
Also: Here’s the first mention of Home Free, from December 1st, 1972, I found on Newspapers.com; it’s part of the critic’s own attempt at (I think) hip verse: “Home Free, more than ever, Dan Fogelberg, on his way.”
Here’s another mention from one Holly Spence, which appeared in the Lincoln (Neb.) Journal Star on Feb. 28th, 1973:
And here’s an excellent deep dive that appeared almost a year later, on January 13th, 1974, in the Hattiesburg (MIss.) American. It goes to show the shelf life of albums back then; a year-plus from its release, it was still winning over listeners. (I had to split it up, however, so parts of the article jump between the two images.)
First Impressions: Neil Young’s Archives II
Posted: December 13, 2020 in 1970s, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 2020, 2020s, First Impressions, Neil Young
Tags: 1970s, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 2020, 2020s, Archives II, First Impressions, Neil Young, Neil Young Archives, Powderfinger, Review, Sweet Joni
I’ve been holding off on writing about Neil Young’s Archives Vol. II, which was released on November 20, 2020, until I finished listening to each and every of its 10 discs. For those not in the know, it covers the fertile period from 11/15/1972 through 3/10/76, when he recorded such classic albums as Tonight’s the Night, On the Beach and Zuma – and held back a treasure trove of audio delights, including the since-released Tuscaloosa and Homegrown LPs. Also recorded during the timespan: the ill-fated Stills-Young collaboration Long May You Run. In total, 63 of the 131 tracks are previously unreleased, though the bulk of those are alternate or live versions of known songs. Twelve tunes are – theoretically speaking – brand-new to our ears. (I say “theoretically” because a few, such as the tender “Sweet Joni,” have been available on bootlegs for decades.)
The original deluxe edition, which was limited to 3000 copies, sold out in a matter of hours despite its mammoth price of $249.98. A second run is now scheduled, with a release date of next March, as is a “retail edition” with a reduced price of $159.98. (The Greedy Hand store is aptly named.) Me, I’ll likely buy the set as high-resolution downloads…and, until then, enjoy it via the Neil Young Archives website and iPhone app.
The online Archives, I should mention, is a tremendous value for both new and old fans. For those of us who, years long ago, traded tapes and CDRs on the Rust List or Human Highway email lists and/or browsed the bins of indie record stores in hopes of stumbling upon bootleg LPs and CDs…well, it’s (almost) all there. Every official release. Live sets. The first Archives box set and, now, Archives II. Plus, next year, bootlegs of bootlegs are slated to appear. And, if that’s not enough, there’s tons of video – Neil’s 1984 appearance on Austin City Limits, when he was backed by the International Harvesters, is currently available to watch. (For those curious, it’s free for the holidays – and even when it’s not…it’s only $19.99/year.)
Best of all, one can access it on one’s smartphone (Apple or Android). Most days, I’m enmeshed at my desk for anywhere from a few to 10 hours. Monday through Friday, of course, it’s for my job, while on weekends it’s for this blog – or just goofing off. When the former, and in the mood, I listen via my iPhone, either plugging it into my desktop speakers or using Bluetooth headphones. Enjoying the music in high-resolution form isn’t to be had, yet it still does its job: It makes the day go faster.
Anyway, back to the Archives II: The many plaudits it has received are well deserved; here are a few such reviews: The Everybody’s Dummy blog; The Guardian newspaper; The LA Beat; Louder Than Sound; Rolling Stone; and Ultimate Classic Rock. Among the gems that I’ve returned to time and again: “Sweet Joni,” which I’ve loved since first hearing it on the Rock ’n’ Roll Cowboy bootleg compilation many years ago, and Joni, Neil and the Stray Gators ripping through “Raised on Robbery.” You can hear a snippet of it in this trailer:
There are plenty of other treasures to be had, of course. This Zuma-era take on “Powderfinger” is one:
Whether one should splurge on either the deluxe or retail edition is really a decision best left to each fan. One factor holding me back: the inclusion of the recent archival releases Tuscaloosa, ROXY: Tonight’s the Night Live and Homegrown, all of which I purchased. If you didn’t pony up the cash for them, the set makes better sense. Another factor: In my life, accompanying booklets – no matter how well done – are usually looked at once, maybe twice, and then placed back inside the box never to be seen again. (If high-resolution downloads aren’t to be had, I rip CDs as FLAC or ALAC files and listen to those.) Too, I’d rather put that $160 or $250 to supporting up-and-coming artists, most of whom are facing financial hardship.
Anyway, as Diane can attest, I often cycle through my musical favorites – I can go months or more without playing anything by a longtime favorite simply because…well, to borrow a phrase from Neil’s erstwhile pal David Crosby, “time is the final currency.” For the last good while, for example, it’s been mostly Bruce Springsteen, Courtney Marie Andrews and Zach Phillips – but, after enjoying the Archives II for the past few weeks, I feel like it’s time to saddle up the Horse and go for a ride…
Wings Over Europe ’72 & 75 Tour Booklets
Posted: January 21, 2018 in 1970s, 1972, 1975, Paul McCartney, Wings
Tags: 1970s, 1972, 1975, Paul McCartney, Tour Booklets, Tour Programmes, Wings, Wings Fun Club, Wings Over Europe
As I’ve written before, my journey into music fandom began in earnest on a spring day in 1978 when, a few months shy of turning 13, I saw a TV commercial for the new Wings LP, London Town. “With a Little Luck” hooked me.
I soon bought the 45, and then the album, and then began sorting through the Wings back catalog, and – a year later – did what any self-respecting fan would do: joined the fan club. Or, as it was called in this case, the Wings Fun Club. I became a member just in time to receive the first-ever all-color Club Sandwich, which was the name of the group’s quarterly newsletter, and began an on-and-off correspondence with Sue Cavanaugh, who oversaw the Fun Club. I’d write her with questions large and small about the band – and a month or two later the answers would arrive in my mailbox, generally written on the back of a postcard or, as in the example to the right, Wings stationary. (The question: Why was “Call Me Back Again,” one of my favorites by Wings at the time, left out of the Wings Over the World TV special.) She also sent me loads of blank postcards…and, in late 1979, two concert programs, one from ’72 and the other from ’75, both of which I’ve shared below.
The 1972 program includes one page of photos (the cover) twice. The 1975 program was a fold-out, so a two-page photo appears split; it also features an inscription from (I believe) Denny Laine: “USA Continent for ’80.”
The Essentials: Stephen Stills – Manassas
Posted: September 23, 2017 in 1970s, 1972, Stephen Stills, The Essentials
Tags: 1970s, 1972, Both of Us (Bound to Lose), Colorado, Essentials, Fallen Eagle, How Far, Manassas, Stephen Stills, The Treasure (Take One)
(As noted in my first Essentials entry, this is an occasional series in which I spotlight albums that, in my estimation, everyone should experience at least once.)
In today’s age, the double album seems almost quaint: two vinyl slabs that, combined, hold anywhere from 70 to 100 minutes of music. But they were a Big Deal back in the day, as that second slab substantially upped the cost to the consumer. Instead of $5.99-7.99 (plus tax), which was the average price of an LP when I began buying them in the late 1970s, a fan had to plunk down almost twice that ($9.99-11.99) – unless it was an Elvis Presley compilation on Pickwick, that is. I picked up the 2-LP Double Dynamite for $3.99 at a Montgomery Ward. (Of course, one look at the song list explains the low cost.)
Many double (and triple, for that matter) albums captured live shows; others were compilations that sometimes included previously unreleased material or hard-to-find b-sides. Double LPs of all-new material, on the other hand, were relatively rare, though any music fan worth his or her salt can reel off dozens of such titles, including ones by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Who, Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder and Allman Brothers, not to mention Pink Floyd, the Clash, Bruce Springsteen, Prince and Husker Du.
Most, though not all, now fit onto one CD, and play no longer than many “albums” released as one disc in the ‘90s and ‘00s, when it seemed (at least to me) fairly common for new releases to clock in at over an hour; and, in the download/streaming age, time constraints just seem moot. But most CDs that run longer than 45 minutes contain – dare I say it? – songs that should have been left in the vault. In the days of limited space, only the best of the best were pressed onto vinyl.
Yes, of course, exceptions abound. But they’re exceptions.
Anyway, with fans and critics of a certain age being who and what they are, lists proliferate of the greatest double albums of all time. Here’s one; here’s another; and here’s yet another. If you Google the term, you’ll find dozens more.
And yet, on just about every list I’ve seen, one stone-cold classic – “a sprawling masterpiece,” according to AllMusic – is usually overlooked: today’s essential pick, Stephen Stills’ Manassas.
Stills, of course, first turned ears as the driving force behind Buffalo Springfield in the mid-‘60s; and again with Crosby, Stills & Nash and Young in 1969 and ’70. He released a great, self-titled solo debut in 1970; a near-great second solo set in ’71; and, in 1972, paired with former Byrd-Flying Burrito Brother Chris Hillman to found Manassas, a talented group that could play just about everything, including rock, folk-rock, country, bluegrass, Latin and the blues.
Among the group’s personnel: steel guitar great Al Perkins and phenomenal fiddler Byron Berline, both of whom had played with Hillman in the Flying Burrito Brothers; keyboardist Paul Harris; Blues Image founder (and percussionist extraordinaire) Joe Lala; and CSNY alum Calvin “Fuzzy” Samuels and Dallas Taylor on bass and drums.
Oh, Stones bassist Bill Wyman sits in on one song, too. (According to Dallas Taylor, Wyman was ready to leave the Stones for Manassas – but wasn’t asked.)
Manassas, the album, is a mosaic of musical styles accented by top-notch playing and great songs. Split into four thematic sides (“The Raven,” “The Wilderness,” “Consider” and “Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay”), it alternately reflects and resonates with the soul; delves into the philosophical; and rocks with precise abandon. It’s an electric album. It’s an acoustic album. Some songs are imbued with hope, others heartbreak and longing.
And it’s hook-laden.
One highlight: “Both of Us (Bound to Lose),” which features a wondrous Hillman intro, a cool mesh of Cuban rhythms and country overtones, gorgeous guitar solos, and harmonies that can’t be beat.
Another: “Fallen Eagle,” a song I sing to myself whenever I see too much of Donald Trump on TV.
And another, “Colorado”:
And another, “How Far”:
Oh, and there’s this gem from Side 4 (“Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay”): “The Treasure (Take One),” a winding treatise on love and “oneness.”
By virtue of my age, and the lack of non-CSN songs played on the radio, I didn’t discover the album (and its followup, Down the Road), until Feb. 12, 1984, when I picked them up at the Hatboro Music Shop. The double-LP set came with a cool fold-out poster that featured a photo montage on one side and the lyrics on the other; and, as I often did in those days, I read the lyrics along with the songs as they unfolded.
I was blown away by it. I still am. And I’m forever mystified as to why it slipped – along with Stills’ other early ’70s solo sides – into semi-obscurity. It did well, chart-wise. After its release on April 12, 1972, it peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard charts, where it shared space in the Top 10 with David Crosby & Graham Nash’s self-titled debut and Neil Young’s Harvest.
Side 1 “The Raven”:
Song of Love
Medley: Rock & Roll Crazies; Cuban Bluegrass
Both of Us (Bound to Lose)
Side 2 “The Wilderness”:
Fallen Eagle
Jesus Gave Love Away for Free
So Begins the Task
Hide It So Deep
Don’t Look at My Shadow
Side 3 “Consider”:
Johnny’s Garden
Bound to Fall
How Far
The Love Gangster
The Treasure (Take One)
Blues Man
Here’s the album in full, courtesy of YouTube:
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Law School Clinic Certification Program
Public Law 113–227 (Dec. 16, 2014) requires the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to establish regulations and procedures for application to, and participation in, the USPTO Law School Clinic Certification Program (LSCCP). The LSCCP Program allows students enrolled in a participating law school’s clinic to practice patent or trademark law before the USPTO under the direct supervision of a faculty clinic supervisor. Each clinic provides legal services on a pro bono basis for clients who qualify for assistance from the law school’s clinic. By drafting, filing, and prosecuting patent and trademark applications, students gain valuable experience that would otherwise be unavailable to them while in law school. The program also facilitates the provision of pro bono services to trademark and patent applicants who lack the financial resources necessary for traditional legal representation. In 2020, there were 60 law schools participating. This information collection covers the applications from law schools that wish to enter the program, faculty advisors who seek to become a faculty clinic supervisor, and students who seek to participate in this program. The information collection also includes the required biannual reports from participating law school clinics and biennial renewals required by the program as well as the request to make special under the Law School Clinic Certification Program, which allows a limited number of applications per semester to be advanced out of turn (accorded special status) for examination if the applicant makes the appropriate showing, to provide law students with practical experience as they will be more likely to receive substantive examination of applications within the school year that the application is filed.
The latest form for Law School Clinic Certification Program expires 2023-04-30 and can be found here.
Form PTO/SB/419 Certification and Request to Make Special Under the Law School Clinic Program
Form PTO 158 LS Application for Limited Recognition in USPTO Law School Program for Law Students
0651-0081 Supporting Statement 2020.docx
USPTO Information Quality Guidelines.pdf
OED_GRB.pdf
Certification and Request to Make Special Under the Law School Clinic Program
Biennial Renewal Application
Application for Limited Recognition in USPTO Law School Program for Law Students
Application by Law School Faculty Member to Become a Faculty Clinic Member
Application by Law School to Enter the Program
Reports Required of Law School Clinics
No material or nonsubstantive change to a currently approved collection 2017-03-16
Preapproved
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Getting to 9/11
By Justin Davidson
Photographs by Christopher Griffith
In late May 2002, the place they still called ground zero had become an immense and pristine hole. Truckload after surreal truckload of mangled steel and ash and gruesome finds had been carted away, leaving a flat expanse of concrete and rock. One final column from the Twin Towers remained standing, a 36-foot totem of rusting steel emblazoned with cryptic notes, duct-taped snapshots, and a running tally of dead bodies. But even with the cleanup declared done, workers kept raking the floor with ordinary garden tools, hunting for some infinitesimal shard of human bone. Today, the floor, the column, and one of those rakes are reunited in the National September 11 Memorial Museum, a huge and spectacularly mournful institution in the bowels of the new World Trade Center.
For years, I have stayed away from reminders of 9/11 and the weeks that followed. The most exhaustively recorded cataclysm in history yielded fictionalized movies, documentaries, YouTube clips, eyewitness accounts, TV news reports, police-radio tapes, and endless documentation. I avoided it all. Instead, I remained focused on the drama of reconstruction, visiting the site many times to watch swarms of hard-hatted welders cauterizing the urban wound. I did, however, have an early preview of what a museum might be like a decade ago, when I visited Hangar 17 at JFK. There, crushed emergency vehicles, twisted girders, sections of the broadcasting antenna, half a dozen bikes still chained to a rack, and a lump of fused metal, concrete, paper, and glass were all laid out in an improvised architectural morgue. The last column was stretched out there, too, housed in its own dehumidified area. The hangar tour was draining, and, years later, the prospect of revisiting that archive of mass murder in its place of origin makes me fibrillate with dread.
Justin Davidson’s video tour of the museum.
The museum is buried in a crypt beneath the crime scene, but I enter through the silvery origami-like pavilion designed by Snøhetta, whose architects have anticipated some of its visitors’ more primal anxieties. Large windows look onto the memorial plaza, where the atmosphere is a mixture of reverence and casual cheer. Outside, kids take selfies with the names carved in bronze and the big shiny towers beyond. Inside, all is bright light and blond wood and soothing necessities like the coat check and bathrooms. A wide staircase descends into darkness; alongside it, a pair of tremendous steel arms reaches up into the light. This is the first trace we see of the ruined behemoths, two of the linked tridents that formed the towers’ gothic arches. Weathered but unbent, they thrust vertically past their new home’s weave of angled struts, mute reminders of the original buildings’ enormity. They also stand as signposts to the Stygian galleries below.
It’s not just craving for forgetfulness that slows my step, but skepticism, too. I wonder where the museum experience will fall on the spectrum from anodyne to brutal—whether disaster will morph into prurient multimedia entertainment or force visitors into a morbidly earnest trudge. Virtually every decision in this enterprise has been controversial: the underground location, the inscription from Virgil’s Aeneid (“No day shall erase you from the memory of time”), the ticket price ($24), the gift-shop souvenirs, the placement of unidentified human remains in an inaccessible chamber just off the museum’s main hall, the inclusion of terrorists’ photographs, the short film about the rise of Al Qaeda, and more. Given this swarm of sensitivities, will the museum fall back on pieties and pabulum? The more I think about the task of perpetuating the recollection of that day, the more doubts flock: How can a museum chronicle unsettled history, or interpret an event we don’t fully understand? How can an exhibit be meaningful to those who were showered in ash that day and also to children who have yet to be born? I think of that field of ravaged metal at JFK: How can those relics be installed in a museum without converting them into aesthetic objects, beautifully lit but stripped of violence and specificity?
Burdened by these musings, I walk down the long staircase into the minimalist Hades designed by Davis Brody Bond. I am greeted by a murmuring choir of recorded reminiscences from all over the world, reminding me that 9/11 was a global event. The dark floors and austere sarcophagal aura make me wistful for the light above, but the architects have taken care to lead visitors gently into the depths. Underground spaces can be disorienting, but this one comes into partial focus at the first overlook. Shock arrives in ripples of recognition. A ramp winds down toward the foundations, where the cut-off columns that held up the Twin Towers sit embedded in Manhattan schist. A pair of building-size boxes, containing the memorial’s waterfalls and coated with glistening aluminum foam, hang in the immense cavern like geometric stalactites. I have arrived at bedrock level, the floor of the concrete bathtub, separated from the Hudson River by a 70-foot-high section of “slurry wall” so brawny and raw that it could almost be a segment of the Hoover Dam. It’s here that the collapsing skyscrapers came to rest, here that the worker with the rake knelt and scraped. That great trench has become a vast vault, containing some of the nation’s most eloquent ruins. The tale that this museum has to tell is partly about dimensions—the inconceivable scale of murder, the size of the weapons, the targets’ bulk, the worldwide aftershocks. Doing it justice requires a lot of space. The biggest artifacts are back, and as I stare at all that crooked metal, thick girders bent by the force of a speeding plane, I find myself trying in vain to conjure up the extremes of violence that formed it. The last column is standing again, dwarfed just as it was when the hall was an open pit, only now a touchscreen allows visitors to zoom in to the scrawls and taped mementos and read a digital text label for each one. After all, a museum’s job is not just to preserve but also to explain.
In 2006, Alice Greenwald, who had been a director at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., was appointed to run what was then an amorphous institution with a laundry list of topics and a backlog of acrimony but no overarching concept, no consensus, no design, and not much of a collection. So Greenwald launched a series of exploratory powwows. “We brought everybody into a room,” she says, “family members, survivors, first responders, landmark preservationists, architects, museum people—and we started with a set of very large questions about what a museum should be.” From those conversations, the team arrived at a few fundamentals: that the loftiest spaces should contrast with intimate chambers, that visitors should be free to create their own itinerary and bypass whatever content they chose, and that tissue boxes would be strategically placed.
The result is a bifurcated museum, split between the square footprints of the original towers and tucked beneath the twin memorial pools. Where the South Tower stood is the memorial exhibition, an outer room papered with the photographs of the 2,977 people killed on September 11, plus the six who died in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993. Table-mounted touchscreens bring up details of the victims’ lives, which can be projected on the walls of a separate room, an inner sanctum where the lost are remembered one at a time. In an audio recording, the Cantor Fitzgerald employee John Katsimatides’s sister Anthoula teases him posthumously about his John Travolta dance moves: “They used to call him Johnny Bodacious,” she recalls.
The historical exhibition designed by David Layman, its brittle and troubling content stowed in a climate-controlled zone behind glass doors, takes up the entire North Tower footprint, and it’s a tour de force of devastating authenticity. The core is a minute-by-minute timeline of the events as we all observed them, starting at 8:46 a.m., when the first plane hit and a confused Matt Lauer shortly thereafter interrupted Today. In the confined spaces of the exhibition, you confront the experience of a city blasted beyond recognition. Firefighters, their landmarks, equipment, and buddies all gone, mill helplessly around, then start searching through the great pile for tiny caves where someone might conceivably have survived. Almost subliminally, the design leads you from small spaces to large, toggling between intimacy and awe.
Chief curator Jan Ramirez has assembled a collection of ephemera, mundane objects, and digital traces that had become suddenly sanctified by circumstance. We see the wristwatch that Todd Beamer, a passenger on Flight 93, was wearing when he said, “Let’s roll.” We hear Sean Rooney call his wife, Beverly Eckert, just after the first plane hit to reassure her that the problem was in the North Tower and that he was fine. We read a letter from Kenneth Feinberg, special master of the Victim Compensation Fund, informing Steven Morello that his father’s life was worth exactly $62,135.41. We imagine the sensation of strapping on the Phantom of the Opera–like burn mask that Harry Waizer, who’d worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and was badly scarred by fire, wore 16 hours a day for a year after the attacks. We stare at a sealed store window, where jeans and sweatshirts coated in toxic ash form a wrenching diorama. These artifacts, too, reflect the scale of September 11—not just the smashed structures and great torn beams.
After the darkness of that day, a brief intermission: a small section devoted to the World Trade Center in pop culture. But I can only linger so long over posters of King Kong and Working Girl before plunging back into tougher stuff. The timeline begins again, another narravie rewinds back to sunrise, and this time it includes not only what we saw but also what we knew only later. By 7:36 a.m., under the eye of security cameras, terrorists check in at Dulles. On another screen nearby, at exactly the same moment, office workers click through the subway turnstiles into the World Trade Center concourse.
It was clear from the beginning of the design process that the museum would have to show more than just things. The physical destruction and emotional wounds were documented electronically, and they would have to be presented that way, too. The task of weaving photos, audio, video, and radar into the narrative fell to Thinc, the exhibition design firm headed by Tom Hennes, and Local Projects, a multimedia design company founded by Jake Barton. This was the aspect I worried about most—that glossy screens and hyperactive graphics would distract from the experience they were supposed to enhance, or else not work at all. That danger isn’t past—it’s crucial that the machines are maintained with fanatical perfection—but the use of interactive technology is tastefully restrained. There are films, but no sonorous narration, no added sound effects, no Adagio for Strings—just, as they say, the facts. The graphic palette, like the architecture, is mostly black and white. Every one of the interactive displays must strike a balance between vividness and consoling distance, and when they don’t get it right, they err on the side of aloofness. “We don’t ever want to re-create that day,” says Tom Hennes of Thinc. “It’s not about screams and sirens. You’re at the site, but you never lose sense of the fact that you’re there today, not back then. The there and then of the day comes through testimony, not immersive experience, which would be sensationalizing and exploitative, and potentially traumatizing.”
At times, the sensitivity becomes glaring. A wall label near the entrance to one alcove states the stunningly obvious: “Please be advised that the program contains disturbing content.” That description gets ratcheted up to “very disturbing” for the corner reserved for the topic of those who, faced with the choice between burning and jumping, chose the open air. I couldn’t face that section on my first visit, but on the second I steeled myself and went in, to find familiar horrors: no videos or identifiable faces, only stills of distant plunging specks.
The museum averts its gaze in more insidious ways, too. The story that opened on a bright Tuesday morning at the start of the school year kept growing more tendrils. During Alice Greenwald’s first year on the job, construction began on One World Trade Center, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death, the war in Afghanistan raged, and drone strikes became an almost daily routine. The meaning of 9/11 continues to change, which means that the museum must be simultaneously definitive and open-ended. “We’re a museum that doesn’t presume to wrap it up nice and neat,” Greenwald says.
In fact, it presumes too little. The exhibits hint at the complexity of the aftermath without tackling the thorniest topics. There are glancing references to conspiracy theorists and tensions between security and civil liberties. A gimmicky digital synopsis projected on a wall keeps recomposing itself, creating a new sequence of headlines every few minutes, but it all goes by too quickly to digest. Clips from on-camera interviews with dignitaries are interspersed with comments that visitors can contribute in a recording booth. But we learn little or nothing about torture, or rendition, or Abu Ghraib, or Tora Bora, or drone raids on Pakistan, or the Bush administration’s spurious linkage of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein to justify the war in Iraq. We are spared Rudy Giuliani’s constant campaign invocations of his role in 9/11.
As I thread my way through the skein of memories and outrage, it occurs to me that mine is the reaction of someone who was in Manhattan on September 11, 2001. I’m relieved that the curators have handled the inherent tensions as deftly as they have, and I am awed all over again by the terrible magnitude of the events. I am discomfited and unhappy—and that is the museum’s strength. It’s a tonic for the jaded and an antidote to denial. To visit is to volunteer for certain but tolerable pain. I wonder, though, what impact the museum will make on my 16-year-old son, who spent that morning happily playing dress-up on his first day of preschool, or what it will mean to his grandchildren. Hennes has thought about that question, though he offers no pat answer. “People will enter this place with all different narratives. There isn’t one story of 9/11. There are thousands. The museum has to be a place where those stories can be told, and where they can be made coherent.” But history is not, or not only, a subjective affair, and the museum’s lasting power lies in the unadorned presentation of evidence. In one alcove, recorded voices from inside the towers segue one into the other, while illuminated pinpoints on a simple diagram indicate the speaker’s position. We hear Orio Palmer, a Fire Department battalion chief who has climbed to the 78th floor of the South Tower, shout breathlessly into the radio to report “numerous 10-45s Code Ones”—Fire Department lingo for the dead. The realization that he will be next comes in a burst of weird, appalling immediacy. We are witnessing the instant of doom from the comfortable distance of time, and it’s still not easy to bear.
This truck was from FDNY Engine Company 21, quartered in midtown Manhattan on East 40th Street. Photo: Christopher Griffith. Recovered from the World Trade Center site after September 11, 2001. Collection 9/11 Memorial Museum, Courtesy of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Presented with permission of the New York City Fire Department.
The final piece of steel to be removed from the site, now called the Last Column, was covered in remembrances. Photo: Christopher Griffith
The display window of Chelsea Jeans was meticulously preserved in its ash-covered state. Photo: Christopher Griffith
A piece of American Airlines Flight 11. Photo: Christopher Griffith. Collection 9/11 Memorial Museum, Gift of the Port Authority Police Department Traveling Memorial.
A fragment of American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon. Photo: Christopher Griffith. Courtesy of the American Airlines C.R. Smith Museum.
The slurry wall around the foundation of the original Trade Center, built in the late 1960s to hold back the soft soil and the waters of the Hudson. Photo: Christopher Griffith
This ambulance, driven by EMS Battalion 17 emergency medical technicians Benjamin Badillo and Edward Martinez, was parked near Vesey and West Streets. Photo: Christopher Griffith. Recovered from the World Trade Center site after September 11, 2001. Collection 9/11 Memorial Museum, Courtesy of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Presented with permission of the New York City Fire Department.
Chalk call board from New York City Fire Department Ladder 13. Five of the firefighters were killed that day. Photo: Christopher Griffith
The collapse of the towers exerted unimaginable force. This dense aggregation of rubble, three feet high, is the compressed remains of five full floors. Photo: Christopher Griffith
Hijacker Mohand al-Shehri’s boarding pass for Flight 175, retrieved from the trash at Boston Logan International Airport. Photo: Christopher Griffith. Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Inside the museum, a view upward to the tower footprints. Photo: Christopher Griffith
Another view of the slurry wall. Photo: Christopher Griffith
The FDNY’s Ladder Company 3, headquartered on East 13th Street, parked this truck on West Street that day. Twelve of its members were killed in the collapse of the North Tower. Photo: Christopher Griffith
Another view of Ladder Company 3’s truck. Photo: Christopher Griffith
The cross-shaped steel fragment that stood over the site. Photo: Christopher Griffith
The Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of the Army, International Affairs, lost 75 people in the attacks. Photo: Christopher Griffith. Courtesy of the United States Army Historical Collection, U.S. Army Center of Military History.
When the North Tower collapsed, FDNY lieutenant Mickey Kross was trapped at the third floor of stairwell B. When he got out a few hours later, disoriented, Kross picked up a playing card lying in the debris, the only thing that looked recognizable and undamaged, and carried it thereafter for luck. He later added the Shakespeare quote. Photo: Christopher Griffith
The TV mast from the roof of the North Tower. Photo: Christopher Griffith. Recovered from the World Trade Center site after September 11, 2001. Collection 9/11 Memorial Museum, Courtesy of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Remnant of a box column. Photo: Christopher Griffith
Almost no office furnishings from the Twin Towers survived. The other damaged Trade Center buildings sheltered a number of ordinary objects, like this file drawer from building 4. Photo: Christopher Griffith. Recovered from the World Trade Center site after September 11, 2001. Collection 9/11 Memorial Museum, Courtesy of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The seal of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management, pulled from the wreckage of 7 World Trade Center. The mayor’s command center was on the 23rd floor. Photo: Christopher Griffith. Used with permission of the City of New York and the New York City Office of Emergency Management, Courtesy of Richard Sheirer.
A protester’s sign. Photo: Christopher Griffith
Badges of trade workers, called in for the recovery effort. Photo: Christopher Griffith
The Tribute Walk along the South Tower footprint. Photo: Christopher Griffith
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Blow Up the Box
By Vanessa Grigoriadis
Photo: Jason Nocito
High in the Frank Gehry–designed IAC building on the West Side Highway, floor-to-ceiling windows flood the offices with blinding sunlight in the afternoon, which is when Barry Diller takes a seat to answer some questions. Wearing a light-gray sweater and black driving loafers without socks, his blue eyes alert behind delicate gold-rimmed glasses, Diller looks younger than his 70 years, probably a product of a life lived equally in the professional realm and aboard the Eos, his 305-foot yacht named for the Greek goddess of the dawn. This curvaceous concrete-and-glass building resembles a ship, when you think of it, sails to the wind, and in the hallway a large replica of a sailing yacht rises from a carpet—a reminder, in case you forgot, that you’re about to meet the guy with the enormous yacht.
Intimidation has long been one of the primary tools at Diller’s disposal, helping him become one of the greatest media and entertainment deal-makers of the last half-century. A second-generation Austrian Jewish kid brought up in Beverly Hills, Diller never bothered to graduate from college, heading instead to the William Morris Agency mailroom, where he arrived shortly before David Geffen in the early sixties. Three networks were set in stone, and he soon left for the weakest, ABC, which he upended as vice-president of programming in the late sixties, masterminding projects that remade TV, like the “Movie of the Week” (he chose Aaron Spelling and Steven Spielberg, both in career infancy at the time, as producer and director) and the mini-series, like Alex Haley’s slave drama Roots, which broke ratings records. From there, he headed up Paramount Pictures and did a stint at 20th Century Fox before collaborating with Rupert Murdoch in 1986 to once again overturn the television order by building the country’s fourth network, Fox.
In the nineties, chafing under Murdoch’s thumb, Diller shocked Hollywood by leaving for the far less glamorous pastures of QVC. Since then, he’s been his own boss at IAC, buying and selling web-based companies from Ticketmaster to Expedia, Match.com, and CollegeHumor (Diller stepped down from the CEO role two years ago but remains as involved as ever). IAC resembles a Berkshire Hathaway of Internet companies, a cheap acquirer but stable and growing. Diller spends most of his time focused on the media and entertainment business: a mobile-technology incubator, Hatch Labs; the free-content service Vimeo; Electus, a TV-production company run by Ben Silverman, which has had success with Mob Wives and Fashion Star; and CollegeHumor, co-founded by Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen, with whom Diller just made a feature film, for the first time in years, and for a very different sum than in his heyday—it’s estimated to be a few million dollars.
Like so many venture capitalists and web companies involved in the race to transform TV, Diller has long been interested in an online TV alternative, and it’s not a surprise that the one he chose to invest in is so much craftier than anyone else’s. Aereo manufactures and stores dime-size antennas that receive anything you can get over the air without paying extra (e.g., NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS) and sends it to a device of your choosing (iPad, iPhone, computer, TV) to watch or record for later. (Aereo operates in the New York market, and the antennas are stored in a Brooklyn warehouse.) It’s live TV, whenever and wherever you want it—more nuanced than watching network TV through a digital antenna on your mantel, and way less expensive than basic cable, which offers the networks alongside a dog’s breakfast of channels most of us never watch.
If this sounds straightforward to you, you’re wrong—the networks, which receive fees from cable companies for their content, are currently suing Aereo, claiming that it hijacks the broadcast signal. Aereo says its subscribers, who pay $12 a month, have a right to this content, because each subscriber rents an individual antenna. The networks say the antennas are a phony pretext, and it makes more sense to think of the service as many individual streams, not antennas. “This isn’t technical innovation—this is business by loophole,” says a network executive in a brusque and angry tone. “It’s a scheme, jerry-rigged, baloney. Dime-size antennas sitting in a warehouse in Brooklyn—can you even say that with a straight face?” They’re wary that there might be a bigger play at work: Diller might eventually take this content, hire directors, producers, and actors to make some new offerings, and create a new digital network of his own. “Barry says this is just about viewers having choices,” says another executive. “I’d like to rent a couple rooms on his yacht, because people have choices.”
Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971) was one of the films in Barry Diller’s pioneering “Movie of the Week” franchise on ABC. Photo: Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection
Diller claims he’s not spoiling for a fight. Nevertheless, as he sits in this elegant room today, in front of a tin of pencils with points like daggers, so freshly shaved that the smell of wood lingers in the room, the atmosphere is not calm. He takes a plain wedding band off his finger and plays with it on a desk, spinning it between his thumb and forefinger like a dreidel. The sun isn’t in his eyes, but mine start to water. I think about what a friend once told me about talking to Diller in this room. “You’re sitting there looking at Barry, and you’re melting, man,” he said. “You’re melting.”
Diller: All right, what are we doing here?
We’re doing an interview for our TV issue, and the theme is “experimentation.” So you’d be the one to talk to about that.
I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.
We want to talk about the evolution of TV. At every stage, somebody seems to come in and bust up the paradigm, and you’ve been at the forefront many times. What is this moment?
That’s a question?
The question is, “What is this moment compared to—”
Okay. Well, this moment is about how, for the very first time, there’s an alternative distribution method for TV. And it just happens that that distribution method is the most radical transformation of everything we see, we hear, and we know. Certainly in the last 100 years. Maybe the invention of the telegraph compares.
We are just getting broadband deployed in this country in a way that you can move rich pictures and video through the Internet and have the ability to slap it up to either a big screen or an iPad. And yet, although there’s so many Internet-ready TVs now being manufactured, relatively few people actually receive video over the Internet on big-screen televisions.
I guess what my first question was about—
I didn’t answer? What have I been doing here?
Well, I was trying to also ask you to put this moment in historical context with other radical moments, like when you created the fourth network.
The fourth network expanded choices, but we went from three to four, right? And now we clock in the hundreds of viewing choices. So going from three to four back then was better than not, and maybe you wouldn’t have gone to fifth, though I’m not sure that’s true. Getting Fox launched was a big, crazy, great effort.
What were you fighting against?
All the other major studios were against us, all the producers were against us, all the networks were against us, the advertisers didn’t have very much interest in us, because why would they? So it was like anything. In establishing something that wasn’t, it’s a bitch. But it’s a good bitch.
Who were your allies?
We had people who began to bring us programming that we thought was interesting, and that’s all we needed, that and an awful lot of willfulness, which is what it takes to do anything.
It’s been said that the TV business is like a medieval guild system. Was it like that from the time you started, or has it gotten more and more entrenched?
What do you mean? Who has said this? I’ve never heard that, a medieval guild system?
It’s a line from Public Knowledge’s Tomorrowvision policy paper, which has been passed around among V.C.’s and web entrepreneurs a lot recently.
Yes, you’re right, it actually was. I thought that was a good piece. I don’t quite know what they meant, but it was nice flowery words.
There’s no sense to it, though?
Well, if you go back, not to the very beginning of broadcasting, as Tim Wu has written, when there were thousands of programmers with little radio stations, but soon after, it’s true that the forces, medieval or not, did coalesce. Broadcasting began, essentially, in the hands of very, very few players—actually two—and when television came along, there were two networks, then three. Rules began to get formulated that essentially protected that concentrated group.
Ricky Van Veen of CollegeHumor once told me that you’re only focused on the future, on new ways of doing things. Do you feel any guilt for being part of that old system?
Why would I? Since I was in my early twenties, at ABC, I was always only interested in things that were not already being done. That’s why we invented the miniseries. We thought that books didn’t always need to be movies. We said, “Television allows you to do something completely different. Let’s take Shogun, and you can make 25 of them, or Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and make 40 hours.” Everybody said, “Hopeless,” “will fail,” et cetera. And it was success from the first hour. My curiosity is only about things that don’t have a record.
With future wife Diane Von Furstenberg at Studio 54 in 1978. Years later, Von Furstenberg sold her wares on Diller’s QVC. Photo: Robin Platzer/Twin Images/Time Life Pictures/Getty Image
What was the landscape when you started the “Movie of the Week”? Why was that so radical at that time?
Making a 90-minute movie every week—for 26 weeks, actually, and repeating them—hadn’t been done. People said not only couldn’t you actually produce it, but you couldn’t produce it at any rational cost, and worse than that, no one would watch it, because people don’t watch movies on television, they watch series with people and characters that they get to know and like. They said trying to sell a new movie every week was impossible, which is why they allowed, essentially, a child—24, 25—to do it.
Who else started creating that content?
Twenty years ago, there were dozens and dozens of independent television producers. There are a couple now, at the most. Mark Burnett, Endemol. It’s gone. Everybody works for the Man now. And it’s natural law, how that happened: Nobody prescribed it, but it’s how things worked out and how it has been for decades, period. Now along comes the potential creative destruction brought by a different distribution methodology, the Internet. And we’ll see what happens.
It seems that the entrenched TV system is on its last legs.
You can’t say that! It’s very profitable. Where are these last legs? What is true, I think, is that just like this revolution of the Internet changed retailing, which it did, changed the music business, which it did, it is likely that now there will be an effect on the television media business.
But isn’t that the point of things like Aereo, to shift that model?
Aereo’s a great idea. When I first heard of it, I said, “There has to be something wrong with this,” and we spent a lot of time and a good amount of money trying to find, legally and technically, what was wrong with it. In the end, we not only found there was nothing wrong with it, but that it had the possibility of being disruptive.
Did you expect the fight with the networks?
My instinct was that it was a flawless argument relative to, essentially, the Communications Act of 1934, which said that a broadcaster receives a free license, and the quid pro quo is that the broadcaster agrees to operate in the public convenience and interest. That’s the foundation of broadcasting. Every person has a right to receive a broadcast signal without any intermediary between that broadcasting of the signal and the receipt of it by a person.
Meaning the wires on tops of houses, antennas?
Right. It’s an antiquated law, but Congress, only in the last five years, invested $650 million to make certain that the digital signal would be transmitted and could be received by a consumer, by a person. So it’s a pure law. I’m very sure—of course, I’m not the judge here, so my being very sure could be very worthless—but I’m very sure that [Aereo’s legality] will be upheld.
But did you think of Aereo as the beginning of the destruction of the current TV system?
No, no. It’s not the beginning of the destruction of anybody. TV wasn’t the destruction of the movie business. Television wasn’t the destruction of radio. Cable wasn’t the destruction of broadcast networks. What happens is new alternatives come, and they live alongside whatever existed.
Isn’t the idea to take Aereo and maybe bundle it with Netflix and some YouTube offerings, various webisodes, put it together, and say, “This is $33,” versus,“This Time Warner Cable package is $133”?
Wait, wait, let’s take it slow … Aereo is a platform, and yes, once that platform is established, you can offer other things alongside that platform, as you suggest. I’ve believed for a long time that à la carte program offerings are better for some people than 400 channels in a system of you take any, you take all. And technology, for the first time, allows or kind of predicts to me that there will be more à la carte offerings.
Right, like my household gets a thousand channels even though all we want is Comedy Central, HBO, and ESPN. Do you watch ESPN?
No. And I think, like many people who don’t watch ESPN, that we are, in fact, subsidizing the people who watch ESPN, because there’s a lot more that don’t than do. The people who watch ESPN will pay its fair-market price. But I don’t know why I have to pay anything toward ESPN, since it doesn’t interest me.
What will this look like, then, in ten years, in terms of—
Some other idiot will have to tell you what happens in ten years. Look, the question, to me, at the core, is why the set-top box has had no innovation—sorry, extraordinarily little innovation. Why is it that the remote control attached to the set-top box and the navigation systems are so lame? Cable has not needed to innovate. When the first innovation came along, TiVo, they killed it. I’m not saying they’re bad folks by any stretch, but the natural forces of technology are forcing a level playing field— now, people will come up with new ideas and compete. I think this will force cable to say, “You know what, we have a lousy customer experience. Let’s improve or they’re fleeing, because there are alternatives.”
With Joan Rivers and Jamie Kellner, left, in 1986, announcing the debut of Fox. Photo: Bettmann/Corbis
So why are the networks trying to kill things like Aereo?
It’s the nature of man: protect what you have, and annihilate anyone who comes sloping up the castle wall. But competition helps everything. I argued that the fourth television network 25 years ago would benefit the three television networks, I argued to the motion-picture studios that they should program for this fourth television network instead of trying to kill it. The result was that it was good in the end for all broadcasters, all producers, all these big, diversified companies.
How do all these changes in TV shift the content business?
I have to answer this with a bit of a bromide. The miracle of the Internet is that you, the creator, create whatever you create, and then you push a send button, and you publish to the world. There’s nobody between you and that send, and anyone, except in China or other countries that block the Internet, can receive it. That’s a miracle. Just the idea that that system wasn’t co-opted or controlled by interests is a miracle. It’s very much worth preserving.
Do you think content will continue to be profitable?
If it’s successful, of course. And will it be successful? At varying degrees. If you’ve got a good idea and you can publish to the world, and the way it goes through the Internet, by definition, means if one person likes it, the next person will know about it, that offers tremendous hope.
But what about Friday Night Lights, a fantastic show—why did that have such a small audience?
I’m an enormous fan. They made five years of it, thank God, because I watched every one. And I never watched it on broadcast television, or when it was in its last year on DirecTV. I watched it once it was over, and in four months, I’d seen 76 episodes. That’s à la carte. I wanted it, I paid for it, I’m happy. I consider that a great story, Friday Night Lights.
Having been the creator in some ways of the form that’s on HBO now, what do you think the future of HBO is?
Again, I don’t think it will get destroyed by definition, but once there’s competition, if they don’t innovate, they are potentially dead ducks.
What would you do if you were the head of Netflix right now?
No, no, I don’t do that.
Is TV good now because there’s so much competition, so many forces bumping up against a closed system?
No, because the forces haven’t really begun yet—they’re too embryonic, it’s too much at the beginning. I just think the bread and butter of good television has for so long been better than any other media. Maybe the most consistent—well, I shouldn’t say most, but I’d say most, so screw it—the most consistently great program in history is The Simpsons. When you think it is more than 500 episodes, and you look at the quality over twenty years, and it is that good every year, that’s a miracle. It’s another kind of miracle. It’s a wonderment.
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foreign policy Sept. 12, 2018
Pompeo: Saudis Are Definitely Trying to Commit Fewer Mass Murders in Yemen
By Eric Levitz@EricLevitz
All we are saying is give more war a chance. Photo: Bandar Algaloud/Saudi Kingdom Council via Getty Images
For the past three years, the U.S. government has been helping Saudi Arabia wage a war against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The U.S. has done this even though:
• The United States has no compelling interest in preventing the Houthis — who are enemies of Al Qaeda — from governing the Middle East’s poorest country, and Congress never approved American involvement in the conflict.
• Aiding the Saudi campaign in Yemen has made the U.S. complicit in war crimes that have claimed the lives of thousands of civilians, and put millions at the risk of starvation — a state of affairs that the European Union has deemed the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world.”
• Our commitment to defeating the Houthis has (reportedly) led the United States to make common cause with Al Qaeda militants in Yemen — which is to say, in a civil war between an Islamist group that is committed to killing civilians in the West, and another group that is not, the U.S. is intervening on behalf of the former.
• The Saudis dropped a U.S. missile on a school bus carrying 40 Yemeni children last month — and subsequently declared this strike legitimate, as intelligence suggested some Houthi rebels were also killed in the bombing.
• Allowing a totalitarian monarchy to kill thousands of civilians with bombs that are labeled “made in the USA” is a pretty good strategy for increasing the number of people in the Middle East who would like to commit terrorist attacks against the United States.
For these reasons and others, a bipartisan coalition in Congress has called on the Trump administration to withdraw its support for the Saudi campaign (which could scarcely exist without our government’s decision to supply Riyadh with planes, bombs, intelligence, and midair refueling services). Those legislators successfully inserted a provision into this year’s defense spending bill that would have barred the U.S. from refueling Saudi jets conducting bombing campaigns in Yemen — unless Secretary of State Mike Pompeo certified by September 12 that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were taking meaningful steps to reduce civilian casualties, increase humanitarian aid, and negotiate a resolution to the conflict in Yemen.
On Wednesday, Pompeo did just that — assuring Congress that the Saudis were really, truly committed to trying their very best to massacre somewhat fewer children in Yemen. Defense Secretary James Mattis endorsed Pompeo’s conclusion, saying, “The Saudi-led coalition’s commitment is reflected in their support for these U.N.-led efforts … Alongside the Department of State we are actively engaged with Mr. Martin Griffiths, the U.N. special envoy, to achieve a negotiated end to this fighting.”
The United Nations director of Human Rights Watch, Louis Charbonneau, called the U.S. certification “ridiculous” in an interview with NBC News. “There is no indication that the coalition has been really trying to improve things. Citizens continue to be taking the brunt of the attacks; civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, continue to be hit.”
In unrelated news (that in no way calls into question the Trump administration’s commitment to minimizing atrocities in the Middle East), White House national security adviser John Bolton threatened Monday to sanction the International Criminal Court if it pursued an investigation into alleged American war crimes in Afghanistan.
Pompeo: Saudis Are Really Trying to Murder Fewer Yemeni Kids
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Managing Inequality: Northern Racial Liberalism in Interwar Detroit
Karen R. Miller
10.18574/nyu/9781479880096.001.0001
History, Economic History
In the wake of the Civil War, many white northern leaders supported race-neutral laws and anti-discrimination statutes. These positions helped amplify the distinctions they drew between their ... More
In the wake of the Civil War, many white northern leaders supported race-neutral laws and anti-discrimination statutes. These positions helped amplify the distinctions they drew between their political economic system, which they saw as forward-thinking in its promotion of free market capitalism, and the now vanquished southern system, which had been built on slavery. But this interest in legal race neutrality should not be mistaken for an effort to integrate northern African Americans into the state or society on an equal footing with whites. During the Great Migration, which brought tens of thousands of African Americans into Northern cities after World War I, white northern leaders faced new challenges from both white and African American activists and were pushed to manage race relations in a more formalized and proactive manner. The result was northern racial liberalism: the idea that all Americans, regardless of race, should be politically equal, but that the state cannot and indeed should not enforce racial equality by interfering with existing social or economic relations. This book examines the formulation, uses, and growing political importance of northern racial liberalism in Detroit between the two World Wars. It argues that racial inequality was built into the liberal state at its inception, rather than produced by antagonists of liberalism. The book shows that our current racial system—where race-neutral language coincides with extreme racial inequalities that appear natural rather than political—has a history that is deeply embedded in contemporary governmental systems and political economies.Less
Managing Inequality : Northern Racial Liberalism in Interwar Detroit
Published in print: 2014-12-26
In the wake of the Civil War, many white northern leaders supported race-neutral laws and anti-discrimination statutes. These positions helped amplify the distinctions they drew between their political economic system, which they saw as forward-thinking in its promotion of free market capitalism, and the now vanquished southern system, which had been built on slavery. But this interest in legal race neutrality should not be mistaken for an effort to integrate northern African Americans into the state or society on an equal footing with whites. During the Great Migration, which brought tens of thousands of African Americans into Northern cities after World War I, white northern leaders faced new challenges from both white and African American activists and were pushed to manage race relations in a more formalized and proactive manner. The result was northern racial liberalism: the idea that all Americans, regardless of race, should be politically equal, but that the state cannot and indeed should not enforce racial equality by interfering with existing social or economic relations. This book examines the formulation, uses, and growing political importance of northern racial liberalism in Detroit between the two World Wars. It argues that racial inequality was built into the liberal state at its inception, rather than produced by antagonists of liberalism. The book shows that our current racial system—where race-neutral language coincides with extreme racial inequalities that appear natural rather than political—has a history that is deeply embedded in contemporary governmental systems and political economies.
Keywords: race-neutral laws, anti-discrimination statutes, race neutrality, Great Migration, African Americans, race relations, racial liberalism, racial inequality
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Category: Fliers and Handouts
Forming Our Faculty Union at Oregon Tech
This handout was made available after Oregon Tech AAUP’s certification on June 27th, 2018. It briefly describes the next steps for our faculty as we move forward with the unionization process. Click here to view!
Posted on September 27, 2018 by locke456Posted in Fliers and HandoutsLeave a comment
Faculty Organizing 101
This document was provided at the faculty forum sessions on February 27, 2018.
This document is intended to serve as a basic primer on faculty unionization and to provide some context around our effort to form a faculty union at Oregon Tech. The specific priorities of our union will be determined collaboratively by all Oregon Tech faculty so cannot yet be set to paper. However, we do hope this 101 provides a vision of what faculty have won through unionization and begins to suggest the possibilities of what we can accomplish together.
Faculty unions are comprised of teaching and research faculty who have come together to advocate for their shared interests and advance their common goals. Unions amplify the voice of faculty within their universities toward the end of improving working conditions, better serving students and the research mission of the university, and generally refocusing the priorities of the university. Unionized faculty have the right to bargain a binding contract that protects and expands rights, benefits, and other terms of employment.
FACULTY UNIONIZATION
Of the seven public universities in Oregon, five already have faculty unions. The faculty at Oregon State University are currently building their union. Faculty union sites are linked below:
Eastern Oregon University (EOU)
Oregon State University (OSU)
Portland State University (PSU)
Southern Oregon University (SOU)
Western Oregon University (WOU)
University of Oregon (UO)
Comparator Universities with Faculty Unions
Boise State University University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth
Central Connecticut State University University of Michigan-Dearborn
Florida Gulf Coast University University of Wisconsin-Stout
Keene State College Western Oregon University
Minnesota State University Moorhead Winona State University
SUNY at Brockport Worcester State University
University of Maine-Farmington Youngstown State University
The list of comparator institutions is taken from the May 2017 Faculty Compensation Study.
What Faculty Unions Have Won
Promotion & Tenure: Many faculty union contracts, including those of the United Academics of the University of Oregon (AAUP-AFT) and Central Connecticut State University-AAUP, include strong protections around promotion and tenure processes. These contracts define timelines and the parties responsible for developing and evaluating criteria, as well as setting up a process for appealing decisions.
Shared Governance: The contract for the United Academics of the University of Oregon (AAUP-AFT) requires that a number of department/unit level policies be made in consultation with faculty. This contract further stipulates that all “duly adopted” policies – such as those approved by the Faculty Senate, as well as department/unit level policies – can be enforced through their union’s grievance process.
Due Process: Central Connecticut State University-AAUP’s contract outlines a clear and fair process for investigating and responding to potential disciplinary issues. It describes the university’s burden of proof and outlines a procedure for reviewing these decisions. Similarly, Portland State University-AAUP’s contract defines strong protections for members facing investigations and disciplinary procedures.
Intellectual Property: United Academics of the University of Alaska (AAUP-AFT) have contract language that thoroughly defines intellectual property, work, and inventions; and specifically mandates the division of all rights and proceeds.
Family Friendly Policies: Rutgers University AAUP-AFT’s contract guarantees paid leave for parents – regardless of gender – for newborn or adopted children, and up to six weeks of paid leave for recuperation for birth mothers.
Employment Stability and Security: Faculty unions at the University of Michigan (AFT), Wayne State University (AAUP-AFT), and University of Oregon (AAUP-AFT) all guarantee access to multi-year contracts for their non-tenured members. Faculty unions have also successfully negotiated around issues such as salary compression and workload.
BUILDING OUR UNION
The Card Check Process
The Oregon Employment Relations Board (ERB) certifies new unions through a legal process called “card check.” Card check requires that we gather signatures from a majority of all faculty indicating their desire to be represented by our union. In practice, this means that we will print and individually distribute authorization cards to faculty members. This face-to-face process ensures that everyone who signs a card authorizing our union has a chance to talk to a colleague and address any outstanding questions. Once we’ve completed the card check process, we will submit signed cards as a petition for certification. The ERB will compare our list of signers against the list of faculty provided by Oregon Tech. If the employer raises challenges to our petition, the ERB will administer a hearing process where any questions about which positions should be included in union representation will be resolved. The Oregon Tech administration will not know who signed authorization cards; they will only know the number of signers. Once our union is certified, we will move into the process of negotiating our first contract and continuing to build strength within our union.
The Bargaining Process
The collective bargaining process begins by forming a bargaining team that is representative of the faculty at Oregon Tech. The bargaining team will use membership surveys, one-on-one conversations, and group meetings to establish bargaining priorities. Once the team has been trained in the bargaining process and received direction from the membership, the bargaining team will begin the process of negotiating with the university administration. During the bargaining process, the administration and union teams will exchange proposals that address the interests of university faculty. Once the two teams reach an agreement, this agreement is submitted to the membership for a ratification vote. After ratification, members and leaders will continue to work on implementing and enforcing the terms of the agreement. Subsequent contracts will work to improve upon the structures built in the first contract and address any implementation issues.
Internal Union Structure
We are already beginning to construct the scaffolding of a strong internal structure by having a broad based, representative group of faculty leading the organizing process. Once our union is certified, we will build on these structures by electing a leadership team, forming committees and caucuses, and drafting constitution and bylaws that ensure democratic structures and decision-making within our union. This is typically accomplished in faculty unions by having a representative body with members from each academic unit and specific representation for different faculty ranks on the leadership team.
Dues will be set by the membership of our union based on our best judgement of the financial resources necessary to carry out the work we want to accomplish. Our union will require resources to negotiate contracts, enforce the terms of our contracts, hold membership meetings, and provide the basic infrastructure for our union to succeed. Our dues will also cover the cost of affiliation with AAUP and AAUP-Oregon. These dues help cover the cost of national and statewide efforts to improve higher education and for the ongoing support of the state and national organizations.
Dues are most frequently assessed as as a percentage of salary. While rates vary by institution, most faculty unions set a range of 1-1.5% of gross salary. No one will pay dues until the first contract has been successfully ratified. To get a sense of the likely range of dues, here are the rates from faculty unions within Oregon:
Portland State University (AAUP) 1.068%
University of Oregon (AAUP-AFT) 1.1%
Eastern Oregon University (AFT) 1.4%
Western Oregon University (AFT) 1.28%
Southern Oregon University (Independent) $125/year
AAUP & AAUP-OREGON
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP)
Founded in 1915, the AAUP’s purpose is to advance academic freedom and shared governance, to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education, and to ensure higher education’s contributions to the common good. The AAUP is made up of more than 50,000 members, exclusively in higher education. The AAUP structure consists of both faculty unions and a number of professional associations called advocacy chapters. At the national level, AAUP elects an executive committee and a council, with all of these positions filled by university faculty.
Oregon State Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-Oregon)
AAUP-Oregon is an organization of members from the faculty unions of Portland State University and the University of Oregon, the Graduate Employees Union at Portland State University, and advocacy chapters from a number of private universities throughout the state. AAUP-Oregon works to coordinate activity in the state and engage in political advocacy for higher education through their state legislative committee and lobbying efforts. AAUP-Oregon also provides direct support to locals as they organize, bargain, and advocate on behalf of their members.
Posted on February 27, 2018 by mfrye15Posted in Fliers and Handouts
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The Child Portraits of Janet Cumbrae Stewart
Posted on September 25, 2017 by Arizona
(Last Updated On March 5, 2018)
Janet Agnes Cumbrae Stewart was born on 23 December 1883 at Brighton, Victoria, she was the youngest of ten children born to Francis Edward Stewart and Agnes Stewart. The artist was home schooled through her childhood and from the age of fifteen received private art instruction, with several different tutors, before enrolling with the National Gallery School in 1901. While enrolled there she received many awards, which in turn gave her recognition and thus began receiving painting commissions. Sometime between 1901 and 1906 the illustrator started to use the surname of Cumbrae Stewart. She graduated art school in 1907 and during the same year she exhibited at the Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work, which was her first group exhibition. During the early part of her career she created paintings to sell in art exhibitions and took commissions for private portraiture work. One exception was when she, along with three other artists, decorated the children’s wards of the Homeopathic Hospital, in Melbourne; one such image is displayed below.
Janet Cumbrae Stewart – Homeopathic Hospital Panel (1910)
At that time Cumbrae Stewart was mostly working with watercolour or oil paints and her subjects were varied. In 1909 the artist started contributing paintings to exhibitions at the Victorian Artists’ Society, which continued until 1919. Her first solo exhibition was held, in 1911, at Coles Book Arcade and was hugely successful providing her with more popularity and work. Due to her success she was able to become a council member of the Victorian Arts Society from 1914 to 1916 and then became a full member of the Australian Artists’ Association from 1916 to 1922; an honour usually reserved for elite male artists.
Janet Cumbrae Stewart – Girl in a Ballet Dress (1923)
Janet Cumbrae Stewart – Mary Quinlan, aged 5 (1919)
Janet Cumbrae Stewart – Portrait of a Young Girl (Date Unknown)
In 1922 Cumbrae Stewart moved to London with her sister Beatrice. The artist had a solo exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, in 1923, which lead to her inclusion in an exhibition of Australian artists held at the Royal Academy of Art. She was also accepted in general exhibitions at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Paris Salon. During the period between 1922 and 1939 the illustrator’s work was exhibited at many of the prominent galleries in England and France. So well received were these artworks that she got an Honourable Mention for a drawing entered in the Salon des Artistes Français. Concurrently to these exhibitions she was also sending works back to Australia. Most of these drawings were exhibited at the Anthenaeum Gallery, with other minor exhibitions occurring at Hordern’s Gallery and the South Australian Society of Arts.
Janet Cumbrae Stewart – Child by the Fire (Date Unknown)
Janet Cumbrae Stewart – Her First Dress (Date Unknown)
Janet Cumbrae Stewart – Young Girl Washing (Date Unknown)
At some point after her arrival in London and 1930 her sister left and Cumbrae Stewart met Argemore Farington Bellairs, also known as Bill Bellairs, who went on to become the artist’s publicist, business manager and companion. They travelled around Europe, living in various areas, before travelling back to Melbourne in 1939. What was to be a short visit became permanent due to the outbreak of World War II. Not much is written about the artist’s life after 1940, though it is known that she was still completing private portraiture work in addition to exhibiting other works. However as she was now 57 years old, her output would have been greatly reduced. Janet Cumbrae Stewart died on the 8th of September 1960.
Janet Cumbrae Stewart – Pink Bonnet (Date Unknown)
Janet Cumbrae Stewart – Portrait of a Young Girl in a Hat (Date Unknown)
Janet Cumbrae Stewart – The Blue Bathroom (Date Unknown)
The artist was regarded as a leading artist both in the field of pastel drawings and in figure paintings, though her subjects were much more varied and this can be seen in the website galleries of the Australian Art Sales Digest. Studies of landscapes, still-lifes and portraits are all noticeable. However the most significant part of her collection was dedicated to studies of the female nude, both adults and children, in pastel. The anatomical aspect of these drawings are faultless with the skin tones soft and exact, which would likely be the main reason for her fame. When creating these images she never used photography and always worked from life. This article from The Sun newspaper describes in detail how she worked with her child models. The largest, freely available, article about Cumbrae Stewart that I have found can be found within the Trove Archive.
This entry was posted in Cumbrae Stewart, Janet, Painting and tagged Nude, Portrait by Arizona. Bookmark the permalink.
1 thought on “The Child Portraits of Janet Cumbrae Stewart”
Christian on November 23, 2017 at 3:21 pm said:
More images by that artist have just now been posted in the Childhood in Art website: https://www.childhoodinart.org/person.php?name=Janet-Agnes-Cumbrae-Stewart
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Mr Latchezar TOSHEV
National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria
BG - 1169 - Sofia
Working language: English
In the political groups
Vice-Chairperson: Group of the European People's Party from 28/09/2009 to 29/09/2013
In the Assembly
from 28/09/2009 to 29/09/2013 Representative-Bulgaria
from 24/01/1994 to 23/06/1997 Substitute-Bulgaria
from 03/02/1992 to 04/05/1992 Special Guest-Bulgaria
In the committee(s) and sub-committee(s)
Full Member: Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy (from 23/01/2012 to 29/09/2013)
Full Member: Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media (from 23/01/2012 to 29/09/2013)
Member: (Former) Political Affairs Committee / Committee on General Affairs (from 28/09/2009 to 23/01/2012)
Member: (Former) Committee on Culture, Science and Education (from 28/09/2009 to 23/01/2012)
Full Member: Sub-Committee on Culture, Diversity and Heritage (from 24/01/2013 to 29/09/2013)
Full Member: Sub-Committee on the Middle East and the Arab World (from 24/01/2013 to 29/09/2013)
Alternate of Mr Stanislav IVANOV (Member): (Former) Committee on the Environment, Agriculture and Local and Regional Affairs (from 28/09/2009 to 23/01/2012)
Alternate of Mr Kirtcho DIMITROV (Member): (Former) Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men (from 28/09/2009 to 23/01/2012)
Reports and committee opinions
06/06/2011 | Doc. 12631 | Report Living together in 21st-century Europe: follow-up to the report of the Group of Eminent Persons of the Council of Europe 11/04/2011 | Doc. 12576 | Committee Opinion The religious dimension of intercultural dialogue 06/08/2010 | Doc. 12354 | Report Military waste and the environment 20/10/2004 | Doc. 10349 | Report Parliamentary contribution to the implementation of the Stability Pact in South-East Europe 08/04/2004 | Doc. 10131 | Report Transboundary water basins in Europe
Motions, Written Declarations, Questions
11/10/2013 | Doc. 13259 | Written declaration The right to the family as the fundamental unit of society 26/09/2013 | Doc. 13310 | Written question Access to the so called “Trophy” archives of the Russian Federation 14/08/2013 | Doc. 13179 | Written declaration Direct election by citizens cannot be overturned by the authorities 06/08/2013 | Doc. 13288 | Motion for a resolution Massive eavesdropping in Europe 04/07/2013 | Doc. 13276 | Motion for a resolution Gender equality in science, research and technology
Votes on adopted texts
25/06/2013 | Doc. 13231, vote on the draft text for resolution The situation in the Middle East 25/06/2013 | Doc. 13229, vote on the draft text for resolution Request for the opening of a monitoring procedure in respect of Hungary 25/06/2013 | Doc. 13230, vote on the draft text for resolution Evaluation of the partnership for democracy in respect of the Parliament of Morocco 26/04/2013 | Doc. 13154, vote on the draft text for opinion Draft Protocol No. 15 amending the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 25/04/2013 | Doc. 13193, vote on the draft text for resolution Challenge on procedural grounds of the still unratified credentials of Mr Andriy Shevchenko (Ukraine, EPP/CD)
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Popscure
Monthly Mixes
Film/TV Lifestyle Literature February 25, 2020 March 24, 2020
Remembering Katherine Johnson and Others In Shetterly’s Hidden Figures
This week we lost Katherine Johnson, the NASA mathematician who was an integral part of the United States race to space. Her calculations were so spot-on that astronaut John Glenn requested she double-check behind the NASA computers to make sure all the math was correct. In her 35-year career, she broke down racial and social barriers as she was one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist. After receiving both a Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal, Johnson lived a long hardy life to the age of 101.
With her contributions so carefully immortalized in the book Hidden Figures, we figured (no pun intended) that it would only make sense if we shared a piece that our editor-in-chief Shannon Jay wrote back in 2016 when the book’s author Margot Lee Shetterly came to speak at Old Dominion University in conjunction with the release of the Oscar-nominated film based on her book. For anyone who has not read the book or seen the film, we can’t recommend it enough and urge you to seek it out.
“We are the breath of our ancestors” rang the harmonized voices of Old Dominion’s choir, an appropriate sentiment for the events unfolding the night of January 11th.
The song “We Are”, by acclaimed all female, all African-American acapella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, encompassed the themes explored in the university’s 33rd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Observance.
The main event was speaker Margot Lee Shetterly — if you don’t recognize the Hampton, VA native by name, the title of her first novel, Hidden Figures might ring a bell. The best-seller was turned into a feature-length film and hit theaters in a big way, beating out Star Wars for the #1 spot at the box office in its first week.
The story follows four women, two of which received honorary degrees from ODU. During the years of 1943 through 1968, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan and Christine Darden worked with other black female mathematicians at NASA Langley in a segregated room. With only pen and paper, these women computed through World War II and went on to calculate the trajectories that would orbit John Glenn around Earth and send Neil Armstrong to the moon.
Coming from no farther than West Virginia, these four extraordinary women are woven in the fabric of our state’s history. “This is a celebration of this place and its people,” Shetterly said. “We have always known this region is a place of fascinating and often complicated history, but now the world knows it, too.”
During a time when segregation was still heavily prevalent and women couldn’t even get a credit card in their own name, “the women of Hidden Figures upend [what it means to] be female, to be black, to be a scientist, and to be American,” Shetterly said.
Mary Jackson had to apply for special permission at Hampton High School to take advanced math classes, and went on to become presumably the country’s first black female aerospace engineer. Katherine Johnson was born in 1918, a birth year where black baby girls faced just a 2% chance of graduating high school. She calculated the orbital space flight that allowed John Glenn to achieve “American domination of the heavens” during the Space Race. Christine Darden, from a segregated grade school with second hand textbooks and no science lab, wrote the computer program that set the industry standard for sonic boom minimization, and became NASA’s leading expert on the topic.
While the night focused on King’s ideals to improve the lives of African-Americans, and how those same values are applied to women, Shetterly wanted to make clear these women “wanted to be what John Glenn says in the movie — the ‘smart one,’ [just] the right person for the job.” She emphasized that the women of the Hidden Figures story needs to be told “not just because they are black or because they are women, but because they too are part of our great American epic.”
Image courtesy of NASA
In the shadows instead of out on the streets, Shetterly said, these women were “marching not with their feet, but with their mathematical talent” for racial and gender equality. There’s an added layer of nobility with this particular group’s civil rights work, having faced dehumanizing segregation at work daily. However, Shetterly said, “they wore their professional clothes like armor, [and] they wielded their mathematical talent like a weapon, warding off the presumption of inferiority because they were black or female.”
Shetterly’s father worked alongside these women at NASA, and the author only heard their story when her husband, Aran Shetterly, inquired about her father’s time there. That was 6 years ago, and ever since Margot Lee Shetterly has interviewed the women and spent time with their families to uncover the untold story. Their amazing achievements inspired her to found The Human Computer Project, which works to archive all the stories of African-American women who worked as computer scientists and mathematicians at the height of NASA that history has skimmed past.
The Human Computer Project aims to collect and highlight the contributions of women to NASA and NACA throughout the years.
The women of “Hidden Figures” felt the weight of the responsibilities the ODU choir hummed and Sweet Honey in the Rock chanted. “They knew,” Shetterly said, “that every action they took over the course of their long careers would have implications for the next generation of people who looked like them.” Along with being great at their job, Shetterly said, these women and their colleagues were out to prove “that excellence has neither color nor gender.”
When an audience member asked if the film would have a sequel, Shetterly responded that it won’t be a direct second act, but she’s working on another book, and hopes for a long career in telling stories untold.
From Shannon Jay: “Johnson was there that day, and even then I realized how special it was to share a room with history – a woman whose achievements were monumental and so important not only to black women, but to all of America. Now, with her passing, it’s a moment I’ll hold even more dear.“
Katherine Johnson 8/26/1918 – 2/24/2020
Posted in Film/TV Lifestyle Literature and Tagged hampton hidden figures katherine johnson margot lee shetterly naca nasa old dominion university shannon jay space
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Moulin Rouge! May Be on Pause, But Danny Burstein’s Still Wowing the Crowd
Living near the theater district during the Broadway shutdown, photographer and performer Matthew Stocke has been haunted walking past the empty theater palaces sitting in repose, waiting for the lights and stars to return. In this new Broadway.com photo feature, he reunites members of the theater community with their Broadway home Away From Home.
DANNY BURSTEIN
In the resplendent world of Broadway’s Moulin Rouge!, Danny Burstein plays the host with the most, Harold Zidler. With six Tony nominations under his belt, he garnered this year’s Drama League Distinguished Performance Award for his spectacular portrayal of the nightclub’s commanding hype man. In the time since Broadway was shut down in March, Burstein has faced his own harrowing battle with COVID-19 and has been dedicating his time to taking care of his wife, fellow Broadway luminary Rebecca Luker, who was diagnosed with ALS last year. Though he may not be welcoming audiences to Moulin Rouge! eight times a week, he is still a beacon that inspires others to celebrate truth, beauty, freedom and love—even and especially in little ways. Here, he shares what he has learned during this unprecedented time and why being a member of the Broadway community never loses its luster.
“It’s humbling when you feel like you could die. [Battling COVID-19] put a lot of things in perspective: Friendship. Love. Kindness. Decency. Doing the right thing. Letting go of grudges. It makes you refocus. I wasn’t thinking about regrets; I was thinking about all of the love that I was lucky enough to live with and through: my children, my friends, my wife, of course…Being there for my wife has been the most emotionally challenging part of things. The change in her hands has been one of the toughest things, just emotionally for me. We live in hope that one of these trial medications will all of a sudden start to work. We fought very hard to get one funded, and then it was delayed and hopefully will be starting in mid-September. That could be delayed again. We just never know. We keep fighting and hoping that the next step for her will be better… I’m very lucky to be surrounded by so many friends. People just show up or send dinner. Somebody sent us a quilt that they had sewn together. It’s those unexpected things… I love every single part of the work. I love coming in, high-fiving the doorman and the stage hands and visiting my cast members and the stage management team before the show. In my 18 Broadway shows, no part of it has ever gotten dull for me. It’s still as exciting as it was the first day I walked on a Broadway stage… [The theater] feels like Camelot: at one point, there’s all this greatness that lived in that building, and then everything was silent. It’s eerie and heartbreaking. I know it can happen again and will happen again.”
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Target remains the largest adopter of on-site corporate solar power
The company added 43 MW last year, placing it well ahead of Walmart and Prologis. Overall installations at 4,000 companies tracked by SEIA grew slightly to 326 MW last year.
April 19, 2018 Christian Roselund
Image: Target
There are no major surprises in the 6th edition of Solar Means Business, Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA) annual report on corporate adoption at the top U.S. companies. The top three companies for cumulative on-site solar installations remained the same, with Target leading Walmart and real estate company Prologis.
However, within these three the differences are stark. Target added 43 MW of solar to its facilities last year, and has now installed solar on 436 of its roughly 1,800 buildings, with a combined capacity of 203.5 MW. Meanwhile, progress at Walmart was barely noticeable, while Prologis added a respectable 12 MW, to bring it to 120 MW.
But the metric of capacity added does not tell the whole story. Swedish retailer IKEA has fewer U.S. facilities to put solar on than either Microsoft or Target, but by the end of 2017 had installed PV systems on 90% of them. None of the other 4,000 companies tracked by Solar Means Business have even reached 40%, although GGP, Johnson & Johnson and General Motors have put solar at more than 30% of their facilities.
Some companies are moving more quickly than others. Real estate investment trust GGP is new to the top rankings; however in 2017 the company installed more than 19 MW of solar, and now has solar on nearly 40% of the properties it owns – the second-highest portion after IKEA.
It is important to note that Solar Means Business tracks only on-site solar, and the large majority of this is rooftop installations. It does not track the power purchase agreements with off-site solar and wind projects that have been extremely popular with technology giants including Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, which recently signed power supply contracts for 315 MW of solar in Virginia to power its data centers.
Some of these firms are also installing solar at their facilities, and in 2017 Apple and Facebook added the 4th and 5th largest volume of solar of the 4,000 companies tracked by Solar Means Business.
Overall, while these 4,000 large and prominent companies are important social indicators, they are becoming a smaller portion of the overall commercial and industrial (C&I) solar landscape. In 2017 these companies collectively installed over 300 MW of solar, however the total “nonresidential” market in the United States, including community solar and solar at schools, reached more than 2 GW for the first time.
Christian Roselund
Christian Roselund served as US editor at pv magazine from 2014 to 2019. Prior to this he covered global solar policy, markets and technology for Solar Server, and has written about renewable energy for CleanTechnica, German Energy Transition, Truthout, The Guardian (UK), and IEEE Spectrum.
More articles from Christian Roselund
I don’t understand how all these businesses – Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc – don’t have solar on top of their big warehouse stores. But, I was in Lowe’s the other day buying LED lights and from what I could tell they are still using T-8 fluorescent tubes as their main light. So, they may sell them, but they don’t use them.
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WATCH: Trump releases farewell address
January 19, 2021 3:18 pm Associated Press
In his farewell address, President Donald Trump says he will pray for the success of the next…
WGEM-TV, the dominant NBC affiliate in Quincy, Illinois, has an opportunity for an On-Air Multimedia…
INTERACTIVE: Fact-checking claims around the U.S. election
The Associated Press has launched an interactive tool to show which claims made about the 2020 U.S. election are untrue.…
More Guard members removed from inauguration
Ten additional U.S. Army National Guard members are being removed from the security mission for the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden, according…
President Donald Trump is expected to spend his last full day in office issuing a flurry of pardons and bidding farewell to the American public from…
January 19, 2021 10:04 am Associated Press
Two U.S. Army National Guard members are being removed from the security mission to secure Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration.…
January 18, 2021 2:58 pm Quincy Media
WXOW, the ABC affiliate in La Crosse, Wisconsin, is looking for a bright, energetic anchor for our 2 ½ hour morning show,…
WQOW-TV in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is looking for an ambitious and creative news producer ready to mold our morning…
WBNG-TV in Binghamton, New York, is looking for a versatile player
to join our multi-platform newsroom and award-winning…
The National Rifle Association says the nation’s most powerful gun-rights organization has filed for bankruptcy and will seek to incorporate the…
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Lynn Jenkins & John Conyers Jr.
Compare the voting records of Lynn Jenkins and John Conyers Jr. in 2017-18.
Lynn Jenkins
Represented Kansas's 2nd Congressional District. This was her 5th term in the House.
John Conyers Jr.
Represented Michigan's 13th Congressional District. This was his 27th term in the House.
Lynn Jenkins and John Conyers Jr. are from different parties and disagreed on 81 percent of votes in the 115th Congress (2017-18).
But they didn't always disagree. Out of 516 votes in the 115th Congress, they agreed on 125 votes, including 6 major votes.
Oct. 26, 2017 — Establishing the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2018 and setting forth the appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2019 through 2027
Nov. 13, 2017 — Federal Acquisition Savings Act of 2017
Nov. 13, 2017 — Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives with respect to United States policy towards Yemen, and for other purposes
Sept. 13, 2017 — Meadows of North Carolina Amendment No. 172
Sept. 13, 2017 — Lewis of Minnesota Amendment No. 167
Sept. 12, 2017 — Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site Boundary Modification Act
Sept. 7, 2017 — Grothman of Wisconsin Part B of Amendment No. 99
Sept. 7, 2017 — Austin Scott of Georgia Part B Amendment No. 92
Sept. 7, 2017 — Rothfus of Pennsylvania Part B Amendment No. 91
Sept. 6, 2017 — Brooks of Alabama Part B Amendment No. 33
Sept. 6, 2017 — McClintock of California Part B Amendment No. 25
Sept. 6, 2017 — Carter of Georgia Part B Amendment No. 17
Sept. 5, 2017 — To direct the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow certain issuers to be exempt from registration requirements, and for other purposes
Sept. 5, 2017 — Financial Stability Oversight Council Insurance Member Continuity Act
July 26, 2017 — Griffith of Virginia Amendment No. 5
July 26, 2017 — Perry of Pennsylvania Amendment No. 4
July 24, 2017 — Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act
July 19, 2017 — Promoting Cross-Border Energy Infrastructure Act
June 23, 2017 — Krishnamoorthi of Illinois Amendment No. 4
June 20, 2017 — Reducing Unnecessary Barriers for Relative Foster Parents Act
June 12, 2017 — J. Bennett Johnston Waterway Hydropower Extension Act
June 12, 2017 — To extend a project of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission involving the Cannonsville Dam
June 6, 2017 — Condemning in the strongest terms the terrorist attacks in Manchester, United Kingdom, on May 22, 2017, expressing heartfelt condolences, and reaffirming unwavering support for the special relationship between our peoples and nations in the wake of these attacks
May 19, 2017 — Probation Officer Protection Act of 2017
May 16, 2017 — Strengthening State and Local Cyber Crime Fighting Act of 2017
March 22, 2017 — Competitive Health Insurance Reform Act of 2017
March 17, 2017 — Hanabusa of Hawaii Part B Amendment No. 11
Feb. 28, 2017 — DeSaulnier of California Amendment No. 2
Feb. 27, 2017 — To facilitate the addition of park administration at the Coltsville National Historical Park, and for other purposes
Feb. 6, 2017 — Black Hills National Cemetery Boundary Expansion Act
Feb. 6, 2017 — Bolts Ditch Access and Use Act
Jan. 11, 2017 — Tested Ability to Leverage Exceptional National Talent Act
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Carolyn B. Maloney & Jerrold Nadler
Compare the voting records of Carolyn B. Maloney and Jerrold Nadler in 2017-18.
Carolyn B. Maloney
Represented New York's 12th Congressional District. This was her 13th term in the House.
Jerrold Nadler
Represented New York's 10th Congressional District. This was his 14th term in the House.
Carolyn B. Maloney and Jerrold Nadler are from the same party and agreed on 96 percent of votes in the 115th Congress (2017-18).
103rd Congress (1993-94)
Disagree: 4%
But they didn't always agree. Out of 1129 votes in the 115th Congress, they disagreed on 47 votes, including 3 major votes.
Sept. 26, 2018 — Empowering Financial Institutions to Fight Human Trafficking Act
July 18, 2018 — McMorris Rodgers of Washington Amendment No. 46
June 28, 2018 — Courtney of Connecticut Amendment No. 29
June 27, 2018 — Poe of Texas Part A Amendment No. 20
April 26, 2018 — Lipinski of Illinois Part A Amendment No. 78
March 15, 2018 — Financial Institutions Examination Fairness and Reform Act
July 27, 2017 — Nadler of New York Part B Amendment No. 38
July 26, 2017 — Takano of California Amendment No. 7
May 22, 2017 — Strengthening Children’s Safety Act of 2017
May 22, 2017 — Global Child Protection Act of 2017
April 4, 2017 — Encouraging Employee Ownership Act
Jan. 10, 2017 — Helping Angels Lead Our Startups (HALOS) Act
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Ted Poe & Adam Smith
Compare the voting records of Ted Poe and Adam Smith in 2017-18.
Ted Poe
Represented Texas's 2nd Congressional District. This was his 7th term in the House.
Represented Washington's 9th Congressional District. This was his 11th term in the House.
Ted Poe and Adam Smith are from different parties and disagreed on 74 percent of votes in the 115th Congress (2017-18).
But they didn't always disagree. Out of 1072 votes in the 115th Congress, they agreed on 282 votes, including 10 major votes.
On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Concur in the Senate Amendment to House Amendment
Dec. 20, 2018 — First Step Act of 2018
June 22, 2018 — Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment for Patients and Communities Act
Jan. 11, 2018 — Amash of Michigan Substitute Amendment No. 1
On Motion to Concur in the Senate Adt to the House Adt to the Senate Adt
Sept. 8, 2017 — Reinforcing Education Accountability in Development Act
On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Concur in the Senate Amendments
Dec. 20, 2018 — Stigler Act Amendments
Dec. 20, 2018 — Forever GI Bill Housing Payment Fulfillment Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — Community-based outpatient clinic of the Department of Veterans Affairs as the “Douglas Fournet Department of Veterans Affairs Clinic”
Dec. 20, 2018 — VA Website Accessibility Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — Codifying Useful Regulatory Definitions Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — National Integrated Drought Information System Reauthorization Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — NASA Enhanced Use Leasing Extension Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — RBIC Advisers Relief Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — Stephen Michael Gleason Congressional Gold Medal Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — Vehicular Terrorism Prevention Act of 2018
Dec. 20, 2018 — Taxpayer First Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — Veterans Small Business Enhancement Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — Victims of Child Abuse Act Reauthorization Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — Justice Against Corruption on K Street Act
Dec. 20, 2018 — Clean Up the Code Act of 2018
Dec. 20, 2018 — Waiving a requirement of clause 6(a) of rule XIII with respect to consideration of certain resolutions reported from the Committee on Rules, and providing for consideration of motions to suspend the rules
Dec. 19, 2018 — Museum and Library Services Act
Dec. 19, 2018 — Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act
Dec. 19, 2018 — To direct the Secretary of the Interior to convey certain facilities, easements, and rights-of-way to the Kennewick Irrigation District, and for other purposes
On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Concur in the Senate Amendment
Dec. 19, 2018 — National Quantum Initiative Act
Dec. 19, 2018 — Water Infrastructure Improvement Act
Dec. 19, 2018 — SECURE Technology Act
Dec. 19, 2018 — State Offices of Rural Health Reauthorization Act
Dec. 19, 2018 — BOLD Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act
Dec. 19, 2018 — Traumatic Brain Injury Program Reauthorization Act
Dec. 19, 2018 — Congenital Heart Futures Reauthorization Act of 2017
Dec. 13, 2018 — Calling on the Government of Burma to release Burmese journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo sentenced to seven years imprisonment after investigating attacks against civilians by Burma’s military and security forces, and for other purposes
Dec. 12, 2018 — Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018
Dec. 11, 2018 — Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium Land Transfer Act of 2017
Dec. 11, 2018 — PREEMIE Reauthorization Act
Dec. 11, 2018 — Improving Medicaid Programs and Opportunities for Eligible Beneficiaries Act
Dec. 10, 2018 — George W. Bush Childhood Home Study Act
Dec. 10, 2018 — Urging the Secretary of the Interior to recognize the historical significance of Roberto Clemente’s place of death near Pinones in Loiza, Puerto Rico, by adding it to the National Register of Historic Places
Nov. 29, 2018 — National Flood Insurance Program Further Extension Act
Nov. 27, 2018 — Democratic Republic of the Congo Democracy and Accountability Act of 2018
Nov. 27, 2018 — Global Fragility and Violence Reduction Act of 2018
Nov. 13, 2018 — Gulf Islands National Seashore Land Exchange Act
Nov. 13, 2018 — To rename the Oyster Bay National Wildlife Refuge as the Congressman Lester Wolff National Wildlife Refuge
Sept. 28, 2018 — Providing for the concurrence by the House in the Senate amendment to H.R. 6, with an amendment
Sept. 26, 2018 — FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018
Sept. 26, 2018 — Making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes
Sept. 26, 2018 — FDR Historic Preservation Act
Sept. 25, 2018 — Expanding Contracting Opportunities for Small Business Act of 2018
Sept. 25, 2018 — Encouraging Small Business Innovators
Sept. 13, 2018 — Making appropriations for energy and water development and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes
Sept. 13, 2018 — Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Act
Sept. 12, 2018 — To authorize early repayment of obligations to the Bureau of Reclamation within the Northport Irrigation District in the State of Nebraska
Sept. 12, 2018 — Every Kid Outdoors Act
Sept. 12, 2018 — Walnut Grove Land Exchange Act
July 26, 2018 — National Defense Authorization Act FY 2019
July 25, 2018 — VA Hospitals Establishing Leadership Performance Act
July 25, 2018 — The American Legion 100th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act
July 23, 2018 — Precision Agriculture Connectivity Act
July 23, 2018 — National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act
July 18, 2018 — Grothman of Wisconsin Amendment No. 39, as Modified
July 18, 2018 — To authorize the National Emergency Medical Services Memorial Foundation to establish a commemorative work in the District of Columbia and its environs, and for other purposes
On Motion to Instruct Conferees
July 18, 2018 — Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018
July 17, 2018 — Protecting Diplomats from Surveillance Through Consumer Devices Act
July 17, 2018 — Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018
July 10, 2018 — Options Markets Stability Act
July 10, 2018 — Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration Act
June 28, 2018 — Making appropriations for the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes
June 28, 2018 — Gallagher of Wisconsin Amendment No. 8
June 27, 2018 — National Defense Authorization Act FY 2019
June 26, 2018 — Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act
June 26, 2018 — Endangered Salmon and Fisheries Predation Prevention Act
June 26, 2018 — Prevention of Private Information Dissemination Act of 2017
June 25, 2018 — Cooperate with Law Enforcement Agencies and Watch Act of 2018
June 25, 2018 — Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act
June 19, 2018 — Stop Excessive Narcotics in our Retirement Communities Protection Act of 2018
June 13, 2018 — Improving the Federal Response to Families Impacted by Substance Use Disorder Act
June 13, 2018 — Assisting States’ Implementation of Plans of Safe Care Act
June 12, 2018 — Safe Disposal of Unused Medication Act
June 12, 2018 — Comprehensive Opioid Recovery Centers Act
June 6, 2018 — Project Safe Neighborhoods Grant Program Authorization Act of 2018
June 6, 2018 — Water Resources Development Act of 2018
June 5, 2018 — Camp Nelson Heritage National Monument Act
June 5, 2018 — Susquehanna National Heritage Area Act
June 5, 2018 — To direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a special resource study to determine the suitability and feasibility of establishing the birthplace of James Weldon Johnson in Jacksonville, Florida, as a unit of the National Park System
May 24, 2018 — National Defense Authorization Act FY 2019
May 23, 2018 — Engel of New York Amendment No. 43
May 23, 2018 — McGovern of Massachusetts Amendment No. 10
May 23, 2018 — Gabbard of Hawaii Amendment No. 3
May 17, 2018 — McClintock of California Amendment No. 3
May 15, 2018 — Expressing the sense of the United States House of Representatives that Congress and the President should empower the creation of police and community alliances designed to enhance and improve communication and collaboration between members of the law enforcment community and the public they serve
May 15, 2018 — To amend the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act of 2000 to provide additional resources to State and local prosecutors, and for other purposes
May 15, 2018 — Lieutenant Osvaldo Albarati Correctional Officer Self-Protection Act
April 27, 2018 — FAA Reauthorization Act
April 26, 2018 — Iran Human Rights and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act
April 25, 2018 — Music Modernization Act
April 24, 2018 — Innovators to Entrepreneurs Act of 2018
April 24, 2018 — Recognizing and supporting the efforts of the United Bid Committee to bring the 2026 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup competition to Canada, Mexico, and the United States
April 18, 2018 — Taxpayer First Act
April 18, 2018 — 21st Century IRS Act
April 10, 2018 — Combat Online Predators Act
April 10, 2018 — End Banking for Human Traffickers Act of 2018
March 22, 2018 — Strengthening Aviation Security Act of 2018
March 22, 2018 — Surface Transportation Security Improvement Act 2018
March 22, 2018 — Vehicular Terrorism Prevention Act of 2018
March 20, 2018 — Alleviating Stress Test Burdens to Help Investors Act
March 14, 2018 — Student, Teachers, and Officers Preventing School Violence Act of 2018
March 13, 2018 — Endangered Fish Recovery Programs Extension Act of 2017
March 5, 2018 — To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 99 Macombs Place in New York, New York, as the “Tuskegee Airman Post Office Building”
March 5, 2018 — To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 13683 James Madison Highway in Palmyra, Virginia, as the “U.S. Navy Seaman Dakota Kyle Rigsby Post Office”
Feb. 14, 2018 — Calling on the Department of Defense, other elements of the Federal Government, and foreign governments to intensify efforts to investigate, recover, and identify all missing and unaccounted-for personnel of the United States
Feb. 14, 2018 — Hamas Human Shields Prevention Act
Feb. 13, 2018 — To extend the Generalized System of Preferences and to make technical changes to the competitive need limitations provision of the program
Feb. 13, 2018 — Lexington VA Health Care System
Feb. 7, 2018 — Ukraine Cybersecurity Cooperation Act of 2017
Feb. 7, 2018 — War Crimes Rewards Expansion Act
Feb. 5, 2018 — Strengthening Protections for Social Security Beneficiaries Act of 2018
Jan. 30, 2018 — Financial Institution Living Will Improvement Act
Jan. 29, 2018 — To establish requirements for use of a driver’s license or personal identification card by certain financial institutions for opening an account or obtaining a financial product or service, and for other purposes
Jan. 29, 2018 — Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act
On Motion to Fix the Convening Time
On Motion to Table
Jan. 19, 2018 — Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, of high misdemeanors
Jan. 18, 2018 — Global Health Innovation Act of 2017
Jan. 11, 2018 — Counter Terrorist Network Act
Jan. 11, 2018 — Rapid DNA Act of 2017
Jan. 10, 2018 — DHS Overseas Personnel Enhancement Act of 2017
Jan. 9, 2018 — Screening and Vetting Passenger Exchange Act
Jan. 9, 2018 — Post-Caliphate Threat Assessment Act of 2017
Jan. 9, 2018 — Supporting the rights of the people of Iran to free expression, condemning the Iranian regime for its crackdown on legitimate protests, and for other purposes
Dec. 21, 2017 — No Human Trafficking on Our Roads Act
Dec. 21, 2017 — Jobs for Our Heroes Act
Dec. 20, 2017 — United States and Israel Space Cooperation Act
Dec. 19, 2017 — Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act
Dec. 19, 2017 — Supporting Veterans in STEM Careers Act
Dec. 19, 2017 — Women in Aerospace Education Act
Dec. 18, 2017 — Keep America’s Refuges Operational Act
Dec. 18, 2017 — STEM Research and Education Effectiveness and Transparency Act
Dec. 11, 2017 — Protecting Religiously Affiliated Institutions Act of 2017
Dec. 11, 2017 — Financial Institution Customer Protection Act of 2017
Dec. 7, 2017 — Venezuela Humanitarian Assistance and Defense of Democratic Governance Act
Dec. 7, 2017 — Small Business Mergers, Acquisitions, Sales, and Brokerage Simplification Act of 2017
Dec. 7, 2017 — Expressing concern and condemnation over the political, economic, social, and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela
Dec. 6, 2017 — Condemning ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya and calling for an end to the attacks in and an immediate restoration of humanitarian access to the state of Rakhine in Burma
Dec. 6, 2017 — Enhancing Veteran Care Act
Dec. 5, 2017 — Stopping Abusive Female Exploitation Act of 2017
Dec. 5, 2017 — Secret Service Recruitment and Retention Act of 2017
Nov. 30, 2017 — Brownfields Enhancement, Economic Redevelopment, and Reauthorization Act
Nov. 28, 2017 — Fowler and Boskoff Peaks Designation Act
Oct. 24, 2017 — Otto Warmbier North Korea Nuclear Sanctions Act
Oct. 2, 2017 — Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park Redesignation Act
Oct. 2, 2017 — Udall Park Land Exchange Completion Act
Sept. 13, 2017 — Courtney of Connecticut Amendment No. 164
Failed by a margin of 8 votes.
Sept. 7, 2017 — Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico Amendment No. 31
Sept. 7, 2017 — Hunter of California Part B Amendment No. 77
Sept. 7, 2017 — Castro of Texas Part B Amendment No. 75
Sept. 6, 2017 — Babin of Texas Part B Amendment No. 58
Sept. 6, 2017 — Budd of North Carolina Part B Amendment No. 32
July 26, 2017 — Jackson Lee of Texas Amendment No. 56
July 17, 2017 — Granting the consent and approval of Congress for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Maryland, and the District of Columbia to a enter into a compact relating to the establishment of the Washington Metrorail Satefy Commission
July 17, 2017 — Granting the consent and approval of Congress for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Maryland, and the District of Columbia to amend the Washington Area Transit Regulation Compact
July 17, 2017 — Sergeant Joseph George Kusick VA Community Living Center
July 13, 2017 — Tom Rooney of Florida Amendent No. 6
July 13, 2017 — Rogers of Alabama Part B Amendment No. 88
June 28, 2017 — Protecting Access to Care Act
June 28, 2017 — Barr of Kentucky Amendment No. 5
June 28, 2017 — Hudson of North Carolina Amendment No. 4
June 7, 2017 — Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico Amendment No. 1
May 1, 2017 — Follow the Rules Act
May 1, 2017 — Small Business Capital Formation Enhancement Act
May 1, 2017 — Fair Access to Investment Research Act of 2017
April 5, 2017 — Self-Insurance Protection Act
March 10, 2017 — Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act
March 9, 2017 — Fairness in Class Action Litigation Act
March 7, 2017 — To name the Department of Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinic in Pago Pago, American Samoa, the Faleomavaega Eni Fa’aua’a Hunkin VA Clinic
Feb. 13, 2017 — BRAVE Act
Feb. 13, 2017 — HIRE Vets Act
Jan. 23, 2017 — Kari’s Law Act
Jan. 23, 2017 — Anti-Spoofing Act
Jan. 5, 2017 — Objecting to United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 as an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace, and for other purposes
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Original Published Date: December 12, 2017
After losing 86 games last season, the once high flying Toronto Blue Jays have quickly fallen on hard times. Let’s face it, the team got old…and it didn’t take long. Just two years ago, they won 93 games to win the AL East.
While the major league team may be aging, the best news is that help is on the way….and soon. The Blue Jays might have the best 1-2 punch in the minor leagues in Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette. Vlad Jr. is already a Top five prospect in the game and Bichette isn’t far behind. Both are also clearly on the fast path and assuming they stay healthy, should arrive in 2019. They should bring the punch back to the middle of the lineup as the Jays aging players fade away.
Almost lost in the shuffle is Anthony Alford. While he might not have the name recognition as the Big-2, his tools are equally loud. He did get a chance to show his stuff in four games in the big leagues (only got one hit), unfortunately, he broke his hamate bone and burned valuable service time.
The Blue Jays are in transition and their poor 2017 season should net some quality players in next year’s MLB Draft. That in combination with a strong farm system, or better said, top of the farm system, should put them back into contention by 2020.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (3B)
Highest Level: High-A, ETA: 2019, Fantasy Ceiling: Top 15 Fantasy Player
When we ranked Vladimir Guerrero Jr. number 44 on our Top 100 list last season as an 18-year-old (technically 17), we thought he had a chance to be special, but after his 2017, I didn’t think he was going to go all Vlad Sr. on us.
First, he turned 18 on March 16 and therefore played the entire season as a young 18-year-old. What did he do? Across Low and High-A, he slashed .323/.425/.485 in 119 games. He slugged 15 home runs and walked more than he struck out – as an 18-year-old. You just don’t see that. Period.
While he only played 48 games in Dunedin, I would not be surprised to see him begin the season in the Eastern League, or at worse, see New Hampshire by May. That could put him on a path to see the majors by 2019, or maybe…
Scouting Report: The scouting report continues to shine. He has an advanced hitting approach and plus bat speed. He has slimmed down since he was signed, losing some of his baby fat, but at his age, he has yet to really put on any man-strength. Once that happens and once he adds more loft to his swing, he could hit 40 or more home runs at the highest level. The one thing he lacks is foot speed and while he might steal a handful of bases early in his career, stolen bases will not be part of his game long-term.
Defensively, I think he stays at third as he has a good arm and is not a hack by any stretch. If he has to move to right-field, he clearly has the bat for the position.
Fantasy Impact: Guerrero is one of the best young prospects in the game with comparisons of Edwin Encarnacion clearly evident (hopefully without the E5 moniker). It’s rare that I put a 40 home run ceiling on a player, and it could come with a .300 batting average and plenty of runs scored and RBI’s. Throw in a handful of stolen bases early in his career and he’s got Top 15 fantasy upside, and it could come sooner than you think.
Bo Bichette (2B/SS)
Highest Level: High-A, ETA: 2019, Fantasy Ceiling: Top 10 2B
It’s kind of hard to fathom how Bo Bichette fell to the second round of the 2016 MLB Draft. Perhaps the wheels will fall off once he get to Double-A next season, but from what he’s done to-date in his career, he’s one of the best prospects in the game
In 132 games in the minor leagues, he posted a 1.018 OPS with 18 home runs and 25 stolen bases. Last year, playing the entire season as a teenager, he had no trouble with either Low or High-A. He showed very good contact (82%) with an excellent understanding of the strike zone, walking nearly 8% of the time. While Vlad Jr. might be getting all the press, Bo Bichette’s star is also very bright. Together, both provide Toronto with one of the best 1-2 prospects in the game.
Scouting Report: Bichette is quickly rounding into one of the prospects in the game. He has a great approach for a young player with excellent bat speed that points to above-average if not more future power. The swing is a little on the violent-side with a lot of moving parts, but the end result is hard contact. His father had a similar swing and so far the Jays have elected not to quiet it down. So far, it’s all working.
Bichette primarily played shortstop last season, but I just don’t see him staying there long-term. He has a thick lower half and doesn’t have a conventional over-the-top throwing motion. If he stays in the dirt, I think he moves to second with left-field as the backup plan.
Fantasy Impact: Bichette has 20 to 25 home run future power with a chance to hit .270. As he continues to fill-out, stolen bases will not be part of the equation. If he stays at second, a Neil Walker type of impact is a good baseline. I think that’s a very good player, a top 10 fantasy second baseman.
Anthony Alford (OF)
Highest Level: Majors, ETA: 2017, Fantasy Ceiling: Top 10 OF with risk
Anthony Alford got off to a great start in New Hampshire and with Kevin Pillar serving a suspension, the Jays decided to promote Alford to the big leagues. He managed a double in four games and then while swinging, broke his hamate bone and spent seven weeks on the disabled list.
Not only did Alford lose valuable development time, he also acquired valuable service time that could delay his return to the big leagues. He now has eight weeks and if the Jays want to maintain seven years of team control, his major league return will likely be delayed those eight weeks. In other words, assuming he spends the entire 2018 in Triple-A, the Jays will likely not bring him to the big leagues until mid to late June in 2019.
Scouting Report: Alford has loud tools with plus speed and plus raw power that if it comes together, could produce a 20/40 performer at the highest level. He has a solid approach that produced a 12% walk ratio last season. He also substantially cut down on his strikeouts. His 15.6% strikeout rate in 245 at-bats in Double-A was indeed impressive and if he can sustain it going forward, he will hit his Top 10 outfield ceiling.
Fantasy Impact: Alford has a chance to be an impact fantasy player with the ceiling of a 20 HR/40 SB player. If his hit tool continues to develop, owners could also be looking at a .270/.340 player. If it all comes together, he’s a first-round draft pick.
Nate Pearson (RHP)
Highest Level: Short Season, ETA: 2020, Fantasy Ceiling: Top 30 SP or Closer with risk
Anybody that can throw 100 MPH should get your attention. Nate Pearson can throw 100 MPH.
Pearson took a circuitous route to the professional ball. He started his college career at Florida International, left the school and went to JC of Central Florida. He started to get noticed while at the Central Florida, leading to the Blue Jays signing him to a $2.4 million dollar signing bonus.
Pearson saw limited action last season once he was drafted but excelled. In 20 innings, mostly pitching in the Northwest League, he gave up six hits, two earned runs while striking out 24 and walking five.
Scouting Report: At 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds, Pearson has little physical projection remaining. It doesn’t matter as he can already hit 100 MPH an hour but his fastball sits more comfortably in the 97 to 98 range. Despite his size and how hard he throws, he does throw strikes.
His best secondary pitch is his change-up with his curveball used as his third pitch. While I’m usually not high on fastball/change-up guys, unless the change-up is double-plus, sources have told me that the curveball is improving and they believe it will eventually grade out to at least average, if not more. If it doesn’t, Pearson will likely move to the bullpen, much like another tall hard-throwing pitcher did a few years ago. That pitcher was Dellin Betances.
Fantasy Impact: The upside of Pearson is high. In fact, you can argue that his stuff, size and athleticism gives him a number two starter ceiling. However, that starter upside is dependent on him improving his curve. If he doesn’t, he moves to the bullpen but with closer upside. For fantasy owners, it’s a win-win situation.
Logan Warmoth (SS)
Highest Level: Short Season, ETA: 2019-20, Fantasy Ceiling: Top 20 SS
The Blue Jays had two first-round draft picks last season. With their first pick, pick number 22, they selected shortstop, Logan Warmoth out of the University of North Carolina. As the season wore on, Warmoth gradually moved up Draft lists as he flashed a plus hit tool (.336 batting average) with surprising pop (.419 SLG with 10 home runs). He was also successful in stealing 18 of 21 bases.
Once signed, the Blue Jays sent him to the GCL for a handful of games before moving him to the Northwest League. In 39 games, he slashed .306/.356/.419 with one home run and five stolen bases. He struck out 19% of the time but the patient approach he showed in college was not there as he walked only 4% of the time.
Scouting Report: There’s a lot to like with Warmoth. First, he has always hit and I expect that to continue as he moves up the ranks in the minor leagues. He has good bat speed but his swing lacks loft so I don’t see any more than a 10 to 15 home runs ceiling at the highest level. He’s also a very good runner. While his times to first grade out at above-average, he’s very effective at reading pitchers and should be able to steal 20 plus stolen bases.
Defensively, sources who I spoke with were split on whether he could stay at short long-term. Most believed he would stay in the dirt with a move to second likely if short does not work out.
Fantasy Impact: Warmoth doesn’t have the loud tools that fantasy owners crave and might be undervalued similar to another Logan, Mr. Forsythe. The upside is 10 to 15 home runs, 20 stolen bases, and a .270 batting average.
Sean Reid-Foley (RHP)
Highest Level: Double-A, ETA: 2019, Fantasy Ceiling: Top 40 SP
The Jays were very bullish on their Double-A squad entering the season as two of their more promising pitchers would be playing significant roles. Conner Greene could not find the strike zone and wound up with a 5.29 ERA, winning five games in the process. The more famous Sean Reid-Foley did win 10 games but also posted a 5.09 ERA in the process. Not that it matters all that much, the Fisher Cats ended the season with the worst record in the Eastern League.
Reid-Foley’s problem was the home run. In 132.2 innings he gave up 22 or 1.5 per nine. In 234 innings prior to last season, he only gave up eight home runs in total.
Scouting Report: At 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, Reid-Foley has a great pitchers body that should allow him to log big innings at the highest level. While many evaluators thought he would see an uptick in his velocity by now, he’s still sitting 92 to 94 MPH. Since he pitches up in the zone, it’s not enough velocity to allow him to throw it by batters. The recipe contributed to his high home run total.
The good news is his control continued to move forward. The mechanics are smoother with better balance. He also is doing a better job in keeping his arm slot consistent.
Fantasy Impact: Reid-Foley poor showing in Double-A has hurt his prospect standing. I think this presents a buying opportunity for Dynasty League owners. I don’t think he’ll give up 1.5 home runs per nine from here on out and will either introduce a two-seamer or start to use his frame better. Overall the stuff is too good to give up on. I’m still buying with a mid-rotation starter upside.
Max Pentecost (C)
Highest Level: Double-A, ETA: 2019, Fantasy Ceiling: Top 15 Catcher
It’s been a tough road for Max Pentecost, the Blue Jay’s 2014 first round pick (11th overall). After a promising debut, he hurt his wrist and shoulder and did not play at all in 2015 and was limited to first and designated hitter in 2016. He did manage to catch 20 games before his season ended on August 7th last season. He did appear in the Arizona Fall League and looked healthy.
Through his injuries, Pentecost has never lost his ability to hit. In 171 minor league games, he’s slashed .276/.332/.434 with 19 home runs. He makes good contact, striking out 20% of the time while showing improved plate discipline.
Scouting Report: The Jays believe that Pentecost will hit at the highest level and are becoming more comfortable that he will be able to catch at least part-time. The upside is a .270 hitter with 18 to 22 home run pop. There could be more power in the tank but with his injury history, it’s been hard to get him enough at-bats to consistently see it.
Fantasy Impact: Pentecost is a buy-low candidate for me in a Dynasty League. Even if he doesn’t stay behind the plate, I think the bat is good enough to warrant regular at-bats at the highest level. He’s also athletic enough to play right-field and a combination of first, outfield, and catcher could be in the cards. The ceiling is a .270 hitter with 18 to 22 home runs.
T.J. Zeuch (RHP)
Highest Level: High-A, ETA: 2020, Fantasy Ceiling: Top 45 SP
T.J. Zeuch has always intrigued me.
Drafted in the first round of the 2016 MLB Draft as a 20-year-old college player, he stands 6-foot-7 but is not a power pitcher. I wouldn’t call him a command and control pitcher but he has excellent control of his entire arsenal. What intrigues me is that he’s very thin and that could foretell some physical maturity and with it, an extra tick or two on his fastball.
Zeuch was limited to only 65.2 innings last season due to a hamstring injury. Most of his innings were in High-A. In 58.2 innings he pitched to a 3.38 ERA striking out 46 and walking only 17. He did give up slightly more than a hit an inning.
He did add innings in the Arizona Fall League and that should be enough to allow Zeuch to start 2018 in Double-A.
Scouting Report: Zeuch has a nice four-pitch mix that begins with a fastball with plenty of downward plane. His GO/AO ratio was an impressive 4:1. His best secondary pitch is his slider that gets plenty of swings and misses. He does show a feel for a change-up. I don’t particularly care for his curveball.
Overall, it’s a nice package. He has size, throws hard enough (93 to 94 MPH), has good if not great secondary pitches, throws strikes and will induce a ton of ground balls. If you put it all together, it’s a recipe for a mid-rotation starter
Fantasy Impact: I would be adding Zeuch in Dynasty Leagues that roster 250 or less minor league players. The ceiling is a number three starter with seven to eight strikeouts per nine and good ratios.
Conner Greene (RHP)
Highest Level: Double-A, ETA: 2019, Fantasy Ceiling: Top 45 SP with risk or Bullpen Arm
It was a disappointing season for Conner Greene as he continues to struggle to find the plate. The Blue Jays started him back in Double-A where he pitched to a 5.29 ERA, striking out only 6.3 batters per nine and walking a concerning 5.63 per nine. In fact, his control backed up from 2016 where he walked 4.3 per nine at the same level. Neither year was good, but clearly, he’s struggling to maintain his release point. Until he does, his ceiling is quickly becoming a bullpen arm.
Scouting Report: The reason Greene remains on this list and why I still like him as a prospect is he has a good arm. He can touch the upper nineties with his fastball and the pitch has a lot of movement as well. The problem is the aforementioned control problems as well as the lack of quality secondary pitches. His best secondary pitch is his slider and the night I saw him in 2016, it had really nice, hard break. When I saw him back in Trenton this year, it was inconsistent at best and was rarely thrown for strikes.
In seeing him now twice, it feels like he is overthrowing. I know it’s an overused phrase, but his arm action is so quick that I think this is leading him to not repeat his delivery. I’m assuming the Jays have tried to slow him down, but until he does, I don’t think he’ll be successful.
Fantasy Impact: It’s looking more and more like Greene will move to the bullpen. The stuff though is still very good and if he can learn to harness it, the upside is a number three starter. However, at the moment he’s likely a reliever.
Justin Maese (RHP)
Highest Level: Low-A, ETA: 2019-20, Fantasy Ceiling: Top 60 SP
Drafted in the third round of the 2015 MLB Draft, Justin Maese was expected to take a step forward after pitching very well in Low-A in 2016. However, he got off to a tough start and was finally starting to put things together when he missed two months with a shoulder injury. He pitched poorly in his return and the Blue Jays shut him down in August.
Scouting Report: When healthy, Maese does have good stuff with a fastball that he can run up to the mid-90’s. It has nasty sink that induces a ton of ground balls. His best secondary pitch is his slider and when used effectively with his fastball can miss bats. That said, he’s more of a pitch to contact pitcher, relying on his sinker to get outs.
He’s got good size and despite being 24 next season, still, might have some physical projection remaining.
Fantasy Impact: I’ve always liked Maese but given his ineffective year and age, he’s a hold for me in Dynasty Leagues.
2018 Emerging Prospect
Ryan Borucki (LHP)
While a number of more famous Blue Jays pitching prospects struggled last season, lefty Ryan Borucki blew through three levels including a six-inning shutout in Triple-A to end the season. He’s more control and command over stuff but does have a fastball that will peak in the Low-90’s with a pretty good slider. He’s likely a number four starter in the long-run but is a guy that Dynasty League owners should begin to monitor.
3 comments on “Toronto Blue Jays”
Kyle Peak December 12, 2017 at 5:20 pm Log in to Reply
Thoughts on Lourdes Gurriel? He was a big name when he signed. Curious of your thoughts on him.
Tuesday December 12, 2017 - Fantasy Baseball Links - FantasyRundown.com December 12, 2017 at 9:38 am Log in to Reply
[…] Baseball Prospect Rankings: Prospect361.com ranks the top 10 prospects in the Toronto Blue Jays farm […]
2018 Toronto Blue Jays Top 10 Prospects | Prospect 361° December 12, 2017 at 6:04 am Log in to Reply
[…] review of the 2018 Toronto Blue Jays Top 10 Prospects is now […]
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Just Planting Trees Won't Stop March of Deserts
On the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, we look at two pioneering ways to stave off the loss of fertile land by challenging the conventional wisdom of merely planting more trees.
Judith D. Schwartz
Attendance was sparse at a press conference following last fall’s first ever U.N. General Assembly devoted to desertification, as the loss of fertile land in dry areas is known. “If this were about climate change, the room would be full,” Luc Gnacadja of Benin, executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, began his remarks to the press.
On the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, where the desertification convention was established, it remains a poor cousin to other groundbreaking treaties set up at that same Rio Summit: the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Global desertification vulnerability map from the US Department of Agriculture (Click to enlarge)
Despite the lack of ink, desertification is not a fringe problem. Some facts provided by the U.N. offer a sobering understanding: Drylands—arid, semi-arid, and sub-humid areas with seasonal, often unpredictable rains—account for 41.3 percent of the world’s land mass, including 44 percent of cultivated land. Drylands are complex ecosystems whose utility to humans is vulnerable when land and water are not sustainably managed. Each year more than 30 million acres of productive land degrade into desert. Perhaps surprising to those who see desertification and think Third World, the continent with the highest proportion of its dryland areas termed severely or moderately desertified is North America, at 74 percent.
Desertification is not a “natural” development. It's driven by human action, such as over-cultivation, deforestation, and poor livestock management. Today 1.5 billion people depend for their food and livelihoods on land that is losing its capacity to sustain vegetation. It's been estimated that half of today's armed conflicts can be partly attributed to environmental strains associated with dryland degradation. A number of scholars cite desertification as a key factor in the fall of some civilizations: think Carthage, Mesopotamia, ancient Greece and Rome.
To combat the advance of deserts, most governments and NGOs say planting trees is the best way to halt encroaching sands. As the NGO The Eden Projects ("Plant Trees/Save Lives") writes on its website, "The world needs to find a way to plant 30 BILLION trees each year, for the next ten years."
Two field scientists addressing the problem from very different directions, Allan Savory and Chris Reij, say that planting trees will not stop encroaching sands.
“Planting trees cannot reverse desertification in most places because the desertifying land generally has too low a rainfall for full soil cover from tree leaf fall litter,” Savory says, “and exposed soil leads to less effective rainfall.” His solution relies not on trees, but on animals.
Savory was a wildlife ranger in the 1950s and 60s in his home of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and noticed that land set aside for parks was deteriorating. Once-healthy land where herds of grazers (antelope, zebra, wildebeest and the like) and their predators (lions, cheetah, etc.) no longer roamed in large numbers began to degrade upon being “protected” as parkland. He concluded that grasslands, herbivores and pack-hunting predators evolved together, and that the land needed animals in the same way that animals needed the land.
Savory developed a land management process, holistic management, that challenged the conventional belief that grazing can only harm land. The key, said Savory, was to manage livestock to mimic the behavior of wild herds, intensively grazing (and defecating on and trampling upon the ground) and then moving on (as if driven by predators) so that no plants are overgrazed. This rejuvenates the soil so that it retains water and supports a diversity of plant species.
The centerpiece of Savory’s work is Dimbangombe Ranch near Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls. While the people in neighboring areas depend on international aid, this ranch has used holistic planned grazing and seen a 400 percent increase in livestock (which have been integrated with Africa’s wildlife). There’s now open water, fish and water lilies even after the long dry season. Using the same planning process involving livestock on crop fields, the yields are three to five times higher than neighboring farms with no plowing or fertilizing.
“All we’ve done really is make the rainfall more effective,” Savory says. Holistic planned grazing is now being practiced on more than 40 million acres around the globe. And trees—naturally occurring trees—do have a role.
“As we’re learning at Dimbangombe, as soon as we use properly managed livestock to reverse desertification, trees don’t need planting [by humans] since everything begins growing better—trees, shrubs, forbs and grass.”
Trees bring several benefits to farming: decreasing wind-speed; protecting soil against water and wind erosion; controlling temperature; providing food for livestock. That’s what Chris Reij, a Dutch geographer, explains to people about agroforestry: integrating trees and croplands by relying on the trees to generate naturally, as opposed to planting them. “Agroforestry is the major tool for farmers to adapt to climate change as well as improve food security,” he says, noting that while the sub-Saharan country of Niger suffered a series of crop failures in 2011, the areas with the highest number of on-farm trees did much better.
Reij admires the work of Yacouba Sawadogo of Burkina Faso, featured in the film “The Man Who Stopped the Desert.” “Yacouba had a lot of land that was degraded. Nothing was growing,” Reij recounts. “He took a traditional technique, digging basins, or zai pits. He made the pits deeper, to collect more rainwater, and added manure, to nourish plants, and used these to grow crops and trees. He started a 15-hectare forest this way.”
[youtube]Dzah_5y65AU[/youtube]
These trees, he notes, weren’t intentionally planted: “We’re talking about protecting and managing trees that grow spontaneously on farmers’ fields. A lot of tree planting has not been very successful. The survival rate of trees planted in drylands is only about 20 percent. Yet it’s continued year after year despite not such a good track record.”
Savory’s work focuses on areas with low population and low rainfall; Reij’s at the margin of the deserts, with more rainfall, higher population and wall-to-wall agriculture. Between the two approaches, we could cover—and re-cover—a lot of ground.
DrylandsClimate ChangeSoilFarmingDesertificationAgroforestryEnvironment
Judith D. Schwartz is a journalist whose recent work looks at soil as a hub for multiple environmental, economic, and social challenges—and solutions. She writes on this theme for numerous publications and speaks in venues around the world.
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Home Events A Brief History of America’s Cup
Nicole/Intern in the City
A Brief History of America’s Cup
Oracle Team USA, the Defenders of the 34th America's Cup; America's Cup Finals are in San Francisco September 7 - 21, 2013
Though the Olympics is frequently cited as the oldest international competition, the title actually belongs to America’s Cup. In 1851, the schooner, America, won a race against Britain around the Isle of Wight, and donated the trophy to the New York Yacht Club under a Deed of Gift, making it a “perpetual challenge cup for friendly competition between nations.” The trophy was thus christened the America’s Cup in honor of the winning schooner (rather than the country). The format of the race has since stayed the same; one yacht, known as the Defender– the current holder of the America’s Cup– races against the Challenger.
The race did not become truly “international” until 1970, with the inception of the Louis Vuitton Cup Challenger’s Series. The tough competition for the spot of challenger paired with the evolution of sailing technology increased the difficulty of America’s Cup. This also marked the race’s debut in the courtroom as a common post-race playing field where the legality of new boat designs would be debated. The end of the New York Yacht Club’s 132 year winning streak was broken in the courtroom in 1983, when winning Australian team’s winged keel– a winged structure under the hull of a boat that increases stability– was declared legal. 1987 marked the first year the America’s Cup was defended outside of the U.S. coast.
The 2013 America’s Cup will be the most daring and exciting race yet. The recently approved AC72 boat design stretches longer than any previous model, and can race at speeds faster than twice the wind. These catamarans– a vessel with two parallel hulls of equal size– require a great level of athleticism as each of the eleven sailors sprints back and forth from hull to hull. The Defender, Oracle Team USA, has the largest wing sail ever built, and Red Carpet Bay Area is excited to see who will become the challengers. America’s Cup Finals will be held September 7 – 21, following the Louis Vuitton Cup Challenger’s Race July 7- August 30, and promises to be a spectacle in the Bay. — Nicole Clark for Red Carpet Bay Area
The America’s Cup in San Francisco
Oracle Team USA, the Defenders of the 34th America’s Cup; America’s Cup Finals are in San Francisco September 7 – 21, 2013
New York Yacht Club: in 1851 the schooner, “America”, won a race against Britain and dedicated the trophy The America’s Cup to the New York Yacht Club
Each AC72 has eleven crew members
BMW Oracle, America’s Cup Defender
Two members of the Emirates New Zealand sailing team sprinting to the opposite hull
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By The Associated Press - May. 21, 2020 10:10 AM EDT
1876 — Joe Borden of Boston pitches the first no-hitter in NL history.
1884 — Knight of Ellersie, ridden by S. Fischer, wins the two-horse Preakness Stakes by two lengths over Welcher.
1922 — Harry Greb beats Gene Tunney at Madison Square Garden in New York to win the American light heavyweight title. Grebb wins a unanimous decision after 15 brutal rounds. In the opening round, Greb fractures Tunney’s nose and opens a deep gash over Tunney’s left eye, but the fight continues to the end. It’s the only loss in Tunney’s professional career. Tunney entered the bout with a 40-0-1 record and would retire with a 65-1-1 record six years later.
1935 — The first major league night game, scheduled for Cincinnati, is postponed because of rain.
1936 — Rushaway, ridden by John Longden, wins his second derby in as many days, taking the 1 1/4-mile Latonia Derby at Latonia in Covington, Ky. Rushaway had won the 1 1/8-mile Illinois Derby, run at Aurora, Ill., the previous day.
1953 — Native Dancer, ridden by Eric Guerin, avenges the loss in the Kentucky Derby by edging Jamie K. by a neck to win the Preakness Stakes.
1976 — Boston center Dave Cowens dominates the opener of the NBA Finals against Phoenix with a 25-point, 21-rebound performance as the Celtics defeated the Suns, 98-87.
1991 — Paul Dougherty scores two goals and adds two assists to help the San Diego Sockers win their fourth consecutive Major Indoor Soccer League championship with an 8-6 victory over the Cleveland Crunch.
1997 — In the first all-freshman singles final in NCAA history, Stanford’s Lilia Osterloh beats Florida’s M.C. White 6-1, 6-1 to win the women’s singles tennis championship.
2002 — Los Angeles Dodgers’ slugger Shawn Green becomes the 14th man in major league history to homer four times in a game and sets a big league record with 19 total bases. He is 6-for-6, scoring six times with seven RBIs in a 16-3 win at Milwaukee.
2005 — Anastasia Myskina is the first defending champion at the French Open to be eliminated in the opening round, losing to Spain’s Maria Sanchez Lorenzo 6-4, 4-6, 6-0.
2009 — Alabama sophomore Kelsi Dunne becomes the first player to throw back-to-back no-hitters in NCAA postseason play. Dunne holds Jacksonville State hitless for the second straight day in a 9-0 softball victory. The two no-hitters tie the NCAA postseason record.
2017 — NFL owners cut the overtime period from 15 minutes to 10 minutes during the regular season, but also give players plenty of leeway to celebrate after a touchdown.
1905 — Harry Payne Whitney’s Tanya becomes the second filly to win the Belmont Stakes. Ruthless was the first filly to win the Belmont, in 1867. Whitney would also win the Kentucky Derby with a filly, Regret, in 1915.
1935 — In the first major league night game, the Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1 before 25,000 fans in Cincinnati.
1936 — Tony Lazzeri of the New York Yankees drives in 11 runs with a triple and three home runs — two of them grand slams — in a 25-2 rout of the Philadelphia A’s.
1967 — The AFL grants a franchise to the Cincinnati Bengals.
1980 — Bobby Nystrom’s overtime goal gives the New York Islanders a 5-4 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 6 for their first Stanley Cup title.
1981 — The Indianapolis 500 ends in controversy when Mario Andretti, who finished second to Bobby Unser, is declared the winner because Unser broke a rule during a slowdown period near the end of the race. The decision is later reversed, giving Unser credit for the victory, but he is fined $40,000.
1986 — The Montreal Canadiens win their 23rd Stanley Cup, beating the Calgary Flames 4-3 in five games.
1988 — The fourth game of the Stanley Cup finals between the Edmonton Oilers and Boston Bruins is postponed with the score tied 3-3 and 3:23 left in the second period when a power failure hits Boston Garden.
1990 — The Edmonton Oilers win their fifth Stanley Cup in seven seasons by beating the Bruins 4-1 in Game 5. Goalie Bill Ranford, who limited Boston to eight goals in the series, wins the Conn Smythe Trophy for most valuable player in the playoffs.
1992 — Al Unser Jr. wins the closest finish at the Indianapolis 500, beating Scott Goodyear by 43-thousandths of a second, barely half a car length. Lyn St. James, the second woman to race at Indy, finishes 11th.
1995 — Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley becomes the sixth pitcher to record 300 saves, in a 5-2 win over the Baltimore Orioles.
2001 — John Lieber of the Chicago Cubs tosses a 79-pitch, one-hit shutout in a 3-0 blanking of the Reds. It’s the first shutout of the Reds in an NL-record 208 games.
2009 — Brazil’s Helio Castroneves becomes the ninth driver to win the Indianapolis 500 three times. Castroneves pulls away over the final laps to beat Dan Wheldon of England and Danica Patrick, who eclipsed her fourth-place finish as a rookie in 2005 by crossing the strip of bricks in third.
2010 — Lukas Lacko of Slovakia beats American Michael Yani in a 71-game match that ties for the most in the French Open since tiebreakers were instituted in 1973. Lacko wins 4-6, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (4), 6-7 (5), 12-10 in a first-round match that takes two days to complete.
2014 — Maya Moore scores 30 points on a record-setting night as the Minnesota Lynx defeats the New York Liberty 87-82. Moore becomes the first player ever to score at least 30 points in four straight games.
2014 — Real Salt Lake stretches its unbeaten streak to 12 games with a 0-0 draw with FC Dallas, matching Major League Soccer’s record undefeated streak to start the season with a 6-0-6 mark.
1948 — Ben Hogan wins the PGA championship, beating Mike Turnesa in the final round, 7 and 6.
1965 — Muhammad Ali knocks out Sonny Liston a minute into the first round in the controversial rematch for Ali’s heavyweight title. Listed as the fastest knockout in a heavyweight title bout, Liston goes down on a short right-hand punch.
1975 — The Golden State Warriors become the third team to sweep the NBA finals, beating the Washington Bullets 96-95 on Butch Beard’s foul shot with 9 seconds remaining.
1978 — The Montreal Canadiens defeat the Boston Bruins 4-1 in Game 6 for their third straight Stanley Cup.
1980 — Johnny Rutherford wins his third Indianapolis 500 in seven years and becomes the first driver to win twice from the pole position.
1987 — Herve Filion becomes the first harness racing driver to win 10,000 races. Filion reaches the milestone driving Commander Bond to victory in the third race at Yonkers Raceway.
1991 — The Pittsburgh Penguins, led by Mario Lemieux, win the Stanley Cup for the first time with an 8-0 rout of the Minnesota North Stars.
1998 — Princeton punctuates its claim as one of college lacrosse’s great programs by beating Maryland 15-5 for its third straight NCAA Division I title and fifth in seven years.
2002 — Boston sets an NBA record, overcoming a 21-point fourth-quarter deficit in a 94-90 win over New Jersey. The Celtics outscore the Nets 41-16 in the quarter.
2003 — Juli Inkster shoots a 10-under 62 — tying the lowest final-round score by a winner in LPGA Tour history — to beat Lorie Kane by four strokes in the LPGA Corning Classic.
2007 — Bjarne Riis is the first Tour de France winner to admit using performance-enhancing drugs to win the sport’s premier race, further eroding cycling’s credibility after a series of doping confessions. His admission means the top three finishers in the 1996 Tour are linked to doping — with two admitting to cheating.
2008 — Seven crashes and spinouts mar the first Indianapolis 500 since the two warring open-wheel series (CART and IRL) came together under the IndyCar banner. Scott Dixon stays ahead of the trouble to win the race.
2009 — Syracuse rallies from a three-goal deficit in the final 3:37 of regulation to beat Cornell 10-9 and win its second straight and unprecedented 11th NCAA lacrosse title.
2014 — Josh Beckett pitches the first no-hitter of his career and the first in the majors this season, leading the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Philadelphia Phillies 6-0 on Sunday. Beckett strikes out six, walks three and doesn’t come close to allowing a hit.
2014 — Ryan Hunter-Reay becomes the first American to win the Indianapolis 500 since 2006, making a dramatic pass of Helio Castroneves on the final lap to win the second-closest finish in history. Hunter-Reay wins by 0.060 seconds — the second closest finish in race history since Al Unser Jr. beat Scott Goodyear by 0.043 seconds in 1992.
2014 — Landon Donovan breaks the Major League Soccer goal record, scoring his 135th and 136th regular-season goals in the Los Angeles Galaxy’s 4-1 victory over the Philadelphia Union.
1925 — In Detroit’s 8-1 win over the Chicago White Sox, Ty Cobb becomes the first to collect 1,000 career extra-base hits. He finished his career with 1,139.
1959 — Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitches 12 perfect innings before losing to the Milwaukee Braves, 1-0 in the 13th on an error, a sacrifice and Joe Adcock’s double.
1985 — Danny Sullivan misses almost certain disaster and holds off Mario Andretti and the rest of the fastest field in auto racing to win the Indianapolis 500. On the 119th lap, Sullivan spins his racer 360 degrees, narrowly avoiding both the wall and Andretti.
1987 — Boston’s Larry Bird steals an inbounds pass from Detroit’s Isiah Thomas and feeds over his shoulder to a cutting Dennis Johnson for the winning basket as the Celtics pulls out an improbable 108-107 win over Detroit in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
1988 — The Edmonton Oilers, with MVP Wayne Gretzky leading the way, beat the Boston Bruins 6-3 to complete a four-game sweep and win their fourth Stanley Cup in five years.
1991 — Rick Mears passes Michael Andretti with 12 laps to go and wins his fourth Indianapolis 500, by 3.1 seconds. Mears joins A.J. Foyt and Al Unser as the only four-time winners.
1994 — Haiti’s Ronald Agenor wins the longest match since the French Open adopted the tiebreaker. Agenor takes the 71st and final game of a second-round match with David Prinosil of Germany. His five-hour, 6-7 (4-7), 6-7 (2-7), 6-3, 6-4, 14-12 victory involves the most games in a French Open match since 1973.
2000 — New Jersey finishes the greatest comeback in a conference final when the Devils win the last three games of the series, beating the Flyers 2-1 in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final. Patrik Elias scores his second goal of the game with 2:32 to play for the win.
2004 — Andy Roddick loses at the French Open — to Frenchman Olivier Mutis, who is ranked 125th. With the five-set loss, Roddick joins Andre Agassi and eight other compatriots on the way home, making it the first Grand Slam tournament in more than 30 years without a U.S. man in the third round.
2005 — Americans Andy Roddick, James Blake and Vince Spadea fail to make it through the opening week at the French Open. For the second year in a row — and the second time at a Grand Slam event in more than 30 years — no American man makes it out of the second round.
2008 — Syracuse wins its 10th NCAA men’s lacrosse championship, beating defending champion Johns Hopkins 13-10 behind three goals from Dan Hardy. The crowd of 48,970 at Foxborough, Mass., is the largest to see an NCAA championship outdoors in any sport — the BCS football championship game isn’t an NCAA event.
2012 — Toronto FC ends its MLS record nine-game losing streak to open a season with a 1-0 win over the Philadelphia Union on a late goal by Danny Koevermans.
2013 — Tony Kanaan ends years of frustration by finally winning the Indianapolis 500. Kanaan drives past Ryan Hunter-Reay on a restart with three laps to go, then coasts across the finish line under yellow when defending race winner Dario Franchitti crashes far back in the field. The Brazilian finished second in 2004 and twice finished third.
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February 2, 2016 - Tuesday February 9, 2016 - Tuesday Jeggit Conflict, International Law, Politics, United States, US Foreign Policy, War
Did the United States use 9/11 as a Pretext to Invade Iraq?
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At the present moment the United States of America and its Western allies are deeply involved in the Syrian War and in a series of ongoing Middle Eastern conflicts that have cost the lives of well over a million people and displaced millions more. The continuing US military presence in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan has been reframed so as to present the United States as a peacekeeper or some sort of supreme arbiter. US foreign policy over the past number of decades has something to do with the these atrocious and deadly conflicts, and, by extension, the current refugee crisis which is doing serious damage to human beings, escalating racial tensions across the world, and threatening to destabilise the European Union.
The People vs. United States Foreign Policy in the Middle East
Over this series of posts we will put US foreign policy regarding the Middle East on trial. As always, innocence will be presumed until otherwise proven. We will collect and present evidence from first hand witnesses, from relevant documents that have been made public, and from other significant sources. 11 September 2001 – the date on which members of Al-Qaeda hijacked domestic flights over the eastern territorial United States and launched suicide attacks on the World Trade Centre towers in New York, the Pentagon complex in Virginia, and a failed attack on Washington DC – provides us with a starting point. These terror attacks were the catalyst for the Bush Administration’s ‘War on Terror,’ the pretext on which the United States launched its 7 October 2001 invasion of Afghanistan (codenamed “Operation Enduring Freedom”), and its subsequent 19 March 2003 invasion of Iraq (codenamed “Operation Iraqi Freedom”) without a formal declaration of war.
We the People put it that US foreign policy with regard to the Middle East has followed a policy doctrine that has sought to destabilise governments in the region to assist in their replacement with puppet regimes under the control of the United States. We charge US foreign policy and US foreign policy makers with wilfully causing the deaths of millions across the Middle East and around the world in its global war on terror. We put it to you that the US has done this to increase its influence in the Middle East against international competitors, and to gain greater access to oil and other economic and strategic resources.
Our first witness to take the stand is General Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr., United States Army (retired). He had a distinguished career in the military, serving as a staff officer with the first infantry division during the war in Vietnam, went on to lead the allied forces during the Kosovo war, and ended his active military career as NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe. On 11 September 2001 he held top level clearance at the Pentagon and was called to a briefing with the US chiefs of staff.
Tagged 11 September 2001, Afghanistan, Conflict, Evidence, General Wesley Clark, Invasion of Afghanistan, Invasion of Iraq, Iraq, Politics, Terrorism, United States, United States of America, War Crimes, War on Terror
One thought on “Did the United States use 9/11 as a Pretext to Invade Iraq?”
Pingback: Iraq was a US Priority from the Beginning | Random Public Journal
Crossing Swords with Christian Zionism
Iraq was a US Priority from the Beginning
Kissinger, US Global Domination, and Population Control
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Ravi's Notes
Issues with Lord of the Rings
I first read the Lord of the Rings series when I was a teenager in high school. I still remember the days of reading it alternatingly with my sister, both of us competing for reading time and being the first to finish it. I grew up in a country that loves its myths but Lord of the Rings was my first introduction to a modern story-telling of a grand epic.
With the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien has created a magnificent world with multiple races, countries, kings and dark lords - and even its own languages. When you read it you are convinced that yes, perhaps such a world did exist, or may exist. Tolkien borrowed from numerous European myths and epics and created this fantastic world that kick-started the modern genre of fantasy. The plot uses a familiar “good vs evil” trope with the good triumphing the end. And I still have a soft corner for the Orcs and Sauron.
It was only years after my initial introduction to the books and movies that I started seeing the problems in the Lord of the Rings franchise. I believe that Tolkien exhibits an inherent bias towards Western Europe and its culture. In this post I want to share the different ways bias can be seen through this series of books that I love.
Take a look at a map of Middle Earth. Shire, where the story starts and where the hobbits live, is depicted like countryside England. If Middle Earth were Europe, Shire looks like it would be in England.
All the bad guys live in the East. Mordor, Rhun, Khand and Harad are all in the Eastern corners of Middle Earth. This ties in well with the cultural differences between the West and the East in the modern world - that of Western Europe and everything East of it.
If you have read the Silmarillion, Valinor is on a continent even west of the Middle Earth and that is where all the Gods live.
Names are very powerful in modern fantasy stories. Many popular fantasy stories talk endlessly about the power of secret names and learning how to utter them to invoke the power within. Names can have unforeseen consequences in real life. Here is a thought experiment: if all the bad guys in a story have Mexican names, would you not think that something is amiss?
The names that Tolkien uses for characters and locations attributed to the bad guys are overwhelmingly non-Western European. Here are a few names of Orcs: Azog, Shagrat and Grishnakh. Azog sounds Eastern European and the other two sound Middle Eastern/Indian. What names do Orcs give places? Lugburz and Gundabad. Lugburz sounds Eastern European and Gundabad sounds Persian/Indian. Incidentally, Lugburz is the name for Barad Dur in the Black Speech.
The names of the countries in the far eastern part of Middle Earth are Rhun, Khand and Harad. They are depicted as part of the enemy, allied with Sauron. Khand and Harad again sound Middle Eastern/Indian. Khand is a suffix used in Indian place names that means “land”
Dwarven character names & place names:
The Dwarves are the exception to the naming scheme. The Dwarven place names also sound Middle Eastern/Indian/Eastern European - Khazad Dum and Nogrod. For the most part Dwarves are “good” people, unlike Orcs.
Enforcing patriarchy
The lack of women characters in Lord of the Rings is well known. Although there exist a few women characters the only strong one in the core series is Eowyn. Arwen is mentioned just a couple of times in the books and her importance in the movies has been greatly enhanced, perhaps to make her more alluring. I would say that the books have so few women characters that the movies greatly amplified Arwen’s role in the story. Galadriel is shown as a powerful Elf queen, but like Elrond, her time in the world of men is up and she plays a minor role.
Eowyn’s character is one of my favorites, especially when she kills the Lord of the Nazgul fulfilling Glorfindel’s prophecy. Eowyn wants to take the sword and fight, but she is not allowed to fight because she is a woman. So she goes to war in disguise. She takes Merry along with her to battle because Merry was not permitted to go as well. Eowyn and Merry kill the Lord of the Nazgul together, fulfilling the prophecy since neither Eowyn nor Merry were men.
Color and Race
This is perhaps part of a bigger discussion than Lord of the Rings - but black is often used to depict the bad guys. What do people in Mordor speak? The Black tongue, a corrupted form of Elvish. Who were the Nazgul? Black Númenóreans. How are the orcs depicted? Dark and ugly. And of course, it is always the dark lord that is bad, never a fair lord.
Although Tolkien does talk quite a bit about the corruption of men, elves and dwarves, the orcs are always a placeholder for the “enemy” and just that. Rarely do we learn about what orcs ponder about, why they do certain things, why they follow Sauron and so on. And if you have seen the movies, orcs are shown to be the ugliest race of creatures in the world. I am not alone - there has been a fanfiction work that tells the story of the Lord of the Rings from the point of view of Orcs.
The good vs evil trope has worked amazingly well in many parts of the world. It is used by religion, myths, politicians, and rabble-rousers. It is exceedingly easy to dehumanize the “other” - most of us participate in this process knowingly and unknowingly. The problem with that is you lose nuance and can fall into a simple trap of mis-trusting anyone who is “different” from your culture.
Tolkien was heavily influenced by fighting in World War I where he saw the chaos and destruction that men could inflict on one another. He also saw the rise of industrialization and how it changed the landscape of quiet English towns. Some say that the true enemy in Lord of the Rings was industrialization and technology. The big, fancy war machines are all invented and operated by Sauron and his stooges. I can understand where this is coming from - many of the weapons we are familiar with like tanks, warplanes and submarines were used for the first time in World War I. It is possible that in Tolkien’s mind, Orcs were simply a placeholder for the things that brought pain to the world.
I am not saying that you should not read the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s books are an excellent work of literature and have brought boundless joy to my life. But in this age and world, we ought to know the hidden pitfalls in Tolkien’s work. We are lucky to live in a time when fantasy written in English is exploding in diversity: you can now find Black(NK Jemisin), South Asian(Samit Basu), East Asian(Cixin Liu), Eastern European(Andrzej Sapkowski) and Nigerian(Nnedi Okorafor) authors in fantasy. The future is promising. Let us not forget where we are coming from.
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Recommend Joe's obituary to your friends
Plant A Tree for Joe Reaves
Joe Lee Reaves
Return to Ray Funeral Home
Obituary of Joe Lee Reaves
Joe Lee Reaves, the son of George L. Reaves and Marjorie T. Reaves, passed away on December 7, 2020. A brief memorial service will take place at the First Baptist Church in Cleveland, MS on Friday, December 18, 2020 at 10:00 A.M. Joe was born on August 15, 1938 in Senatobia, MS. He went to Dublin School from 1st to 12th grade. He worked for Cooper Tire in Clarksdale while in school and after he graduated, until he went to West Helena, AR where he worked until he joined the Navy on January 2nd, 1957. He worked in the Navy Electronics until he was honorably discharged on March 17, 1966. He went on to work for Singer-Link as a Test Engineer until he got into US Civil Service- Department of Defense. He worked in various countries and states until he retired in 1994 with 37 years in Federal Service. After retiring, Joe worked with Habitat for Humanity in Tampa, FL for two years. After that, he worked with his church in disaster relief, building churches in different states and remodeling churches in the Tampa area. He was a Christian and loved helping people unable to help themselves. Once he moved to Cleveland, he became a member of First Baptist Church of Cleveland where he continued his ministry in whatever way God called him. Joe leaves behind a loving wife, Carolyn D. Reaves; two brothers, James (Sandy) Reaves and George Reaves; sister, Ann (Lewis) Bailey. He has three children, Joe (Christine) Reaves II, Mark (Penny) Reaves, and Kathleen (Frank) Jones. He also has three step children, Phil (Morgan) McNeer, Julie McBride, and Poppy (Brian) Driskell, as well as many grandchildren and great grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the First Baptist Church of Cleveland, MS
First Baptist Church of Cleveland
101 N Bolivar Ave
Cleveland, Mississippi, United States
View Map | Text Directions | Email Directions
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What is an Acceptable Level of Noise at Work?
29th mai 2014
Noise at Work: How Loud is Too Loud?
Excessive noise at work can be irritating, distracting and potentially harmful to workers’ physical and mental health. The problem is, many employers struggle to determine exactly what is an acceptable level of noise at work, perhaps unsurprising given the subjectivity of terms like ‘excessive’ and ‘acceptable’. For example, while one person might not be particularly bothered about incessant chatting in the office, another might find it impossible to concentrate, to the detriment of their concentration, productivity and, potentially, their mental wellbeing.
To confound matters further, the risks associated with noise at work vary greatly from one employee to the next. Contributing factors include the intensity, duration and nature of the noise, the worker’s proximity to its source, and the amount of time they spend in its vicinity – to name but a small handful.
So what is an acceptable level of noise at work?
What are considered to be acceptable noise levels at work depends on whether the risks to health are physical, psychological or both. Indicators of excessive noise at work include:
Physical – tinnitus and hearing loss; also impaired communication, which could result in failure to hear alarms and warning signals in the event of an emergency.
Psychological – difficulty concentrating, reduced productivity, work-related stress and insomnia.
In addition, there is also a legal element which requires employers to take action at certain noise levels and ensure that the legal limits on noise exposure are not exceeded to protect workers’ hearing. A word of caution here. Noise-induced hearing loss claims are on the up since 2001. Most of these are made by staff against their employers and relate to deafness and hearing problems that have come about as a result of noise issues in the workplace.
If you think noise in the workplace could be affecting the physical health and safety of staff, you should adopt a strict risk management regime. The Control of Noise at Work Regulations (2005) in the UK outline six key steps for employers:
Assess the noise risk using a sound meter
Take action to reduce the noise exposure that presents that risk
Provide staff with hearing protection if required
Ensure that noise does not exceed legal limits*
Provide staff with sufficient information and training
Carry out regular hearing surveillance
* Acceptable levels of noise at work: Up to 80 or 87dB, depending on the nature of the noise.
If you are absolutely certain - that is you have checked that there is no direct risk to workers’ physical health and safety - i.e. that the risk factors associated with noise at work are purely mental or psychological in nature, you are not legally obliged to take the steps as shown above.
However, in the interests of your staff’s mental well-being and productivity as well as your duty of care as an employer, further action is strongly recommended. Speak directly with each individual member of staff to find out whether they generally find noise levels at work acceptable or if it’s affecting them in any way. If noise is considered a problem, organise meetings and put up signs to raise awareness about the issue. Move affected staff to quieter areas, replace old or noisy machinery, and put up a noise activated warning sign, which will illuminate when a chosen noise level is exceeded.
If you would like to know more about what is an acceptable level of noise at work or wish to purchase a sound meter, go to www.pulsarinstruments.com. Pulsar Instruments manufactures and supplies quality noise monitoring equipment designed for health and safety professionals, and can help you find the perfect solution for your business. Call us on 01723 518011 for advice or to enquire further about their products and services.
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About PURVIEW
Space Based Assets the new Critical Infrastructure?
Posted by apellegrino on January 7, 2021
Great Power Competition and the Consequences for Conflict in Space
Proliferation of Global Navigation Satellite Systems: Implications for Modern Warfighting
A Sustainable Model to Ensure a Unique Joint Culture for the US Space Force
BY: CPT Robert A. Hale, U.S. Army
Space Based Assets the new Critical Infrastructure? CPT Robert A. Hale, U.S. Army Project Officer, Mission Command Battle Lab If you look to the night sky you may get a glimpse of an object passing overhead; was it a meteor, a falling star? Most likely, the object was one of the thousands of satellites or space assets that touch almost every facet of our lives. These Space Based Assets (SBAs) provide support and functionality to global telecommunications, military operations, financial industries, weather surveillance and research efforts. Anyone would be hard pressed to prove that they are not touched in some way by SBAs.
The nearly instantaneous access to data on which the Department of Defense and civil society alike rely is the result of the exponential expansion of SBAs since the 1980s. Following the passage of the Commercial Space Launch act of 1984, commercial companies became able to launch space assets with the use of expendable launch vehicles. This expansion helped create the modern global telecommunications infrastructure on which millions rely every day. In terms of national security, however, this expansion creates more ways for adversaries to endanger critical capabilities.
The level of risk to SBAs is vast and often unpredictable, ranging from radiation to small debris. Importantly, the implications of risks to these assets involve the security of the economy and other national interests. In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security wrote the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) that outlined 16 categories of critical infrastructures (CI) and determined the governmental agency to oversee the security of each category . The risk to SBAs and the support provided to the 16 CIs makes the security of these assets vital to national security. In the remainder of this essay I will outline the risks SBAs face. I will then argue that they should be included as one of the critical infrastructures outlined in the NIPP and that the Department of Defense (DOD) should lead the security efforts for SBAs.
Space-Based Assets are critical because they are integral to many different applications that affect both national security and civil society. For national defense, the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) provides missile warning, and for civil (and global) society, the SpaceX Starlink satellite constellation will provide high speed internet without the use of ground structures. The millions of Americans who enjoy DirecTV are dependent on satellites. Moreover, SBAs are not just used for imagery or missile warning or even high speed communications. The GPS that cars and planes use daily is triangulated through the use of Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) satellites that are managed by the Department of Transportation. With each type SBA there is a component that affects the functionality of one of the 16 CIs.
There is no one-size-fits-all risk management approach for the each of the CIs, because each CI’s security is managed by the government agency that provides its oversight. For the purpose of this essay, the Army’s Deliberate Risk Management model (DRM) will be used to identify and assess the hazards or risk to the SBAs. The DRM process allows an organization to identify and assess hazards, develop and implement controls, make decisions, and evaluate outcomes. It blends tactical, threat-based risks with accidental, hazard-based risks .
As a hypothetical risk analysis, I will use only the first three steps of the DRM: identify the risk; assess the risk; and develop controls. Future analysis based on simulation should study the effectiveness of those controls based on different scenarios. The DRM as outlined in Army Training Pamphlet (ATP) 5-19 labels risks as hazards with the potential to cause injury, illness, or death of personnel; damage to or loss of equipment or property; or mission degradation. The assessment phase determines the probability and severity of a hazard. Probability is defined as frequent, likely, occasional, seldom, or unlikely; the severity is categorized as catastrophic, critical, moderate, or negligible. The development of controls will serve as a recommendation to the decision makers, in this case the DOD, to mitigate the risk.
I only focus on risk to the assets themselves, which includes manned and unmanned space assets. I will not include the risk to the ground facilities or delivery vehicles, each of which would warrant their own individual studies and analysis. I will also limit the level of complexity by grouping the risks into two major categories: environmental risk and manmade risk. The initial risk is for the category as a whole and not for each example provided.
Environmental risks or hazards are any that come from operating outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. These types of risk also include the risk to operational requirements of the SBA since the potential for the SBA to not be able to perform its mission could have consequences for other CIs. Environmental risks include but are not limited to: terrestrial weather, atmospheric scintillation, radiation, solar flares and wind, cosmic rays, gravity, debris and other flying objects.
The environmental risks to a SBAs are substantial; every type of SBA faces risks from operating in the harsh environment of space. Two examples of environmental risks to the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS), for instance, include: the inability to detect a missile launch because of terrestrial weather and the deterioration of SBIRS’ life span from increased solar radiation. These types of hazards can not only affect the personnel and equipment in space but can also cause risk to other CIs. For example, the loss of PNT would render a ship operating in the Atlantic Ocean unable to determine its position. While there is no way to stop environmental hazards from affecting SBAs, it is possible to mitigate the effects these hazards on the SBA and thus mitigate the risk to other infrastructures that utilize SBAs.
Within the framework of the DRM, environmental hazards are frequent risks because no one can control how or when the space or terrestrial environment will affect the SBA. In contrast to the frequency of the environmental risk, the severity of the risk can vary from moderate to catastrophic given there is generally more than one of any given type of satellite in orbit at a time. Contrast, for instance, the severity of the loss of a smallsat with that of the International Space Station. Utilizing Table 1-1 in ATP 5-19 we could assess the initial risk to the SBAs as ranging from high risk to extremely high risk depending on the SBA that is being affected. Through the development and implementation of controls, the initial risk can be mitigated to an acceptable risk.
Environmental risk controls include the concept of increasing “stand-off” distance. Stand-off distance refers to keeping the effect of an environmental hazard away from the critical components of the asset. The increase in stand-off distance can be achieved through shielding of critical components during the construction of the SBA. Nevertheless, there is a trade-off to increasing the shielding because the added weight means that the delivery vehicle is not able to carry as much. Another means of control similar to the mitigation of physical risk is to “push out the perimeter,” by identifying locations or orbits where environmental risk may occur or have a greater chance of affecting the asset. This control is generally determined during the operational planning process and can then be monitored from the ground station.
Many environmental risks are similar to physical risks and can be mitigated by increasing stand-off distance from the effects of environmental risk. One way this is being accomplished is through the implementation of the CO-NETIC AA alloy that helps shield satellites from gamma-ray bursts. Another way to create is by using EMI tape on the opening of the Faraday Cages that protect sensitive components from electromagnetic interference. These controls are some examples of measures that can be used to mitigate the effects of environmental risk.
The mitigation of environmental risk is the responsibility of multiple people over the course of development and operations. At the start of the life-cycle process, risk management falls to the designers, engineers, and builders to ensure that the appropriate controls are implemented to mitigate the potential of environmental risk affecting critical components and systems. Following an SBA’s launch into space, the responsibility of risk management falls to the ground station crew from organizations like the U.S. Space Force that control the SBA in orbit. Given the large roles that the Air Force and Space Force play in the mitigation of risk to SBAs, the ultimate responsibility for the security of SBAs should fall to the DOD for oversight.
Manmade Risk
Manmade risks are risk and hazards that are produced by adversaries looking to exploit the critical nature of SBAs. Examples include cyber-attacks launched as part of international conflicts. In 2008, during the brief Georgia-Russia War over South Ossetia, Russia engaged Georgia in the cyber domain. These types of attacks can be transmitted via satellite uplink and transferred somewhere else via the downlink, potentially affecting other infrastructure. Manmade risks can also involve a direct physical attack on an SBA. This was seen with China’s destruction of a weather satellite using a ground based missile. Other forms of manmade hazards include: the creation of debris clouds, the shining of directed energy into the satellite’s optics, or the “gassing” of a satellite by expelling gasses from another satellite into it.
Computer viruses, nuclear detonations, and electronic jamming all constitute manmade hazards to SBAs. A sophisticated computer worm such as Stuxnet, which was used against the Iranian nuclear program, could certainly be used to damage SBAs. The 1962 detonation of a nuclear device about 240 miles in the air caused electrical problems across the Pacific to New Zealand. A similar detonation today would have catastrophic effects on SBAs. Electronic jamming constitutes the cheapest and most wide spread risk. Jammers can degrade the signal needed for communications and navigation. All of these risks can carry significant consequences, from a delay in operations, to the potential loss of human life.
Using the DRM model we can determine that the manmade risk probability of attack can be assessed at “occasionally” simply because adversaries are limited by the cost of actually attacking an SBA. Differing from environmental risk, the severity of a manmade risk is “catastrophic” because of the second and third-level effects that come from destroying or damaging an SBA. The destruction of just one satellite can create a debris field of thousands of various sized objects which can potentially lead to the destruction of other SBAs. Furthermore, objects of sufficient size can return back to Earth and crash. Utilizing Table 1-1 in ATP 5-19 as we did in the environmental risk section, the risk of manmade hazards is a high risk. In comparison to environmental risk, manmade risk is not as easily mitigated because adversaries possess a preponderance of destructive capability against fragile SBAs; no amount of shielding is going to stop a missile targeting a satellite. The mitigation of risk from manmade threats resides with the ground station that monitors the SBA from specific regions around the world. The ground station controller like those in the U.S. Space Force and other space units across the DOD have the capability to maneuver the SBA utilizing system commands. Nevertheless, this process is not in real time and can actually cause more damage if done incorrectly. The U.S. Air Force Silent Sentry program allows the ground station to determine if a satellite signal is being jammed and the location of the jammer, mitigating the effects of jamming. Though private companies have some responsibility in mitigating risk to the SBAs they control, ultimately the security of these assets resides with the DOD, as it possesses the preponderance of space assets and units. Conclusion Risk is inherent in all things relating to space, from building the asset to launching it into orbit. The amount of risk only increases once it enters into orbit and all SBAsd are at a high risk for environmental and manmade hazards. Because of their support to the other 16 critical infrastructures, SBAs need to be included as a CI in the NIPP under the oversight of the DOD. Though environmental risks to SBAs cannot be controlled, these types of hazards can be mitigated through methods similar to preventing physical risk, such as extending the stand-off distance through shielding or expanding the perimeter through the analysis of the orbit and forecasting of the space environment. These mitigation methods begin with the developers, builders, and engineers. They continue with the ground station crew and reside ultimately with the DOD as the holder of the preponderance of interests in space. Manmade hazards potentially pose a risk as devastating as those caused by the environment because they are new and have a greater second and third-order consequences. A manmade hazard to an SBA can cause widespread destruction; just one destroyed satellite can scatter thousands of various-sized objects in orbit. Manmade risks are managed by ground station crews who monitor system statuses and provide commands to respond to risks or external hazards. Space Based Assets affect all 16 CIs and thus impact the lives of most American citizens. Therefore, the risk associated with any type of SBA can be – and should be — mitigated by utilizing the U.S. Army Deliberate Risk Management process. The support SBAs provide to critical infrastructures defines a need for SBAs to be counted among the CIs outlined in the NIPP and receive the requisite DOD security oversight.
1. Legislative History of Commercial Space Launch Act P.L. 98-575. Washington, Arnold and Porter.
2. See DHS, National Infrastructure Protection Plan (2009) https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/NIPP_Plan.pdf
3. Dept. of Transportation. Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) & Spectrum Management. https://www.transportation.gov/pnt
4. U.S Army, (2017 February 24). AR 385-10: The Army Safety Program, Headquarters, Department of the Army
5. U.S Army, (2017 April). ATP 5-19: Risk Management, Headquarters, Department of the Army
6. See ATP 5-19
7. Sauter, M., Holshouser, K., & Doane, J. (2004). A pound of prevention. Security Management, 48(3), 91-102. https://search-proquest.com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/docview/231195215?accountid=8289
8. Shielding material helps satellite explore gamma-ray bursts. (2002). NASA Tech Briefs, 26(7), 22. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/docview/223377405?accountid=828
9. Solin, J. (2018). Shielding effectiveness of satellite faraday cages with EMI taped seams and closeouts. IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Magazine, 7(2), 40–46. https://doi.org/10.1109/MEMC.2018.8410660
10. O’Connell, M. (2012). Cyber security without cyber war. Journal of Conflict and Security Law, 17(2), 187-210.
11. Marc Kaufman and Dafna Linzer, T. (2007, January 19). China missile destroys satellite ; Test raises fears of arms race in space: Chicago Final Edition. Chicago Tribune (1963).
12. See “Cyber Security”
13. The Engineer (2015). In 1962, United States Detonated A Nuclear Bomb In Space. Here Is Why They Did It. Wonderful Engineering. https://wonderfulengineering.com/in-1962-united-states-detonated-a-nuclear-bomb-in-space-here-is-why-they-did-it/
14. See ATP 5-19
15. Tech Sgt, M. A. (2013, Mar 24). Combat ops space cell: Defending critical satellite links. UPI Space Daily Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/docview/1319073486?accountid=8289
apellegrino
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The Molly Maguires (1970)
Watch The Molly Maguires (1970) Online
Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 1876. A secret society of Irish coal miners, bond by a sacred oath, put pressure on the greedy and ruthless company they work for by sabotaging mining facilities in the hope of improving their working conditions and the lives of their families.
Director: Martin Ritt
Actors: Anthony Zerbe, Art Lund, Bethel Leslie, Frank Finlay, Richard Harris, Samantha Eggar, Sean Connery
Last Dance (1996)
Upon taking a new job, young lawyer Rick Hayes is assigned to the clemency case of Cindy Liggett, a woman convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death. As…
A group of wealthy boys in Los Angeles during the early 1980s establishes a get rich quick scam that turns deadly.
Genre: Biography, Drama, Thriller
Ben Singer is a failed children’s folk singer, a career proofreader, a less-than-extraordinary weekend dad, and perhaps the most negative man alive. Floundering in all aspects of his life, Ben’s…
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)
Island of Java, 1942, during World War II. British Major Jack Celliers arrives at a Japanese prison camp, run by the strict Captain Yonoi. Colonel John Lawrence, who has a…
Country: Japan, New Zealand, UK
Genre: Drama, War
Dan, a 21-year-old carefree boy is always surrounded by a bunch of friends and fellow hotel interns who feed off each other’s everyday moments, their ups and downs. Shiuli is…
Love & Other Drugs (2010)
Maggie, an alluring free spirit who won’t let anyone – or anything – tie her down. But she meets her match in Jamie, whose relentless and nearly infallible charm serve…
Speed Kills (2018)
Speedboat racing champion and multimillionaire, Ben Aronoff (Don Aronow), leads a double life that lands him in trouble with the law and drug lords.
Country: Puerto Rico, USA
Bitter Moon (1992)
An embittered husband, paralyzed and in a wheelchair, buttonholes a complete stranger and begins to tell him the story of his marriage. The stranger would like to escape, but cannot….
Genre: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Downfall (2004)
In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In…
Country: Austria, Germany, Italy
Uncorked (2020)
Elijah must balance his dream of becoming a master sommelier with his father’s expectations that he carry on the family’s Memphis BBQ joint.
A single mother and her slacker sister find an unexpected way to turn their lives around in the off-beat dramatic comedy. In order to raise the tuition to send her…
Shane, a Jersey boy with big dreams, crosses the river in hopes of finding a more exciting life at Studio 54. When Steve Rubell, the mastermind behind the infamous disco,…
Trailer: The Molly Maguires (1970)
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A randomized controlled trial of a mutual support group for family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia
Wai Tong Chien, Ian Norman, David R. Thompson
This randomized controlled trial examined the effectiveness of a 12-session mutual support group conducted over 3-months for Chinese family caregivers of a relative with schizophrenia compared with routine family support services in Hong Kong. Forty-eight family caregivers from two psychiatric outpatient clinics were allocated randomly to an experimental (mutual support and usual outpatient care) group (n=24) or a control (usual outpatient care only) group (n=24). Data were collected prior to, 1 week and 3 months after the intervention. Families allocated to the mutual support group experienced decreased levels of family burden and increased family functioning and these changes were significantly greater than those of the controls at both post-intervention time points. The experimental group also showed a significant decrease in the duration of patient re-hospitalization (the total number of days of psychiatric hospitalization) at 3 months compared with the control group. This suggests that the mutual support group provided a more responsive service for patients than standard care. However, there was no significant difference in family service utilization between the two groups. The findings indicate that a mutual support group can provide benefits for family caregivers of people with schizophrenia that go beyond those provided by routine family support.
International Journal of Nursing Studies
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2004.01.010
10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2004.01.010
Chien, W. T., Norman, I., & Thompson, D. R. (2004). A randomized controlled trial of a mutual support group for family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 41(6), 637-649. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2004.01.010
Chien, Wai Tong ; Norman, Ian ; Thompson, David R. / A randomized controlled trial of a mutual support group for family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia. In: International Journal of Nursing Studies. 2004 ; Vol. 41, No. 6. pp. 637-649.
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title = "A randomized controlled trial of a mutual support group for family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia",
abstract = "This randomized controlled trial examined the effectiveness of a 12-session mutual support group conducted over 3-months for Chinese family caregivers of a relative with schizophrenia compared with routine family support services in Hong Kong. Forty-eight family caregivers from two psychiatric outpatient clinics were allocated randomly to an experimental (mutual support and usual outpatient care) group (n=24) or a control (usual outpatient care only) group (n=24). Data were collected prior to, 1 week and 3 months after the intervention. Families allocated to the mutual support group experienced decreased levels of family burden and increased family functioning and these changes were significantly greater than those of the controls at both post-intervention time points. The experimental group also showed a significant decrease in the duration of patient re-hospitalization (the total number of days of psychiatric hospitalization) at 3 months compared with the control group. This suggests that the mutual support group provided a more responsive service for patients than standard care. However, there was no significant difference in family service utilization between the two groups. The findings indicate that a mutual support group can provide benefits for family caregivers of people with schizophrenia that go beyond those provided by routine family support.",
keywords = "Chinese, Controlled trial, Family caregivers, Mutual support group, Schizophrenia",
author = "Chien, {Wai Tong} and Ian Norman and Thompson, {David R.}",
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journal = "International Journal of Nursing Studies",
Chien, WT, Norman, I & Thompson, DR 2004, 'A randomized controlled trial of a mutual support group for family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia', International Journal of Nursing Studies, vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 637-649. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2004.01.010
A randomized controlled trial of a mutual support group for family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia. / Chien, Wai Tong; Norman, Ian; Thompson, David R.
In: International Journal of Nursing Studies, Vol. 41, No. 6, 01.08.2004, p. 637-649.
T1 - A randomized controlled trial of a mutual support group for family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia
AU - Chien, Wai Tong
AU - Norman, Ian
AU - Thompson, David R.
N2 - This randomized controlled trial examined the effectiveness of a 12-session mutual support group conducted over 3-months for Chinese family caregivers of a relative with schizophrenia compared with routine family support services in Hong Kong. Forty-eight family caregivers from two psychiatric outpatient clinics were allocated randomly to an experimental (mutual support and usual outpatient care) group (n=24) or a control (usual outpatient care only) group (n=24). Data were collected prior to, 1 week and 3 months after the intervention. Families allocated to the mutual support group experienced decreased levels of family burden and increased family functioning and these changes were significantly greater than those of the controls at both post-intervention time points. The experimental group also showed a significant decrease in the duration of patient re-hospitalization (the total number of days of psychiatric hospitalization) at 3 months compared with the control group. This suggests that the mutual support group provided a more responsive service for patients than standard care. However, there was no significant difference in family service utilization between the two groups. The findings indicate that a mutual support group can provide benefits for family caregivers of people with schizophrenia that go beyond those provided by routine family support.
AB - This randomized controlled trial examined the effectiveness of a 12-session mutual support group conducted over 3-months for Chinese family caregivers of a relative with schizophrenia compared with routine family support services in Hong Kong. Forty-eight family caregivers from two psychiatric outpatient clinics were allocated randomly to an experimental (mutual support and usual outpatient care) group (n=24) or a control (usual outpatient care only) group (n=24). Data were collected prior to, 1 week and 3 months after the intervention. Families allocated to the mutual support group experienced decreased levels of family burden and increased family functioning and these changes were significantly greater than those of the controls at both post-intervention time points. The experimental group also showed a significant decrease in the duration of patient re-hospitalization (the total number of days of psychiatric hospitalization) at 3 months compared with the control group. This suggests that the mutual support group provided a more responsive service for patients than standard care. However, there was no significant difference in family service utilization between the two groups. The findings indicate that a mutual support group can provide benefits for family caregivers of people with schizophrenia that go beyond those provided by routine family support.
KW - Chinese
KW - Controlled trial
KW - Family caregivers
KW - Mutual support group
KW - Schizophrenia
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2004.01.010
DO - 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2004.01.010
JO - International Journal of Nursing Studies
JF - International Journal of Nursing Studies
Chien WT, Norman I, Thompson DR. A randomized controlled trial of a mutual support group for family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia. International Journal of Nursing Studies. 2004 Aug 1;41(6):637-649. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2004.01.010
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Return on Art
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Ruth Asawa
Sculptor - activist - educator
Learn something. Apply it. Pass it on so it is not forgotten.
Ruth Asawa was an American sculptor, an arts education advocate, and the driving force behind the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts. Her sculptures can be found in permanent collections of prominent museums such as the Guggenheim, the San Francisco's de Young Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, while several of her fountains define public spaces in San Fransisco.
Photo by Imogen Cunningham © 2019
Ruth Aiko Asawa was born in 1926 in Norwalk, California to Japanese immigrant parents. They were truck farmers who grew seasonal crops such as strawberries, carrots, green beans, and tomatoes. From the age of six, Ruth often did farm work after school to help her family make ends meet. She was often given solitary tasks as she enjoyed working alone because it allowed her to daydream. Later in life, she recalled how an ordinary farm task influenced her work:
I used to sit on the back of the horse-drawn leveller with my bare feet drawing forms in the sand, which later in life became the bulk of my sculptures.
Ruth’s sketch of her home in Norwalk. Photo by Hudson Cuneo
At the beginning of the 1940s, things took a turn for the worse. In the hysteria following the outbreak of World War II, the United States government feared that Japanese Americans would commit acts of sabotage against their country. Although no such act was ever committed, 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the Western United States were removed from their homes and made to live in internment camps.
Photo: the National Japanese American Historical Society
In February of 1942, Ruth’s father was arrested by the FBI and sent to a Justice Department Camp in New Mexico. In late April, Ruth, her mother, and five of her siblings were interned at Santa Anita Racetrack, where they lived in horse stables for six months. Thus freed from farm work, she spent her time drawing with artists from the Disney Studio who were also interned.
In September of that year, the Asawas were shipped by train to a camp in Rohwer, Arkansas. The Rohwer Relocation Center, surrounded by eight watchtowers and barbed wire fences, held 8.000 Japanese Americans and was built next to a cypress tree swamp. Here, Ruth became the art editor for the yearbook and completed her senior year of high school.
Ruth with friends at Rohwer Relocation Center, 1943
Through a scholarship from the Quakers, she continued to study to be an art teacher. In 1946, when she was unable to do her student teaching placement due to hostility against the Japanese, her friends encouraged her to travel to the experimental, liberal Black Mountain art College in North Carolina, to spend the summer studying art.
Black Mountain College was conceived by idealistic and progressive faculty from other colleges and an advisory board that included John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Walter Gropius, and Carl Jung. Their goal was to create a liberal arts college where democratic principles governed how the college was structured. Its progressive ideals put the practice of the arts at the center of the curriculum and made students responsible for their own education.
Josef Albers, Photo by Ted Dreier
image: Western Regional Archives
Josef Albers, who fled Germany after the Nazis closed the famous Bauhaus art school, established the arts curriculum at Black Mountain. The College came to be identified with experimental art in America largely because of Albers’ pedagogical efforts. His program included all of the arts, architecture, literature, dance, but also mathematics, and music. There were no beginning or advanced courses. Ruth was not awarded a degree. As Albers was fond of saying, “Art knows nothing about graduation.”
This summer proved to be such an enriching experience that the young artist decided to stay on scholarship for another three years. During her time there she was profoundly influenced by the community of artists and educators. This is also where she met her future husband, architect Albert Lanier.
The Asawa-Lanier family, 1962, Image via Ruthasawa.com
Soon after, Ruth left Black Mountain to join Lanier in San Francisco, where they married against the wishes of their families. In the following nine years they had six children. Ruth worked at home in her studio, often at night and in the early morning while her children were asleep. Slowly but steadily, she began to receive recognition for her looped wire sculpture, exhibiting her work in solo and group shows. In 1954, Asawa was asked to explain her work for her first show at the Peridot Gallery in New York. She wrote:
A woven mesh not unlike medieval mail. A continuous piece of wire, forms envelop inner forms, yet all forms are visible (transparent). The shadow will reveal an exact image of the object.
Image via Ruthasawa.com
Hanging metal wire sculpture
Asawa often described these tied-wired sculptures with terms such as “tree” and “branching form,” as she used nature as her model. Over time, she moved into more abstract forms with geometric centers of four, five, six, and seven points. These tied wire forms gave her the freedom to explore how, as she said, “the relation between outside and inside was interdependent, integral.”
Image via Superradnow.com
Photo by Imogen Cunningham
Mid 1960’s Asawa began experimenting with cast forms. For her first public commission, the Andrea mermaid fountain at Ghirardelli Square, she had to design the mermaid’s tail. Her solution was to first loop it in wire, then dip it in wax, and then cast it in bronze. She was captivated by the process of taking an idea from one material and then seeing it transformed into bronze. Her cast sculptures reaffirmed what she learned from her teacher Josef Albers:
The artist must discover the uniqueness and integrity of the material.
Ghirardelli Square fountain, image via Ruthasawa.com
Even though Asawa is mainly celebrated as a sculptor, she originally wanted to be a painter. Growing up on the farm she developed a love for drawing plants. Her time at Black Mountain College taught her to see the fluid relationships between color, form, and space. Her student paintings from her college years are exploratory and abstract. After her marriage, she continued to draw every day — in the morning before her family was awake and when her children were watching television. Meandering lines and patterns and explorative variations of the same subject characterize her work. The act of drawing, not the drawing itself, mattered to her.
Imaga via Esotericsurvey.com
Influenced by the social unrest of the 1960s, Ruth joined other artists in advocating for social and political change. In 1968 she and her friend Sally Woodbridge co-founded the Alvarado Workshop - an innovative program that involved parents and professional artists in the public schools so that young children had the chance to develop more fully as individuals. Based on personal experience Ruth formulated her teaching philosophy:
A child can learn something about color, about design, and about observing objects in nature. If you do that, you grow into a greater awareness of things around you. Art will make people better, more highly skilled in thinking and improving whatever business one goes into, or whatever occupation. It makes a person broader.
Photo by Greta Mitchell
They started the program with almost no money and throwaway objects — milk cartons, egg cartons, scraps of yarn, and flour, salt, and water. They would spend the entire summer working with baker’s clay, a cheap and safe material to introduce children to sculpture.
At about the same time, Asawa became a member of the San Francisco Arts Commission and began lobbying politicians and charitable foundations to support arts programs that would benefit young children and average San Franciscans. Soon, the Alvarado School Arts Workshop was in 50 public schools in San Francisco. It employed artists, musicians, and gardeners and recruited thousands of parents to be involved in public education.
In 1982 the artist decides to devote her energy to building a public high school for the arts in San Francisco in the heart of Civic Center, close to the city's world-class cultural organizations such as the opera, ballet, Jazz Center, the main library, and symphony.
Photo by Tom Wachs
In the late 1960s, Asawa’s activism and growing reputation as an educator led to many more commissions for public sculptures and fountains. These works can be found in San Francisco, San Jose, and other places in Northern California. For some of these works, the artist drew upon her life-long interest and experimentation with paper folding, also known as origami, for others she used her technique with baker's clay, cast in bronze. The artist loved to collaborate with different craftspeople on these bigger projects to learn all about the possibilities of her materials and to simultaneously encourage them to embrace the creative possibilities of their trade.
When I work on big projects, such as a fountain, I like to include people who haven’t yet developed their creative side — people yearning to let their creativity out. I like designing projects that make people feel safe, not afraid to get involved.
Aurora Fountain, Photo by Hudson Cuneo
Asawa would go on to serve on the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and become a trustee of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. In 2006, the museum presented a major retrospective of her work entitled ‘Contours in the Air, recognizing her contribution to post-modern American art.
Ruth died in 2013, at age 87. She left behind a vast legacy, not only as a ground-breaking artist and activist but as a teacher to anyone who sought to immerse themselves in the arts. In 2010 the San Francisco public arts school was named the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in her honor.
I think that I’m primarily interested in making it possible for people to become as independent and self-sufficient as possible. That has nothing really to do with art, except that through the arts you can learn many, many skills that you cannot learn through books and problem-solving in the abstract.
Photo © Rondal Partridge Archive
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Namely is a text-sound project by composer Beth Anderson which uses the names of creative figures important to the composer's life as source material. The names are put into a "magic square," which is used to generate the text material that is spoken by the performer. Beth Anderson is a poet and composer of new romantic music, text-sound works, and music theater events. She has composed an opera, an oratorio, three off-off Broadway musicals, several downtown music theater collaborations, music for orchestra, voice, chorus, tape, instrumental solos with and without electronic modulation, and a large amount of chamber music, in this country and in Europe, on radio and in concert. She joined Ear Magazine on V.1#5 in May 1973 and took it to NYC where she ran it 1975-79. Her all-Beth Anderson recordings are out on MSR, Albany, New World, and Pogus. 1750 Arch and then Other Minds (2003) includes Torero Piece. Her other music is on Capstone, North/South, Newport Classics, and Opus One. She is her own publisher along with Antes/Bella Musica in Germany. Born in Kentucky, she studied primarily in California with John Cage, Terry Riley, Robert Ashley and Larry Austin, at Mills College and the University of California at Davis. She has been awarded an Aaron Copland Fund for Music grant, many Meet the Composer grants, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Foundation for the Contemporary Performance Arts grant.
Label: OTHER MINDS
Artist: Anderson
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A Love Letter to Circe From Someone Who Can Relate
Posted byJacqueline August 28, 2020 August 28, 2020 Posted inMadeline Miller Week
On Monday, you heard from Dana about why she loves The Song of Achilles more than any other work of Madeline Miller’s. I promised you all that friends would be pitted against each other over the course of the week on this blog. That’s why today I’m here to discuss the reasons why it’s actually Circe that is unrivaled as Miller’s best novel.
Naturally, in a post that will argue that Circe is better than The Song of Achilles, I have to start by talking about how spectacular The Song of Achilles is. I’ll name the main reasons why I thought it was so good. For one, the ending devastated me. This was in part because the writing is so lyrical and poetic. I believe that someone with Miller’s writing style was meant to write a love story like the one featured in The Song of Achilles. And perhaps this book’s biggest strength is its love story. It made me acutely aware of what it means to be tragically in love. Circe had no hope of containing a love story anywhere as compelling as this one, and thank goodness, it didn’t even try.
All of these are reasons why I was shocked when I read Circe and began to love it in a way that was deeper and more complex than my love for The Song of Achilles. It is hands down one of the best books that I have ever read. Since I started Ristra Reads and Recs, I have been waiting for the chance to explain what this book means to me.
Before I came up with the idea for Madeline Miller Week, I didn’t feel the need to soliloquize about why I find Circe to be better than The Song of Achilles, even though I think that this is a fun way for Dana and I to engage with the two novels. I do think that comparing the two novels serves a purpose, though, because they allow me to explore what the difference between a very good book and a truly outstanding book is. What I mean by all of this is that this post is not meant to bring any negativity to The Song of Achilles. It is a great work of prose in its own right. But at the end of the day, Circe has my whole heart, and it’s time to discuss why that is.
“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe
On a basic level, Circe is more well plotted and better narrated.
The Song of Achilles is not always well plotted. Namely, it does drag in some areas. Everyone who is familiar with the Iliad or the story of the Trojan War will spend quite a while waiting for the book to get to the war. I think that Miller was reveling in the narrative freedom she had before the war scenes, and wanted to give her characters the chance to experience real happiness. Accordingly, a lot of the book focuses on Patroclus’ and Achilles’ childhoods, and it makes the pacing of the novel feel off. With so much time spent in childhood, I felt like I was often waiting for the book to get to its point.
Circe, on the other hand, has a more natural plot, in the sense that there is a clear beginning, middle, and end, and these parts are evenly spaced out. Miller wasn’t stuck to a particular story with the titular character Circe in the way that she was with Patroclus, so I think she had more freedom to tell the story in the exact way that she wanted. In a lot of ways, Miller’s freedom to be creative also contributes to Circe being a stronger narrator than Patroclus. Circe’s narration focuses on mapping out who she is as a person, while Patroclus’ often focuses on his love story. Circe’s voice as a narrator consequently comes across more strongly than Patroclus’.
Additionally, there is a certain part of Patroclus’ narrative that I think Miller could have written better. Without spoiling anything, at one point in The Song of Achilles, the story becomes more focused on Achilles, and Miller struggled a bit with how to continue to include Patroclus’ perspective. The route that she chose to go was jarring, in my mind. Circe doesn’t encounter any of these troubles, and as a result is a superior narrator.
The crowning achievement of Circe is the titular character. She is endlessly relatable.
Circe is a masterfully well written character. To start with, Miller manages to make her relatable. I have seldom related more to a character in my entire life than I have to Circe. Strange as it may seem, I feel like I’ve gone through a lot of the same experiences that this witch goddess has. The way that other people treat her is horrible. She is often the laughing stock in the room, deemed a freak, liked by virtually no one, and still she has the compassion to try to love and change and take chances. Her story gets to me, and it takes me back to when I was very young and unsure of how to fit in and usually failing miserably at it. I have had so many similar experiences to Circe that this book was painful to read at times, to see my emotions so blatantly exposed on the pages for everyone to see.
Circe isn’t just relatable, she’s also brilliantly written and full of complexities.
I can only hope that I will be able to write a character like this someday.
Even though I relate to her, Circe isn’t a sympathetic character at all times. She didn’t do what I wanted her to do at points throughout the story. She was beholden to her emotions. This just made her feel more alive to me. She is a complex and imperfect person in my eyes. I can’t help but think of her as a real person sometimes.
In a world that tries to put her down, mock her, and leave her in the mud, Circe has a determination to be herself. She loves recklessly, even after people let her down. She’s brave. She challenges the natural order of the gods. She’s everything I want in a main character, and in a heroine. Even after I put the book down for a while, and the specifics of the plot started to fade, Circe has stayed with me, reminding me to ignore the people, and specifically the men, who want to put me down, and to focus on living life on my own terms. Even as I think about her now, I get emotional, because she means so very much to me.
And yes, the ending of The Song of Achilles was like a punch to the gut and it hurt to breathe. But I actually cried more at the end of Circe. At the end of the book, for a few minutes, Circe made me acknowledge my humanity and what it means to truly live, which felt like a gift.
I highly encourage you to read this book if you haven’t already!
A Small Compilation of Books Steeped in Mythology
Review Of “Galatea” by Madeline Miller
2 thoughts on “A Love Letter to Circe From Someone Who Can Relate”
J (Midnight Book Blog) says:
OMG I just made a post about how much I love this book! Glad it is still getting the hype it deserves
Me too, I love this book so much (as if my post didn’t make that obvious lol)!!
Ristra Reads and Recs, Blog at WordPress.com.
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Change in the Admissions Evaluation Process: A Study of the Adoption of Committee-Based Evaluation at Selective Colleges and Universities
by Romero, Yvonne M., Ed.D. University of Pennsylvania. 2017: 318 pages; 10599186.
Empowerment in the context of climate change: How community-based organizations can play a role in engaging citizens
by Heuscher, Annie Thompson, M.C.R.P. Iowa State University. 2012: 112 pages; 1519170.
Perspectives on drought and temperature variability for the southwestern United States from a new hydro-isotopic network
by Berkelhammer, Max B., Ph.D. University of Southern California. 2010: 208 pages; 3434545.
Listening to Greater Boston's Climate Change Concerns
by Valdez, Anna I., M.S. University of Massachusetts Boston. 2020: 191 pages; 28028738.
El Niño Tropical Pacific Mean State Interaction Under Anthropogenic Global Warming
by Lemmon, Danielle Elizabeth, Ph.D. University of Colorado at Boulder. 2020: 142 pages; 28031703.
Crop Modeling to Assess the Impact of Climate Change on Spring Wheat Growth in Sub-Arctic Alaska
by Harvey, Stephen K., M.S. University of Alaska Fairbanks. 2019: 94 pages; 13856242.
Development of a Parameterization for Mesoscale Hydrological Modeling and Application to Landscape and Climate Change in the Interior Alaska Boreal Forest Ecosystem
by Endalamaw, Abraham Melesse, Ph.D. University of Alaska Fairbanks. 2017: 272 pages; 10605308.
Leadership, Change Management, and Acculturation in the Merger of Two Institutions of Higher Education: A Case Study
by Hazelwood, Anita Cook, Ed.D. University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 2016: 292 pages; 10243660.
Examining the role of resources, beliefs, and behavior in the policy process: A study of Colorado climate and energy politics and policy
by Elgin, Dallas J., Ph.D. University of Colorado at Denver. 2014: 271 pages; 3667223.
The spring phytoplankton bloom and vertical velocities in the stratified and deep convecting Labrador Sea, as observed by Seagliders
by Frajka-Williams, Eleanor, Ph.D. University of Washington. 2009: 140 pages; 3377337.
Becoming Food Crop: A Multispecies Ethnography of Three Food-Plants in a Changing California
by Sbrogna, Kristen Alina, Ph.D. Prescott College. 2018: 308 pages; 13424517.
Interlocal collaboration on energy efficiency, sustainability and climate change issues
by Chen, Ssu-Hsien, Ph.D. The Florida State University. 2011: 207 pages; 3483675.
Reexamining the Utility of Existing Climate Adaptation Frameworks Through Application on a Northern Forest
by Rice, Alexander, M.S. Michigan Technological University. 2019: 83 pages; 13857277.
Determining Heat Island Response to Varying Land Cover Changes Between 2004 and 2017 Within the City of Reno, Nevada
by Lawrence, Brendan W., M.S. University of Nevada, Reno. 2018: 45 pages; 10932769.
The Fermenting Assemblage: Finding Latent Potential for Change in Emergent Process
by Sancho-Rosi, Nicholas, M.A. Clark University. 2018: 127 pages; 10846281.
Energetic and hydrological responses of Hadley circulations and the African Sahel to sea surface temperature perturbations
by Hill, Spencer Alan, Ph.D. Princeton University. 2016: 195 pages; 10167545.
Lessons learned from Hurricane Sandy survivors: A qualitative intrinsic single-case study
by Tennyson, Donna, D.B.A. University of Phoenix. 2016: 169 pages; 10108360.
Investigating climatic drivers of the warming hole through empirical downscaling of eastern U.S. summertime maximum temperatures
by Wagner, Audrey Romaine, M.S. Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. 2011: 90 pages; 1501014.
Limits to species' distributions: Spatial structure and dynamics of breeding bird populations along an ecological gradient
by Hargrove, Lori Jean, Ph.D. University of California, Riverside. 2010: 133 pages; 3398224.
Short-a in the Sixth Borough: A Sociophonetic Analysis of a Complex Phonological System in Jersey City
by Coggshall, Elizabeth Learn, Ph.D. New York University. 2017: 472 pages; 10260486.
Factors influencing organizational change in the Department of Defense
by Majewska-Button, Marzena, Ph.D. The University of Oklahoma. 2010: 189 pages; 3407990.
Cultural Perspectives on Communication in Community Leadership
by Anwar, Abeer, Ph.D. Walden University. 2018: 159 pages; 10747804.
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New NBC Show Highlights Sole Woman In NASA’s 1960s Mission Control
22 August, 2014 2 January, 2017 / Inspiration, STEM TV & Movies / Alien, astronaut, Astronauts Wives, Chris Hadfield, Hollywood, Krysten Ritter, Leadership, Mission Control, NASA, Sandra Bullock, Sigourney Weaver, STEM, TV, women, women in aerospace
Name a sole female lead from a space TV show or movie. Sandra Bullock playing Dr.Ryan Stone in Gravity? Sigourney Weaver playing Lt.Ellen Ripley in Alien? Any others? With less than 30% of speaking film roles given to women in Hollywood, it’s no surprise that lead sci-fi characters are predominantly male. Sandra Bullock even admitted that “It was brave that [the studio] created a big tentpole action/science fiction film with a female lead, when it’s probably much easier to make it a male.” Soon these female space leads won’t be the only ones that come to mind.
NBC’s Mission Control – Premiering Mid-Season
NBC have green-lighted ‘Mission Control’, a refreshing new show centred around Dr. Mary Kendricks, played by Krysten Ritter (“Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23”), as a tough but brilliant aerospace engineer leading a team of NASA scientists at the cutting edge of space exploration. The show highlights the challenges faced by a woman in the 1960s, navigating the ridiculous boys’ club of astronauts and engineering nerds. Mission Control is executive produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (“Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights”). Ritter explains, “It’s about a woman in a man’s world at NASA. I play the only woman working at NASA. She’s really smart and fabulous and empowered, but she’s working amongst some bumbling idiots, and that’s very frustrating for her. And that’s where comedy ensues.” The show premieres mid-season on NBC.
Chris Hadfield with his book “An Astronaut’s Guide To Life On Earth” on the International Space Station (ISS) [NBS News]
Ritter’s Mission Control isn’t the only space centric show in production. A new ABC sitcom based on Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s best-selling “An Astronaut’s Guide To Life On Earth” book is in development. The show’s premise focuses on an astronaut who must re-adapt to life on Earth, after completing his final mission in space. The new sitcom is being led by Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker, as part of a larger deal they have with Warner Bros TV.
Green-Lighted By ABC – The Astronaut Wives Club based on the book by Lily Koppel [Barnes and Noble]
If you’re still in need of your space-fill, ABC have green-lighted “Astronaut Wives Club” a 10-episode series based on Lily Koppel’s best-selling book of the same title. The drama is based on the true-life story of the spouses of America’s early spacemen and will air in Spring 2015, with a script written by Stephanie Savage (Producer, Writer, Gossip Girl) .
The popularity of recent space movies and the number of space-centric TV shows in production may well point to a renewed and much-needed public interest in the space industry. Hopefully with shows such as ‘Mission Control’, the reality faced by women working in the industry over decades will be highlighted and their dedication remembered, whilst inspiring women today to aspire to be a modern-day Dr. Mary Kendricks.
Yes, add me to your mailing list to hear of Rocket Women updates first!
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Glycine transporter 2: Expression and interactions in the central nervous system
Shweta Lavania, University of Texas at El Paso
Glycine is an important inhibitory neurotransmitter that is localized in the caudal areas of the nervous system and plays an important role in mediating many important functions related to breathing, spinal reflexes, nociception etc. Termination of neurotransmission is achieved by the re-uptake of glycine back into the pre- synaptic neuron and neighboring glial cells by the two glycine transporters namely Glycine transporter 1 (GlyT1) and Glycine transporter 2 (GlyT2). These transporters play an essential role in regulating glycinergic inhibition in the central nervous system by controlling the duration and intensity of neurotransmission and therefore the efficacy of synaptic inhibition as well. The GlyTs share 50 % amino acid sequence identity and similar topology; however, unique to GlyT2 is the presence of a 200-amino acid long N-terminal tail which is not present in any other related transporter such as the monoamine or GABA transporters, and its functional aspects have not been explored to date. The importance of this N- terminal domain can be gauged from the fact that many individuals diagnosed with sporadic Hyperekplexia, a neurological disorder characterized by excessive startle response, carry point, nonsense and frameshift mutations along the GlyT2 sequence, including the N-terminal domain (Davies, Chung et al. 2010). The aim of this research is to understand the role of this N-terminal domain of GlyT2 in regulating the function and anchorage of the transporter and to study its expression in the glycine- rich areas of the nervous system like the brainstem, cerebellum and the spinal cord. This is accomplished by performing Yeast Two Hybrid assay in order to identify proteins that could interact with the N- terminal domain of GlyT2. Out of the 74 clones identified in the screen, the first 26 proteins have been identified and are mainly cytoskeletal proteins as well as some involved in signaling cascades, thus hinting at the important role of the N- terminal domain vii of GlyT2 in anchoring the protein at the plasma membrane and perhaps, influencing its functioning at the glycinergic synapse. Although it is well known that GlyT2 is abundant in the spinal cord and caudal regions of the CNS, the location of glycinergic nuclei, axonal projections and connections have not been explored in detail. The efforts to study these neuronal circuits have been limited, due in part, to the essential function of GlyT2 for survival and the lack of reagents such as highly specific antibodies. To map the neuronal pathways containing GlyT2, a transgenic mouse was developed and kindly provided by Dr. H. U. Zeilhofer, University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany (Zeilhofer et al. (2005) J. Comp. Neurol. 482, 123-41) which expresses the green fluorescent protein (GFP) under the control of the GlyT2 promoter. Coronal and sagittal sections of the transgenic mice brains reveal that the majority of GFP signal is localized to the medulla, pons and midbrain. Several nuclei containing GFP are restricted to the Colliculi and several areas of the Pons in the brain stem. Consistent with these findings, we have identified several GFP-, GlyT2- positive neurons in the Central nucleus if the Inferior Colliculus (CIC) and several areas of the brainstem such as the ventral cochlear nuclei (VCA), and several nuclei which make up the Superior Olivary Complex (SOC). The existence of GlyT2 in the areas involved in audition could provide important insights into the importance of glycinergic inhibition in mediating audition and could possible lead to further research in understanding the important sense of audition and treat maladies associated with it. The work described in this thesis has provided insights into the importance of GlyT2 in mediating glycinergic inhibition and could serve as a foundation to identify glycinergic circuits in the CNS, which can be manipulated by optogenetic techniques to gain a better understanding of glycinergic neurotransmission.
Lavania, Shweta, "Glycine transporter 2: Expression and interactions in the central nervous system" (2014). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI1564767.
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Tag Archives: Alan Trustman
Posted on September 2, 2018 | 2 comments
4-Word Review: Robbing his own bank.
Thomas (Steve McQueen) is a bank executive who devises what he feels is the perfect crime. He hires five men who he does not know nor do they know each other to rob his bank in broad daylight and then dump the money in a trash can at a cemetery where he retrieves it. The heist works flawlessly, but then insurance investigator Vicki (Faye Dunaway) comes on the scene and she almost immediately eyes Thomas as the culprit. The two begin a torrid affair with Vicki openly telling him her suspicions and that she’ll do whatever it takes to prove it, but Thomas has other plans.
What makes this film stand out from all the other bank robbing movies is that the heist scene was shot using a concealed camera. Only the bank officials and guards were aware that a movie was being made while the rest of the people were actual customers convinced that what was happening was real making their reactions of fear genuine. The best part of this sequence though is when director Norman Jewison has the camera put onto a dolly and glides it through the tear gas that the thieves set off.
The film is famous for its use of the split screen particularly during the opening credit sequence as well as Michel Legrand’s award winning music. Legrand wrote the score after viewing a five hour rough cut and the movie was then edited to be in tandem with the music instead of being done in reverse, which is how it’s usually done. For me the music comes off as sappy and out-of-place making it seem more like a romance when it’s really a game of cat-and-mouse and the blaring score almost gets in the way of it.
The best thing is Dunaway and I really don’t care how many face lifts she may have had, or how many years it’s been since she’s had a relevant role because she’s still a great actress and her presence here proves it. She filmed this before her breakout movie Bonnie and Clyde was released and she takes complete control of every scene she is in. Her character also works in what was still traditionally perceived as a man’s role and thus making it kind of groundbreaking. I also like that she’s never seen as weak or vulnerable in the traditional feminine sense and instead remains quite determined and focused throughout while never swaying from using her femininity as a weapon and nothing more.
McQueen unfortunately, and I can’t believe I’m saying this as he’s one of my favorite actors, ends up being the film’s weakest link as the role goes against his rugged persona, which is what he’s good at. He had worked with Jewison before in The Cincinnati Kid and lobbied hard for the part, but Jewison rightly felt that character was not the right fit, but ultimately he relented, which was a mistake. The only time he is effective is when he’s doing his own stunts or driving on the beach in a dune buggy but otherwise he’s transparent and utterly dominated by Dunaway.
The supporting cast is good especially Jack Weston as a mope who gets hired on to partake in the robbery and then works as the clumsy catalyst that helps unravel it, but I was disappointed that his character ultimately disappears too soon and would’ve liked him to have remained for the duration. Otherwise this slick production, which was written by Alan Trustman who worked at a bank and would spend his idle time fantasizing on how to rob it, holds up well and includes the famous chess game sequence that still sizzles.
As for the 1999 remake, which changes many key plot points, I’ve never seen it nor do I have any interest to. Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo certainly make for an interesting pair, but I feel that if the original is a classic then it shouldn’t be touched and a law should be written disbarring remakes when they aren’t needed or asked for.
Director: Norman Jewison
Studio: United Artists
Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube
Posted in 60's Movies, Classic, Heist Movies, Moody/Stylish, Robbing Banks
Tagged Alan Trustman, Entertainment, Faye Dunaway, Jack Weston, Michel Legrand, Movies, Norman Jewison, Review, Steve McQueen
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Pakistan: Armed men shoot dead four members of Christian family in Quetta
The Islamic State group reportedly claimed the attack in a statement posted on its Aamaq news agency.
Apr 03, 2018 · 11:56 am Updated Apr 03, 2018 · 01:37 pm
Unidentified bike-borne men shot dead four members of a Christian family in Pakistan’s Quetta on Monday, Reuters reported. The family was travelling in an auto rickshaw at the time of the incident. The Islamic State group claimed the attack in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency, AP reported.
A woman is being treated for her injuries from the attack while her father and three cousins succumbed to their injuries. “It appears to have been a targeted attack,” provincial police official Moazzam Jah Ansari told the news agency. “It was an act of terrorism.”
The attack on the minority community in Pakistan comes two days after the Christian festival of Easter. Security risks are high during minority religious festivals in the country, according to Reuters.
In December 2017, at least 10 people were killed and 44 were injured in a suicide attack at a Christian church in Balochistan’s Quetta. Christians account for 2% of the population.
Support our journalism by subscribing to Scroll+. We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.
Christian minority
People trapped in hospital as earthquake hits Indonesia, at least 34 dead
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Shell’s giant floating refrigerator to tap new gas reserves
Chief executive Peter Voser tells Emily Gosden why the massive Prelude vessel is a game-changer
By Emily Gosden, in Geoje, South Korea
6:00AM BST 21 Oct 2013
Peter Voser is surveying the view from the Prelude vessel, which he has just boarded for the first time. “Now you see the difference,” he says, pointing out an oil tanker a few hundred yards away. “That’s a regular tanker. It’s a big one, yet a small one.”
Small compared with Prelude, that is. The same could be said of all the giant vessels here in Samsung Heavy Industries’ shipyard in Geoje, South Korea. Among them are liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers, some of the world’s biggest ships. Yet all are dwarfed by Royal Dutch Shell’s monster. It is, as Voser puts it, “massive” – and it’s still only half-built.
Two-and-a-half years ago, Voser, Shell’s chief executive, signed off on the construction of the world’s first floating LNG (FLNG) plant. Expected to begin operation in 2017, it will be moored for 25 years at Shell’s Prelude field, 125 miles off Australia. There, it will produce gas, cool it to minus 162C – shrinking it to a liquid some 600 times more compact – and offload it to LNG carriers for shipping to gas-hungry markets in Asia. Shell, in short, is building a giant floating fridge.
Once the liquefaction equipment is on deck – roughly doubling its height – it will be the biggest floating construction yet built. Fully laden with LNG, Prelude will weigh 600,000 tonnes – six times heavier than the biggest aircraft carriers. “They have a few planes and 6,000 people on those,” Voser says. “We will operate this thing with 130 people.” And the 1,600ft length? “It’s a par 5 in golf.”
Not that Voser plays much. “No no, you need time to golf,” he says, chuckling. “I don’t have time.” Not yet, anyway. At the end of this year, aged just 55, Voser will retire from Shell after four-and-a-half years at the helm.
He says he will enjoy “a more private life” – likely to include seeing more of his family in Switzerland and indulging his love of football. As a young man, Voser hoped to be a footballer and played professionally for a second-division Swiss club. “I was never good enough to have a decent life from it,” he says.
Shell, which has awarded Voser an annual pay package of over £4m in recent years, has certainly yielded that.
Voser joined the Anglo-Dutch giant in 1982, only leaving for a brief stint at ABB from 2002 to 2004. Returning to Shell as CFO, he worked to rebuild the company in the wake of the reserves misreporting scandal and, as CEO, has honed its strategy, in particular towards gas. “We expect to see global gas demand growing by over 60pc from 2010 to 2030,” Voser says. “This trend presents a great opportunity for Shell.” Under Voser, gas production has grown to at least half of the company’s output. Shell counts itself as a leader in so-called “integrated gas” – producing gas and then processing it.
Liquefying gas enables it to be shipped over large distances where pipelines could not reach. Global trade in LNG has doubled in the past decade and is only set to rise as large gas reserves are developed in Australia and East Africa, oceans away from the markets. There are more than 40 LNG export plants across 18 countries, and more than a dozen being built.
Until now, though, all have been on land. Shell has spent two decades figuring out how best to build an LNG plant that floats. Prelude must be able to withstand category five cyclones, for example. And despite its gargantuan size, it has been squeezed to fit on a ship, taking up just one-quarter of the area of an equivalent onshore plant. As Voser might put it, it’s a big one – but a small one.
The purpose of the innovation is to enable production from offshore gas fields where it is too costly or impractical to pipe the gas to land and build a liquefaction plant onshore. Voser says the development of FLNG should herald “a step-change in LNG opportunities”. Shell won’t disclose the costs of Prelude, but analysts put it at close to $13bn (£8bn). Building onshore would have required 50pc more infrastructure.
Voser says a floating plant was simply “the best technical solution” – but it has also saved Shell even greater exposure to rising costs in Australia, which have led to multi-billion-dollar budget blowouts in several onshore projects. “We are quite happy having Prelude being built here in Korea and not being exposed to Australian cost inflation at the moment,” Voser says.
He expects Prelude to be the first of several Shell FLNG plants – one of the next could be the Browse project, also in Australian waters, where Shell is a partner. The decision to look offshore has drawn criticism in Australia, which would lose out on construction jobs. But “an onshore project in western Australia was just not profitable”, Voser says. “It’s not a question of whether it’s a floating or an onshore project – it’s a question of it is floating or no project.”
With rivals now also pursuing FLNG projects, Voser believes that within two decades there could be dozens worldwide. Some could be off Mozambique and Tanzania, where Voser sees “potential for floating LNG solutions” for developing some of the giant offshore gas discoveries. “It’s quite far away from the coast, it’s a very nice coastal area – it would give you challenges with pipelines,” he says.
Despite Shell’s gas focus, it has no real presence in East Africa – in exploration, Voser says, “you get a few, you miss a few”. Opportunities exist, but Shell has so far “found it too expensive to get in there” – referring to its decision last year to walk away from a bidding war for Mozambique-focused Cove Energy.
Whether Shell makes another move for East Africa is now likely to be a decision for Ben van Beurden, who will succeed Voser in January. Voser won’t dispense advice for his successor, insisting he “is old enough and has 30 years of Shell experience – he knows what he needs to do”.
But he does say: “Shell needs to stay ahead of the rest of the industry, in terms of technology and innovation, to be the right partner for governments and other companies to develop energy resources in the future.”
Perhaps no surprise, then, that of all the projects Voser has been involved with, it is the world first of Prelude he says he feels “most attached to”. “It makes me proud of what Shell can do,” he says.
“What we do best is we make breakthroughs in the industry.” And despite his imminent retirement, Voser admits, this may not be his last visit to see Prelude’s progress.
Defiant Shell unwilling to quit crime-hit Niger Delta: 29 Sep 2013
Shell ‘shuts down £8.3bn project in China’: 10 Sep 2013
Shell HQ development on hold over view fears: 04 Sep 2013
Shell attractive despite grim results:02 Aug 2013
‘We see a presence for Shell in the North Sea for years to come’: 04 Aug 2013
Posted in: Australia, Ben van Beurden, Daily Telegraph, Gas, LNG, Peter Voser, Prelude FLNG Project, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Shell Oil Reserves Scandal.
Tagged: Australia · Gas · Peter Voser · Royal Dutch Shell Plc
← Dozens of LNG platforms to be developed – Shell
Chris Finlayson saw himself as the victim of a brutal Shell regime →
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Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow
The Shrimp Boy Sessions: A Jailhouse Conversation with the Alleged Gang Boss
Max Cherney | November 21, 2014 | Lifestyle Story City Life
Sauntering through San Francisco County Jail's fluorescent-lit visiting area—the black shoulder patches on his orange jumpsuit indicating a maximum security detainee—Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow plops down on a metal stool facing a glass partition. A bit of an intricate Chinese-dragon tattoo peeks above his collar as his thick fingers operate a phone system that looks like it hasn't been upgraded since the 1980s.
Head shaved, still maintaining a meticulously groomed mustache above his upper lip, Chow spends several minutes fiddling with the phone before he can get it to work. Then, after seven months of public silence, perched inches away from me and grinning, Shrimp Boy speaks.
“I feel great!” he exclaims, his dark-brown eyes wide. “I’m in a good mood, very positive about my situation.” Phone in his left hand, gesticulating with his right, Chow begins a conversation with me that will continue over four separate visits, all without his lawyers present. Aside from the orange-and-black getup—a sharp contrast to the tailored two-piece suits that had become his calling card on the outside—Chow looks almost unchanged from March 26, the day he was arrested by federal agents on a 228-count indictment. He’s slightly paler as a result of his 23 hours a day in locked-down isolation, but otherwise outwardly upbeat and energetic, even joking about the bland food. “They give us a lot of peanut butter. I don’t like it much,” he says, laughing. “It was better before, back in the day, because the inmates made the food. Now we get a lot of beans and potatoes. Not much meat.”
The 5-foot, 5-inch Chow—dubbed Shrimp Boy by his grandmother because of his size and to ward off spirits—spends much of his time in his roughly five-by-eight-foot cell meditating and working on his case. It doesn’t bother him, he insists, that some of the other people charged in the sprawling federal racketeering case, including disgraced state senator Leland Yee and the conspiracy’s accused linchpin, political consultant Keith Jackson, are free on bail, living their lives. “I have no negative feelings on that,” he says with a shrug. But he does believe that it’s unjust to keep him locked up pending trial. “The situation is unfair to me. Money laundering is all I got charged on, no violence related to me—it’s just the system. I feel bias and prejudice against me, but I’m not angry about it.”
I ask Chow whether he feels safe, wondering if a man who has already served 20 years in prison and has a history of criminal associations—and, presumably, many enemies—is anxious or uneasy to be back behind bars. Not in the least, he says. “I’ve been in the system for a long time. And when I’m in the system, I have a lot of people who I know, who I trust. I feel really safe. I’m the OG here. They give me a lot of love. I walk by and [there’s] nothing but welcoming [and] people saying hi to me.”
On my second visit with Chow—our first is cut short by technical problems with the ’80s phone—I’m drawn to his tattoo, the barely visible but permanent reminder of his criminal past. It’s an immense work of art, covering his back and much of his chest. Chow obligingly relates the story: “During a prison riot in Tehachapi [where he had been transferred from what was then Chino State Prison], I saved a kid—he got stabbed twice.” Chow makes a knifing motion toward the right side of his chest. “They stabbed him in the lung, so I brought the kid to the prison hospital and convinced the nurses to take him. When he came out, the kid appreciated what I did—he wanted to give me an American-dragon tattoo. But I’m Chinese, so I explained the Chinese dragon to him, and without seeing a picture he got it exactly right, all over my body. It’s the only tattoo I have.”
I ask Chow where he finds his strength now, with the government accusing him of crimes that, if proved, could mean more than 100 years in prison. He is characteristically unfazed. “I’m innocent. I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” he says, gaze steady, scrutinizing my reaction. “All the people who are supporting me, that’s what’s keeping me strong. I’m not going to fail.”
The government has charged Chow with presiding over a multimillion-dollar crime syndicate involved in gun and drug smuggling, political corruption, and money laundering. Much of that activity was allegedly under the umbrella of the Ghee Kung Tong, identified by the feds as a de facto Chinese mafia organization. Chow begs to differ: “My organization is not what they call a secret society,” he says. “People misunderstand—it’s not a secret. It’s a private self-help group, helping people, our people. It’s about loyalty, trust, honor. As the chairman, it’s my job to help people.”
The title “chairman” is interchangeable with “Dragonhead,” an ominous-sounding moniker deployed by the government in court filings. When I ask Chow about the notoriety that comes with being Dragonhead, he laughs, insisting that there’s nothing scary about it. “It’s about respect from people for knowledge, wisdom, courage, respect, honor—it carries honor, tradition, and history.” Specifically, he explains, he would help people get jobs, connect business associates, and assist with community projects. His lawyers show me 20 pages documenting Chow’s public appearances between 2008 and 2011—a period that overlaps the federal investigation, which Chow’s lawyers believe began sometime before 2009. The pages and pages’ worth of projects range from a youth speaking tour to the Chinatown Night Market—which was eventually killed by then-mayor Gavin Newsom—and a museum to honor the history of Chinatown’s tongs (Chinese-American community organizations whose name means “hall” or “gathering place”). “I was starting to do a lot of community work, to put myself out there,” Chow says. “I’m not here to terrorize the city or people. I’m here to benefit people.”
Tapping his index finger against the metal countertop on his side of the glass, Chow drives his point home: “Just because some people involved in tongs [are committing crimes] doesn’t mean that everyone in a tong is criminal.”
Weeks later, I sit down in a Starbucks with Chow’s longtime girlfriend (who requested that her name not be used so as not to harm her job opportunities). She says that she’s inspired by Chow’s positive attitude. He is not just putting on a good face for me during our visits, she says—he’s upbeat with her as well: “Raymond is amazingly thankful.” In the government’s charges against Chow, she sees a bias that stems from his reputation and his criminal past. “The Raymond I know, he’s someone trying to lead a good life and trying to give back,” she says. “If I believed he was doing anything wrong, do you think I’d risk myself, my daughter over that? No. It makes me sad.”
Along with press conferences and a public relations blitz, my series of interviews with Chow is part of a concerted campaign by his legal team to challenge the government’s narrative and to exonerate their client in the collective imagination in advance of trial proceedings, which are likely to kick off next year. Insistently criticizing the government’s approach to the case, Chow attorney and famed civil rights advocate J. Tony Serra tells me at his North Beach office that he—along with his fellow counsel, Gregory Bentley and Curtis Briggs—intends to put the system on trial. Curtis Briggs’s elder brother, Cory Briggs, also an attorney, recently filed a civil action on Chow’s behalf against San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, demanding documents related to an alleged illegal contribution of approximately $20,000 from an undercover federal agent to Lee’s 2011 campaign for mayor. The presumed goal of the suit is to characterize the FBI’s investigation as a haphazard fishing expedition into murky waters in search of a headline-grabbing catch. Failing at that, the lawyers argue, the government put the fix on Chow, the colorful ex-con with a chest full of tattoos and a gangster’s nickname.
When Serra announced in April that he planned to bring on Chow as a pro bono client, it signaled Chow’s intent to mount a vigorous defense. “If [Chow] wanted to cut a deal, he would have selected defense counsel that would do a better job schmoozing the U.S. attorney,” legal scholar David Levine of UC Hastings College of the Law tells me. “Tony Serra is an iconoclast and a true believer,” Sam Singer, a crisis PR specialist, says of Chow’s lead attorney. “He believes his client is 100 percent innocent. The news media and public really enjoy someone who believes. There’s little he can say that will harm his case.” Chow’s girlfriend confirms that she and Chow are relishing the chance to go to trial, almost excitedly talking about the possibility. “We’re not normal,” she says. “We do things out of the box. We like to be different, creative. And Tony and Curtis and Greg [Bentley] are the first attorneys [Chow] doesn’t have to fight.”
After Serra announced that he was taking on this particular client, rumors swirled about an unwritten though widely known aspect of Serra’s criminal defense practice: He doesn’t represent snitches. This presents a potential problem, as Chow’s previous stay in prison was curtailed in 2002 when he cooperated with federal prosecutors to bring down another gang leader. “I don’t represent a snitch,” Serra wrote in response to my query on the subject. “I represent a beautiful man who 12 years ago transcended a lifestyle most people never have the courage to walk away from. He experienced a true epiphany after prison and became a role model for many unfortunates. He has devoted his life since then to bona fide social causes.”
The government portrays Chow in a very different light, as a dangerous thug who has never given up his past—to this day living in the United States without citizenship, with a deportation warrant awaiting him, and still socially tied to alleged criminals in Chinatown. It’s not an entirely unfounded argument: By his own admission, Chow was involved in criminal activity off and on from the time he arrived in San Francisco from Hong Kong more than 40 years ago until his release from prison in 2002. His rap sheet (which is nearly 10 pages long—I viewed a physical copy at his lawyers’ offices) reveals serious crimes. In 1978, he was sentenced to 11 years in state prison for armed robbery. Released early, he got nabbed again for assault and was imprisoned on that charge until 1988.
Monitored by the FBI since the late 1980s, Chow was indicted in 1992 and convicted in 1996 for gun trafficking, a charge that was rolled into a racketeering indictment that named 19 other defendants. In that case, the government accused Chow and a man named Peter Chong (then the leader of the Wo Hop To, an Asian gang with roots in Hong Kong) of attempting to unite Asian criminals across the country. After serving nearly 10 years in federal prison, Chow agreed to collaborate with the government in exchange for a reduced sentence. His testimony was critical to Chong’s eventual conviction in 2002. Chow got out of prison that year, but was detained by immigration authorities until 2003.
Chow tells me that the underworld has transformed in the years since he was released from prison. “A lot of things have changed about organized crime—it died out after 9/11. When that happened, the whole thing changed. Com- puters, technology, wiretaps—it’s so easy to catch up with people.” He also sees a difference in the way that criminal societies form, with younger people showing less allegiance to their criminal forebears. “As a society, we are losing the culture,” he says. “The new generation isn’t related to the old generation. There’s not the same loyalty and standards as back in the day. There’s no loyalty. They talk about loyalty, but it doesn’t succeed—not the same standard.”
Despite Chow’s insistence that organized crime as he knows it has fallen by the wayside, the government’s narrative says otherwise. Outlined in a lurid 137-page affidavit, the investigation reads like a screenplay: Goodfellas of the West. There are allegations of Chinese secret societies, a corrupt gun-running senator (the disgraced Leland Yee), illegal marijuana grows, and violent thugs running amok within and beyond Chinatown. Since the feds first announced the charges in March, the public has learned that the investigation was even more sweeping than it first seemed, touching politicians such as Mayor Lee and San Francisco supervisors London Breed and Malia Cohen, none of whom were implicated in any wrongdoing. In recent court documents, federal prosecutors even mentioned music mogul Suge Knight, rapper Too $hort, and comedian Katt Williams (though, again, they have not been formally swept up in the charges).
What’s intriguing about this particular indictment is that the feds initially presented an account of unchecked greed, arranged paid assassinations, political corruption, and profiteering involving a colorful cast of 29 defendants. Since then, the U.S. attorney has refined the allegations, stating that there are, in fact, two separate conspiracies. The first racketeering charge is tied firmly to the Ghee Kung Tong, including Chow, Keith Jackson and his son Brandon, sports agent Marlon Sullivan, George Nieh, Kevin Siu, and 11 others. Siu and Nieh (the purported leader of the Wah Ching street gang) were allegedly laundering profits from fake criminal enterprises set up by an undercover federal agent, referred to in the indictment as UCE 4599. As the investigation proceeded, Nieh and Chow allegedly dragged the other people into the operation, eventually expanding to moving cocaine, marijuana, guns, booze, and cigarettes illegally—and, of course, laundering the proceeds.
The second racketeering charge surrounds state senator Leland Yee’s alleged gun-running operation—in which he allegedly attempted to ship black-market weapons from Filipino revolutionaries via the United States to North Africa—and political corruption ring. The feds have said that Yee took bribes from undercover agents in exchange for political favors such as influencing marijuana-related legislation, issuing a proclamation honoring the Ghee Kung Tong (proposed and paid for by UCE 4599), and funneling state government money to a fictitious company, Well Tech, set up by the feds. Yee and Keith Jackson are the only two indicted in the second racketeering charge.
As I pore over the 570-and-counting documents entered into the public record, Jackson emerges as the man who ties Yee’s sphere of influence to those allegedly involved in Chow’s Ghee Kung Tong. When the feds first infiltrated the tong and came into contact with Jackson, they had no knowledge of Senator Yee’s alleged illegal political activities or his ambitions as an international arms trafficker. At the time, in 2010, Jackson was spending time with Chow because he hoped to use Chow’s community influence to support massive redevelopment on the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard site.
Chow allegedly introduced Jackson (who later would be named a consultant to the Ghee Kung Tong, a title given to people who donate money to and show support for the organization) to UCE 4599, who was inducted into the tong at the same time as Jackson. At first, Jackson asked the undercover agent to contribute to Yee’s 2011 bid for mayor, allegedly bragging about his close relationship with the then state senator and about how much of San Francisco’s budget would be under Yee’s control if he were elected. As Jackson began to ask UCE 4599 for illegal donations more frequently, the agent introduced Jackson to another agent who, he claimed, was interested in having some influence in politics. This set in motion the FBI’s investigation of Yee.
During our last interview, I ask Chow about his relationship to Yee. Chow says that all he knew about the senator was his community work. “I think I saw him at the Starr King Elementary School events, the school’s car wash, things like that. But we ran into each other at a lot of functions. He was very good with the community—that’s all I know about him.”
A metal gate slams shut, sending a clang through the visitors’ area. Chow pulls the receiver closer to his mouth. We’re talking about his past life, a youth lived in thrall to crime and violence. “The first firecracker [you lit], how did you feel?” he asks rhetorically. “That kind of exciting feeling, the rush, that kind of violence, you can get addicted to it—some people chase that kind of feeling. When I was younger, I had that kind of craving. When you get older, you get the understanding that it’s bad. But I never killed no one. I feel good about that.”
Chow explains that this is the sort of thing that he tells young people when he speaks to them—a service for which he’s been recognized by the city of San Francisco and the state. He tells me that he aims to be open and honest in responding to whatever questions kids have. “When I talk with the youngsters, I always say to them, ‘Be careful what you ask me because I’ll answer truthfully.’ They always want to know, ‘What is it like to fire a gun?’ They really want to know all those type of questions. They want experiences. Life, a journey to experience.”
Chow frames his transformation from criminal to model citizen as the result of a breakthrough that came after considerable self-reflection and thought. Following his release from federal custody and several months of detainment by federal immigration authorities, he began to reenter society in San Francisco’s Chinatown. “I was lost, separated from society for many years, and it was very difficult,” he says. “I lived with my brother, meditating by Ocean Beach, settling down my thoughts, looking—looking for my future. I don’t want to be sitting home as a useless person. I was looking to do something with meaning.”
Chow was seeing a therapist at the time. “But the therapy wasn’t helping much,” he says. “I don’t have nothing, I don’t have no meaning out there. So I started to do a lot of community work, put myself out there. I want to do this. I think I can help. A lot of youngsters can do better. A lot of them need guidance.
“I want my culture, my history to be known, American-Chinese history—especially for my people, so the Chinese young people know where they came from, know how to respect the past. That’s what I tried to do, send a very good message: to stand up for themselves, talk about it, and get to know about it.”
Chow says that it became even more important to him to engage with youth and steer them away from his former lifestyle when he developed health problems that he links back to the life of a gangster. “Two years ago I had [a heart attack]. All the alcohol, drugs, smoking—now I’m paying for it, what I did to my own body. All the things you do in the past will catch up with you and affect your body. Now I take seven or eight pills every day because of all that from the past.”
That past is something that he has been unable to shake—and won’t be able to until his trial. Despite facing charges that threaten to keep him in prison for the rest of his life, Chow is thinking about the moment when he will be free. Talking with me and Curtis Briggs over speakerphone in Briggs’s office, Chow laughs loudly and says to his lawyer, “You guys owe me a couple of drinks once I get out, right?”
I ask him what he likes, and he laughs again: “Mojitos.”
Originally published in the December issue of San Francisco
Folllow Max Cherney on Twitter @chernandburn
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With U.S. Ebola fear running high, African immigrants face ostracism
(Note: Please be advised that the second paragraph contains language that may be offensive to some readers.)
Zuru Pewu holds her four-year-old son Micah inside a home in the Staten Island borough of New York October 23, 2014. Pewu, 29, who emigrated from Liberia in 2005, and her son Micah recently underwent an experience where they were insulted and linked to the spread of the Ebola virus. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
Reuters – When Zuru Pewu picked up her 4-year-old son, Micah, from kindergarten at a Staten Island, New York, public school recently, a woman pointed at her in front of about 30 parents and their children, and started shouting.
“She kept screaming, ‘These African bitches brought Ebola into our country and are making everybody sick!'” said Pewu, 29, who emigrated from Liberia in 2005. “Then she told her son, ‘You know the country that’s called Liberia that they show on the TV? That’s where these bitches are from.'”
Pewu’s experience points to an alarming trend. While many Americans have reached out to help, African communities in the United States are reporting an increasing number of incidents of ostracism.
Thursday’s news that a physician who had treated Ebola patients in West Africa has tested positive for the disease in New York heightened anxieties even further.
Some Liberians, whose home country has been hardest hit by the worst outbreak of the virus on record, say they are being shunned by friends and co-workers and fear losing their jobs.
In California, doctors refused to examine a child believed to have been in contact with someone who traveled to West Africa but turned out to have no risk of Ebola, a nurses’ association said. In Rhode Island, two women said they were disinvited to a baby shower for a co-worker.
And in South Carolina, a high school student was sent home for 14 days because the student’s parent had visited Senegal, a country that has had one non-fatal case of Ebola and was declared Ebola-free last week, according to a school spokesman.
At least two speeches by Liberians have been canceled by U.S. universities, and a college in Texas refused admission to Nigerian students over worries about the virus even though that country has had few cases.
Oretha Bestman-Yates, a healthcare worker in New York, said she was barred from returning to her job after a trip to Liberia – despite 21 days of quarantine and no signs of illness.
“People are looking at Liberians as if we have Ebola in our DNA,” said Ezekiel Solee, 55, a pastor in Rhode Island at a meeting in Providence on Tuesday to discuss the stigma. “Even when you hang your jacket, no one else wants to hang his jacket near you because they are afraid.”
This week, President Barack Obama’s administration issued new guidelines for hospitals treating suspected Ebola cases and ordered all travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – the West African countries most affected by the disease – to be funneled for screening through five selected airports.
Four people in the United States have been diagnosed with Ebola, which as of Wednesday had infected 9,911 people in Africa and killed 4,868 since the outbreak began earlier this year, the World Health Organization said.
Many Republicans, joined by some Democrats, have called for a travel ban to the region. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh linked the case of Thomas Duncan, a Liberian who died of Ebola in Dallas, to illegal immigration, saying there was a “huge Liberian community of illegal immigrants in Dallas.”
Sociologist Barry Glassner, author of the book “The Culture of Fear,” said the combination of Ebola fear and racial prejudice makes xenophobic reactions to dark-skinned people from West Africa even more likely.
“One has to wonder: If these were Swedes, would we be seeing the same response?” he asked.
Alexander Kollie, 43, president of the Liberian Ministerial Fellowship of Rhode Island, said he feels increasingly ostracized.
“Because we are from Africa and our skin color identifies us as being from Africa, we are being treated differently,” he said. “People avoid us, and they are afraid of us.”
But fear of Ebola also runs deep among West Africans. Several Liberian community associations in the United States have asked members to voluntarily quarantine themselves if they have traveled to the affected countries.
In Staten Island’s Little Liberia, where Pewu lives, streets bustle with men and women in bright traditional attire, loudly greeting each other in their native languages.
But some here have begun limiting their greetings to verbal salutes.
Tamba Aghailas, 42, a human resources specialist who recently traveled to Liberia, said so many people in the community were uncomfortable touching him when he returned that he stopped greeting acquaintances with a handshake.
Experts like Dr. Mark Rupp, an infectious disease specialist at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, which treated Ebola-infected cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, urged the public to resist irrational fear of Ebola, which is spread through contact with body fluids of someone who is showing symptoms.
“We even have some examples here in our own community – children of parents who are working in our biocontainment unit being shunned,” he said. “That level of paranoia is just not helpful, and it’s just not appropriate.”
(Sharon Bernstein reported from Sacramento, California.; Additional reporting by Sebastien Malo in New York, Harriet McLeod in Charleston, South Carolina, Svea Herbst in Providence, Rhode Island, Lisa Maria Garza in Dallas, Ian Simpson in Washington, D.C., Marisa Helms in Minneapolis and David Bailey in Minneapolis. Editing by Dina Kyriakidou and Douglas Royalty)
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In the National Concert Hall on Wednesday August 11th at 8.00pm, 2021
Tickets to catch this timeless piano maestro are on sale now from www.nch.ie.
First Irish show in over 10 years by one of the most influential artists of the last century.
The living legend that is Herbie Hancock returns to Ireland for the first time in over a decade in August next year. One of the most influential and revered artists globally of the last century, he has won some 14 Grammy awards across the six decades of his musical career. Having recently celebrated his 80th birthday, Herbie will take an all-star band with him for a very special show in the intimate surroundings of National Concert Hall in Dublin.
Now in the sixth decade of his professional life, Herbie Hancock remains where he has always been: at the forefront of world culture, technology, business and music. In addition to being recognized as a legendary pianist and composer, Herbie Hancock has been an integral part of every popular music movement since the 1960’s. As a member of the Miles Davis Quintet that pioneered a groundbreaking sound in jazz, he also developed new approaches on his own recordings, followed by his work in the 70s – with record-breaking albums such as “Headhunters” – that combined electric jazz with funk and rock in an innovative style that continues to influence contemporary music. “Rockit” and “Future Shock” marked Hancock’s foray into electronic dance sounds; during the same period, he also continued to work in an acoustic setting with V.S.O.P., which included ex-Miles Davis bandmates Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams.
Among his many honours Herbie Hancock has received an Academy Award for his “Round Midnight” film score and 14 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for “River: The Joni Letters”, and two 2011 Grammy Awards for the globally collaborative CD, “The Imagine Project”. Many of his compositions, including “Canteloupe Island”, “Maiden Voyage”, “Watermelon Man” and “Chameleon”, are modern standards. In 2014 he was named the 2014 Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University, completing his lectures series, “The Ethics of Jazz,” as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lecture Series for a period of six weeks. His memoirs, Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, were published by Viking in 2014, and in February 2016 he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. A member of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Herbie Hancock is currently in the studio at work on a new album.
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Council Housing
An NHS For Housing And Food – What Fresh Hell Is This?
October 13, 2017 Samuel Hooper5 Comments
With all the political momentum behind them and the Conservative government in chaos, even more moderate leftists are now pushing for a radical expansion of the size and role of the state
Fresh from advocating for a 100 percent inheritance tax, Guardian columnist Abi Wilkinson takes her desire for all of us to be vassals of the state to the next level by calling for a National Housing Service and National Food Service to rival the wonder that is the NHS. No, seriously.
Wilkinson is responding to a new report published by UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity, which calls for an ever-expanding range of “universal basic services” to be provided free of charge to all British citizens.
From the report’s summary:
The UK should provide citizens with free housing, food, transport and IT to counter the threat of worsening inequality and job insecurity posed by technological advances, a report launched by the Insitute for Global Prosperity recommends.
The proposal for ‘Universal Basic Services’ represents an affordable alternative to a so-called ‘citizens’ income’ advocated by some economists, according to the expert authors working for UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity.
Building on the ethos that saw the establishment of the NHS and public education – that essential services should be free at the point of need – the plan would “raise the floor” of basic services all citizens can expect, providing better protection for workers in the face of rapid advances in technology and automation.
As always, the report’s sponsors and cheerleaders make heavy use of emotional manipulation to press policy solutions which make people feel good and altruistic at the time, but which ultimately do more harm than good as they act as a dead weight on the economy. Andrew Percy, “citizen sponsor” for the report, predictably puts a rather more positive and moral spin on it:
It cannot be sufficient to excuse hungry school children or an uncared-for elderly population with a notion of ‘unaffordability’ in a society that is as rich as any that has ever existed.
Because let’s not blame irresponsible parents for having children they can’t afford or selfish adults for having no interest in caring for their elderly relatives, both groups not just being willing to palm these responsibilities off on the state but expectant of doing so. Let’s not assume that any of these problems require even the slightest change in the way that we ourselves behave. No, let’s just scream about human suffering and point angrily toward the government, demanding a solution.
Cynically using the Grenfell Tower tragedy as a convenient emotional launchpad to push her leftist Utopian vision, Wilkinson picks up the banner and writes:
The horror of Grenfell Tower has also given impetus to those who wish to see a more communal politics. Though a public inquiry into the tragedy is in progress, leftwingers have long argued that programmes for poor people are poor programmes. That is to say, when fewer people are dependent on a service – and when they’re among the most marginalised, disempowered and ignored members of society – there’s a higher chance that standards will fall.
If a larger proportion of people lived in social housing, this sort of treatment would be impossible. Politicians can only neglect a certain percentage of the population without facing consequences: mess with too many of us, and we’ll vote you out. In essence, this is the basic argument for universality. It’s one that even many left-of-centre politicians seem to have forgotten in recent decades. The higher the number of people who have a stake, the better resourced, monitored and defended a public service will be.
Interesting. Abi Wilkinson seems to have forgotten the more important and proven lesson from history – that when everybody is dependent on a service (as in every Communist state yet attempted) standards do not just fall, they crash through the floor, except for those well-connected apparatchiks who are given unofficial permission to bypass state provision and get what they want or need on the black market.
At first glance, Wilkinson’s argument may make sense to many people – because many of us do not have an immediate, direct stake in social housing or welfare payments, we are naturally less concerned with the service offered to those who are. But even this is not entirely accurate, since the majority of Brits are now net beneficiaries from the state rather than contributors to it. And this is reflected in the dismal Politics of Me Me Me which has utterly taken over, our selfish badgering at every general election not about what we can do for the country, but what the country can do for us.
In other words, half of the population effectively consider themselves (or are considered by government agencies) to be among “the most marginalised, disempowered and ignored members of society”, or at least among the most entitled members of society, and still this has not generated sufficient political pressure to force the socialist gold-plating of these services. But then clearly this is why Abi Wilkinson is pushing for more. Her New Jerusalem can only be achieved when literally everybody relies on the state for housing, food, healthcare, transport, education and probably cultural and leisure services too, for good measure.
And this is precisely what she then calls for:
As the neoliberal order of the past several decades enters its death throes, we should take the opportunity to reconsider our conception of universal rights. Healthcare and under-18 education we already agree on. In a changing economy with a growing need for highly skilled workers, why not university education as well? What about state-provided universal basic services, which is what leading economists and social scientists at UCL propose as a practical, affordable and morally justified response to growing poverty and inequality?
The left has spent years focusing primarily on opposition: resistance to spending cuts, punitive welfare changes and the erosion of employment rights. Now, with Labour tantalisingly close to power, we have, at last, a chance to imagine something better.
Except it’s not better at all. What she proposes has been tried, tested and failed every single time it was implemented. There is already a steady ratchet towards greater state provision underway, both fuelled by and fuelling public clamour for the same. People now expect to be able to procreate and have the state cover the cost of raising their children, and to even question this absurdity is to find oneself excommunicated from polite society. People expect schools to feed their children, and act as though schools expecting parents to provide meals for their own kids is somehow a mark of barbarity.
After a brief retrenchment, more and more people once again are clamouring for the state to be landlord to everybody, and the weak, pathetic incumbent Conservative government is actively cooking up plans to build more council homes while doing almost nothing to increase private provision. At every turn, people look first to the government to solve their problems, and with some justification – they have been falsely led to believe that this is normal and moral their entire adult lives.
Leaving aside universal basic income (for which there may arguably one day be a case if current trends toward automation continue on their present trajectory) the idea of universal state provision of individual services like housing, food, endless tertiary education and more besides is corrosive to the human spirit, as is the idea that it should automatically be the compelled responsibility of productive individuals to pay for the bad choices of another person. A basic welfare safety net is absolutely required, particularly at the present time, when civic society is so eroded after years living under a system where government comes to be seen as an auxiliary parent. But we must recognise the ratchet effect for what it is – increasing state provision leads to decreased personal initiative and increased demand in an endless, self-fulfilling cycle.
And where would it end? Today, food, housing and internet access are seen as essentials for which no human being or head of household should have any responsibility for providing for themselves. Presumably, then, every new invention from here onwards will quickly be decreed by the Left to be so vital to wellbeing and participation in society that it requires nationalisation and state provision to an ever-expanding pool of “vulnerable” people. Where does it end? And what happens when the innovators and high-income people who fund the wretched Ponzi scheme leave Britain in disgust?
The irony of such wicked proposals emanating from an organisation calling itself the Institute for Global Prosperity is almost too much to bear. How does the IGP think that prosperity is generated in the first place? Which is the economic system which has lifted more people out of poverty and want than any other, and which is the system which always begins in a blaze of idealistic optimism and ends with round-the-block queues for government bread?
But this is why it is essential that conservatives wake up, stop their petty infighting over personalities and develop an alternative policy programme to address the issues tackled in the IGP report. At present, the socialists are the only one with ideas and the political courage to speak them out loud. And at a time when dissatisfaction with the status quo is high and populist policies quickly gain traction, these ideas could end up being implemented by a Corbyn government sooner than many people think possible.
Carefully cultivating their reputation as the wooden, uncharismatic, technocratic comptrollers of public services, as the Tories seem determined to cast themselves (witness Theresa May’s most recent awful performance at Prime Minister’s Questions this week), is now a recipe for political suicide. Indeed at this point, given the uselessness of the present Tory party, it may already be inevitable that the political pendulum swings toward the Corbynite Left no matter what is done now. But thinking conservatives of vision and courage need to be ready to step in with an alternative as soon as the opportunity presents itself, whether it be a successful U-turn while still in government or a quick bounce back from Opposition.
And unlike the Left’s beguiling promises of an easy life stripped of any personal responsibility, this new conservative vision must inspire humans at our hardworking, civic-minded best rather than pandering to us at our grasping, self-entitled worst.
LeftWatch, UK Current Affairs, UK PoliticsAbi Wilkinson, Basic Income, Conservatism, Conservative Party, Council Housing, Housing Crisis, Institute for Global Prosperity, Socialism, Statism, Universal Basic Services, Welfare
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Tag: Jewish history
fiction · YA
Book Review: What the Night Sings by Vesper Stamper
December 10, 2020 Stephanie3 Comments
Book lists are so dangerous for my TBR; one quick scroll sends my TBR shooting up to excessive numbers, but it’s always so, so worth it. It was a list of awesome Jewish fiction that had me adding What the Night Sings by Vesper Stamper (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2018), and despite the oftentimes intense and difficult content, I’m glad I did. This is a gorgeously illustrated book with so much depth and feeling that I feel like I would discover new things on every page every time I reread it.
Young teenager Gerta’s life in Germany was disrupted by the Nazis. Previously, Gerta hadn’t even realized she was Jewish. Now, having lost everything but having survived, she must rediscover who she is- what Judaism means to her, what she wants to be, how she wants to live, what she wants her future to look like, and with whom she wants to spend it. Flashbacks tell the story of her before-life, of her training as an opera singer and how she came to be in the camps, followed by the nightmare of what life there was like. Brace yourselves; this is no gentle read.
Gerta struggles to define who she is when friendly, comforting Lev expresses interest, but attractive Michah makes her heart race. She’s not sure if she’ll ever be able to sing again. How do you rebuild, how do you relearn to be a person again when everything you ever had and almost everything you were was destroyed? What the Night Sings is a story of devastation followed by the soft, tentative rebirth of hope that will wrench your heart, bring tears to your eyes, and never let you forget it.
(I loved Lev. Loved him so much. Swooooooooooooon.)
What. A. Book. There were moments when I had to stop and breathe through the story because the details were so horrific and painful (to be expected with any book on the Holocaust, of course; I don’t think that any book set during this time period needs a separate content warning). Ms. Stamper’s writing is so fluid and so immediate that the reader is placed directly in the story with Gerta, living each painful moment and feeling the uncertainty of indecision. While Gerta’s story is specific to the time period she lived in, her story- needing to rebuild your life after everything changes- is universal, and this is further illustrated in the author’s note at the end (I won’t spoil this for you, but she’s got a really neat story).
Ms. Stamper’s art style is stark and lovely and fits this story perfectly. My own recent dabbling with art has made me appreciate artists’ skills even more, and I deeply enjoyed the illustrations in this book. I’m looking forward to reading more from her; my library has her other book, and she has a new one coming out in 2022, so this makes me extremely happy.
I cannot recommend What the Night Sings highly enough. If you’re looking for a book that will shove your heart through the ringer, yet still leave you full of hope, this book is it.
Visit Vesper Stamper’s website here.
Follow her on Twitter here.
Book Review: Someday We Will Fly by Rachel DeWoskin
August 31, 2020 Stephanie2 Comments
Don’t we all go through book lists to make ourselves feel better? 30 New Books You Can’t Miss This Year! 10 YAs That Will Make You Cry! 23 Books That Will Murder You In Your Sleep If You Don’t Read Them Immediately!!!!! (Okay, maybe not that last one.) And I think a lot of us have been doing more adding to our TBRs than reading, whether that’s because we can’t focus as well right now (yes) or we just don’t have as much time to read at the moment (also yes). Browsing through one of those book lists was how I learned about Someday We Will Fly by Rachel DeWoskin (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2019). The brief description said that the book was set during the Second World War and told a fictionalized tale of the Shanghai Jews, and my brain went, “…the what now???” This was something entirely new to me, and I had to know more.
Lilia and her family, circus performers, are set to flee the persecution of 1940 Warsaw when their plans go awry and Lilia’s mother gets separated from the rest of the family. Knowing that their lives are on the line, Lilia and her father and sister must continue their journey to China, hoping Mama will continue on behind them as they sail to Shanghai in search of a place they can live in safety. Shanghai is under Japanese occupation, but the Jewish community that has fled there is grateful for any place that will take them in. Existence there is bleak and difficult: jobs are almost non-existent, food is scarcer than that, hunger is a constant companion, and fears about the future and worry over whatever happened to Mama never end.
But there are small joys to be found amidst the heartbreak and fear. Lilia’s friendship with Wei, the Chinese boy employed to clean her school, is a bright spot in the darkness, and the connection she makes in a desperate search to make money for her family ends up resulting in an unexpected miracle. Lilia’s broken-up family is far from home, struggling to survive with every breath, but their story isn’t to be missed.
Y’all. This story is bleak. The poverty Lilia’s family suffers is enormous, to the point where you’ll feel something like survivor’s guilt if you eat while reading this. The conditions they live in are foul and oppressive, and they’re uncomfortable to read. It’s important to bear witness to this kind of historical pain, though, so don’t skip this one. Put it off for later if you need to, when reading may be easier, but put it on your TBR, because Lilia’s story is based on real Jews who fled to China during the brutality of Hitler’s regime. It’s a remarkable history I’d never known anything about, and I’m glad I know more now. It’s just not an easy read.
Lilia’s relationship with her little sister Naomi is sweet. Naomi is young but already highly delayed at the start of the story; the trauma the family endures doesn’t help, but Lilia’s care of her never wavers. And Lilia’s friendship and slight crush on Wei are adorable. There are plenty of tense moments in the story, however, including multiple deaths for a variety of reasons, and allusions to sexual assault. There’s also a deeply heavy scene near the end of the book that broke my heart as a mother, but I don’t want to give away any spoilers. It’s a painful, complex story, but one that deserves to be heard.
I’m learning better to balance out my reading this year, so I had to follow this one up with a lighter romance novel, but it’s definitely worth the read, especially if you’re into historical fiction. It’s YA but don’t let that stop you if that’s a genre you don’t normally read- Lilia’s problems are very much adult in nature, and Ms. DeWoskin’s masterful writing makes this a powerful, emotional story for readers of any age.
Visit Rachel DeWoskin’s website here.
memoir · nonfiction
Book review: Concealed by Esther Amini
April 28, 2020 Stephanie3 Comments
This week in my (Re)Introduction to Judaism class was our week to study Jewish history from Creation to the Enlightenment. Thousands of years of history in just an hour and a half, not an easy feat, and as the rabbi teaching the class said, “Jewish history is a bit of a misnomer. We have Jewish histories, plural.” And in a stunning bit of serendipity, this lesson showed up in my own life when I was offered a chance to read and review Concealed by Esther Amini (Greenpoint Press, 2020). After reading the premise of this new memoir, I leapt at the chance, because this sounded perfect for me, and it was. From the very first paragraph, I was hooked.
Esther Amini was born in New York, but her parents and older brothers came from a world away in Iran, Mashhadi Jews who spent their lives passing as Muslim in order to stay safe and alive, living as Jadid al-Islam, a kind of Persian converso. Outwardly, they presented as Muslim, their status as Jews a public secret; when tensions rose and the community stopped looking the other way, violence- stonings, robberies, assault, and murder, all sanctioned by the government- erupted. It was with this trauma that Esther’s parents lived, affecting their marriage, their outlook on life, and how their raised their children.
“Can we ever really know our parents?” Ms. Amini asks, before admitting the weight and sheer gravitas of this task. In this memoir, she recounts the struggles of her youth and young adulthood with parents whose volatile marriage and difficulty adapting to the cultural norms of their new home touched every part of her life. As she matures, she comes to understand her father’s fierce overprotectiveness and silence, her mother’s drive for independence and single-minded desire to stand out, while still acknowledging their faults and gathering the determination to stop the pattern of chaos with her own children.
A memoir of religion, immigration, family history, the challenge of reaching an adult understanding of one’s parents, and healing from the scars of the past, Concealed tells a story of a life lived with grace, perseverance, forgiveness, and the drive to shed the turmoil of one’s past.
I’d known there were Jewish communities in Iran, but Concealed was my introduction to what those communities look like. Extremely insular out of necessity, the community suffered greatly and lived in constant fear for their lives. It was after Esther’s brother David, then three, was burned on the ear with a red-hot fire poker by his teacher (who also screamed a terrible antisemitic pejorative at him) that Esther’s mother insisted that they needed to leave.
What fascinated me, however, was how much of the surrounding Persian culture and the lifestyle her parents had needed to adopt in order to survive, yet which they still carried with them to their new country. Early marriage for girls, as young as nine and to men twenty to fifty years older, was the norm in Iran (for the Mashhadi Jews, the reasoning behind this early marriage stemmed from the fact that minority girls and women ran a higher risk of being raped, which would then affect their chances of being married at all; thus, the earlier the marriage, the safer they would be, the reasoning went). While marriage at nine was, thankfully, out of the question, Esther’s parents made it clear that marriage, the earlier the better, was the only goal they had for her. Doing nothing to disavow her parents of the notion that graduation from high school was mandatory in America, Esther put all her effort into her studies, determined to make something more of herself than the anemic vision of her future presented to her by her parents. The book illustrates an almost stunning parallel: her parents sneaking and hiding their Jewishness in Iran, and Esther’s furtive studying, hiding books under the covers and reading with a flashlight, sneaking schoolbooks from her parents. The type of survival differed, but both types of concealment were necessary for each person to persist.
Her brothers were encouraged to study and work hard, however, a sexist stereotype that unfortunately transcends culture. “Stop thinking. No man will marry you,” her father told her. “Books are evil, they poison girls’ minds.” Her mother, herself illiterate, mocked Esther’s constant studying and desire to attend college. Her brothers, however, formed a team to educate and protect her, teaching her about periods, taking her bra shopping, serving as the knowledgeable, tuned-in substitute parents she desperately needed. “Es, create a mind you want to live with,” her brother David told her. And through hard work, trial and error, and the help of a good therapist, she does.
Her parents are mysteries, human contradictions whom Esther defies as a young adult, then endeavors to understand as she ages and then has children herself. Her father, harsh and reticent with a fierce protective streak, remains an enigma until she sees him through the eyes of a parent. Her mother, never missing a chance to create a spectacle, denied so much in her own life yet content to deny so much in her daughter’s, felt the world owed her, something Esther doesn’t come to terms with until late in her mother’s life. Maybe we can’t ever truly know who our parents our, but Esther Amini never stops trying, never gives up piecing together the puzzle of where she came from and how it affected her. Readers will triumph alongside her as she reaches hard-won conclusions and answers about the family she was born into.
Concealed is an intriguing memoir of not just one woman, but of a family, of a community, of the past and how it follows us all, and the effort it takes to grow and flourish beyond the places predetermined for us. Esther Amini is an absolute bastion of strength and determination, and her meticulous insight glows on every page of this book. If you enjoy memoirs, you won’t want to miss this original take on the genre spotlighting a community and a type of voice not often heard from.
Special thanks to Alessandra Scarpaci of Wunderkind PR and Greenpoint Press for sending me a review copy of Concealed.
Visit Esther Amini’s website here.
Follow her on Facebook here.
Follow her on Instagram here.
People of the Book- Geraldine Brooks
February 17, 2020 Stephanie1 Comment
Phew! Last week was ridiculously busy, between life stuff, kid stuff, and the extra reading I have for the class I’m taking. I didn’t have a single chance to sit down and whip up any blog posts, even though I really wanted to! This week looks a little quieter, so hopefully I’ll be caught up in a few days…maybe. A few weeks ago, a lovely woman in the Facebook group for the podcast I’m currently listening to recommended People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (Viking Books, 2008) to me. I’d heard of it but had never picked it up, and now seemed like just the time for such a book!
Hanna Heath has dedicated her life to preserving and restoring rare books, and she absolutely leaps at the chance to work with the famous centuries-old Sarajevo Haggadah, once thought to have been lost forever. Upon close examination, there are tiny clues- salt crystals, an insect wing, a single hair- as to where the Haggadah has been and who has owned it, sending the reader on a journey through the past to visit all the times and places it’s been. But the Haggadah’s story unearths a few hidden truths from Hanna’s life and illuminates a few paths before her that she never expected.
Bosnia, 1996. World War II Bosnia. Turn-of-the-century Vienna. Venice during the Inquisition. Barcelona during the time of the forced exile of the Jews, and Seville in the years before. People of the Book takes the reader on a journey through time, shedding light on not just the daily life of these times, but Jewish history, world history, allies and enemies, customs and mores. It’s not time travel- Hanna is never present as the reader is learning the details of the Haggadah’s past- but it has that same feel since Hanna’s restoration work and personal drama are interspersed with the Haggadah’s journey through time with each new clue she finds. I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book with so much information about rare document conservation before, and I found the descriptions of Hanna’s work with the book to be really fascinating. It’s obvious that a lot of research went into not only the descriptions of what Hanna was doing, but into the history behind the Haggadah, so my hat is off to Ms. Brooks for the intensity and scope of the work that went into the writing of this book.
History is often unkind in general and has been especially harsh to the Jewish people, so there are some content warnings for this book, including murder, death (including the death of children), rape, torture, slavery, and probably other things that I’m forgetting. There’s also a brief mention of a young adolescent being raised as a gender different from what was assigned to them at birth, as was occasionally the custom in their group at the time, but a mention of rape follows after this, so take care of yourself if these aren’t subjects you’re comfortable reading at this time.
People of the Book is an incredible read. It’s history that seems fresh, possibly because so much of what Ms. Brooks covers in the book hasn’t necessarily been overdone in fiction (or, if it has, I haven’t noticed!), and definitely because her writing style pulls the reader in so well, placing them directly in each period and surrounding them with the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the emotions prevalent in each era. The Haggadah’s travels bring the reader through so many different time periods that the reader is always kept wondering where it will turn up next, what excitement, what tragedy it will be witness to. I’m a little surprised I never picked this up before, but again, I think this book found me at exactly the time I needed it and was ready for it. I love when that happens. 🙂
Have you read any of Geraldine Brooks’s other books? I have a copy of Year of Wonders on my bookshelf right now; I’ll get to it eventually! People of the Book was my first book of hers, but I’m absolutely planning on reading more. I’ve kind of shied away from historical fiction in the past; I think I had a few bad experiences with the genre when I was young (looking at you, seventh-grade unit on Johnny Tremain) and that made me leery in general, but I need to move beyond that and cozy up to more of these great books by Geraldine Brooks and other authors, because reading this was an experience I want more of!
And, as luck would have it, People of the Book fits the 2020 PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt for a book with a map! There’s a lovely map in the book that details the travels of the Haggadah, so I’m happy to not only read a great book, but tick another box off on this challenge. 🙂
Visit Geraldine Brook’s website here.
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HomenewsPress ReleasesSLO Legal Alternatives Brings In the New Year with a New Name and New Leadership
SLO Legal Alternatives Brings In the New Year with a New Name and New Leadership
Posted by: slolaf
Category: Press Releases
By: Stephanie Barclay, Executive Director
SLO Legal Alternatives, also known as “SLOLAC” will have a new name as of January 1, 2015. The organization, which has been providing free legal help to low-income SLO County residents for over 20 years, will now provide free services as the San Luis Obispo Legal Assistance Foundation (or “SLOLAF”). The change comes as the organization works to ensure the community is sent a clear message about the broad scope of services it performs, including providing free legal assistance to over 400 SLO County residents per year through the Senior Legal Services Project, the Government Benefits Program, the Loan Modification Program, and, starting January 2015, the Supportive Services for Veterans Families Program.
The organization’s leader for the last 20 years, Mike Blank, has resigned as President but will remain on the board as Immediate Past President. The organization and the legal community are extremely grateful for the countless hours that Mike donated to help provide legal assistance to those most in need in SLO County. Dallas K. Mosier, a business, tax, and estate planning attorney at Carmel & Naccasha LLP, was elected President for 2015. Dallas has acknowledged that he has big shoes to fill and looks forward to continuing the legacy of this important organization. Director/Officers Marianne Kennedy and Scott Wall will continue to serve as Vice President and Treasurer, respectively. Collette Hiller has been elected the Secretary for 2015 and Angie King and John Carsel will continue to serve as directors.
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The Prime Numbers Have It
Évariste Galois: Died in a duel at the age of 20 but left a lasting legacy
In June the first Breakthrough Prizes in mathematics were announced: $3 million for each of five recipients, three in America, one in France, and one who divides his time between Britain and America. The new prizes, founded by internet moguls Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner, were announced last December at a ceremony to award similar prizes in physics and the life sciences. Narrowly focused on particular specialisations, these differ from the mathmatics prize, which is spread across the whole subject.
The big difference between mathematics and other sciences is that maths has no need for expensive experimental work, and mathematicians are free to follow their own instincts-trying to propel them in a particular direction would be rather like herding cats. With no need for experimental corroboration and inspiration, mathematics is very much an exercise of the mind, success residing in the proving of theorems.
A theorem might start out as a well-known conjecture — the 1859 Riemann Hypothesis with its implications for the distribution of prime numbers is the most famous — but it can also be far more mysterious, such as an unlooked for connection between two murky areas of mathematics. A great example of this occurred in 1832, when a 20-year-old French mathematician Évariste Galois sat down to write a letter outlining his mathematical results. The next morning he died in a duel. What Galois had done was connect the problem of solving algebraic equations to the study of symmetry. The more symmetries there are among the solutions to an equation, the tighter their bonding and the harder it is to extract them by means of a formula. He gave a precise connection between equations and symmetry, and had this been a known conjecture his work would have received immediate scrutiny. Prizes would have been awarded — though of course he was dead by then — but it was completely unexpected. Reactions only came years later and his fame was entirely posthumous.
Galois’s prominence as a political revolutionary reputedly brought 300 people to his funeral, but Zuckerberg and Milner want mathematicians to be well-known for their mathematical prowess. Milner, who quit the world of physics and made a billion dollars in business, says, “Scientists should be better appreciated. They should be modern celebrities, alongside actors and entertainers. We want young people to get more excited.”
It’s a fine idea, though celebrity status does not suit all mathematicians. Apparently when Andrew Wiles proved Fermat’s Last Theorem, a clothing company wanted him to model a pair of jeans — he wasn’t interested. And when the Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman won mathematics’ highest honour for his proof of the Poincaré Conjecture (about three-dimensional curved spaces) he refused to attend the ceremony or accept the prize money.
Of course the settling of an old conjecture can readily be publicised, but what of the deeper undercurrents that barely cause a ripple on the public surface of mathematics? Unfathomable, even to the educated layman, these are where the new ideas lie. Work on an old conjecture that does not delve into such depths usually results in the efforts being stillborn. A lovely fictional example appears in Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture. In Apostolos Doxiadis’s novel, the protagonist gives up a very promising mathematics career to concentrate all his efforts on the conjecture that every even number is the sum of two prime numbers, but in a William Golding-like descent into madness, he fails.
Problems about prime numbers can indeed drive you crazy. Some are easily settled, like the fact, proved by Euclid 2,300 years ago, that there are infinitely many primes, but consider a similar question that is not so easy. Take a sequence of numbers such as 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, where the difference between one and the next is constant. This is called an arithmetic progression. If there is no common factor, must such a sequence contain infinitely many primes? At one time this could only be proved in special cases, but in 1837 a young German mathematician, Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, provided a universal proof, revealing techniques previously unknown, which in turn led to new questions and results.
Switch the problem around and consider arithmetic progressions within the infinite set of prime numbers. Can they have any desired length? For instance 5, 11, 17, 23, 29 has length 5, but any length is not so easy. It was proved in 2004 in joint work by Ben Green in Oxford and Terence Tao in Los Angeles.
Slowly but surely these problems are cracked, though it may take hundreds of years. Here is one that hasn’t got there yet: are there infinitely many pairs of prime numbers differing by only 2? No one knows, but last year a Chinese-American mathematician, Yitang Zhang, proved that if the difference was at most 70 million there were infinitely many such pairs. This put the cat among the pigeons, and Terence Tao started a project to prove the same result with a smaller difference. His project, involving a more general claim — so often the case in mathematics — had the difference down to 246 in April, but as Tao writes, “[This] is a nice place at which to ‘declare victory’. . . it may be smarter to actually let things rest for a while in case some external development makes further progress a lot easier.”
Tao is one of the five recipients of the new Breakthrough Prize in mathematics, along with Simon Donaldson (Imperial and Stony Brook), Maxim Kontsevich (Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques), Jacob Lurie (Harvard) and Richard Taylor (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton). The external developments he alludes to are the key to serious progress, and those who make such strides are candidates for the most prestigious prize in mathematics — the Fields Medal of which Tao himself was a recipient in 2006.
Awarded once every four years to four people, at most, the Fields Medal has a cachet like that of the Nobel Prize, though at 15,000 Canadian dollars the financial rewards are far lower. Yet unlike the Nobel Prize, often conferred for achievements long past, its aim is to encourage new work, and an unwritten rule says you cannot be over 40 to win one. As a prize for the relatively young, its recipients are usually not well-known but their names are eagerly awaited, and this year for the first time a woman, Maryam Mirzakhani at Stanford, is one of the four winners.
These prizes may not create celebrities, but if they help raise public awareness of mathematics that is enough. One occasionally meets people who think the subject was all finished long ago, yet it constantly renews itself with new ideas, results and methods. Humanity’s desire to plunge ever deeper into numbers and patterns, and climb ever higher to see hitherto undreamed — of connections must never cease.
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Accessibility statement for www.stondonmasseypc.org.uk
This accessibility statement applies to the website www.stondonmasseypc.org.uk.
This website is run by Stondon Massey Parish council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader
email clerk@stondonmasseypc.org.uk
We’ll consider your request and get back to you as soon as possible but definitely within 30 days.
We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact the Clerk be email to: clerk@stondonmasseypc.org.uk
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
Stondon Massey parish council is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.
Minutes and agendas are loaded as PDF documents which may not be fully accessible.
Stondon Massey parish council is a small parish council with limited financial resources and only one part time employee.
At this moment in time making the website fully accessible would be a disproportionate burden financially and administratively.
It’s not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content.
It’s not possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping.
Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag.
Our forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website.
We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with navigation and accessing information, and with interactive tools and transactions. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment when the supplier contract is up for renewal, likely to be in one year.
[Note: in this subsection list accessibility problems that fall outside the scope of the accessibility regulations.]
The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we do not plan to fix the minutes/agendas of historic meetings.
This statement was prepared on 2nd November 2020. It was last reviewed on 2nd November 2020.
This website was last tested on 2nd November 2020. The test was carried out by the Clerk by self evaluation.
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Contact/Join Us
Tauranga Model Aircraft Club
The official website for the Tauranga Model Aircraft Club Inc. New Zealand.
Details of the TECT Park site
Over the period 2004-2006 the Western Bay District, and Tauranga City Councils, with funding from the Tauranga Energy Consumer’s Trust, acquired approx 1650 Ha of forestry and native bush to form TECT Park. The intention is to provide a facility for a wide range of recreational outdoor activities, and the Tauranga Model Aircraft Club is fortunate to be one of the early tenants in the Park, having signed a fixed term lease of 30 years in 2012.
The club has access to around 10 hectares of land around a hilltop flying site. The club has developed 2 grass runways – one North -South of 230m length and the other of 150m in an East-West direction. The club also has a club house, implement shed and day shelter on the site.
The site is in its infancy and is under development as funds allow. With our long term lease, and the difficulty in gaining new flying sites anywhere in the country, TECT Park is expected to be a major facility for the modelling fraternity, for many years to come.
Flying hours (Summer) are 7am to 9pm. (7 days)
Click this link to access the TECT website – TECT Park
Click this link to access the Rural Fire Service weather station (on site) – Rural Fire Service TMAC
Other flying sites
Gliding – some members with an interest in slope soaring, fly at a Plummers Point ridge location
Indoor Flying – depending on numbers this has previously been run at the Centennial Park Hall
If you are interested in these or other forms of aeromodelling, please contact a committee member.
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DYMMAX (DMX) Review: A valuable new opportunity in the DeFi sector?
The DeFi (Decentralized Finance) sector of the crypto industry exploded in 2020, particularly from March of this year onwards. Until then, the highest that the DeFi sector managed to go in terms of TVL (Total Value Locked) was a little over $1 billion, but the COVID-19 global pandemic quickly nullified that success.
However, at the same time, the DeFi sector — which never received too much attention — finally started attracting interest. Over the course of only three months — from March until June — DeFi managed to return to its $1b TVL.
However, that was not all for this sector, which only then started to surge. In four more months, between mid-June and mid-October, the DeFi sector hit a new ATH in terms of TVL, reaching as much as $12.5 billion locked away in various protocols. Since then, the amount has seen a slight decrease, although this could easily be only a small bump in the road.
That means that the amount of money that poured into DeFi grew by 12 times in only four months, in the middle of the year when a global pandemic and all kinds of other issues continuously troubled the world.
Needless to say, DeFi is likely only getting started, and those who joined it thus far are the pioneers of this sector of the crypto industry. Meanwhile, many are waiting for the second wave of projects to come out, in hopes of gaining new decentralized banking services, and potentially earning through HODLing, as the projects attract interest and accumulate value.
One such project, which promises to bring decentralized options trading without collateral, is DYMMAX.
What is DYMMAX?
As most people in the crypto industry already know, the crypto world has shifted through a number of trends so far. There were ICOs, IEOs, and other token issuance models that attracted attention over the last few years.
However, most projects that came through these models gave only empty promises. So, why would DeFi be any different?
Well, DeFi does not come with promises that may or may not come true in a few years. Instead, it comes with an offer of services that users can start using as soon as the projects see the launch.
DYMMAX is a good example of this, as the project offers options trading without collateral, which is something that we have not seen before. The project’s approach and offer to the DeFi sector are quite unique, and therefore, the project stands out from the others.
The project has recently closed a private investment round, and there is still time for interested investors to catch that train. After the private round is finished, the project plans to hold an IEO, which will provide it with the funding needed to continue its development and bring further value to its native token. Funding will also provide initial liquidity to the auctions.
Like with all new tokens, many are hoping to see this happen, which is why it is expected that most people who purchase the project’s tokens are likely to HODL.
Of course, there is never a guarantee that the price will go in the desired direction, but the progress that the project has seen thus far — combined with its unique approach and strong demand for decentralized options trading with no collateral — is certainly promising.
DYMMAX already teamed up with ProBit
Another thing worth mentioning is that DYMMAX already started attracting influential partners, including ProBit.
This is a well-known crypto exchange, with which the DYMMAX team has found common ground, according to the DYMMAX medium post.
In fact, the partnership with ProBit will allow DYMMAX to hold an entire series of rounds at the exchange. This would provide ProBit’s community with a unique opportunity to influence DYMMAX’s ecosystem, which is currently still in the process of being built.
What do token holders get by purchasing DYMMAX (DMX)?
As mentioned, there is a possibility of DYMMAX’s DMX token seeing a price increase as the development continues, and the demand for the token increases. Apart from that, the project also allows all token holders to become a true part of the project, and participate in its development.
Token holders would be able to help manage the project’s protocol, as well as get a discount on fees while using it. They will also be able to vote for new options, and thus decide on the direction that the project will take further down the road.
In addition, DMX holders will be able to decide on adding a new series of auctions, and pay for all DYMMAX-offered services with DMX directly. That also includes services offered by the project’s current and future partners, which DYMMAX promised to ensure as soon as possible.
In essence, DYMMAX aims to be fully decentralized, and completely in the hands of its community, where anyone holding the tokens will have a right to let their voice be heard.
It is an innovative project which aims to serve institutional and private investments alike, and it will help crypto users earn profit through trading by using one of several appropriate strategies.
Next Read: Virtual Reality: Where to apply the Innovative Technology? »
BlockchaincryptocryptocurrencyDeFiDeFi sectortrading
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William & Mary Men Set 9 Records in Victory, Johns Hopkins Women Rally for Win
The Johns Hopkins women won the final three events of the meet to come from behind to beat host William & Mary, 135-127, while the Tribe men won 152-110. Current photo via William & Mary Athletics
More NCAA Division I Mid-Major
Franklin Community Indiana HS Sectional champion Grace Nuhfer has verbally committed to swim for the University of Akron beginning in the fall of 2021.
2019 Futures qualifier Peter Hawash has verbally committed to swim for Lafayette College beginning in the 2021-2022 season.
Futures Qualifier Quinn Bike Verbally Commits to UNCW for 2022-23
Quinn Bike from St. Charles North High School and St. Charles Swim Team will head to Wilmington, North Carolina in the fall of 2022.
University of Wyoming Honors Seniors with Slip and Slide
Honoring the school’s graduating class, the University of Wyoming held a practice dedicated to the seniors, ending with a homemade slip and slide.
Winter Juniors Qualifier Robert Tars (2022) Verbally Commits to UNCW
Winter Juniors qualifier Robert Tars has announced his verbal commitment to the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s class of 2026.
Riptide Teammates Sophie Curran and Elizabeth Bonneville Commit to St. Thomas
Elizabeth Bonneville (pictured) and Sophie Curran, who both swim for Riptide in Apple Valley, Minnesota, have committed to in-state St. Thomas for 2021-22.
Claire Grover Splits 22.28 Freestyle Leg as UCLA Tops Fresno State
Grover swam 4 relays amid 5 events across two days of racing, which included a big season-opening split in the 200 free relay.
by SwimSwam 4
October 05th, 2019 College, NCAA Division I Mid-Major, NCAA Division III, News
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Johns Hopkins at William & Mary
Men: William & Mary 152-110; Women: Johns Hopkins 135-127
Courtesy: William & Mary Athletics
The William & Mary men’s swimming team opened the 2019-20 season in record-breaking fashion on Saturday, shattering nine pool- and dual-meet records in a 152-110 win over Johns Hopkins. The Tribe starts the year at 1-0, while the Blue Jays fall to 0-1 overall.
– The record parade got started in the very first event, as W&M won the 200 medley relay for the first of 10 wins on the day. Senior Colin Demers (Virginia Beach, Va.) led-off the team before giving way to Devin McNulty (Herndon, Va.) and Jack Doherty (Middletown, Conn.), and senior Colin Wright (Williamsburg, Va.) brought the team home in 1:29.21, more than three-quarters of a second faster than the same team went in January of 2018 (1:30.08). That performance was the eighth-fastest race in school history, and broke both the pool and dual-meet records in the event.
– Next was the 200 free, where Wright swam 1:40.47 for the win, and broke the pool record of 1:40.61 set by Billy Russell ’16 in his senior season. That was also the first of two individual wins on the day for Wright.
– Demers earned an individual win of his own in the 100 back, timing 50.36 seconds. He is the reigning conference champion in that event.
– Senior Chris Balbo (Short Hills, N.J.) matched his classmate Wright with two individual wins, the first coming in the 200 fly where he swam 1:51.49.
– Another senior, Ian Thompson (Alexandria, Va.) was the next man on top of the podium, touching the wall in 20.91 seconds to win the 50 free.
– After the first intermission, Wright put on another show in winning the 100 free, swimming 44.36. While that was shy of his own pool and dual-meet marks of 44.28, it was the 16th-fastest race ever at W&M. With his second win, Wright moved past Mike Lovett ’00 and into seventh-place on the all-time wins list with 54.
– Johns Hopkins picked up wins the 200 back and the 200 breast, but Balbo put the Tribe back on top in the 500 free, pulling away from the field over the back-half of the race to win in 4:38.62. That was Balbo’s 50th career win, making him just the seventh man in the last 30 years to reach that mark.
– Next was the 100 fly, where Doherty made it look easy with a 49.13 win. That was nearly a full four-tenths under the previous dual-meet record, set by Justin Barden ’16 in his final dual meet (49.62).
– Doctoral candidate Ben Skopic (Marriottsville, Md.) added another dual-meet record in the 200 IM, stopping the clock in 1:51.15. That was 0.61 under the record previously held by Will Manion ’16 since 2015.
– The meet was already decided by the start of the final race, the 200 free relay, but the Tribe made sure it was one of the most exciting races of the day. Wright started things off with an astonishing 19.95 lead-off split, shattering his own pool and dual-meet records set in the final meet of the regular season last year (20.17). That was also an NCAA provisional-qualifying mark, and though the season is still young, it ranks Wright third in the country in the 50 free. Next was Thompson and Doherty, who split 20.09 and 20.17 respectively, before sophomore Graham Hertweck (Greensboro, N.C.) brought the team home in an easy 20.78. Combined, the team swam 1:20.99, obliterating the pool record of 1:23.23 set by W&M back in 2013, and the dual-meet record of 1:22.12 set last fall against Navy. That was the ninth-fastest race in school history, and currently ranks No. 2 in the NCAA this season.
William & Mary hits the road for the first time next weekend, taking on long-time rival East Carolina on Saturday, Oct. 12, at 1 p.m.
The William & Mary women’s swim team opened the 2019-20 season on Saturday in a barn-burner with Johns Hopkins, with the meet going down to the final relay before the Blue Jays were able to escape Williamsburg with the 135-127 win. The Tribe starts the year at 0-1, while Hopkins, a powerhouse in Division III with more than a dozen All-Americans on its roster, begins the season 1-0.
– W&M started the meet with a strong showing to win in the 200 medley relay. Sophomore Anna Kenna (Chantilly, Va.) started the team off on the backstroke leg, before senior Lauren Freeman (Fairfax Station, Va.) handled the breaststroke and freshman Brooke Lamoureux (Virginia Beach, Va.) the butterfly. Heading into the final exchange, the Tribe was in second, more than half-a-second behind, but Olympic Trials-qualifier Missy Cundiff (Leesburg, Va.) blew through the water in a 22.86 split and won the touch at the wall in 1:45.96, 0.04 ahead.
– W&M kept the winning streak going over the next two events, starting with senior Norah Hunt (Stuarts Draft, Va.) in the 1,000 free. Hunt led wire-to-wire, and stopped the clock in 10:31.45 for the win.
– Junior Megan Bull (Hillsborough, N.J.) equally unrelenting in the 200 free, winning the event in 1:51.99 for the first of two wins on the day.
– In the 100 breast, freshman Annie Tuttle (Alexandria, Va.) won her first collegiate race, timing 1:05.85 for the win. She was just a second off the dual-meet record in the event, despite the team being in heavy training early in the season.
– Cundiff was back in the water in the 50 free, the event she’s the freshman record-holder in, and nearly added two more records with her winning time of 23.28. That’s less than two-tenths of both the pool and dual-meet records.
– After Hopkins won the next three events and took its first lead in the meet, Bull and Hunt were back in the water for the 500 free and finished 1-2 for the Tribe. Bull’s winning time was 5:05.57.
– Despite tight finishes in the final three races, including the 200 free relay where Cundiff posted another sub-24 performance in the 50 free, Hopkins was able to win each event and take the meet. One of the longest-standing pool records also went by the wayside, with Blue Jays senior All-American Michelle Wang timing 2:05.32 in the 200 IM to break the mark that had stood since 2002. Wang’s time was also an NCAA Division III provisional qualifier.
William & Mary hits the road for the rest of the fall semester, beginning next Saturday, Oct. 12, with a trip to face East Carolina at 1 p.m.
Courtesy: Johns Hopkins Athletics
The Johns Hopkins women’s swim team won the final three events of the meet to come from behind to beat host William & Mary, 135-127, Saturday afternoon. In all, the Blue Jays won eight of the 14 events.
Quoting Coach Armstrong
• “This was a real top to bottom effort from the team. The energy on the pool deck has been positive all season so it was fun to see it transfer over to an electric meet. Any time you go up against a Division I team you know you have to bring your best. It’s clear that the seniors have set the tone, we are going to have a really fun year!”
Top Finishers
• Hopkins opened the day with second and fourth-place finishes in the 200 Medley Relay. Sophomore Sydney Okubo, senior Sonia Li, sophomore Rebecca Ssengonzi and senior Kiki Petersen swam a 1:46.00 to finish in second by just four-hundredths of a second. Freshmen Renee Liu and Cali Wilson, senior Michelle Wang and junior Mikayla Bisignani placed fourth with a time of 1:50.06
• Junior Emma McElrath followed with a second-place finish and a time of 10:34.68 in the 1000 Free. Wang then took second in the 200 Free as she touched in 1:53.62.
• The Blue Jays then swept the top three spots in the 100 Back. Okubo led the way with a winning time of 58.01. Freshman Cecilia Cortez took second (58.73) and Liu followed closely in third (58.98). Lin took third place in the 100 Breast as she clocked in at 1:07.74, while Wilson took fifth in 1:10.80.
• For the second time in three events, Hopkins grabbed first through third in the 200 Fly. Ssengonzi paced the field with a 2:06.77. Sophomore Elaine Lipkin touched in 2:07.83 for second and freshman Emerson Davis took third in 2:08.04.
• The 50 Free saw Petersen and sophomore Kristen Alicea-Jorgensen go two-three. Peterson finished in 23.86, with Alicea-Jorgensen following in 24.20. Petersen then beat the field in the 100 Free, touching in 52.52 to win by three-quarters of a second. Alicea-Jorgensen placed fourth in 54.04.
• Okubo finished first in the 200 Back, clocking in a 2:03.63, with Liu following in second in 2:05.30. Freshman Chase Lahr took fourth place with a time of 2:07.84. That pulled the Blue Jays within one point of the Tribe with five events to go.
• Hopkins then grabbed a six-point lead over William & Mary with first and second-place finishes in the 200 Breast. Lin led the way with a winning time of 2:24.71. Freshman Kate Overbey placed second in 2:25.25.
• The Tribe bounced back to take the lead after the 500 Free by taking the top two spots. McElrath finished in third place with a time of 5:10.33, followed closely by Lipkin in 5:10.64.
• Ssengonzi earned her second win of the day by beating the field in the 100 Fly in 57.33. She beat W&M’s Madeline High by more than a second and a half to kick start JHU’s rally.
• Wang then took first in the 200 IM in 2:05.32 – winning by 2.68 seconds. She also broke a 17-year-old pool record and her time was an NCAA B time. Okubo finished in third place with a time of 2:09.25. That swung the lead in Hopkins’ favor as the Jays led 124-121.
• Hopkins secured the win with a first-place finish in the 200 Free Relay. Lin, Petersen, Bisignani and Alicea-Jorgensen combined for a 1:36.16.
• This is Hopkins’ first-ever win over William & Mary as the Tribe had won the previous nine meetings.
The Johns Hopkins men’s swimming team won four events in as the Blue Jays opened the dual-meet portion of their schedule at William & Mary Saturday.
• Hopkins opened the day with third and fifth-place finishes in the 200 Medley Relay. Sophomores Dylan Wachenfeld, Maxwell Chen and Jeffrey Vitek and junior Nat Davenport combined for a 1:33.27. Junior Matt McGough, freshmen Tristan Lin and Spencer Ryan, and junior Noah Frassrand finished in 1:36.58.
• Junior CJ Arena then won the 1000 Free as he beat the field with a 9:47.36. Freshman Alec Caswell followed in second with a time of 9:52.64.
• Sophomores Noah Corbitt and Collin Hughes then went two-three in the 200 Free. Corbitt touched in 1:41.27 for second place, with Hughes clocking in at 1:42.41. The 100 Back saw Wachenfeld take second place in 52.00.
• Hopkins grabbed the top two spots in the 100 Breast, led by Chen with a time of 57.30. Lin then touched in 57.41 for second place.
• Vitek picked up a second-place finish in the 200 Fly as he touched in 1:51.92. Davenport led three Blue Jays in the top five of the 50 Free with a time of 21.29 for second place. Freshman Spencer Ryan placed fourth in 21.82 and classmate Kyle Wu took fifth in 22.02.
• Corbitt took another second-place finish, this time in the 100 Free, as he clocked in at 46.66. Wachenfeld followed with a win in the 200 Back (1:50.66), as he beat the field by nearly two and a half seconds. McGough placed fourth in 1:57.88.
• Tristan then took the top spot in the 200 Breast with a winning time of 2:05.08. Freshman Brandon Stride claimed third place in 2:07.64, with Wu taking fourth in 2:08.59.
• The Blue Jays took second through fourth in the 500 Free, with Hughes leading the way in 4:42.67. Arena finished in 4:48.06 with sophomore Mitchell Simmons finishing just 0.14 seconds after him.
• Vitek grabbed second place in the 100 Fly as he touched in 50.24. Lin followed with a second-place finish in the 200 IM, clocking in at 1:54.46.
• Hopkins ended the night with second and third-place finishes in the 200 Free Relay. Davenport, Chen, Wu and Corbitt combined for 1:24.33. McGough, Vitek, Ryan and Hughes finished in 1:26.09 for third place.
• Hopkins is back in action on Friday, October 18 as the Blue Jays travel to Annapolis, MD to take on Navy, Towson and George Washington. The quad meet is set for a 4:00 pm start.
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barbotus
Go Tribe!
TXmom
Reply to barbotus
Go Hop!
SwimMom
What a way to start the season, Go Tribe!!
Great start for both teams really
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Florida Women Host UNF On Wednesday For Senior Day
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Tag: Iron Age
Project unearths iron age hillfort
Posted on August 12, 2020 August 12, 2020 by andrew in History and Heritage
LASER technology has helped researchers identify a previously unknown prehistoric hillfort in the Chilterns.
The discovery was revealed by the Beacons of the Past team based at the Chilterns Conservation Board following a recent laser scanning survey of the entire Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty which citizen scientists have been poring over.
It adds a new monument to the score of existing Chilterns hillforts like Pulpit Hill, Cholesbury Camp, Church Hill, or Medmenham Camp – although the exact location has not been revealed.
SIGNS OF THE PAST: an enclosure at Pulpit Hill PICTURE: National Trust / Hugh Mothersole
Hillforts are a class of prehistoric monument constructed in Britain from between the Late Bronze Age and the Middle Iron Age, between four and 12 centuries before Christ, although they are often not on hills and may have been used for a variety of functions.
Confirmation of the new hillfort in the AONB coincides with the Online LiDAR Portal’s one-year anniversary. Launched in August 2019, the portal now has nearly 3,000 registered users, who have created records of more than 10,000 archaeological features.
LiDAR stands for “Light Distance and Ranging”, an airborne laser scanning survey technique used by archaeologists for nearly 20 years which can reveal underground features hidden beneath tree cover.
Beacons of the Past is a National Lottery funded project to discover more about the local hillforts, which seem to have a fairly regular distribution, with a few notable gaps.
“One of the aspirations of the project was to locate any hillforts that might have been hiding in plain sight or under tree cover,” said project manager and archaeologist Dr Wendy Morrison.
Archaeologist Dr Ed Peveler, landscape heritage officer for the project, and several citizen scientists independently identified an earthwork in the southern Chilterns as a potential hillfort.
Following careful assessment and an extensive walk-over survey by the team with the full co-operation of the landowner, the existence of a new hillfort was confirmed.
Dr Morrison said she thought it was likely from visual inspection of the rampart and ditch that it dated from around 800-500 BC – “Although one can never be certain of the age of a prehistoric earthwork without excavating for dating evidence.”
There is no public access to the site and the exact location is currently being withheld to protect sensitive archaeology and the landowner’s privacy.
Funded by a £695,600 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and a number of partners such as the National Trust, Chiltern Society and local authorities, the project provides a focus for community and public involvement through techniques such as remote sensing and survey, practical excavation and research, as well as a programme of events and educational activities.
With full training offered, the Online Citizen Science Portal can be found here.
Tagged hillfort, Iron AgeLeave a comment
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Category: dating
Ah well. Mejor solo que mal acompanado.
http://www.theawl.com/2014/02/ask-polly-should-i-play-it-cool-or-ask-for-more-and-be-that-girl
And what’s so fucking attractive about that easy-going, no-problem girl anyway? Does she have a single fucking thing in common with Lorde, or is she inadvertently aspiring to be a muted, high-fiving fuck doll? Do you want to be a person, or do you want to be an emotional Hooters waitress, serving up cuddles and hot wings and laughing it off when your ass gets pinched for the 15th million time?
AND there’s a smallish chance that he’ll say, “Yeah, I can do that. I want to be with you.” When you stand up for what you want, and you aren’t afraid to say it out loud, you’d be amazed how well the world responds to that.
But, let’s be honest, lots of guys don’t like it. You know what kinds of guys don’t like it? The guys who are hiding from themselves, the guys who don’t want to be seen, the guys who don’t want to show up. AND THEY ARE FUCKING EVERYWHERE, dude. But you don’t want someone like that. You want one of the good ones, the ones who can look you in the eye and say, “YES. What you want is not unreasonable. I want to be intellectually met, too. I want to be emotionally open, too. I want to be with YOU.”
Do some writing about what you really, really want from love. Make a list. Then list the things that make you feel disappointed and sad. Talk it all through with a few friends. Revise your list. Spend some time alone and really feel your way through this. You shouldn’t be talking yourself into or out of anything. You should be looking deep inside and asking yourself what you want, how you want to live. You should be reaching for the very best possible love and life for yourself. You should be thinking of your favorite bad ass. Don’t you deserve to treat yourself with as much adoration and love as Lorde does? And if not WHY THE FUCK NOT? Why don’t you cherish yourself and who you are like THAT? What damns you to half-assed fucking men, exactly?
Listen to me closely now: The people who dare to ask for an expansive, life-altering love, who will be alone rather than settle for less, are the ones who find it. People who accept less, who figure they don’t deserve any better, who figure that it’s too much of a risk to tell the truth and scare men off, are the ones who live with a constant feeling of disappointment and neglect. When you neglect yourself and your feelings, you get neglected by others, too.
Stand up for yourself. Stand up for what you want. Does that make you That Girl?
Then BE. THAT. GIRL.
Because That Girl is a shining beacon to the rest of us. That Girl doesn’t play along and call herself whatever some dude is calling her, whether it’s “pal” or “that chick I’m sleeping with” or “her, over there.” That Girl doesn’t sit through drifty, disconnected conversations with men who can’t show up. That Girl doesn’t care if you think she’s attractive or appropriate or easy to be around or not. She’s not caught up in some dude’s love affair—with himself, with his stuff, with his fantasy of how easy and sexy and mysterious True Love will be when he finally finds it, just like a porn flick starring him with a soundtrack by The Shins. That Girl is willing to risk his disapproval for the sake of her own happiness.
Fuck the critics. Fuck the onlookers. Fuck this cold, disapproving world, that doesn’t like That Girl or really any fucking girl at all, when it boils right down to it. BE THAT GIRL.
I too have always loved Heather Havrilesky:
http://www.theawl.com/2013/10/ask-polly-how-do-i-find-true-love-and-stop-dating-half-assed-men
Now imagine for a second that someone writes to me and says, “Look, you’re just ok and you’re old and you’re wasting your time on this bullshit.” (Um, no one does that, because this isn’t Salon.) But imagine that someone does tell me that. And imagine that I spend several hours of my time explaining why I’m awesome and my work here is incredibly significant to the health of the planet, and I fucking matter and I have great ideas, brilliant fucking ideas, I’m a genius, and seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? Suddenly this tepid bit of flotsam is taking up my time, and instead of turning away from it, I’m making claims that my work is deeply important (which, well, is a highly subjective stance).
Please note: this world also devalues free-flowing, emotional discourse from a woman unless she’s also funny AND sexy. If you’re not super fucking hot and funny first, you can go fuck yourself, ladies.
Because tepid is everywhere. Tepid is the air we breathe. Listen to me: We can’t do anything right. We can’t say what we mean, we can’t be ourselves, we can’t age, we can’t talk about feelings, we can’t fuck up. This is how it feels to be a woman, motherfucker. The world is filled with human beings who want us to shut up and shake our asses, point blank, the end. Can you fucking imagine if we had our own Kanye? For her to have Kanye’s power, and get invited on Kimmel, of course she’d have to be a mega-hot, funny as shit woman who walked around looking exactly like the chick in the short skirt who eats giant hamburgers on those Carl Jr. ads, but instead of eating a hamburger she’d be saying FUCK YOU, YOU ARE A SEXIST FUCK. I mean, sure, we have our women who look mortal and say this. Are they on TV? Rachel Maddow, she’s on TV. How many people in that bar would even know who the fuck she is? Who listens closely to Lena Dunham, who is gorgeous by the way? No, she’s not shaped right to listen to, right? She’s too full of herself? She’s too annoying?
Let’s not fall down that rabbit hole. All I’m saying is, here we are in a fucked up world. And even when you find your species, or at least your genus, you still are sometimes just a piece of ass to the best of them. Not even because they’re incredibly sexist—maybe they’re just pragmatic, or ambivalent in this case. They don’t happen to love you, is all. They don’t think you’re a math genius or a historian, and they’re gonna call bullshit. They think that when you talk, you’re wasting their time a little. That doesn’t mean that they’re bad. Sure, you want those guys and their futons and their best friends Sean to go fuck themselves, but that doesn’t mean they’re evil. But once they don’t love you, who the fuck cares about them? Were those dudes in the bar sexist, or did they just think I’m sort of bossy and repellent? Who the fuck cares?
You’re hunting a very small group, that’s all. Your target demographic, it’s small. There’s more than one of them, but they’re not everywhere.
That doesn’t mean your odds are bad! You will find love. Believe me. But in order to find it, I think you have to prepare yourself for a life alone, and be at peace with that. It’s a real tightrope walk. I get that. But you won’t tell tepid to fuck off if you don’t believe in your heart that you will rock it out one way or another.
In order to tell tepid to fuck off once and for all, you MUST recognize that life among those who don’t appreciate or understand you is bullshit. You don’t want to live that way. You don’t want to be badgery and lonely while you’re with someone. You’d rather be alone.
What will make ALONE look good to you? You have to work on that. Because single life needs to look really, really good, you have to believe in it, if you’re going to hold out for that rare guy who makes you feel like all of your ideas start rapidly expanding and approaching infinity when you talk to him. You need to have a vision of life alone, stretching into the future, and you need to think about how to make that vision rich and full and pretty. You have to put on an artist’s mindset and get creative and paint some portrait of yourself alone that’s breathtaking. You have to bring the full force of who you are and what you love to that project.
You have to do a lot. And you have to do it all against a backdrop of indifference that, as you get older, curdles into a kind of disgust. But you know what? We have each other. We have worlds within us, you and me. This mean, mean planet still rewards those who can see the depth and beauty of what they carry around inside of themselves. This indifferent landscape will rise up and give you love if you share what you have inside, if you dare to believe in your potential even as people tell you it’s a mirage, if you ignore the ones who are allergic to free-flowing, emotional discourse from YOU. They are everywhere, and they don’t matter. God bless them. Come on their Hampton blouse, and move on.
I’ve come to believe that, outside of Sara Eckel, there’s nobody currently out there writing anything of real intelligence or worth about dating. This commenter sums it up pretty well:
http://www.xojane.com/relationships/how-do-we-fight-back-against-stupid-relationship-advice-nobody-asked-for
Ali • 2 years ago
A big crop of these relationship experts are out there with trendy advice, acting like they’ve just solved the big mystery and they have some new and exciting breakthrough.
The reality is that the core of how to attract a compatible partner isn’t very jazzy. Basically, it boils down to finding someone where you both:
-Are mutually attracted to each other
-Have a foundation of common values
-Share common interests/sense of humor/ideas of what’s fun
-Respect each other
-Treat each other with courtesy and honesty
-Have common relationship goals
-Have solid self-esteem
Add in a dash of hard work and/or luck to find each other, and there’s your relationship advice. It’s hard to find all of those things at once, so it usually takes time and having some duds along the way, but there really isn’t some magic formula.
However, that doesn’t sell books, so that’s not what the “experts” talk about. Instead, they write a book about harnessing the power of your astrological sign to find a mate. Good grief.
Mary tried to be fair, but her jealousy was beyond all bounds. Possibly Mrs. Herbert had been shy. Possibly she might be something more than beautiful, rough, rude, brainless, vulgar. This was Mr. Herbert’s serious permanent choice. She had been an amusement, a very small incident. “But I am superior,” she thought.
— F.M. Mayor, The Rector’s Daughter, p. 152
Sometimes the old dog in the corner can still be roused; it will, on occasion, still prick up its ears or wag its tail. This particular old dog will, on occasion, even be roused enough to leave its solitary cushion, if a smart, witty, sensitive, like-minded soul comes around.
This weekend I made a bold move; I reached out to someone I barely know in an attempt to forge a connection with someone I’ve long identified with and admired. I put aside my sense of shame and took a chance, something I do about once a year, when I realize that any semi-satisfying relationship of any duration that I’ve ever had resulted entirely from my efforts. In the midst of my communication, however, I heard from a decades-old friend, someone I normally keep at a bit of a distance due to a long history of empathy fails. Long story short, wires got crossed, paragraphs were sent to the wrong person, and I ended up revealing a lot more to Mr. A (as I’ll call him) than I ever in a million years would have wished to reveal to him or almost anyone else.
Modern communication being what it is, however, I have no certainty that Mr. A received the messages. If he has received them, he has not responded. The power of vulnerability, indeed.
On a bigger level, I don’t know what, if anything, the universe was trying to communicate to me. “Shed old friendships that are standing in the way of more fulfilling ones” or “stick with the ones who actually call, no matter how frustrating and dispiriting they can be.”
In any case, in a week in which there has been a public outpouring of sympathy over a celebrity, I could have used a small show of kindness from Mr. A. On one hand, I could be totally humiliated over this; on the other, Mr. A could find the whole thing funny or touching and reach out. It appears, however, that there will only be silence; perhaps I don’t rate a response.
This old dog, however, with a head so weakly raised, easily returns to slumber in the absence of encouragement. There was nothing to be roused for, after all.
The internet is not much help in moments such as these. At worst, it provides the glib platitudes one encounters enough of IRL; at best, there is a feeling of “me too” solidarity and connection. What is missing is an empathetic ear that can take in all the specifics of the disaster that has happened; even better would be an empathetic ear that has some general familiarity with the players involved. This used to be known, back in the day, as friendship.
In my student period I was acquainted with a group of friends; of this group two were always my favorite. Over the decades, those two have only grown in my estimation, showing kindness, creativity, and wit in our encounters. They have both become writers. There was another member of that group whom I cannot recall saying a single thing of substance, intelligence, or charm, and who was unable to give me the time of day when I first moved to L.A. She moved here with no real career plans and ended up marrying a successful writer and having a brood of kids. It feels like she is living the life I would have liked to have lived. I was reminded of her again in all of this, because she is loosely connected to Mr. A, and were she a nicer person, I could try to glean some insight from her. Were she a nicer person, in fact, perhaps I would not have had to advocate for myself in the first place.
I feel, at this point, that I must just let all the embers die. The embers of unsatisfying friendships from my past as well as the last remaining embers of certain kinds of hopes for my future. That I must sit with the dark void for a spell, here at the bottom of the U-shaped curve of happiness, at age 44.
the buffet
This is a major, and ridiculously exhausting, shift in how we mate as a species, the biggest, it seems, since birth control. As online dating becomes less stigmatized—just 21 percent of Internet users think online dating is “desperate,” down eight points since 2005, according to the Pew Research Center—more and more singles, hoping to meet their match, are turning to the digital world. It isn’t the age of the hook-up; it’s the age of the never-ending first date.
While any slut can game the system if he or she so pleases, bedding the city via Tinder or any number of online dating apps, what’s less often acknowledged is that regular people are going on an inordinate number of dates and getting very little—sexual or otherwise—in the process.
Read more at http://observer.com/2014/07/50000-first-dates-online-dating-makes-finding-a-partner-in-nyc-harder-than-ever/#ixzz38jffX8mV
Follow us: @newyorkobserver on Twitter | newyorkobserver on Facebook
The burbs. They are easier, safer, less jangling on the nerves. The single men who are around may be more serious about relationships, if I could find any common ground. But with a lifestyle tailored for marriage and family, it’s hard to fit.
http://nypost.com/2012/07/23/you-go-girl-out-to-burbs-for-real-romance/
“In Connecticut, they’re just very normal, very sweet, very unassuming. They don’t have game. They’re steak-and-potatoes American. They don’t care about fashion, they’re not metrosexual,” said Kassner, who hopped on a train to Stamford, Conn., on July 12 for an outdoor concert featuring alt-rocker Matisyahu in order to meet a decent guy.
High-end matchmakers said it’s a matter of time before heading to the suburbs is no longer considered a trend — and becomes the norm.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/27/nyregion/not-in-manhattan-and-not-married-singles-who-prefer-the-suburbs.html?src=pm&pagewanted=1
Carolyn Grossman, a 40ish executive secretary, complained that married people segregate themselves from singles, then “stereotype single people as being drinkers and party people.” In the singles enclave in South Norwalk where she lives, she said, town authorities more readily tolerate noise than in a family neighborhood.
“They just don’t seem to have any conception that there are other people besides themselves,” she said of married couples.
Ms. Thompson believes that suburban single women are distrusted by their married counterparts.
“Even if you go to a P.T.A. meeting, the husbands are carefully guarded,” she said. “You’re made to feel you should stay on the outside.”
http://www.nextavenue.org/blog/after-superstorm-spinster-finds-community
Being a single, childless woman in the New York City suburbs has never been easy. My neighbors all moved here “for the children” — for the quality public education, backyard swing sets and cars that didn’t require usurious garage bills. They wonder, not unreasonably, what I’m doing here. I sometimes wonder, too, even 16 years after moving back to New York following a decade in California.
At the time, I was unwilling to return to a dark hamster cage in the city I had lived in most of my adult life, where nature is largely confined to parks and potted plants on fire escapes. But once I reached a certain age — I’m now 65 — living here became more than just a matter of being a social pariah, with few friends whose lives don’t revolve around their families. Sometimes it’s dangerous.
Arnold thought, lying awake in the night, of the people you can talk to and the person you love. The fact that these are not always the same is an outrage; one of those sardonic flicks at beauty and unity which life loves to give. Men and women have always accepted it, with the cynical, unquestioning patience of their kind. Men go out to talk with other men, come home to woman and child. Girls gossip with girls, take silent walks, locked in dumb affection with the beloved youth. What is talk, that curling of the tongue round air to trap ideas, between two people who would kiss? For that matter, what are kisses, what is embracing, what is dumb desire, between two people who cannot know each other’s mind?
– Rose Macauley, Crewe Train, p. 225-226
I’ve actually met some men “in real life” lately and do find that method vastly preferable to online dating. Although nothing appears likely to work out, at least I’ve had some fun distractions, and I’ve maintained my sense of humor through it all.
The man that is most appealing to me is around my age (although a couple of years younger, which might as well be 100 years in Hollywood logic). He is of course a creative and was friendly and polite but ultimately, from all appearances, disinterested. The usual pattern. Interestingly, I sometimes get criticized by friends for going out in jeans and a nice shirt, so the particular night I met him I went a bit over-the-top and wore a hot little dress. Later I heard this guy talking on a podcast about how embarrassing he thinks it is when women dress up to that extent. Argh!
The second was smart and fit and young-looking but I got a sense that we were of different generations and figured he was about ten years older than me. As it turns out, he’s closer to sixty than I thought. It is true that the men who have seemed most keen on me have been ten to twenty years older, and there are dating gurus who would say I am shooting myself in the foot by not considering them seriously. I have several friends who have found very happy relationships with men fifteen to twenty years older, but my gut tells me it’s not for me. I’ve been very attracted recently to some men who are fifty, but late fifties is a bit too far in the distance.
The third was in the sweet spot age wise, probably a couple of years older, and in great shape, but seemed a little rough around the edges. He made a joke about the idea of reading books. I found him on Facebook and his politics are so polar opposite of mine that there’s no way it could work.
http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/10-things-only-people-over-30-know-about-dating
My interests and experiences are also rather varied, so when it came to dating in my post-collegiate years, I was pretty compatible with whomever came across my path. Whatever his disposition or lifestyle — night owl, outdoorsy, intellectual — I simply adjusted. But as I got older, dates became more of a chore, and I left them feeling deflated rather than elated. I didn’t understand what was happening. Was the thrill of discovering someone new gone? Had I become less interesting? Why did I find so many men disappointing? The answer (I came to in retrospect) was that the guys hadn’t changed, I had. As I got deeper into my thirties, my values were no longer the ones I was raised with, and my life purpose and interests became far more defined. Consequently, there were far fewer men who were going to fit into my parameters. And that’s OK. Because after a life of expansion, while it seems contradictory, zeroing in on your passions and the people who share them will actually expand your life and broaden your horizons.
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Gabrielle Hecht
Gabrielle Hecht is the Frank Stanton Foundation Professor of Nuclear Security, Professor of History, Professor (by courtesy) of Anthropology, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute. Previously, she was professor of history at the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (MIT Press, new edition, 2009) and Being Nuclear: Africa and the Global Uranium Trade (MIT Press, 2012).
Articles by Gabrielle Hecht
2012: An elemental force: Uranium production in Africa, and what it means to be nuclear
By Gabrielle Hecht | Nuclear Risk
An elemental force: Uranium production in Africa, and what it means to be nuclear
By Gabrielle Hecht | Uncategorized
Nuclear nomads: A look at the subcontracted heroes
By Gabrielle Hecht | Nuclear Energy, Opinion
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Articles About The Tech Sector
No Matter Who Wins the Election, The Dawn of Solar Power Is Here
0 Oct 24th, 2020 | By Alex Kagin
Before November 3, everyone is trying to get ahead of an “Election Day” boost – buying stocks in certain sectors and hoping prices rise because of who won the race.
You don’t have to do that because this technology I’m about to talk about is set on an unstoppable path. I have a clear winner that’s going to make you money, no matter who is in office.
I’m talking about solar energy, the fastest growing renewable energy source last year according to the Energy Department. Since 2016 we will have more than doubled the total installed capacity, continuing the groundwork that has been laid for solar power generation in the United States.
Dividend Yields Are Full of Pitfalls – But You Can Count on These Tech Leaders to Pay Out
0 Oct 13th, 2020 | By Michael A. Robinson
I sure hope you don’t make the kind of costly mistake my uncle did.
A few years ago, the retired telco worker invested in a communication company that offered a juicy double-digit dividend.
When I heard about that, I ran some numbers on the company. And what I saw alarmed me.
Windstream Communications had a mountain of debt. My concern was that if things got tight, it would cut the dividend.
And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. Shares slide from a high of $100 to below $2 before Windstream filed for bankruptcy protection.
I’m sharing this story with you because I’m concerned other retirees or those approaching retirement, may be tempted to shop around for high yields after the Fed recently signaled its commitment to low interest rates.
Irony abounds. Tech has become the very best place to find dividends that are the least likely to be cut no matter what happens with the economy.
And today, in the first of two parts, I will share with you three great dividend payers for your portfolio…
3 Best Tech Stocks to Buy on the Rebound
0 Sep 19th, 2020 | By Alex Kagin
When you run a marathon, it’s better to focus on the finish line rather than each breath or stride. That was the first thing that came to mind this month as the tech-heavy Nasdaq sold off roughly 10% and Apple saw $180 billion erased from its market valuation in a single day, the most any U.S. company has ever lost in a trading day.
Focusing on the finish line is important not just in sports but also in the stock market. While the tech sell-off hammered markets over the last two weeks, it is important to look at the bigger picture. Just like a marathon runner might need to slow down to catch their breath, the market needs to do the same thing. A healthy pullback is good for any bull market.
Since the market collapsed in late February and early March the Nasdaq is still up roughly 60% and close to record highs. To me, the pullback is a blessing in disguise as the best tech stocks will continue to rise long into the future.
Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Just look at Tesla Inc. (TSLA). Its stock dropped by almost 50% in 2018-2019, and in 2020, it had a similar drop. But if you would have held on for the ride instead of selling in the downturn, you would be up over 500% today.
The same could also be said for semiconductor company Nvidia Corp. (NVDA). It saw an over 50% drop at the end of 2019 and then in 2020 dropped 30%. But if you held on through the drops and even bought right at the previous peak, you would still be up over 70%. Going out even further, you could be up 10,000% and 30,000% respectively. Those are some big gains anyone would be crazy not to want.
That is why it is important to look at the bigger picture. The Nasdaq has its ups and downs and just like a marathon, it takes some time to get to the finish line. This month’s highs are still above the peak before the pandemic and this comes at a point when the economy is still far from recovered.
So, when I see pullbacks like this, I go back to tried and true companies that survive these market conditions and have the fundamentals to move higher.
And to help you do just that, I’ve keyed in on three of the best tech stocks you can buy. These companies will be stalwarts of your portfolio for decades, and they just happen to be “on sale” thanks to sellers with a short-term view of the world.
This Life-Saving Breakthrough Is Saving COVID Patient’s Hearts and Giving You The Opportunity To Take Advantage Of A Projected $600 Billion Industry
0 Sep 15th, 2020 | By Michael A. Robinson
Devan Smith had one foot in the grave.
After contracting COVID-19 last May, he was hospitalized with severe respiratory issues and multiorgan failure.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, the 42-year Pennsylvania warehouse worker also had to deal with a malfunctioning heart. That alone could have killed him.
But doctors at the Mercy Catholic Medical Center in Pennsylvania were able to save Smith in no small measure because of a tiny heart pump.
Known as the Impella, that device received an emergency use authorization from the FDA to treat coronavirus patients only weeks before.
Of course, Smith credits the medical team with saving his life. But he’s quick to point out that the Impella played a big role in it all.
And Bill is not alone.
These kinds of heart complications are reported to affect as many as 10% of COVID-19 patients.
Fortunately for tech investors, there’s a lot more going on here than a feel-good feature story.
The medical device market is worth $625 billion, and the company behind Impella can grab a big chunk of that.
And make you a lot of money…
Posted in The Tech Sector, Medtech, Uncategorized
There’s a “Silent Partner” In the Project for A Post-COVID America – And You Can Buy It At A Great Discount
1 Sep 1st, 2020 | By Michael A. Robinson
The best minds in biotech are working round the clock on putting a stop to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project includes over 135 vaccine candidates and the profit potential here is massive.
This is literally about saving the world.
The thing is, though, vaccines are only one part of this project. There’s another dimension, a “silent partner” in the project that doesn’t get quite so much heroic headline ink but is just as important.
You see, of all the vaccines coming down the pipeline, 31 are currently in human trials. There’s a very good chance that one of them will be safe and powerful enough to begin mass distribution in early 2021.
But there are 328 million living Americans and 7.5 billion humans on planet earth. It will take time to vaccinate them all, and that’s where our “silent partner” comes in.
It’s blazing a trail towards the kind of better COVID-19 testing technology we will need to get things fully back to normal.
And not only that, it’s on a solid track to double your money in just two years…
Posted in The Tech Sector, Medtech
Welcome to the Strategic Tech Investor Monthly Mailbag
1 Aug 27th, 2020 | By Michael A. Robinson
This month, you’re getting a brand-new feature as a subscriber to Strategic Tech Investor. It’s called the Monthly Mailbag, where I’ll be taking some of the most pressing questions that I’ve received and answer them on video.
This month, I take a look at the ongoing drama between Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Epic Games, some of the biggest stock-splits happening in the tech world, and the outlook for federal intervention in the course of the economy.
The Doctor’s Office Visit Is History, and What Comes Next Could Make You A Fortune
Looking for a parking spot for 15 minutes, spending 20 minutes filling out forms, and waiting for 30 minutes or more to see your doctor is a relic of the past thanks to virtual medical appointments through our computers and phones.
And it’s easy to see why.
What’s referred to as “telemedicine” can save patients nearly two hours of their time, according to Forbes.
Being in the comfort of their own homes is also a major selling point, as a Doctor.com survey found that 91% of the respondents said telemedicine would:
Help them stick to their appointments.
Manage prescriptions and refills.
Follow wellness regimens suggested by their doctor.
Keep in mind folks that telemedicine was becoming more commonplace, and then COVID-19 sent it into overdrive.
As far as hard numbers go, telemedicine forecasts B.C. (before coronavirus) show this market is only getting more valuable, climbing 127% from $35.5 billion dollars to $80.6 billion by 2025.
So those estimates could be too conservative, and I don’t want you to wait around to make money as this market gets bigger and bigger.
The good news is there’s a fire sale going on in the telemedicine market that we can take advantage of right now that will pave your road to wealth.
I’m talking about Teledoc Health Inc. (TDOC), which got slammed on August 5, closing down 19%.
The reason was that the firm is making a big buyout, one that I think is very savvy.
If everyone else takes that as a sign to sell, all the better for us…
A “Super Vaccine” Deal Has Gone into Overdrive After This Latest News
The COVID-19 pandemic is and has been an unprecedented event, but there’s also something else to think about.
During this moment in history, we have never had a unified global effort quite like this to find an effective vaccine, and the convergence of technology and medicine that we have access to is allowing researchers to work on a vaccine at break-neck speed.
As of this writing, there are currently 28 COVID-19 vaccines in human trials, and the Trump Administration believes it will have an effective vaccine by 2021.
To get there, the federal government is spending an unprecedented $10 billion…
The Best of Tech is Driving the Best of Gains
0 Aug 11th, 2020 | By Strategic Tech Investor Staff
The leading names in tech are continuing their legacies out outstanding gains that drive the entire market along with them, but making the best possible return takes more than a play on the clear front runners. Instead, the savviest investors will look for high-growth potential within the unstoppable trends. Amazon.Com Inc. (AMZN) is facing strong prospects, but Shopify Inc. (SHOP) is where the real potential for market-crushing growth lies. Meanwhile, as tech continues to lead the economy, and more and more parts of everyday life go digital, the chip sector is still at the heart of practically everything, and prepared to make its own gains from nearly any high-tech development imaginable. The outlook for the tech sector as a whole remains good. Click here to watch
Posted in The Tech Sector, TV Appearances, Video
The “Super Vaccine” and Your 10X Profit Potential Within the Next Year
0 Aug 8th, 2020 | By Strategic Tech Investor Staff
From scientists to business leaders, there’s one thing most people can agree on – life will not return to normal and our economy will not reach maximum production until a vaccine for COVID-19 is in hand. To find this vaccine, the convergence between tech and medicine is creating a biotechnology revolution.
Operation Warp Speed (OWS), an initiative in the United States, aims to deliver over 300 million doses of a safe, effective vaccine for COVID-19 by January 19, 2021.
And as of this writing, what we call a new, viable “Super Vaccine” is pushing to begin production of up to one billion doses. Right now, a tiny company behind the Super-Vaccine has a mere $60 million a year in sales.
But with production expected to begin imminently, it could create a staggering 58,300% revenue surge by year’s end…
America Is Fighting Against Cyberattacks – This Firm Offers a Strong Defense and a Huge Profit Opportunity
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by Andria K. Brown
Andria is an advertising professional, freelance writer, concert presenter and mother who has happily called Memphis home for two decades.
Amy Faulk, CEO and World Champion Racer: FACES of Memphis
August 13, 2017 by Andria K. Brown
Amy Faulk’s automotive education began at her father’s body and radiator repair shop in Union City, TN, where she and her brother spent their days learning the parts and processes that keep cars running. Under the watchful eye of a father who didn’t believe women should drive at all, Amy never imagined that she would one day be drag racing at 260 miles per hour. No one who is familiar with her focus and determination is surprised that she overcame any challenges and limitations she faced, or that she’s the first female National Hot Rod Association World Champion in the Sportsman (amateur) category, dubbed “The Winningest Woman in Racing,” as well as the CEO of automotive technology manufacturer Hypertech.
We visited with Amy at her home away from home: Memphis International Raceway’s drag strip, which in 2012 honored her with their Lifetime Achievement Award. As we sat in the control tower overlooking the “Christmas tree” — the multi-colored light pole where racers start their stages — Amy shared how she got her own start at the track more than 40 years ago and how she’s conquered both external and internal competition ever since.
World Champion Racer and CEO of automotive technology manufacturer Hypertech, Amy Faulk
How did you begin drag racing?
My husband Kenny raced, but he really and truly likes working on cars. That’s what he enjoys. So one day, just completely out of the blue, he goes, “You’re going to race.” And I had no desire whatsoever. I’d watched him, but until you line up on the Christmas tree and experience going down there, you don’t know what you don’t know.
What were those early races like?
I was awful to begin with. I mean, terrible. Probably if I hadn’t been so bad, I might not have stuck with it. But you know, when you make a fool of yourself, you can either quit, or you can decide to get better, learn and then beat the guys that were making fun of you. We were the turkeys. Everybody wanted to line up against me because I was inexperienced and an easy win, they thought. And I was, for a while. Then we started doing well.
There were very few women back then who were doing it. I had to have a special women’s permit. At 21 years old, I couldn’t race on the track without getting two drag strip owners and two pro drivers to sign off. A young man at 16 who could get his driver’s license could come out here and race; a woman at 21 couldn’t.
Amy calls her NHRA World Championship ring her “Super Bowl ring;” like most prizes in the racing circuit, it was designed with men in mind.
How did racing help you transition to a career in the automotive after-market?
I came to Memphis and got a job in the medical industry and met my husband. He was a racer. I had work on Saturdays; it was a great job, but Saturdays interfered with racing, so I was very fortunate to get into the automotive field here in Memphis. The racing opened a lot of doors in my professional career.
When we won the World Championship in ’79, I was the Car Craft Driver of the Year in Super Stock, my category. We were winning quite a bit and everybody’s like, “Go professional, go professional.” But I wanted it to always be something fun that my husband and I enjoyed doing, and also my career meant more.
RELATED: The Morning Routines of 4 Successful Memphis Women
Both racing and the automotive after-market are male-dominated fields. How did you find — or create — your place?
When I started in the automotive industry, there were few women who had jobs in more of a position than clerical. And so I contacted the president of the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) and said, “Look, I want something that’s going to help me survive in this business.” He challenged me to start it, so a friend and I put together the SEMA Businesswomen’s Network.
Then I wanted to do a scholarship for women to be in the industry. The SEMA board gave us a little space at the Las Vegas convention, and then I called all my racer friends to give me memorabilia. I think the very first year we raised $25,000; the next year was $250,000. All in all, we’ve raised over $1 million for the scholarship fund.
Amy was dubbed “The Winningest Woman in Racing” by the National Hot Rod Association, yet a career that led to the CEO’s office kept her from turning pro.
How do you connect with the next generation of female racers?
I hope that my racing and my career and the things I do inspire everyone, but mostly inspire women to look outside the box and not be afraid to fail. You are not going to be good at anything at the very beginning. It’s too easy to quit, and a lot of people do quit – they’re like, “Well, I was embarrassed.” I ran out in a rice field! My nickname for a year was Rice-A-Roni. And it was just an experience. It was just part of the life.
Your helmet features a butterfly. What’s your connection to that symbol?
It’s because, growing up, everything I had to do never came easy. I wasn’t the smartest. I wasn’t the “most likely” in class. Kinda quiet, not a lot of belief in myself. I was this caterpillar; you look at them, but you don’t notice them. And then they turn into this butterfly, and they fly. I finally got to this stage where I thought, I’m the butterfly. I’m free. I can soar. I can do this.
Once nicknamed “Rice-A-Roni” for an ill-fated drag race, Amy became the first woman to receive the National Hot Rod Association’s Sportsman Hall of Fame award.
When did you feel like the butterfly emerged?
I think it was when I went to Gainesville, Florida, one of my first races, and I actually won a competition stage at a national event. Not the whole race, just that one round. It’s like, I’ve got this. I know what I’m doing. Honestly, I have to say, I’ve won a lot of national events, but that’s the one that sticks in my mind. Did I win the race? No. But I won a stage and got over that barrier.
RELATED: 30 Pieces of Advice: Memphis FACES of 2016
How does being a CEO make use of your skills as a driver?
It’s decision-making. One of the things you learn in racing is you don’t panic. Also you learn that you’re in 100% control of everything that you’re doing in that car. It’s the same thing in business. You have to take control of situations, and whatever decision you make, you have to accept responsibility.
“Right now, we’re in the process of building a new car, so this year I haven’t raced that much,” says Amy. “I’m hoping next year we’ll race 15 or 20 times.”
How does it work to be so closely involved in the same effort with your husband?
It’s really good. He’s really the one who pushed me and saw more in me than I saw. He knew that I was determined to do things, and he took a lot of flak because he put me in his cars.
What is your best piece of advice?
Whether it’s the race track or business, be prepared, learn everything you can, and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. That’s truly the way I live my life.
The butterfly on “Miss Amy’s” helmet symbolizes her journey. “I finally got to this stage where I thought, I’m the butterfly. I’m free. I can soar. I can do this,” she says.
Other than faith, family and friends, what are three lighthearted things you can’t live without?
My three cats.
Thank you to Amy for slowing down long enough to share her story with us. Learn more about her work at Hypertech, and try to catch her at the Memphis International Raceway.
Thanks to Micki Martin for the fabulous photos of Amy!
Subscribe to StyleBlueprint, and meet more fascinating women of Memphis!
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Banarasi Sharara Set – Beige
Style : #1909B09
The Banarasi Collection is a versatile party ensemble line dominated by our signature Banarasi Dupatta inspired by the traditional Do-shala, viz., double-sided shoulder mantle. The dupatta is teamed with a kurta and sharara with rich embroidery in resham threads and dabka hand work.
Fabric name: Sharara & Kurta in Chanderi Silk; Dupatta in Linen Silk.
Lining: Mul cotton
Kurta: Kurta features embroidery in resham threads and dabka work in intricate floral patterns inspired by pattern of the woven dupatta.
Bottom: The panelled flared ankle-length sharara uses floral patterns similar to the ones used in kurta, created with resham thread and dabka hand-embroidery and is edged with fused gold tissue and zari border.
Dupatta: The signature Do-shala (double-sided dupatta) is created by attaching a Banarasi silk dupatta woven with gold zari bootas and hand block printed chanderi fabric and edged with zari borders and sequins.
Neck Type: Round neck
Sleeve Type: 3/4 Sleeves
Care: Dry-clean only
Model Height: 5’7’’
Model is wearing standard size M
Kurta length is 41”; Sharara length is 38″
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Do you talk to your computer?
Mark Lewis|October 27, 2016
The last few years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of applications that expect people to interact with machines through a voice interface “” that is to say, you tell it what to do by talking to it. Most likely, you don’t do this with your “computer.” It is far more likely that you do it with your phone, which is just a computer that you can put into your pocket. There are even products like Amazon Echo or the recently announced Google Home, where voice is intended to be the primary means of interaction. Recently I placed a call to a customer support line and spent quite a bit of time in dialog with a machine. It wasn’t simply a voice menu system. The interaction followed the same type of script that humans in call centers have used for years and did a really good job of understanding me.
What is really significant about this is that only a few years ago, voice interfaces were rather broadly ridiculed. There was a reason for this “” they weren’t very good. That voice system on the phone really stood out to me because it was so much better than what I had previously experienced, where the software barely understood me saying numbers for menu options. The voice recognition on my phone, which I use occasionally to send text messages when it isn’t convenient to type, also generally does a very good job. The error rate is definitely much lower than it was just a few years ago.
So what’s changed? It turns out that the difference isn’t improvements in voice recognition specifically, so much as improvements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning in particular.
AI isn’t new. We are in what one might call the third golden age of AI. The first came in the 1950s when digital computers were still young, and many people believed that human intelligence was just a collection of logical rules. They believed that if they could just figure out the right rules and put them into a computer, they could reproduce human-like intelligence. In the 1980s, AI became a hot topic again, and there was a lot of work on techniques like neural networks. Both of these previous golden ages died when reality failed to live up to their assumptions.
The most recent rise in AI has been fueled by machine learning, which is feeding off the vast quantities of data that we create on the internet and through our various connected devices. The specific form of machine learning that is behind the ability for you to talk to your computer is called “deep learning,” and it uses constructs called “deep neural networks.” Neural networks are based on the structure of neurons in biological brains. The recent addition to them is the “deep” part. Basically, people have made the neural networks a lot bigger. Neural networks are generally “trained” by feeding them inputs where we know what the output should be, and adjusting the connections between neurons to reflect whether the output is right or wrong. Bigger networks require more data to train on.
If you want to train a neural network to understand what people are saying, you have to feed it a lot of audio clips where you know what is being said. Getting a hold of a large amount of such information might have been challenging in the past, but it has gotten a lot easier. How many hours of captioned video are available on YouTube alone?
The turning point for deep learning wasn’t actually related to giving voice commands to computers. It was in 2012, when a program using a deep neural network dramatically outperformed other approaches in the ImageNet challenge, which was a competition to recognize the objects in millions of digital images. To help advance the field of image processing, the creators of the ImageNet challenge created a database with over 10 million labeled images that could be used for training AIs. The 2012 winner had an error rate of 16 percent for identifying images it had never “seen” before; compare this to the 25 percent error rate of the previous year’s winner. By comparison, people have an error rate of 5.1 percent.
With the success in the ImageNet challenge, many technology companies have begun to invest heavily in their own deep learning projects. Earlier this year, a deep learning AI from Google made headlines for beating the world champion in Go. Microsoft’s 2015 entry into the ImageNet challenge used a deep learning AI to achieve an error rate under five percent.
The technology is used in more practical applications as well, including many products that you likely use today. Google Translate uses an AI that was trained on the vast amounts of text data in multiple languages available on the internet. Autonomous cars are largely driven by machine learning software that is constantly getting smarter as it drives. The work in image recognition has grown to include video recognition that not only identifies what objects are in the videos, but also what activities they are performing.
Deep learning also powers other applications, like IBM’s Watson. When Watson won Jeopardy in 2011, it wasn’t using deep learning. Now, nearly all the components in Watson use deep learning, and IBM has been investing heavily in the technology. Watson is training to do medical diagnosis andhas already proven to be more capable than human doctors in some areas. It is also trained for call center use. For all I know, that might have been a Watson-based system I was talking to when I called that customer service line.
As with all new technologies, it isn’t clear what the full range of applications are for deep learning, but my guess is that we are only scratching the surface, and the full implications of this technology could be quite profound.
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Bridget McKenzie voted strongly for prioritising religious freedom
How Bridget McKenzie voted compared to someone who believes that the federal government should protect religious freedoms over other rights and freedoms (for example, by giving religious organisations the right to discriminate)
Bridget McKenzie
12th Nov 2018, 4:08 PM – Senate Motions - Day of the Unborn Child - Religious freedom
The majority voted against a motion introduced by National Party Senator Barry O'Sullivan (QLD), which means it failed.
Note that only five Liberal Party Senators attended the vote, which is only 23% of the party, with four voting in favour of the motion and one - Liberal Senator Jane Hume (Vic) - crossing the floor to vote 'No' against the rest of her party.
That the Senate—
(a) acknowledges that:
(i) the internationally-recognised Day of the Unborn Child is observed on 25 March as 'a positive option in favour of life and the spread of a culture for life to guarantee respect for human dignity in every situation',
(ii) religious observers attending Day of the Unborn Child services are continuously disrupted and harassed at annual protest rallies organised by pro-abortion groups, such as the University of Sydney Women's Collective, the University of New South Wales Women's Collective and Labour for Choice,
(iii) these protest rallies feature speakers who insult church-goers and accuse the church of supporting violence against women, and
(iv) then Bishop of Broken Bay, Peter Comensoli, has advocated for exclusion zones around religious activities, stating "if they're (activists) determined to have a safety zone, why not a safety zone around any activities that could be personally intimidating for those involved"; and
(b) calls on all senators to:
(i) protect religious freedom in Australia,
(ii) note the hypocrisy of pro-abortion activists complaining about pro-life group activities near abortion clinics, while, at the same time, carrying out their own protest rallies against religious observances, and
(iii) support calls for pro-abortion activists to be banned from disrupting Day of the Unborn Child services across the nation.
absent Yes Not passed by a modest majority
16th Oct 2018, 4:15 PM – Senate Motions - Anti-Discrimination Laws - Protect students and staff at independent schools
The majority voted against a motion introduced by Justice Party Senator Derryn Hinch (Vic), which means the motion failed.
(a) acknowledges:
(i) the recent partial release of the 'Ruddock Report' into religious freedoms in Australia, and
(ii) that, in response, both the government and the opposition have now committed to repealing sections of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, which allow independent schools to sack teachers and expel children on the basis of their sexual orientation; and
(i) work with the states and territories to achieve consistency in anti-discrimination laws,
(ii) withhold federal funding to any schools which engage in discrimination against teachers or students on the basis of sexual orientation, and
(iii) deny charity tax concessions to any organisation or commission responsible for a school that engages in discrimination.
absent No Not passed by a modest majority
16th Oct 2018, 3:50 PM – Senate Motions - Religious Freedom Review - Discrimination against LGBTI students and staff
The majority voted in favour of motion introduced by Labor Senator Penny Wong, which means it succeeded.
(i) Australia is a tolerant and accepting nation and discrimination against LGBTI Australians has no place in our national laws,
(ii) the Government has had the Review into Religious Freedoms since May 2018, and has so far refused to release it so Australia can have a proper debate about these important issues,
(iii) repeated leaks over the last week have suggested that the review will recommend changes to exemptions from anti-discrimination legislation in relation to LGBTI students and staff,
(iv) many religious education institutions have made clear that they do not use, nor do they want, these exemptions, and
(v) these exemptions are out of step with the views and beliefs of most Australians; and
(i) immediately introduce legislation which would abolish the current exemptions that permit discrimination against LGBTI students and staff in religious schools, and
(ii) immediately release the Review into Religious Freedoms so the Australian people can have a mature debate about how we can best balance protection of religious freedom with the rights of people to live free from discrimination, in compliance with the orders of the Senate of 19 September and 20 September 2018.
No No Passed by a small majority
How "voted strongly for" is worked out
MP voted with policy 1 10 10
Agreement score = MP's points / total points = 12 / 14 = 86%.
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Former model alleges Trump groped her body, stuck tongue down her throat
News World US Former model alleges Trump groped her body, stuck tongue down her throat
6:10am, Sep 18, 2020 Updated: 6:48am, Sep 18
President Donald Trump's lawyers have strongly rejected allegations of sexual assault by a former model.
The New Daily @TheNewDailyAU
A former model has publicly accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her outside a VIP bathroom at the US Open in New York in the late 90s.
Amy Dorris gave an exclusive interview to The Guardian outlining her allegations which the US president’s lawyers have denied in the “strongest possible terms”.
The Florida woman, 48, claims Mr Trump forced his tongue down her throat, assaulted her all over her body and held her in a grip she was unable to escape from.
The Guardian reports Ms Dorris was 24 years old and Mr Trump was 51 and married to his second wife Marla Maples when they met through her boyfriend, who was a friend of Trump.
Ms Dorris and her boyfriend Jason Binn joined Mr Trump and friends in his VIP box at the US Open on September 5, 1997 when Ms Dorris claims the alleged encounter occurred when she used the bathroom.
“I was having some issues with my contact lenses,” she said. “I remember going in there to moisten my lens.”
When she came out, she told The Guardian Mr Trump was waiting outside.
“Initially I thought that he was waiting to go to the bathroom, but that wasn’t the case, unfortunately,” she said.
Donald Trump was married to Marla Maples at the time of alleged assault against Amy Dorris in the 90s. Photo: Getty
Ms Dorris alleges Mr Trump forced himself on her after a brief exchange in which she recalls nervously laughing and telling him: “No, get away.”
But Mr Trump “just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off”.
“And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything.
“I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it.
“I don’t know what you call that when you’re sticking your tongue just down someone’s throat. But I pushed it out with my teeth. I was pushing it. And I think I might have hurt his tongue.”
In the Guardian today, Amy Dorris bravely told me about her allegation of sexual assault against Donald Trump.
On why now, she says: "I’ve noticed a shift in how women are being treated since he became president… so I am coming out for me, for my kids" https://t.co/p2VnJkYmx6
— Lucy Osborne (@Lucy_Osborne) September 17, 2020
Ms Dorris alleged she told Mr Trump “no, please stop” but “he didn’t care”. “It doesn’t matter who you are,” she said.
“Any time anyone says no, no means no. And that just didn’t work out for me. It wasn’t enough.”
“I just kind of was in shock,” she told The Guardian.
“I felt violated, obviously. But I still wasn’t processing it and just was trying to go back to talking to everyone and having a good time because, I don’t know, I felt pressured to be that way.”
The Guardian says Ms Dorris has provided evidence to back up her allegations including her ticket to the US Open and six photos showing her with Mr Trump and celebrities including actor Leonardo DiCaprio and musician Lenny Kravitz over a period of days.
Mr Trump’s lawyers have strongly denied all allegations and said it seemed incredible that Ms Dorris would remain in Mr Trump’s company in the days following the alleged assault.
They said Ms Dorris had never raised the allegations with a law enforcement agency or to Mr Trump, and questioned the timing of her claims as possibly politically motivated.
Ms Dorris said after choosing not to speak out in 2016 when other women came forward when Mr Trump ran for president, she now wanted to be a role model for her twin daughters.
“Now I feel like my girls are about to turn 13 years old and I want them to know that you don’t let anybody do anything to you that you don’t want,” she said.
“And I’d rather be a role model. I want them to see that I didn’t stay quiet, that I stood up to somebody who did something that was unacceptable.”
Ms Dorris joins more than two dozen women who have publicly accused Mr Trump of sexual misconduct over the last few decades.
‘He was confused’: Donald Trump contradicts virus vaccine expert
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FM18 Project: Everton Challenge, Episode 4
Episode 1; Episode 2; Episode 3
Everybody hates me. This is not unusual. Indeed, I’ve grown used to it since the summer. But generally, within the confines of Football Manager, it usually takes three months for the first signs of a dressing room revolt to appear. And yet here we are, still in August, just two games into a 38 game campaign and I’ve managed to alienate 14 players in the squad.
Apparently, the concession of seven goals in two games is considered a bad thing. If it were possible, I’d point them towards the real life Everton and ask them in which universe they’d prefer to dwell.
We have to push on. But I think that we have to push on in the same shape. There were positives about our weird, asymmetric formation against Spurs. Yes, they battered us, I accept that, but we had our moments. I think this formation gives us the right level of cover and allows us to field players with the right amount of pace. This is not a very balanced squad.
I really like Ademola Lookman, I like he way he always tries to do something with possession rather than slowly turning in a wide circle like a tugboat with a knackered rudder…like some attacking midfielders I could mention.
Wayne. He has to stay. Sandro is getting chances, so he stays. And that Cary Elwes player role, or whatever it is, that seems to allow Tom Davies to provide the cover to Lookman. It’s Rosenborg (got there in the end), we’ve taken a two goal lead to Norway from the first leg. Now let’s get ourselves into the group stages of this hideously bloated competition that no-one likes.
They barely got past the halfway line. That was lovely. Ninety minutes of attacking, punctuated only by their repeated attempts to kick lumps out of my players. We were well on top even before their inevitable red card and, once again, the 2-0 scoreline didn’t begin to reflect our superiority.
Kevin Mirallas picked up both goals in similar fashion, driving home form 25 yards to finish a move that began on the left through Lookman. He really is a very promising young man. We managed to get a half decent performance out of Ross Barkley, who was replaced to great effect by Davy Klaassen. Once again, it’s a Europa League qualifier, not a Premier League game, but at least this indicates that we’re not doing a lot wrong. Right?
I think it’s fair to say that we could do without losing this one. We’ve played two, lost two, for starters. But it’s also Huddersfield. I can take losing to Bournemouth, these things happen. I can take losing to Spurs, they’re one of the best teams in the league. But we’ve got to be beating newly promoted teams.
I see little point in changing the team. It’s a team that looks cohesive and composed. At least against Rosenborg. But it’s also a team that, unlike our original tactic, can attack with a bit of pace. And we’ll surely find gaps against David Wagner’s side if, as I’d expect, they’re set up to counter-attack.
It’s a set piece. Of course it is. They couldn’t get us in open play, so it had to be a set piece. They could barely get the poxy ball before they scored. And then they toss in a corner, we can’t clear it and bang…we’re a goal down just as we were looking good. I can see heads going down all over the park. Then Huddersfield step up and they start coming at us, sensing the blood in the water.
What can I do? Nothing really. I just stare in horror as we carefully build chances only the toss them away with a misplaced pass or a misjudged run. We’re playing well, in a manner of speaking. We’re doing everything I ask of them. But it’s not until the second half that we equalise. Sandro scores again, and it’s Lookman with another assist. But a draw isn’t going to be enough. I absolutely have to win.
I switch to attacking. Nothing. I remove Idrissa Gueye for Rooney and push him up to support Sandro. Nothing. I switch to rapid fire football. Nothing. If anything, all this ambition is only making it easier for Huddersfield to make chances. With ten minutes left, I switch to ‘overload’. And we all know what that means.
For the next five minutes, Huddersfield are scampering through our half like it’s a trolley dash. Jordan Pickford makes a saves for which a statue should be commissioned. And then Michael Keane clears his lines by lumping the ball upfront. And Sandro races onto the ball and beats the defence for pace. And then Sandro is one on one with Jonas Lossl and I have time to look up at the clock and see that we’re in the final, sweat-stained vinegar strokes of the game and when I look back down, Sandro shudders and releases the trigger, exploding into the back of the net and I have exploded too and we have won and we have won and we have won and I might just be able to get to Episode Five.
To the first person who says, “It’s only Huddersfield,” I will have you shot.
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By Oli Young-Myles
FM18 Project: Five managerial challenges to tackle
We’ve already selected five clubs to consider managing on FM18 but here’s something a little different. Rather than start your managerial career from scratch, why not try emulating some real life coaches who conquered the game from the dugout?
Ranging from the obvious to the obscure, the relatively easy to downright difficult, here are our five managerial challenges to tackle in Football Manager 2018…
The Sir Alex Ferguson challenge
The task here is a simple one: build a dynasty.
When Alex Ferguson took the reigns at Manchester United in 1986, before he became a Sir, he inherited a club that was second from bottom in the old First Division and without a top-flight title in 19 years.
By the time he left some 27 years later, United had overtaken Liverpool as England’s most successful ever club with 20 league titles, adding two Champions League triumphs to boot.
Fergie was a one-off and it’s unlikely anyone will stick around at a major club for as long as he did ever again. Arsene Wenger is still hanging on at Arsenal and Paul Tisdale is in his 12th season at Exeter City, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to survive at any club for longer than a year or two.
The same is true for FM18. The addition of squad dynamics has made your job slightly harder as there are ringleaders in the dressing room actively plotting your downfall (damn you, Virgil Van Dijk), while the AI managers are more tactically savvy than ever before.
However, it can be done. Begin this challenge by either taking charge of a big club from the start, or doing it the authentic way and starting out in the Scottish lower leagues before getting your big break later on down the line.
The aim: Build a dynasty.
The Carlo Ancelotti challenge
Don Carlo’s reputation has taken a bit of a hit recently following his sacking by Bayern Munich, but his CV speaks for itself.
The Italian is a renowned winner having won 19 trophies in a 21-year coaching career. But what makes Ancelotti stand out from the crowd is that he’s brought success to clubs in each of Europe’s top five leagues.
Ancelotti won league titles in Italy (AC Milan), England (Chelsea), France (PSG) and Germany (Bayern Munich) and, while he didn’t conquer La Liga during his time with Real Madrid, he did deliver a long-awaited 10th Champions League title.
In the modern game it’s becoming increasingly common for managers to hop from one club to another, but few have come close to matching Ancelotti’s success. Now it’s your turn.
Find this challenge too easy? Why not head over to South America and try it there instead.
The aim: Conquer Europe’s big leagues.
The (curse of) Bela Guttmann challenge
Unlike the Ferguson and Ancelotti challenges, this is a very specific test: win a European trophy with Benfica.
In 1962, Hungarian manager Bela Guttmann steered Benfica to a second successive European Cup victory, but was denied a pay rise despite his achievements.
The story goes that Guttmann, so enraged by his employer’s refusal to reward him for his success, put a curse on the club to stop them winning a continental trophy ever again.
Some 55 years later and Benfica are yet to add to two the European trinkets that Guttmann delivered in the 1960s – despite competing in eight different finals in the intervening period. Like the non-scoring curse that takes over Harry Kane in August, the Guttmann curse is very real indeed. Spooky.
Your challenge is to bring back European glory to Benfica before the drought reaches six decades. It could be a tall order as this Benfica squad needs some fine-tuning following the fire sale in the summer – Victor Lindelof, Ederson, Nelson Semedo and Konstantinos Mitroglou (yep, that one) were all sold without being adequately replaced.
The aim: End Benfica’s European trophy drought.
The Bora Milutinović challenge
Milutinovic 2.0.
Much like in the real world, international management can be a bit frustrating on FM18. You spend most of your time on holiday or else watching the odd game from a corporate seat under the pretence of doing a bit of scouting.
However, there can be a lot of fun to be had as an international boss. Who wouldn’t want to be involved in the World Cup, after all?
While FIFA are doing their utmost to ruin the World Cup by allowing a quarter of the world’s countries to compete in it from 2026 onwards, it remains by far the biggest global tournament in sport. Even the much-maligned qualification process can be enjoyable in the game too.
One man who knows the tournament better than most is 73-year-old Velibor “Bora” Milutinović, who has presided over five separate World Cup campaigns as a manager with five different nations. Bora wasn’t exactly working with the world’s best teams either, coaching Mexico, Costa Rica, the United States, Nigeria and China at the finals between 1986-2002.
If you decide to load up a mega-database on FM18, you’ll find that there are 108 different countries to manage, ranging from Argentina to Azerbaijan, Brazil to Burkina Faso, England to El Salvador. With so many nations to choose from (including Kosovo for the first time) this could be the challenge to steer you away from club football.
The aim: Qualify for five successive World Cup finals. (The smaller the countries, the better).
The Graham Potter challenge
Step one: Go up to the attic, dust off the globe that your great aunt got you for Christmas eight years ago and give it a spin.
Step two: Close your eyes and stop the globe from spinning.
Step three: Wherever your finger lands, that’s where your managerial career begins. For me, this means FC Spartak Trnava in the Slovak Super Liga. I can’t wait.
Granted, this almost certainly isn’t how Graham Potter landed his first and so far only managerial job at Swedish side Östersunds FK, but for someone who spent the entirety of their playing days in English football, it was perhaps a surprising place to start out.
When Potter took charge of Östersunds in 2011, they were languishing aimlessly in the Swedish fourth-tier. Fast-forward to the present day and they are playing in the Allsvenskan (Sweden’s top division), are the reigning national cup champions and are in the Europa League courtesy of sending Galatasaray packing in qualifying.
The job Potter has done at Östersunds is Football Manager brought to life. Now it’s your turn.
The aim: Build your reputation away from the bright lights of the Premier League.
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Changes in social isolation and loneliness following total hip and knee arthroplasty: longitudinal analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) cohort
Smith, Toby O, Dainty, Jack R and MacGregor, Alex (2017) Changes in social isolation and loneliness following total hip and knee arthroplasty: longitudinal analysis of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) cohort. Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, 25 (9). pp. 1414-1419. ISSN 1063-4584
Objective: To determine the prevalence and change in social isolation and loneliness in people before and after THA and TKA in England. Design: The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing dataset, a prospective study of community-dwelling older adults, was used to identify people who had undergone primary THA or TKA because of osteoarthritis. Social isolation was assessed using the ELSA Social Isolation Index. Loneliness was evaluated using the Revised University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale. The prevalence of social isolation and loneliness were calculated and multilevel modelling was performed to assess the potential change of these measures before arthroplasty, within a two-year operative-recovery phase and a following two-year follow-up. Results: The sample consisted of 393 people following THA and TKA. The prevalence of social isolation and loneliness changed from 16.9% and 18.8% pre-operative to 21.8% and 18.9% at the final post-operative follow-up respectively. This was not a statistically significant change for either measure (p=0.15; p=0.74). There was a significant difference in social isolation at the recovery phase compared to the pre-operative phase (p=0.01), where people following arthroplasty reported an increase in social isolation (16.9% to 21.4%). There was no significant difference between the assessment phases in respect to UCLA Loneliness Scale score (p≥0.74). Conclusions: Given the negative physical and psychological consequences which social isolation and loneliness can have on individuals following THA or TKA, clinicians should be mindful of this health challenge for this population. The reported prevalence of social isolation and loneliness suggests this is an important issue.
joint replacement,social participation,environment,rehabilitation,psychology,multi-morbidity
Pure Connector
10.1016/j.joca.2017.04.003
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Escape Room Events in Wales
Escape Games make the perfect venue for many types of event. Players have to work together to solve puzzles, either physical or mental depending on the chosen room, which makes them a very enjoyable social occasion. They also tend to bring out the competitive streak in some of us, so there's the fun aspect too. Escape rooms are great for birthday parties, stag nights or Hen do's, company team building or just for a family get-together.
We have a room for everyone! However please note that Escape Games are not suitable for children's parties as the puzzles and challenges are at an adult level. You may bring the little darlings along with you, but they are not suitable for children on their own.
CSI Murder Mystery
A room for those that like whodunnits. Can you match fingerprints and compare alibis with witness statements to discover who is being economical with the truth? Can you piece the forensic evidence together to place the guilty at the scene and rule out the innocent? In short, can you bring the culprit to justice?
"A genuinely original game which threw up one of the most interesting tasks I’ve ever seen in an Escape Room" - The Logic Escapes Me (A London based blog reviewing Escape Room Games all across the UK)
Escape from the Future
This is a fun room, but serious at the same time. It is still challenging as well as being fun to play. You have been asked to test a time machine invented by a mad professor friend of yours. Of course you have agreed, which makes you as nutty as he is!
"Absolutely awesome! Best hour ever!" - Louis-Courtney Jones from Rhyl
This is the ultimate challenge, but anyone can have a go as it's fun to play. We haven't called it Mission Impossible because it's based on that particular franchise, but it is that sort of thing... Can you get through a sophisticated security system and disarm a bomb? All I can tell you is that you don't have to dangle from a skylight to avoid touching the floor and you can go below 50mph, but that's all the help you get here! Come and play for more.
"I have never seen such technology in an escape room" - One of our testers with 50+ games under their belt.
"This is really clever!" - Just about all our testers!
Escape Rooms and Coronavirus COVID-19
Please read before booking an Escape Room...
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DisneyLife Reaches Ireland!
By Mallika Venkatramani | Nov 7 2017
Mallika Venkatramani discusses the launch of DisneyLife and recommends some classic Disney movies.Greetings, Disney fans! As you might have heard, we received exciting news on October 11th, DisneyLife, Disney’s streaming service, has landed on Irish shores. Ireland is the second nation after the UK to receive this service.DisneyLife is Disney’s own service that allows you to not only stream over 400 Disney movies, but also watch live TV from Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Junior, sing along to Disney tracks, read books of the Disney tales, and so on. You can begin a seven-day free trial after which the cost is €6.99 per month. It can be downloaded from Google Play, the App Store, or the Amazon App store, or subscribed to from your laptop.
DisneyLife was a well thought out move on Disney’s part, as it allowed it to establish its own distinct platform for movie streaming, hence drawing increased attention and viewership, to its own productions.
Before the launch of DisneyLife in the UK in 2015, Netflix was the main site from which people streamed Disney movies. As the UK market displayed strong interest in Disney productions, Disney decided to test DisneyLife there. It quickly became a success. While Disney films are still available on Netflix, Disney has recently announced that it will withdraw its films from there and rely on its own streaming service. Given the movie and video streaming nature of both, many often compare DisneyLife with Netflix. However, unlike the latter, DisneyLife allows customers to stream books and Disney soundtracks, which allows the Disney fan-base to enjoy a closer interaction with Disney movies. The service aims to attract families and even allows family members to create Disney-character profiles upon subscription.The Walt Disney Company was founded by two brothers in 1923, with the Mickey Mouse cartoon series being their breakthrough. Subsequent years saw a growing audience and the premiere of the movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937. It flourished in the following decades, producing endearing classics like Alice in Wonderland (1951), Robin Hood (1973) and The Lion King (1994). Disney movies and shows remain an integral part of the childhoods of today’s youth.Disney was the first company in the film and entertainment industry to achieve such success and fame such that it opened theme parks, but it certainly faces competition from various other entertainment companies today. Disney’s theme parks have become hugely popular and successful worldwide, does launching DisneyLife give Disney the same edge over other entertainment companies? DisneyLife was a well thought out move on Disney’s part, as it allowed it to establish its own distinct platform for movie streaming, hence drawing increased attention and viewership, to its own productions. By providing its members with more than just movies and TV shows, DisneyLife aims to increase audience engagement, using features such as books helps meet this aim.
DisneyLife allows customers to stream books and Disney soundtracks, which allows the Disney fan-base to enjoy a closer interaction with Disney movies.
The service was well received in the UK and has retained a good number of UK viewers. The next step in making DisneyLife global has been the expansion to Ireland. This availability means that Irish viewers can choose from a large collection of movies to stream. If anyone is unsure which film to watch, The Lion King or Pocahontas are always sure to entertain and inspire.The Lion King is a family favourite. Simba, a young cub of Mufasa, the king of a pride of lions, grows up to confront and oust his scheming uncle Scar. An important take-home message from this story is that our world is not a Utopia; one should have the courage to stand up for his or her own rights and must remember that good will ultimately triumph over evil.Pocahontas is a gem among the Disney Princess movies. We see how a young Native American woman, Pocahontas, the daughter of the tribe’s chief, meets and falls in love with John Smith, a young Englishman. This message is very relevant to the current day and age where we still see violence every day based on people’s differences, on a large and small scale.If you have not previously heard of or accessed DisneyLife, now is a great time to explore it. A feast of Disney awaits all, so hurry up, get some ice cream and a huge bowl of popcorn, and start streaming your favourite Disney movies.
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nominations@purposepublishing.com.au
UBH Events
Waco Tao
CEO, Founder - PowerHouse Homes Pty Ltd
‘My name is Sue, how do you do?’
That classic Johnny Cash song from 1969 tells the story of a father who knew he wasn’t going to stay, but wanted to ensure his son grew up tough. So, he gave his boy a girl’s name.
In China you weren’t named Sue, you were named Erguniang (it’s not pronounced phonetically as it appears in English either!). At least that’s what happened to Waco Tao, and while his father did stay, just like the boy in the song, that name shaped Waco’s life.
“I’m the second of three boys,” says Waco. “After me, my parents were desperate for a girl however they got another son and thought ‘oh not again!’, so they started treating me like a girl.
“My Mum called me Erguniang, which means second daughter, and I was taught all the girly stuff, like knitting and embroidery.”
That led Waco to develop an interest in model-building: “not that models are girly, it just seemed a natural progression.”
Who would have thought that an innocent nickname given to him by his mother would lead Waco down a path to the establishment of PowerHouse Homes.
The introduction on the website outlines the business perfectly: ‘PowerHouse Homes is a Melbourne based prefab housing company specialising in R&D, manufacture and construct of prefab buildings catering for both residential and commercial markets.’
But to understand how a ‘girly’ upbringing has lead to such an innovative company, you have to go back, way back – back to before Waco even arrived in Australia.
As he recalls, “before I started school, children would learn English, but by the time I went to school it was the height of the Cultural Revolution, and learning English was frowned upon. It wasn’t banned, but not encouraged either.
“I had one teacher who spoke very good English and I listened. Most of my classmates didn’t listen – they weren’t interested – but I was, and I became pretty good at it.”
Learning While Earning
The first piece of the puzzle was in place: when Waco arrived in Australia, he could already speak English fluently.
His ticket into Australia was as a student in the hospitality industry, and because of his fluency in English he was able to turn a two-year course into one year.
At the time, Waco was studying at the Australian College of Travel and Hospitality in Melbourne. “They were trying to cut costs, and because I was already a qualified hotelier and my English was good, they offered me the chance to become a lecturer.
“I didn’t get paid, so I still needed to have a job. I was working as a waiter and the owners of the restaurant realised I was overqualified, so they made me the manager.”
That role “helped me develop my management skills, and not just with Chinese people, but with English-speaking people as well.”
The second piece of the puzzle then fell into place. Not only was Waco becoming a good people manager, he was dealing with customers and these were “skills which have played a huge role in where I am today.”
In his spare time Waco’s hobby was building models – mainly ships – and he had a friend who was an architect. He told Waco that if you can make model ships, you could make architectural models. At the time, “I had no idea what he was talking about; I had never seen one. I was a bit of a daredevil, I guess, and said I’d do it.”
It took Waco four months to complete the model of a four-storey building in Toorak. “My friend was amazed and the next thing I realise there was a cheque in the mail. Of course, I didn’t expect that.”
Another piece of the puzzle was embedded into Waco’s journey: his introduction to the construction business.
The realisation that “there is money here” led Waco to begin “knocking on the doors of architects; I thought architects would give me the business, but I was wrong. The architects did recommend me to developers, and they became my clients.”
The next piece of Waco’s building industry education was about deadlines. “If I missed a deadline there were penalties, so I knew I couldn’t do it by myself: I needed help.
“Initially I was outsourcing locally, but that became expensive, so I drew on the experience I’d received in several other jobs I’d had and looked overseas. That’s when I went back to China and found model-makers there who didn’t cost me as much and performed more efficiently.”
Waco had learnt about outsourcing overseas in his research papers he’d read while studying at Monash University, and also whilst working for training, stationery, cosmetics and 3PL companies during that period.
Waco Tao was developing a unique set of skills which would set him apart from others in his field. He recalls that “during these last two jobs in particular, I was dealing directly in procurement. It’s the beginning of the supply chain. You have to buy the goods first, they’re then shipped, transferred to a warehouse ready for distribution and eventually sold.”
Puzzle Taking Shape
The third-party logistics company that Waco was using to bring goods into the country made him an offer too good to refuse. The initial five-year contract lasted almost eleven years.
Proudly Waco recounts: “I treated the company as my own and we made some great inroads into the Asian market. The carrot to stay for the second five years was that I would get the chance to join the ownership group.”
Waco went back to university to get his MBA, and completed a four-year course in two years, studying part-time. Waco was highly engaged and enthusiastic about having a real say in how the business would be run.
However, when an offer to head up the business in Hong Kong fell through, Waco resigned. “I walked out just prior to Christmas in 2005. The only thing I took with me was a chair. It was a very expensive chair, handmade in South Australia. I pulled the roof down on my convertible Mercedes, stuck it in the back seat and drove home.”
In reality though, Waco left with way more than just that chair: “I went away from that job with a full understanding of the supply chain industry.”
More pieces of the puzzle were fitting into place.
Waco’s view now is that, “very rarely do you find a CEO or business owner who has a complete understanding of both architecture and supply-chain management. It’s the biggest point of difference PowerHouse Homes has over our competitors.”
However, there was still one more venture before Waco would set up PowerHouse Homes. It was another piece of the puzzle that would prove vital to the success of his business.
It began towards the end of that eleven-year stint with the third-party logistics company, and sprang from an idea he’d presented to management who were rather unimpressed.
At that time “they said ‘you’re too ahead of yourself, you’re full of it’, to which I replied, ‘if you don’t like it I’m walking out, I’m going to do it’.”
Waco set up a global logistics company based in Shanghai using his own money – “I even gambled with the kids’ school fees.”
He realised warehouses on the Chinese ports were under-utilised, so he made agreements to rent part of them and then set about attracting business from companies from around the world which were having difficulties making inroads into China.
In a bold move, “I forged a user-pays agreement with the warehouse owner, based purely on the amount of space I used. In just five months I had thirty-three companies lined up. They thought I was representing a large enterprise, but it was just me.”
In Waco’s mind however, “I was large where it mattered: in my heart, in my desire and in my vision. My biggest asset was my knowledge, and knowledge is power.”
Then the Global Financial Crisis hit. It was 2007 and the failure of the international financial markets killed his idea.
Looking back now Waco asserts that “I still believe in the model, especially for small-to-medium sized businesses. The one saving grace was that I hadn’t borrowed any money – it was all my own money invested.”
For several years prior to that Waco had been talking at business conferences, mainly those aimed at the Asian market. It was only four or five times a year, but he had a policy of encouraging people to interrupt him if they had a question. Fortunately for him, “you could never kill my train of thought.”
It was one of those ‘rude interrupters’ who helped Waco add the final piece of the puzzle to establishing PowerHouse Homes. “I was talking about my attempt to set up the Shanghai business and this guy shouts out from the crowd ‘that’s blue ocean strategy’.”
Waco had replied ‘yes it is’ at the time, “but I really had no idea what he was talking about. I did remember buying a blue covered book that mentioned strategy in its title though.
“As soon as I got home, I read that book from cover to cover, and agreed with that guy. I’d started a business in a field which no-one else had done. I was meeting a need that needed to be met. If it wasn’t for the GFC, it really would have worked.”
Waco realised that if he had done it once, he could do it again. All he needed was an idea. That idea hit him squarely between the eyes while on a flight, circling Sydney airport, becoming agitated about a meeting for which he was running late. “I looked out the window and saw all these containers lying idle.”
These were the same containers he’d used to ship goods into Australia, and the same containers which would have been used to store goods in China. Containers which are vital in the supply chain industry, but only have a working life of about ten years.
For Waco, “It was a light bulb moment. While these containers are replaced after ten years, their life expectancy is a lot longer; they rust a bit but they don’t break down. It costs more to break them down than having them sit there doing nothing.”
Waco had read an article in the in-flight magazine about the housing crisis in Australia. “I thought Australia doesn’t have a huge population so the labour force is small. When it comes to building homes to satisfy demand, because demand is high and supply is low, the cost of homes is only going to grow.”
The idea which flowed from these two trains of thought was “what if I could use these containers to build homes? I couldn’t wait to get off the plane and start doing my research.”
That research took Waco eighteen months, and in March 2009, the puzzle was finally complete and PowerHouse Homes was born.
From a boy named Erguniang who liked to build model ships, a company which builds model homes had emerged.
In a reference to his Asian culture, “whenever I do something I have an English and a Chinese name for it. But Chinese people didn’t initially understand it, because for them ‘powerhouse’ is like an engine room in terms of Chinese characters.
“I explained it does make sense, because with an engine room you empower people. What’s the big dream for Australians? To have your own home. So I created an engine room to empower them to achieve that dream.”
From its inception, “the business plan I wrote in 2008 allowed for ten percent of our earnings to go to charitable organisations. Back then I had four business partners and they all agreed to that. The more we give, the more we get back. I believe in that; ‘Givers Get’.”
Again, in Chinese, Waco explains, “it’s two characters, (Sir Der). Most people believe it’s just to give, but if you break it down and think it through, there are two layers to this word, it means Givers and Get. So that’s always been my business philosophy.”
And true to that philosophy, when a businesswomen’s network approached PowerHouse Homes with a sponsorship proposal, Waco turned them down.
At the time “I said we can do a lot better than sponsorship. I said, ‘you need money, how far can you go with twenty thousand dollars? Not very far. I said I have a better idea. Why don’t we give you a house you can auction at one of your events?”
Waco then took the idea a step further by turning it into a campaign to maximise publicity for the women’s network and his company and, most importantly, to boost the chances of making a bigger impact for those in need.
Charitable organisations were asked to “write in and explain their need. We then set up a panel to study the proposals and then a group of judges to pick the winner. That way the organisation which best deserved the house would get the opportunity to auction it and keep all the proceeds. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”
HIGHLIGHT QUOTES
I was large where it mattered: in my heart, in my desire and in my vision.
My biggest asset was my knowledge, and knowledge is power.
I’d started a business in a field which no-one else had done. I was meeting a need that needed to be met.
…what if I could use these containers to build homes? I couldn’t wait to get off the plane and start doing my research.
Waco realised that if he had done it once, he could do it again. All he needed was an idea…
I looked out the window and saw all these containers lying idle.
The more we give, the more we get back. I believe in that; ‘Givers Get’.
Powerhouse Homes
19-29 Milton Pde,
http://www.powerhousehomes.com.au
Unsung Business Heroes
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HCM City's industrial zones seek 900 million USD this year
The Ho Chi Minh City Export Processing Zones and Industrial Parks Authority (Hepza) hopes to attract new investment worth 900 million USD this year.
More than 60 percent is targeted in four technology-oriented industries -- food processing, chemical-rubber, mechanical, and information technology and supporting.
A Hepza report said new investment in the city’s industrial parks and export processing zones last year topped 840 million USD, an increase of 68 percent over 2016, most of it in those four industries.
As of last year, there were 1,495 projects in the IPs and EPZs with a combined capital of nearly 10 billion USD.
Dao Xuan Duc, deputy head of Hepza, said simplification of administrative procedures related to investment, labour and construction in the city including Hepza helped attract investments last year.
“Investors and enterprises have seen progress in [streamlining] procedures, so they continued their investment and many of them increased their investment.”
Investment by domestic companies was higher than foreign direct investment last year, he said, describing it as a “new thing.”
This year Hepza would continue to reform administrative procedures, he promised.
Hepza is working with the city’s Department of Science and Technology to deploy IT in investment and information management, he said.
The city plans to set up a facility in Binh Chanh district mostly for start-ups, he said.
Also this year, Hepza will continue to provide assistance to companies in the city’s industrial parks and export processing zones like introducing them to a city programme that helps them invest in various sectors and pointing to labour sources.
It will cooperate with relevant agencies to resolve strikes in time to avoid adverse effects on the investment environment.
It will also safeguard the benefits of workers in industrial parks and export processing zones. - VNA/VNP
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Share this Story: Opinion: Universities provide optimism in world of conflict and crisis
Opinion: Universities provide optimism in world of conflict and crisis
Jamie Cassels
Jul 30, 2016 • July 30, 2016 • 4 minute read
The university experience is one that feeds hope of a better world, writes Jamie Cassels, president of the University of Victoria. Photo by DARRYL DYCK /THE CANADIAN PRESS
It’s not easy to be an optimist these days. The growing anxiety about conflict and crises in the world is fed by the daily news cycle — Brexit, the wars in Syria and Iraq, intercultural misunderstandings, polarized political values, the attacks in Nice and Kabul, and the horrific shootings in Orlando, Dallas and Munich.
While Canadians can feel blessed that we’re not grappling with the breadth of those particular issues, we’re not immune from our own challenges — pressure from global economic competition, the disruption of many traditional industries, jobs and ways of life caused by rapid technological and economic change, growing inequality, the legacy of colonialism and residential schools, and climate change — all strain the economic, social and environmental bonds of our country.
Opinion: Universities provide optimism in world of conflict and crisis Back to video
But there’s good reason to look beyond these dark times toward a brighter future, and it starts with Canada’s universities.
Universities can play a unique and important role in addressing the critical challenges around us. As centres of learning, discovery and community engagement, Canada’s universities are places of innovation and ideas, creative catalysts for partnerships of people working toward shared goals. When we consider the pressures facing our country and the world, it’s clear that knowledge, collaboration, research and education are key to their solution. Universities not only build pathways of success for individual students, but they also nurture the kind of thinking and create the tools needed to tackle the world’s toughest problems.
In October 2015, Universities Canada, the collective voice of higher education, research and innovation in our country, committed universities to play a specific role in our country’s future:
• Equipping all students with the skills and knowledge to flourish in work and life, empowering them to contribute to Canada’s economic, social and intellectual success;
• Pursuing excellence in all aspects of learning, discovery and community engagement;
• Delivering a broad range of enriched learning experiences;
• Putting our best minds to the most pressing problems — whether global, national, regional or local;
• Helping build a stronger Canada through collaboration and partnerships with the private sector, communities, government and other educational institutions in Canada and around the world.
Through collaboration and partnerships, through developing talent and ideas, and through inquiry, curiosity, and innovation, universities can help to put Canada on the road to a smart, prosperous and bright future.
Canadian universities are bridge builders — connecting people and ideas from our cities and towns to the global community, and fostering mutual understanding and collaboration with governments, businesses, individuals and organizations at all levels. This reciprocal collaboration pushes the boundaries of what’s possible, moves ideas forward, and encourages social justice and prosperity.
Our role includes preparing students to take their places as global problem-solvers and innovators through hands-on learning in the classroom, the community and the workplace. Last year, for example, the University of Victoria partnered with more than 1,000 different employers in B.C. and around the world to hire enthusiastic students steeped in the latest knowledge and developments in their fields, to secure successful futures for their businesses and organizations and shape a strong, sustainable economy for our country.
Universities are also home to the dynamic research centres that bring together researchers from around the globe to respond to the challenges of international cooperation, resource stewardship, sustainability and climate change. At UVic and other universities, students and researchers in areas such as global studies, religion and society, language and culture focus on mutual understanding, peace and social justice. The Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS), is a collaboration between B.C.’s four leading research universities that is hosted and led by UVic. Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) continues to develop close collaborations with federal and provincial governments and the international community to maximize the overall public benefits and policy impacts of ocean monitoring and research.
Universities have also recognized the importance of partnering with the indigenous peoples of Canada, and our responsibility to promote awareness of the enduring impact of our shared colonial past. Canada’s universities today are focusing on initiatives that will help us face that history and support indigenous people to achieve personal success and assume positions of leadership. These involve coordinating and enhancing educational support for indigenous students and strengthening our relationship with First Nations communities.
For hundreds of years, universities have been contributing to the development of society through social and technological innovation, constantly changing and adapting to meet the needs of the students, employers and societies we serve. As a result, universities are perfectly positioned to respond to the rapid pace of change and the global challenges of today.
And that’s a great reason to be optimistic about where we’re headed as a country, despite the challenges in front of us.
Jamie Cassels, QC, is the president of the University of Victoria, chair of the research committee for Universities Canada and chair of the Research Universities Council of B.C. for 2016-17.
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Living at Wintringham
There are many factors that contribute to making a house a home - from the building itself, to its setting, surroundings and support systems - and at Wintringham, the infrastructure, amenities and facilities planned are vital ingredients to help create a sense of place that will make you feel like you’re at home from the moment you move in. Our first phase includes 500 new homes, the Civic Square and Wintringham Primary Academy which is due to open in Autumn 2020. From day one, residents will benefit from safe cycle and walkways, exciting brand new play spaces, and more.
You can sign up with us for updates on homes at Wintringham and also register directly with the house builders by following the links on their pages.
CALA Homes
Homes on sale now
CALA's new collection at Wintringham is now available to reserve. Each house will have a private garden and the apartment blocks will have communal amenity spaces, secure and covered bike parking as well as resident and visitor car parking. The landscaping will create an attractive setting both for new residents and surrounding neighbours, with significant new tree planting, hedges and green corridors that connect people to two new parks and play areas.
Book an appointment Learn More
Morris Homes
New homes are now available to reserve at Wintringham, with an exclusive collection of 3 & 4 bedroom detached and semi-detached homes, they blend timeless character with high specification and modern design, perfect for families. The new homes are located at the eastern end of the Wintringham development, and have been designed with landscaping to form an attractive Eastern Gateway to Cambridge Road and entry to both Wintringham and St Neots.
How long will it be before the first houses are available?
Homes at Wintringham are now on sale. Details for CALA Homes and Morris Homes can be found on the Homes section of our website, Durkan Homes are due to launch in 2021. First residents moved in towards the end of 2020.
Will Help to Buy be available?
As Help to Buy is a national scheme, it will be available from the housebuilders where the property prices do not exceed the price cap for Help to Buy. The current Help to Buy scheme will run until April 2021 when it will be replaced by a new version. You can read more about Help to Buy here. https://www.helptobuy.gov.uk/
Will there be shared ownership opportunities?
Yes there will be shared ownership opportunities across the range of homes and apartments. You are able to register for updates and we will keep you informed as more information becomes available.
How will you safeguard the quality of the design?
Our vision for Wintringham is to create a place of enduring quality set in beautiful green space, using sustainable materials, with a strong infrastructure and a vibrancy that strengthens through the decades. A Design Code has been established, which sets out specific guidelines to safeguard the quality of design as the work progresses and we will work with the housebuilders at Wintringham to ensure these ambitions are realised.
What will the housing prices be like?
House prices are accessible from the housebuilder websites which can be found via the Homes page.
Are there any self build plots available?
Self-build are one of the many housing types that Urban&Civic are considering along with modular homes and increasing the delivery rate of housing across all our developments. Self build are not part of the initial stages at Wintringham however we will be responding to market demands and would like to introduce self build in the future at Wintringham.
Can I register for updates?
Yes, please register with the housebuilders. You can find links to register on the pages for CALA Homes and Morris Homes.
In this episode we find out what it's going to be like to live in Wintringham, St Neots.
All podcasts Episode page
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Wipro Selected as Strategic Partner by Metro Bank to Drive IT Transformation
Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, today announced that Metro Bank, a large UK based retail and commercial bank, has awarded a multi-year contract to deliver and transform Testing and Environment Management Services.
As part of this partnership, Wipro will leverage its Digital and Quality Engineering capabilities to drive transformation through automation, service virtualisation and DevSecOps enablement. This will help Metro Bank achieve its objectives around cost, pace and quality of operations and further differentiate them from other high street banks. Wipro will accelerate the bank’s digital journey through its marquee offerings, Virtual Automation Engineer, IntelliAssure and Digital Rig. In addition, Wipro has been chosen as one of the preferred partners to deliver Business-IT services across Metro Bank functions.
Cheryl McCuaig, Chief Information Officer at Metro Bank, said, “We are excited to partner with Wipro on this journey towards transforming our business. We look forward to a successful partnership that delivers value to both organisations and enables us to achieve our goal of improving the quality, velocity and efficiency of our IT delivery. This directly supports Metro Bank’s strategy to become the UK’s best community bank by providing outstanding service and solutions to our personal and business customers.”
Omkar Nisal, Senior Vice President & Head – Banking EMEA, Wipro Limited said, “We are delighted to be chosen as Metro Bank’s strategic transformation partner for testing and environment services. We look forward to working together and delivering an ambitious programme that will significantly improve the overall efficiency of technology change.”
About Metro Bank
Metro Bank is celebrated for its exceptional customer experience. Its mobile app and online service achieved the top spot in the Competition and Market Authority’s Service Quality Survey among personal and business current account holders in February 2020; the bank also ranked in the top two for overall service and store service for personal and business customers. It was awarded ‘Best All Round Personal Finance Provider’ at the Moneynet Personal Finance Awards 2019.
Offering retail, business, commercial and private banking services, it prides itself on giving customers the choice to bank however, whenever and wherever they choose. Whether that’s through its network of stores open seven days a week, early until late, 362 days a year; on the phone through its UK-based 24/7 contact centres; or online through its internet banking or award-winning mobile app: the bank offers customers real choice.
The bank employs around 3,500 colleagues and is headquartered in Holborn, London.
Intelliassure: A Next Generation IT wellness platform leveraging the principles of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, advanced analytics and built on Wipro HOLMES – Wipro’s AI and Automation platform.
Virtual Automation Engineer: Intelligent Test Automation built on the theme of ‘Automating the Automation’ enabling natural language-based automation, at-scale cloud-based autonomous execution and automated maintenance through self-healing, resulting in on-demand validation of digital applications undergoing frequent changes.
Digital Rig: Wipro’s enterprise DevSecOps platform for non-linear scaling of DevSecOps through simplification, standardisation and automation of key engineering capabilities across the organisation through a self-service catalogue.
About Wipro Limited
Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company. We harness the power of cognitive computing, hyper-automation, robotics, cloud, analytics and emerging technologies to help our clients adapt to the digital world and make them successful. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, strong commitment to sustainability and good corporate citizenship, we have over 180,000 dedicated employees serving clients across six continents. Together, we discover ideas and connect the dots to build a better and a bold new future.
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WJ Groundwater August 1, 2015
Sisters are doing it for themselves…
WJ Groundwater included an article by two of its engineers, Ula Markowicz and Revathy S. Nair, in Issue 27 of The Wet End to highlight its interest in the lack of female engineers in the trade.
The article was an interesting, insightful and sometimes frank look at the challenges that face women in our industry, be they culturally based or just role enforced through gender profiling.
At WJ Groundwater, we encourage our female engineers to work onsite if they see their career path as less office based, and the article reflects that outlook.
Not wanting the article to be a feint gesture we got in touch with the organisers of National Women In Engineering Day, 2015 to add our support to their enterprise. They kindly published excerpts from our article on their website here.
The day of events has been devised to promote equality across the engineering sector. In decades past women had been told that the industry is a ‘career no-go area’ but this is a sentiment of the past. To raise awareness and highlight the issue, companies, schools, universities and communities have been celebrating the day with a mind-boggling range of events including; a record breaking number of women performing a mid-air high five at the same time; the heritage minister for London re-listing Waterloo Bridge (aka the Ladies’ Bridge) to honour the female engineers that worked on its construction during the Second World War; and SAGE Publications have put together an exclusive web page featuring 11 inspirational women engineers. This is just the tip of the iceberg too.
The need for more diversity when staffing for the future is growing increasingly important and raising the profile of a whole raft of career choices for women is paramount. There has been a lot of coverage in the national press about the dearth of females in the UK taking up careers in engineering. It was also the subject of a talk at this year’s Ground Engineering and Piling Conference by Martin Blower, Chairman of the FPS. Here’s a link to a short film promoting the benefits of staff diversification and equality.
WJ plan to get behind the next National Women in Engineering Day in 2016 wholeheartedly with its own event (to be announced) so if anyone has any inspiring ideas please email us and we’ll see what we can do to raise awareness.
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Five years of crisis (resolution) – some lessons
Thorsten Beck, José-Luis Peydró 07 September 2015
The past five years have given European countries useful insights on what works in crisis resolution. The lessons should be viewed as forward-looking contributions to the institutional and policy reform agenda in Europe, especially in the Eurozone. The Eurozone is not doomed, it just needs better economic and financial policies.
Greece: And the can keeps on rolling…
Thorsten Beck
The new European Union
Greece: Seeking a way forward
Elias Papaioannou, Richard Portes, Lucrezia Reichlin
The past five years have given useful insights on what works and what does not in crisis resolution. Several Eurozone countries went through deep, persistent financial (and economic) crises, caused not only by bad crisis management policies, but mainly by a pre-crisis debt boom.
Sovereign public over-indebtedness (Greece);
Real estate private credit bubbles (Ireland and Spain); and
Current-account imbalances (Portugal, and also in Spain and Ireland, where the credit and real estate price bubbles were in great part financed by foreign liquidity).
More often than not, European policymakers decided not to draw on the extensive crisis resolution experience in and outside of Europe, a decision which has led to substantial number of policy mistakes.
It would be wrong, however, to say that any negative outcome could be explained by policy mistakes. Post-crisis, countries have to go through (often severe) readjustment periods, often with distributional repercussions. Nevertheless, the experience over the past five years allows lessons to be drawn. While economists pointed out pitfalls beforehand, these lessons definitely benefit from hindsight and should thus not be perceived as knee-jerk ‘told-ya’ reaction.
The lessons should be viewed as forward-looking contributions to the institutional and policy reform agenda in Europe, especially in the Eurozone. The Eurozone is not doomed, it just needs better economic and financial policies.
Looking beyond fiscal policies
The Maastricht criteria for entering the Eurozone focused on fiscal and monetary policy conditions. As most observers agree, the Maastricht criteria to enter the currency union were too narrowly focused on public sector debt (and were often ignored anyway, including in Germany and France in the early 2000s, and especially bad in the case of Greece).
The Fiscal Compact is a broader approach, but still seems too much focused on fiscal policy. History, and also the Global Crisis starting in 2007-08, suggest that the main determinant of systemic financial crises with strong and persistent negative aggregate effects is a pre-crisis build-up of private leverage. This was the case of Ireland and Spain before the Global Crisis. Such run-ups are normally accompanied by asset prices bubbles, especially in real estate. Often this private over-indebtedness ends up on governments’ balance sheets, so that the rise in public debt is more a consequence than a cause of a financial crisis.
This makes it clear that there have to be better limits on both ex ante build-up of private and public leverage, especially if used for real estate.
Examples include building empty airports in Spain and preparing for the Olympic Games in Greece. Europe suffered from a lack of any limits on build-up of private leverage prior to the Crisis, and in general from the lack of macroprudential policies that limit systemic risk (Freixas et al. 2015).
Public and private leverage limits are especially important in good times, when incentives are stronger and more pernicious in the build-up of excessive risk; and
The limits have to be softer in bad times when some relaxation may help economic recovery, as fiscal multipliers are greater in crisis times and issuing equity in crisis times is more costly for private agents.
Convergence in a currency union, therefore, cannot be purely on fiscal grounds; however, it cannot even be on current-account grounds alone, though credit booms were mainly financed with foreign debt, which implied strong internal Eurozone imbalances.
Importantly, convergence also has to happen on the institutional level. Devaluation of a currency allows a strong internal coordination mechanism to reduce overall local prices in a country with respect to foreign products and services, which was the typical way for periphery Eurozone countries to get out of economic recessions in the past.
Rigid external prices in a currency union should imply substantially more flexible internal prices and flexible labour, service, and product markets that allow adjustment to external shocks.
In fact, a key argument in favour of peripheral countries to adopt the euro was that the only way to go out of a crisis would be with a more flexible, competitive economy through structural reforms.
Sadly, the substantial lower risk premia – and thus lower costs of borrowing – that came with the euro implied strong booms but too little economic reforms in the periphery countries. The case of Greece has especially shown the need for such flexible markets (the same in e.g. Spain, but here the labour market has been partly liberalised after the onset of the Crisis). Greece went into the Crisis with rigid internal price structures and no option to adjust external prices, which ultimately exacerbated the impact of fiscal retrenchment beyond that predicted by normal-times fiscal multipliers.
While the adjustment programmes involving private and public deleveraging in several other periphery countries were painful but relatively successful, the programme in Greece failed, which can thus be (partly) explained by deep structural rigidities. This lack of reforms could be due to the deep links between the Greek political elite (PASOK and ND) and the economic elite, which has benefitted enormously from corrupt and inefficient government structures. Similarly, the clientelistic nature of Greek politics (jobs and/or economic rents for electoral support) prevented the previous government from implementing reforms that would ultimately undermine this system.1
Restructuring – done correctly
Since debt is in general not state-contingent, it results in too much ex-post liquidation and insufficient risk sharing across borrowers and lenders, and has some moral hazard problems such as debt overhang and risk shifting. These problems are even worse in the Eurozone countries as debt is written in euros, which is not controlled by the local governments and central banks (opposite to e.g. the US and the UK), and is especially short-term (and thus very fragile) to weak borrowers, as e.g. banks or the periphery sovereigns.
Ex post restructuring is thus necessary in some circumstances to reduce the huge ex post-crisis costs, and this is even more necessary in the Eurozone, given the lack of other adjustment risk-sharing mechanisms such as fiscal union and loss of monetary sovereignty. Going into the Crisis, Europe had few, if any, restructuring mechanisms in place. Europe has made progress in establishing resolution mechanisms for banks, including stronger capital requirements and bail-in rules, as well the beginning of a banking union to cut the links between weak banks and weak sovereigns. These reforms come in the wake of mistakes done during the Crisis, such as guaranteeing too many bank liabilities with taxpayers’ money (e.g. in Ireland, Spain or Greece).
There has been little restructuring, on the other hand, in the household sector. In the US with most states with non-recourse mortgage loans and bankruptcy procedures for households, the deleveraging process has been much faster via defaults and the restart in growth therefore relatively quicker by alleviating debt problems. This part has been missed in Europe, though there have been improvements, as for example in Ireland during this Crisis (or in Sweden in the 1990s). For non-financial firms, restructuring has always been easier, but it has even improved further in the Crisis, e.g. in Spain (even allowing some new fresh money to have some priority over existing senior debt or giving second opportunities to entrepreneurs with too much debt). A right balance between too much debt overhang and zombie lending to inefficient firms and banks has, of course, to be struck.
The only aspect that has not been touched at all is a framework for insolvency for countries, and this is urgently needed.
Similarly as for households, enterprises and banks, restructuring of sovereign debt requires an adequate framework, especially in a currency union.
The repeated adjustment in Greece’s debt burden after 2010 and 2012 has increased uncertainty, especially given the ad-hoc nature of these adjustments. The lack of such framework and the attitude ‘we do not do sovereign insolvency in Europe’ in 2009/10 has delayed the urgently needed adjustment of the Greek debt burden. Even the ‘private sector involvement’, i.e. bail-in of private debtholders in 2012 proved to be insufficient. In the US, public default occurs and ‘life continues’, as it happened with Detroit, Orange County, and very recently with the problems in Puerto Rico.
Given that there is not going to be a fiscal union in the Eurozone soon, financial integration is one way of obtaining higher risk sharing within the Eurozone. Financial integration has been mainly through debt, and debt (as we have explained) which cannot be easily restructured. Thus:
More debt restructuring in general and favouring more equity-based type of financial instruments (over debt) would allow for substantial higher risk sharing within the Eurozone, thus limiting partially the problems associated with a lack of fiscal union within a monetary union.
Rescue – do it once and right or lose traction/momentum
On the rescue programmes for very weak countries, substantial reductions in public debt should have been traded with true structural reforms that improve GDP and the competitive environment of the local economy. Greece could have done many, as the above example of the independent statistical institution shows us, or as Papaiannou et al. (2015) explain carefully, and not the mistakes on contractive fiscal policy given the strong fiscal multiplier in crisis times.
It is important that such structural reforms are ‘owned’ by the local government, the political class, and the population of a country.
Greece has clearly shown that if this is not the case, it won’t work. We predict that doubling down, as currently being done by going step by step (as Ms. Merkel likes to do without looking ahead) has in great part brought us into this bad situation and will not solve the problem.
Compromises have saved the day and lost the year! To quote just one example, the Greek liquidity support of 2010 and debt restructuring 2012, partly motivated by the desire to protect banks in Germany and France, where a large share of private debt was swapped for public debt, has resulted in a rise in political tensions between Greece and its creditors over the past years. It has ultimately resulted in a rise of nationalism and populism across the Eurozone, both in periphery countries (most notably Greece), but also in the creditor countries, such as Finland and Germany.
The human factor counts
The human factor count; trust is crucial. Trading a reduction of debt for future deep structural reforms, including institutional framework, requires trust, and trust has been lost on both sides. If one cannot trust that the Greeks have a properly functioning statistics office, can outsiders trust them on deep structural reforms over time after an initial large debt reduction?
Economists often like to view policymakers as rational players, deciding purely on the basis of numbers and arguments. The experience with Yanis Varoufakis, Greek finance minister for the first half of 2015, has shown that this is not necessarily the case. Tensions were rising very openly in the Eurozone. The very different style of the new Greek finance minister might very well have contributed to the agreement in early July between Greece and its creditors, even though numbers and arguments had not really changed. Of course, even after the Greek referendum, the other countries have to sell the third Greek bailout to the local voters, and these voters also need to trust that their governments look after their interests. One missing solution that is not on the table is substantial debt relief as substantial reforms are taken over time, which may be incentive-compatible for both sides.
A central bank is a political player – no matter what the Treaty tells you
The ECB has been crucial in the Crisis. Draghi’s statement to do ‘whatever it takes’ (and the related OMT) was crucial in calming markets during the Eurozone public debt crisis of summer 2012 and avoiding self-fulfilling runs. In this context, the Eurozone also provided public liquidity to banks when European cross-border interbank markets failed.
A central bank can never be a purely technical institution – politics is always involved (unlike what some German economists and politicians like to think).
The role of the ECB in the recent stand-off between Greece and its creditors, most prominently the other 18 Eurozone countries, has clearly shown that. Beyond being a creditor to the Greek government – a rather unfortunate role – at which point does the ECB decide as the lender of last resort to not extend liquidity support to Greek banks further or even withdraw it? Given multiple equilibria, and the associated large economic and political costs, if the (ex-post) wrong decision is taken, this is clearly not a purely technical decision.
More generally, most economists agree by now that financial stability should also be a concern of the ECB, in addition to price stability. While the inflation target paradigm of the pre-2008 period was based on a clear separation between (micro-prudential) financial stability and monetary stability, the Crisis has taught us that such a separation is not feasible.
Central banks’ primary objective in history has been financial stability, while price stability is a more recent focus. Most times, both objectives reinforce each other, but not always. Moreover, with free capital mobility and without a full banking union (including deposit insurance), once citizens think that their country could potentially leave the Eurozone, it is optimal – and hence self-fulfilling – to run on the banks, thereby completely destabilising a bank-dominated economy.
Importantly, however, the ECB’s role is not substitutive of the periphery economies reforming their economies, notably Greece but also the others, and the creditor countries allowing some sovereign debt restructuring and more expansive fiscal policies.
The Eurozone is not doomed; it just needs better economic and financial policies. The experience with the mistakes in crisis resolution over the past five years can serve as critical input into the necessary institutional reform in the Eurozone.
Freixas, X, L Laeven, and J-L Peydró (2015), Systemic Risk, Crises, and Macroprudential Regulation, Boston, MA: MIT Press.
Papaioannou, E, R Portes, and L Reichlin (2015), “Greece: Seeking a way forward”, VoxEU.org, 19 June.
[1] An illustrative example is the problems faced in Greece by Andreas Georgiou, the technocrat in charged with running the Greek statistics office who showed the real public fiscal deficit that Greece truly had. See http://www.wsj.com/articles/deficit-drama-greek-authorities-step-up-prob....
Topics: EU policies Financial regulation and banking Monetary policy
Tags: Debt crisis, global crisis, EU policies, Greek debt crisis
Professor of Banking and Finance, Cass Business School; Research Fellow, CEPR
José-Luis Peydró
ICREA Professor of Economics at UPF, Barcelona GSE; Research Professor and Research Associate, CREI; and CEPR Research Fellow
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High Tech News
Will we ever be able to charge the phone from Wi-Fi signals?
Our eyes are set only on a narrow strip.possible wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, about 390-700 nanometers. If you could see the world at different wavelengths, you would know that in an urban area you are even illuminated in the dark - infrared radiation, microwaves and radio waves everywhere. Part of this electromagnetic radiation from the environment is emitted by objects that scatter their electrons everywhere, and a part carries radio signals and Wi-Fi signals that underlie our communication systems. All this radiation also carries energy.
What if we could use the energy of electromagnetic waves?
Researchers from the Massachusetts technologyInstitute presented a study that appeared in the journal Nature, which described in detail how to begin the practical implementation of this goal. They developed the first fully bendable device that can convert energy from Wi-Fi signals to usable DC electricity.
Any device that can convertThe signals of alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) are called rectal: rectifying antenna. The antenna picks up electromagnetic radiation, converting it into alternating current. It then passes through a diode that converts it into direct current for use in electrical circuits.
Rektenny were first proposed in the 1960s andeven used to demonstrate the model of a helicopter powered by microwaves in 1964 by inventor William Brown. At this stage, the futurists have already dreamed of wireless transmission of energy over long distances and even the use of rectilla to collect space solar energy from satellites and transfer to Earth.
Optical rectenna
Today, new technologies work in nanoscaleallow a lot of new. In 2015, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology collected the first optical rectenna capable of handling high frequencies in the visible spectrum from carbon nanotubes.
So far, these new optical rectennas havehave low efficiency, about 0.1 percent, and therefore cannot compete with the growing efficiency of photovoltaic solar panels. But the theoretical limit for rectenn-based solar cells is probably higher than the Shockley-Kusser limit for solar cells, and can reach 100% when illuminated with radiation of a certain frequency. This makes efficient wireless transmission possible.
A new piece of device manufactured by MIT,takes advantage of a flexible radio frequency antenna that can capture wavelengths associated with Wi-Fi signals and convert them to alternating current. Then, instead of the traditional diode to convert this current into a constant one, the new device uses a “two-dimensional” semiconductor, just a few atoms thick, creating a voltage that can be used to power wearable devices, sensors, medical devices or large-area electronics.
New rectennes consist of such “two-dimensional” (2D)materials - molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), which is only three atoms thick. One of its remarkable properties is the reduction of parasitic capacitance - the tendency of materials in electrical circuits to act as capacitors holding a certain amount of charge. In dc electronics, this may limit the speed of signal converters and the ability of devices to respond to high frequencies. New rectibene from molybdenum disulfide have parasitic capacitance an order of magnitude lower than those that have been developed so far, which allows the device to capture signals up to 10 GHz, including in the range of typical Wi-Fi devices.
Such a system would have fewer problemswith batteries: its life cycle would be much longer, electrical devices would be charged from ambient radiation and there would be no need to dispose of the components, as is the case with batteries.
“What if we could develop electronicsystems that will wrap around the bridge or which we will cover the whole highway, the walls of our office, and give electronic intelligence to everything that surrounds us? How will you provide all this electronics with energy? ”, Asks co-author Thomas Palacios, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We have come up with a new way to power the electronic systems of the future."
Using 2D materials allows cheapproduce flexible electronics, potentially allowing us to place it on large areas to collect radiation. Flexible devices could be equipped with a museum or a road surface, and it would be much cheaper than using rectenna from traditional silicon or gallium arsenide semiconductors.
Can I charge my phone by Wi-Fi signals?
Unfortunately, this option seems extremelyunlikely, although over the years the theme of “free energy” has been fooling people over and over. The problem is the energy density of the signals. The maximum power that a Wi-Fi access point can use without a special broadcasting license is usually 100 milliwatts (mW). These 100 mW are radiated in all directions, spreading over the surface area of the sphere, in the center of which is an access point.
Even if your mobile phone collected allthis power is 100% efficient, it would still take days to charge the iPhone, and the phone’s small area and distance to the access point would seriously limit the amount of energy it could collect from these signals. The new MIT device will be able to capture about 40 microwatts of energy when exposed to typical Wi-Fi density of 150 microwatts: this is not enough to power the iPhone, but enough for a simple display or a remote wireless sensor.
For this reason, it is much more likely thatWireless charging for larger gadgets will rely on induction charging, which is already able to power the devices up to a meter away, if there is nothing between the wireless charger and the charging object.
However, the surrounding radio frequency energycan be used to power certain types of devices - how do you think Soviet radios worked? And the upcoming "Internet of things" will definitely use these power models. It remains only to create sensors with low power consumption.
Co-author of the work, Jesus Grazhal from the TechnicalUniversity of Madrid sees potential use in implantable medical devices: a pill that a patient can swallow will transfer health data back to a diagnostic computer. “Ideally, I would not want to use batteries to power such systems, because if they miss lithium, the patient may die,” says Grazhal. "It is much better to collect energy from the environment in order to power these small laboratories inside the body and transfer data to external computers."
Current device performanceis about 30-40% compared with 50-60% for traditional rectenn. Along with such concepts as piezoelectricity (materials that generate electricity when physically compressed or stretched), electricity generated by bacteria and the heat of the environment, “wireless” electricity may well become one of the power sources for future microelectronics.
I hope you are not upset that this method of charging for phones is not suitable? Tell us in our chat in Telegram.
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Wessex Institute, UK
High Performance Structures and Materials Book Series
P de Wilde
Free University of Brussels, Belgium
S Adali
G Hrinda
NASA Langley Research Centre, USA
I Iskhakov
Ariel University Center of Samaria, Israel
T Katayama
Doshisha University, Japan
B-S Kim
Korea Institute of Materials Science, South Korea
S Kravanja
A Maheri
University of Northumbria, UK
D O Northwood
University of Windsor, Canada
P Prochazka
Czech Technical University of Prague, Czech Republic
M Sejnoha
K Srinagesh
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, USA
H Takagi
The University of Tokushima, Japan
I Tsukrov
University of New Hampshire, USA
5th International Conference on High Performance Structures and Materials
The fifth International Conference on High Performance Structures and Materials has been recently held in Tallinn, Estonia, co-organised by the Free University of Brussels, represented by Professor Patrick de Wilde; the University of Tartu, represented by Professor Ulo Mander; and the Wessex Institute of Technology (WIT), represented by it’s Director, Professor Carlos A Brebbia.
The HPSM conference originated from a series of meetings on computer-aided design of composite materials, which were organised by WIT until 2000, when it was felt necessary to broaden the type of materials under consideration and that it was essential to relate them to the advances in structural design, including interaction between structures and materials. Since then, meetings were held in Seville (2002), Ancona (2004), Ostend (2006) and the Algarve (2008).
One important consideration of the conference was to address the increasing emphasis on durability, sustainability and re-use of structural materials, responding to the need to look into the environmental performance of materials and structures.
Emerging methods and techniques continue to appear and offer important applications in engineering, they include improvements in environmental materials, such as special types of concrete or new plastics and composites. The conference also addresses new optimisation techniques and construction processes, amongst other emerging topics. The important application of modern methods, particularly for structural repairs, has reached a stage of maturity that allows designers to increase the useful life of many structures.
The conference was opened by Professor de Wilde who explained the origin of the conference and its objectives. He spoke of the importance of these meetings and the way in which the conference has operated for the last few years, bringing together scientists from many different backgrounds and countries.
Professor de Wilde’s welcome speech was followed by Professor Brebbia's remarks about the work of the Wessex Institute of Technology (WIT) and its aim in acting as a hub for knowledge dissemination. This is possible through the continuous evolution of the Institute’s activities, including its conference series.
Professor Brebbia mentioned the commitment of WIT to Industrial Research, which is based on its unique modelling tools using the boundary element method, for which WIT is renown throughout the world. The field of application of this technique is wide, ranging from aerospace to offshore, two industries with which WIT has collaborated for many years,
Professor Brebbia also explained the growing importance of the interdisciplinary research initiated by WIT, particularly in environmental and ecological fields. WIT participates in many international programmes dealing with the topics, including those of NATO, Scientific Research Councils, the EU as well as several supported by industry.
Another important activity for WIT is the dissemination of knowledge which is achieved through WIT Press, its academic publisher. WIT Press produces books and journals in paper and digital format, the latter becoming more widespread from day to day heralding a new era for information dissemination, for which WIT is ideally positioned.
This emphasis on dissemination of knowledge through books, journals, either in paper or digital format, ensures that the work presented at conferences such as HPSM is easily accessible and permanently available to the international scientific community.
The conference covered a series of topics, such as composite materials and structures, lightweight materials and structures, high-performance concretes, automotive composites, natural fibre composites, timber structures, materials characterisation, optimal design, experimental and numerical analysis, damage and fracture mechanics.
There were a series of invited lectures given by renown colleagues, i.e.;
‘Numerical simulation of press forming of an automotive body structural component using St13 and BH340 steel sheets’
by D O Northwood, University of Windsor, Canada
‘Optimal pre-stress and lay-ups in a thick-walled hollow cylinder for minimum stresses’
by P Prochazka, Czech Technical University, Prague
‘Optimal design of underground gas storage’
by S Kravanja, University of Maribor, Slovenia
‘Estimation of cyclic plastic deformation behaviours by the microindentation method’
by H Sakamoto, Kumamoto University, Japan
‘Effect of surface and heat treatment on tensile properties of jute fiber reinforced composite’
by K Takemura, Kanagawa University, Japan
‘Fracture behaviour of natural fibre reinforced composites’
by H Takagi, Tokushima University, Japan
‘Material characterization and modelling of carbon–carbon textile composites’
by M Sejnoha, Czech University of Technology, Prague
‘High performance finite element analysis of composite aeroelastic structures’
by A Maheri, University of Northumbria, UK
‘Ductility of high performance joint between HSC column and NSC flat slab’
by B S Kim, Korea Institute of Materials Science, South Korea
The delegates had plenty of opportunities for interacting outside the formal conference sessions. This took place during the coffee breaks, complimentary lunches, welcoming drink event, and the conference banquet. This interaction is most important and contributed to the success of the meeting.
The International Scientific Advisory Committee of the conference met over dinner at a typical Estonian restaurant, to discuss how the conference is proceeding and where to hold the next meeting. There was general agreement of the need to arrange for more contributions in the structural field, covering emerging technologies. One of the proposed sessions could be on Adaptable Structures and another on Optimisation. Several names were suggested as session organisers. The meeting will be reconvened in 2012 in a location and at a date to be announced shortly.
The conference dinner took place in an old trader’s house belonging to the Guild of St Maurice, which has similar sites in other Baltic ports. These trader houses were excellent and spacious buildings which are now being used for cultural and social purposes. The delegates were offered a buffet accompanied by good wines in a convivial atmosphere in one of the panelled rooms of the centre. At the end of the meal a series of Estonian dances were performed by a folkloric troupe, followed by an invitation to the delegates to join in. The whole evening was arranged by the local co-chairman, Professor Ulo Mander, who acted as Master of Ceremonies throughout the proceedings.
Publication of Papers
The proceedings of High Performance Structures and Materials V, 608pp (Print ISBN: 978-1-84564-464-2; Online ISSN: 1743-3509) are available from WIT Press priced at £231/US$462/€323. Orders can be placed online at www.witpress.com or by email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., telephone: +44 (0) 238 029 3223 or fax: +44 (0) 238 029 2853.
Papers from the conference will also be hosted online in the WIT eLibrary as Volume 112 of WIT Transactions on the Built Environment (ISSN: 1743-3541). For more details visit the WIT eLibrary at http://library.witpress.com
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HomePoliticsJUST IN: Buhari appoints Prof. Agboola Gambari as new Chief of Staff, See His Profile
JUST IN: Buhari appoints Prof. Agboola Gambari as new Chief of Staff, See His Profile
Professor Agboola Ibrahim Gambari has been appointed as the new chief of staff to President Muhammadu Buhari.
Prof. Gambari, a Nigerian scholar, diplomat and an indigene of Kwara State was appointed to replace the late Abba Kyari on Tuesday, May 12.
Mallam Abba Kyari was the Chief of Staff to President Buhari Before his demise which was announced on April 17 shortly after testing positive to CoronaVirus.
Details to come
MEET THE PROFESSOR IBRAHIM GAMBARI, THE NEW CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE PRESIDENT
Prof Ibrahim Gambari: 5th HOD ABU, Dept of Pols Sc & Int'l Studies (1982-1984)
Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, CFR, OCORT, a scholar-diplomat is the Founder/Chairman of the Board of Directors of Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development, a non-governmental think-tank on research and policy studies on conflict prevention and resolution as well as democratization and development in Africa.
SCDDD seeks to promote the evolution of Africa into a prosperous, politically stable and globally respected continent which is motivated by the culture of good governance.
Prof Ibrahim Gambari has had an illustrious career, spanning academia, government and international diplomacy, culminating with his appointment as the first United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Africa (1999-2005).
In that capacity, he worked closely with heads of government, key policymakers as well as institutions in the continent to develop the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
During this period, he was concurrently the Resident Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission to Angola (2002-2003). He has been a delegate to the Assembly of the OAU/African Union as a national delegate (1984-1985) and as a member of the UN Secretary-General's delegation (2000-2012).
Prof Ibrahim Gambari was the Chairman of the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid (1990-1994) during which he worked closely with African governments to coordinate UN policy to eradicate apartheid, thereby building trust and confidence with governments and policymakers in member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Ambassador Gambari was Under-Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Department of Political Affairs (2005-2007). In that period, he also operated as UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy on Cyprus, Zimbabwe and Myanmar.
On 22 May 2007, the Secretary-General entrusted Prof Ibrahim Gambari with the Good Offices Mandate on Myanmar. He was also appointed in 2007 by the Secretary-General as Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Iraq Compact and Other Issues, positions he held until 2009.
He served his country, Nigeria, as Director-General at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs; Minister of External Affairs (1984-1985) and subsequently Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations (1990-1999).
He also served as a delegate at the 2014 National Conference on the restructuring and promotion of national unity in Nigeria. At international level, Prof Ibrahim Gambari held numerous United Nations positions, including Chairman of the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations and the UNSG's Special Adviser on Africa.
Professor Gambari also served as Joint AU/UN Special Representative in Darfur and Head of UNAMID, which was then the largest international peacekeeping operation in the world and the first hybrid Mission. He had in different capacities, worked with four successive United Nations Secretary-General (Perez de Cuella, Boutros-Ghali, Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon).
He currently co-chairs the Commission on Global Security, Justice and Governance at the Hague Institute for Global Justice and the Stimson Centre at Washington D.C.
In January, 2017, he was appointed a member and is currently Deputy Chairperson of the Panel of Eminent Persons of African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), a Specialized Agency of the African Union for the promotion of good governance at the political, economic and corporate levels.
In the same vein, Prof Ibrahim Gambari was appointed in 2016 by Patricia Scotland, QC, and the Commonwealth Secretary-General as the Special Envoy to Zambia on Elections and reappointed in 2017 as the Special Envoy for Democratic Stability and Elections 2020.
In addition, he is a member of the Senior Working Group (SWG) of the United States Institute for Peace (USIP). Also in May 2017, he was honoured with the Global Leadership Award by the University of South Florida, USA.
Prof Ibrahim Gambari was born November November 24, 1944, in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria. He attended Provincial (now Government Secondary School), Ilorin before proceeding to the Floreat Collegium Kings College, Lagos.
He subsequently attended the London School of Economics where he obtained his B. Sc. (Economics) degree (1968) with a specialization in International Relations. He later obtained his M.A. (1970) and PhD (1974) degrees from Columbia University, New York, the USA in Political Science /International Relations.
Prof Ibrahim Gambari's Academic career
Professor Gambari began his teaching career in 1969 at City University of New York before working at the University of Albany. Later, he taught at Ahmadu Bello University, in Zaria, Kaduna State, the second-largest university in Africa serving as the 5th Hod of the department of political science and International Studies from 1982 to 1984.
From 1986 to 1989, he was Visiting Professor at three universities in Washington, D.C.: Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Georgetown University, and Howard University. He has also been a research fellow at the Brookings Institution also in Washington D.C. and a Resident Scholar at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center, the Rockefeller Foundation-run centre in Italy.
He has received several academic and national honours, He was decorated with the title of Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR) by the Government of Nigeria., and the "Order of the Companion of the Oliver R. Tambo" (OCORT) of South Africa.
He was accorded, honoris causa, the title of Doctor of Humane Letters (D.Hum.Litt.) from the University of Bridgeport. He is a member of the Johns Hopkins University's Society of Scholars.
On March 4, 2013, Ibrahim Gambari was appointed by the Kwara State Governor, Abdul Fatah Ahmad, as the pioneer Chancellor of the Kwara State University (KWASU), Ilorin, Nigeria. He was also appointed and as the Pro-chancellor and Chairman of the Board of Governing Council of Bayero University, Kano (BUK). He is married with children and grandchildren.
Abdulhameed Yakubu Gamboss
Diplomat Historian
Abuja News Politics
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HomeCovid-19Kwara Governor’s Chief Of Staff Dies Of COVID-19 Disease
Kwara Governor’s Chief Of Staff Dies Of COVID-19 Disease
Aminu Adisa Logun, the chief of staff to Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara has died, the state government announced Tuesday evening.
The Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Rafiu Ajakaye, said in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES, “With total submission to the will of the Almighty Allah, we wish to announce the passing of the Chief of Staff to the Governor of Kwara State Aminu Adisa Logun (min).
“Logun, an industrialist, a public intellectual, and an elder statesman, died Tuesday evening of complications from COVID-19. He died only a few hours after the test of his result returned positive.
“The entire government and the people of Kwara State have lost an outstanding public servant who diligently served the state at various times, including as Chief of Staff to the Governor from June 7, 2019 until he returned to his Lord.
“The Governor has declared a seven-day mourning in honour of the late Chief of Staff.
“The Governor commiserates with the family of the late Chief of Staff and the entire Ilorin Emirate for this tragic development.
“We pray the Almighty Allah to grant him Al-Jannah Firdaus and give the family the fortitude to bear the huge loss.
“Details about his Janazah will be made public by the family and the government in due course.”
Mr Logun was a pioneer industrialist in Ilorin and an alumnus of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) Kuru, Jos. He hailed from Ilorin, the state capital.
He was chairman of the 80-member Kwara State Transition Committee appointed by Governor AbdulRazaq before his inauguration last year.
An alumnus of Barewa College, Zaria, Mr Logun attended King’s College, Lagos and earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Loughborough University of Technology and a Master’s of Science (M.Sc.) from Birmingham University, both in the United Kingdom.
He worked at various times in Lever Brothers, Port Sunlight, UK; Cerekem Arhus, Denmark; North Brewery Limited Kano; Ajaokuta Steel Company; and Nigeria Iron Ore Mining Company, Itakpe. He was also a General Manager at the New Nigeria Development Company.
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Fort Myers: Al Fresco Dining at it's Best in Fort Myers
For Frank Lloyd Wright fans, Wisconsin's dedicated trail is the trip of a lifetime
June 6, 2017 // By Lois Alter Mark
Travel Expert June 6, 2017
Frank Lloyd Wright Trail sign — Photo courtesy of TravelWisconsin.com
To honor its native son, Wisconsin recently marked the world’s first Frank Lloyd Wright Trail, a 200-mile self-guided motor route that leads you to nine different sites designed by the world-renowned architect.
From public buildings to private houses – including Wright’s own Taliesin – the trail gives you a real sense of his visionary work and his philosophy of “organic architecture,” a phrase he coined and a style that changed the way we build. He strongly believed in harmonizing design with nature, and that becomes more and more apparent with each stop along the trail.
There’s even a Frank Lloyd Wright Trail app that you can download to give you directions and lots more information as you drive to each location.
As you get a firsthand look at some of the innovative spaces Wright created over his seventy-year career, you’ll understand why the American Institute of Architects named him the “greatest American architect of all time.”
SC Johnson Administration Building | Racine
SC Johnson Administration Building, Racine — Photo courtesy of SC Johnson
The global headquarters of the iconic household cleaning products company, this 1939 building is considered one of the top 25 buildings of the 20th century. “I wanted to build the best office building in the world,” said Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr, grandson of the company’s founder, “and the only way to do that was to get the greatest architect in the world.”
Wright designed everything here, from the 43 miles of glass windows down to the furniture. The impressive Great Workroom is a half-acre of open space known for its dendriform (tree-shaped) columns. Be sure to ride the “birdcage” elevators from the basement to the penthouse for the best views.
SC Johnson Research Tower | Racine
SC Johnson Research Tower, Racine — Photo courtesy of SC Johnson
This 15-floor tower was completed in 1950 as a vertical compliment to the SC Johnson Administration Building. It’s one of the world’s tallest cantilevered buildings, and features windows made of more than 7,000 Pyrex tubes.
Visit The SC Johnson Gallery, which showcases a rotating selection of the architect’s designs and artifacts, and don’t miss the replica of a 1950’s lab where scientists developed some of the company’s earliest innovations.
Wingspread | Racine
Wingspread, Wind Point — Photo courtesy of SC Johnson Foundation at Wingspread
Although it now serves as an educational and conference center for the company, Wright originally designed this 14,000-square-foot estate in 1939 as a residence for Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr. and his family.
Shaped like a four-winged pinwheel, it’s the largest of Wright’s Prairie School houses. Staying true to the architect’s organic roots, natural materials like limestone, brick, stucco and unstained wood blend into the surrounding woodland and prairie, creating a true celebration of the earth and sky.
Burnham American System-Built Homes | Milwaukee
Model B1 - 2714 West Burnham, Milwaukee — Photo courtesy of Wright in Milwaukee
Wright dreamed of building beautiful, affordable homes for every American, and his American System-Built Homes were a short-lived venture between 1911 and 1917.
Six of those homes still stand on West Burnham Street and Layton Boulevard in Milwaukee, an area that was considered “the edge of town” when they were built. Take a tour and appreciate Wright’s comment in Architectural Forum that he “would rather solve the small house problem than build anything else I can think of.”
Monona Terrace | Madison
Monona Terrace, Madison — Photo courtesy of TravelWisconsin.com
Framing the lake for which it was named, Wright’s “dream civic center” wasn’t completed until 1997, nearly 40 years after his death.
He spent 21 years working on the design, which he envisioned linking the shores of Lake Monona with the Wisconsin State Capitol. Today, Monona Terrace serves as a community gathering place and a popular spot for weddings.
10 Good Reasons You Should Pack for Green Bay
First Unitarian Society Meeting House | Madison
First Unitarian Society Meeting House, Madison — Photo courtesy of First Unitarian Society of Madison
Hailed as one of the world’s most innovative examples of church architecture, this project was undertaken by Wright in 1947 at the age of 80.
Wright was a member of this congregation, and his preacher father was one of its founders. The movable seats accommodate a variety of activities, and the building houses a Unitarian Universalist community of more than 2000.
Taliesin and the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center | Spring Green
Taliesin — Photo courtesy of TravelWisconsin.com
Considered one of the most architecturally significant buildings in the country, Taliesin was the personal home and studio of Wright himself. Meaning “shining brow,” Taliesin was named in honor of Wright’s Welsh grandparents and it embodies the architect’s own energy, technique and creative vision.
This 800-acre estate overlooks the Wisconsin River and is the summer home of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. It stands as the longest continually evolving project of Wright’s career. As you walk around and get an inside look at the way Wright lived and worked, you’ll wish he had invited you to stay in that guest bedroom.
Wyoming Valley School Cultural Arts Center | Spring Green
Wyoming Valley School Cultural Arts Center — Photo courtesy of TravelWisconsin.com
Located just a couple of miles from Taliesin, Wright designed this former elementary school in 1957 for the children of Wyoming Valley. It’s the architect’s only public school.
Today, it’s used as a non-profit cultural arts center providing an inspiring space for workshops, performances, lectures and exhibits for all ages.
AD German Warehouse | Richland Center
AD German Warehouse, Richland Center — Photo courtesy of TravelWisconsin.com
Wright designed this commercial warehouse building in his boyhood hometown of Richland Center for a local commodity wholesaler, Albert Dell German. Although it once acted as a storage place for sugar, flour, coffee and tobacco, it now houses a gift shop, theater and exhibit of large murals illustrating Wright’s work.
The warehouse is especially notable because it’s one of the few major public buildings Wright designed around the time that it was actually built. It’s also his best remaining example of sculptural ornamentation, with a frieze of repeated cast concrete motifs encircling the top of the building.
Seth Peterson Cottage | Mirror Lake State Park
Seth Peterson Cottage — Photo courtesy of Kit Hogan
Just off the Trail, less than an hour from Taliesin, the Seth Peterson Cottage was the first – and is still one of the only – Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes in which you can actually stay overnight.
Small (there’s only 880 square feet of living space) and simple, it was one of Wright’s last commissions. He designed the cottage, which is balanced on the edge of a wooded bluff overlooking picturesque Mirror Lake, in 1958. It beautifully embodies his design principles of being open to nature and of making small spaces appear larger. As you make your way across the Frank Lloyd Wright Trail, it’s the perfect place to spend the night.
About Lois Alter Mark
Lois Alter Mark would love to visit all of Frank Lloyd Wright's stunning creations.
Read more about Lois Alter Mark here.
Connect with Lois via: Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Pinterest
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Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
Captivity in Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi, is a strongly emphasized theme. Fideaus the protagonist is constantly constrained and surveilled within the realms of the Egyptian society subsequently being emotionally, and twice literally, captive. The significance of captivity in Woman at Point Zero is not only for plot or dramatic effect. In the writing of Woman At Point Zero Nawal El Saadawi wishes to inform the reader about the captivity felt by some women in suppressive countries. In this way, she means the protagonist Firdaus to not only represent one woman but many. Captivity in Woman at Point Zero is not only that of the literal, lock and key. Throughout the novel Firdaus is subject to varying forms of captivity, emotionally from societal expectations, mentally and physically in both jail and as a literal prisoner of Bayoumi. Further captivity is introduced to the reader through use of an 'eyes' motif to show how, in Firduses societal paradigm she was and felt, constantly surveilled by the Egyptian patriarchal society.
Throughout Firdauses life she is subject also to degrees and different forms of captivity as a child under control of her parents she finds herself 'powerless', furthermore she is captive in an arranged marriage to her husband Sheikh Mahmoud in his, and societies social expectations for her behaviors a married woman. She later describes as herself and other women as having been 'bind them in marriage and chastise them with menial service for life' The verb bind is directly connotative of a physical captivity that one is desperate to be free from, it is also adds to the negative tone, showing that marriage was a hardy, difficult trap, almost impossible to flee. Despite marriage not generally being ...
... middle of paper ...
...t of Firdaus and also allows better understanding of her motives and desperation to be free, having been surveilled and captive all her life. The theme of captivity is significant in making readers question their own lifestyles as Firdaus does, either making us count our blessings or query as to if we are all captive in some smaller way. By repeating the theme of captivity in a variety of ways throughout, El Saadawi furthermore ensures it is brought to the readers full attention, provoking us either into action to ensure less captivity for women like Firdaus or into guilt over our assumedly freer lives. The continually captive and oppressed Firdaus is symbolic of any woman today subject to captivity and injustices from their societies, and in a world where this continually occurs this theme is both universally significant and relevant in the modern societies today.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
In the end she is thought of as a "new kind of female hero" (497). She has gone through many hardships and she "articulates her struggle to assert her womanhood" (497). Even with her lack of a higher education, she shows intelligence throughout her writing. She had her own way of getting her points across, one being that a person could not possibly fully understand the degradation of slavery if he/she did not go through it themselves. This is a point within itself because it further relays the fact that slavery was a very horrible, evil and degrading thing.
Women At Point Zero By Nawal El Saadawi
The novel starts by introducing the main character Firdau, and how her past shaped her to become the woman she is wh... ... middle of paper ... ...the societal rule that was stopping her from finding freedom. Firdau’s story allowed people in Egypt to talk about women’s right and how the her one an act of defiance against the system which will cost her her life. In Women at Point Zero, El Saadawi is making a statement about the need for the attitude toward women in Egypt to change. She is providing other women with a positive message of how it is necessary to the courage of protesting to the society that treats women are trash. It makes reader question the worth of women in the world and how they are perceived by men in general.
Harriet Jacobs' Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl
A perspective that was relatively secretive during Jacobs’ time. Jacobs’ narrative focuses on subjugation due to race but it also portrays many women an strong and often open roles. Women in these roles were minimal and often suffered for their outspoken roles. Harriet Jacobs’ narrative is a powerful statement unveiling the impossibility and undesirability of achieving the ideal put forth by men and maintained by women. Jacobs directs her account of the afflictions a woman is subjected to in the chain of slavery to women of the north to gain sympathy for their sisters that were enslaved in the south.
A Fight For All Women By Harriet Jacobs
Nevertheless, Jacobs’ female slave narrative would eventually be discovered as an important literary achievement for the female slave and feminism. Harriet Jacobs female slave narrative brought to the fore-front many issues relating to gender and sexuality in the patriarchal society of antebellum America. In particular, the author described how the ideals of the “True Woman” were unfeasible depending on race and class and the refusal to submit to the patriarchal male to gain the power of choice. Jacobs’ narrative’s lack of acceptance during its time also shed light on patriarchal views. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl calls out to women for a break from the tyrannical oppression of the ideal “True Woman.” Jacobs’ work is an inspiring feminist narrative describing femininity and sexuality as related to the Feminist/Gender Theory.
Woman at Point Zero, as the title hints, deals with the struggles of a woman and her fight for freedom and independence in a land that shackles her with misogynistic mores and sexism. Power and control is undeniably a major theme throughout the novel, and Firdaus’ struggle to attain it is certainly a captivating one. The Novel deals with the trials and tribulations of a young woman in Egypt, abandoned, betrayed and abused by all the men she encounters in her life, eventually leading to her own death. Firdaus tells us how “every single man I did get to know filled me with but one desire: to life my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.” And she goes on to tell her story. The reader is introduced to Firdaus in the first chapter of the novel through the descriptions of a psychiatrist with a burning curiosity and desire to speak with the infamous Firdaus.
The Novel Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
The novel Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi and the article “With Tasers and placards, the women of Egypt are fighting back against sexism” by Laurie Penny can be connected both internally in regards to the text and outwardly to the time and place surrounding the novel and article. Although Woman at Point Zero provides a fictional journey, one that is at heart and by inspiration very genuine, the ideas incorporated into this novel are just as authentic as those provided by the first hand account given by Laurie Penny. Woman at Point Zero follows the story of one woman, Firdaus, who is forcibly raped on numerous occasions. Firdaus later finds security by means of prostitution, which leads her to be targeted on a more authoritative scale. Ultimately Firdaus finds strength to retaliate against the men who have harmed her, as can be seen when she defends herself, killing her pimp.
The Role Of Women In Persepolis And Wadjda
In Saudi, women are not allowed to exit their homes without the male supervision and generally are looked down. In the traditional societies, sons are preferred over daughter. Hence, the film conflict concerning the gender inequality proves the patriarchal domination. Father of Wadjda comes home on his will and constantly makes his wife feel inferior. Thus, Wadjda’s father decides to leave her mother due to her being unable to bear a son Despite, the mentally traumatic event Wadjda and her mother are able to form a strong female bond and move on with their lives.
Analysis Of Woman At Point Zero
The book Woman at Point Zero, written by Nawal El Saadawi is a tragic one. Based upon a true story, it focuses on the woman named Firdaus and her life story. Taking place in Egypt during the mid ‘70s, Firdaus’ life is filled with dread and despair from beginning to end. Being a woman is the only thing stopping Firdaus from being the dominant, independant person we learn that she is. Yet the harsh reality is that all women in egypt at this time are treated like objects, used only for sex and slave-like tasks.
Repression And Resistance Essay
They are unique in their ability in facing and resisting their environment bravely. Both novels depict the women’s physical and psychological repression and their attempts to resist in their societies. The novels depict the female protagonists’ actions and the ways repression is represented in the Egyptian and the American society where the writers belong to.... ... middle of paper ... ...n for these female characters in their novels are victories. The articulations for repression in the two novels can be seen as innovation. ’Woman at Point Zero’’ and” Winter’s Bone’’ are therefore, intrinsic reflection of life and a claim for change.
Dehumanization Of Women Essay
The dehumanization of women is a struggle that the female population has been subjected to for even longer than the earliest recorded history. Women have been made into scapegoats throughout our history that has fortified this ignorance of why women shouldn’t be treated as equals. The ideas that have been established (and are still constantly being created) have been reinforced by religions, governments and the policies/laws, cultures, and even commonly other women and are continuing an internalized oppression upon women. The conversation of equality for women is often hijacked by erroneous thinking that this is a problem of the past. They also have played a role in the suppression of women’s rights and still play a major role in prevention of actual equality.
More about Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi
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All Press Releases for August 28, 2020
Hannah C. Pakula Presented with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who's Who
Ms. Pakula has been endorsed by Marquis Who's Who as a leader in the field of authorship
NEW YORK, NY, August 28, 2020 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Hannah C. Pakula with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Ms. Pakula celebrates many years' experience in her professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes she has accrued in her field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
A recognized author, Ms. Pakula has published three significant books over the years. Named a notable book by The New York Times, "The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China" is the story of the founding of modern China. It has since been translated into Chinese in two different editions. She also authored two biographies, including "The Last Romantic: A Biography of Queen Marie of Roumania," about the queen of Romania. It was celebrated as the best biography and one of the three best books of the year by English novelist Graham Greene. Ms. Pakula's second biography, "An Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick," takes place from the mid-19th century to the start of the First World War, and is the story of Vicky, eldest child of Queen Victoria of England, who married the Emperor Fredrick. It was notably a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.
In addition to her books, Ms. Pakula has written for several leading magazines, such as Vanity Fair. She has also been a book reviewer for Los Angeles Times, a daily newspaper. To support her writing career, Ms. Pakula is a former chairperson of the freedom to write committee of PEN America. Interested in human rights for much of her life, she is also aligned as a member of Human Rights Watch. Other memberships to her credit include the Council on Foreign Relations and The Century Association.
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, to two loving parents, Ms. Pakula has one sibling. Her sister, Myra Cohn Livingston, an equally gifted writer, authored over 80 books during her lifetime, mostly children's poetry. Twice married, Ms. Pakula was the spouse of Robert L. Boorstin who passed on shortly thereafter, rendering her a young widow at the age of 35. She later married the late filmmaker Alan J. Pakula who made 23 movies during his career.
Ms. Pakula studied at Wellesley College and the Université Paris-Sorbonne. She was later accepted to Southern Methodist University where she received a Bachelor of Arts in 1956. In 1999, Ms. Pakula was honored with the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal for Human Rights. A celebrated Marquis listee, she has been showcased in the 66th through 70th editions of Who's Who in America.
About Marquis Who's Who®
Since 1899, when A. N. Marquis printed the First Edition of Who's Who in America®, Marquis Who's Who® has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from every significant field of endeavor, including politics, business, medicine, law, education, art, religion and entertainment. Today, Who's Who in America® remains an essential biographical source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms around the world. Marquis® now publishes many Who's Who titles, including Who's Who in America®, Who's Who in the World®, Who's Who in American Law®, Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare®, Who's Who in Science and Engineering®, and Who's Who in Asia®. Marquis® publications may be visited at the official Marquis Who's Who® website at www.marquiswhoswho.com.
Marquis Who's Who Ventures LLC
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Joe Staley Reacts to Pro Bowl Honor, Commends Young Players on Roster
Joe Staley received a text from his agent on Tuesday that notified the San Francisco 49ers left tackle that he would be Hawaii-bound to begin the New Year. The news marked Staley's fifth consecutive Pro Bowl and illustrated that the nine-year pro is still at the top of his game.
The left tackle took a humble approach when asked on Wednesday to qualify his season.
"I think I've been doing pretty well," Staley said at his locker. "I had one bad game against the (Chicago) Bears. That's one I want back, but I think I've been doing pretty well this season."
Joe Staley's Pro Bowl 2015 Season in Photos
Take a look at the best photos from Joe Staley's season in which the left tackle made his fifth straight Pro Bowl.
If Staley is able to start in the final two games of the regular season, the 2007 first-round pick will have played in all 16 games during each Pro Bowl season. The 31-year-old left tackle acknowledged that taking care of his body becomes a greater focus with each passing year.
"I've been fortunate to participate in every single offseason, every single training camp," Staley said. "I have to do more in the offseason and away from the practice field to make sure I'm staying on top of it."
Staley said that will take part in the Pro Bowl, but mentioned that the honor is somewhat bittersweet given the 49ers 4-10 record.
"It's been kind of a weird year offensively," said the lineman, referring to the vast number of injuries the team has endured. "We've had young guys step up in roles where at the beginning of the season, that they didn't really picture themselves stepping into."
Staley expects that the expanded roles for young players on the roster will pay dividends in the years to come. Game experience this year could translate into a more productive offseason and greater confidence entering next season.
"I feel optimistic," Staley said. "We have a lot of young guys on this team and a lot of guys that are stepping up. We need more guys to get into those leadership roles. I see the traits and the qualities that are needed out of those young guys.
"It can't be forced on someone. It has to grow naturally for it to be effective."
The Pro-Bowl left tackle went on to name a few of the players who have flashed in his eyes.
"You see Jimmie Ward, the last four or five weeks, really playing amazing," Staley said. "He's a guy that really works hard. You see (Jaquiski) Tartt – he's a young guy – and (Arik) Armstead. And then you see Trent Brown playing really great last week on the o-line.
"And (Andrew) Tiller, all these guys stepping up in their roles where they haven't had a lot of playing experience. When you see success individually, you start becoming more confident and feel like you have a voice more."
All of the names listed by Staley will continue to see ample playing time against the Detroit Lions and St. Louis Rams in Week 16 and 17, respectively. Staley said the lack of playoff hopes in 2015 shouldn't diminish what the rookies as well as the rest of the team can accomplish before the season concludes.
"We have a great opportunity these last two weeks to finish on a high note," Staley said.
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Caldercraft /
Nelson's Navy /
HMS Victory (Caldercraft 1:72)
Part #CC9014
Dimension in Inches
Paint Set for HMS Victory
100 Gun Ship Victory, Anatomy of the Ship
CC9014 Caldercraft HMS Victory
Caldercrafts wooden model kit of the HMS Victory contains double plank on bulkhead construction in lime and walnut, complete with pre-cut gunport strips ~ no more need to tediously mark on and cut out the gunports yourself; 5 different sizes of turned brass cannons; Carronades; 8 sheets of brass etched components; 3 different profiled brass rails; CNC cut walnut and ply components, profiled where necessary; All new scale turned wood belaying pins, support pillars and staircase balusters; All necessary blocks and black / natural hemp for rigging; All 4 ships boats in authentic plank on bulkhead construction; All new scale copper plates.
18 sheets of fully detailed actual size plans and a comprehensive, full colour, step-by-step instruction manual including constructional photos of the prototype. All this enables you to build the most authentic model of H.M.S. Victory as she appeared at Trafalgar.
As well as this, the kit also includes the timber work to produce the model to the current specifications as she stands in Portsmouth, for example timberheads, capping and hammock cranes for the forecastle.
Ships History
After more than two years of extensive research and development, using information and sources previously unavailable, this is the most historically accurate, highly detailed kit of Victory in her Trafalgar condition available. Our model is very different to other manufacturers, and the amendments are the result of our own research verified by Mr. Peter Goodwin, and further research provided by Mr. Goodwin.
Forever associated with Nelson's last battle, H.M.S. Victory is one of the most famous ships of all time, and is now preserved as a major part of the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth. The ship's survival is particularly appropriate since Victory is not only an example of the ultimate sailing warship ~ the three decker First Rate ~ but she was also the most popular and successful 100-Gun ship of the period.
Forty years old by the time of Trafalgar (1805), she had been the flagship of half a dozen Admirals, and was to continue in active service until 1812.
This was not the first ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Victory, there were in fact four predecessors:
1. The first Victory was built in 1559. In 1586, she was rebuilt to 800 tons and carried 34 guns with a crew of 750. At the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, she was the flagship of Sir John Hawkins.
2. Phineas Pett designed the second Victory. She was built at Deptford and launched in 1620. Rebuilt in 1666 to 1029 tons and carried 42 guns and a crew of 500.
3. The Royal James of 1675 was renamed the third Victory in 1691. She was rebuilt in 1695 to 1486 tons and carried 100 guns and a crew of 754.
4. The fourth Victory suffered a tragic fate. Launched in 1737, she was of 1920 tons, carried 100 guns and had a crew of 900. She was lost during a gale while off the Casquets in October 1744. Her whole crew perished with her ~ this tragedy caused the name Victory to be deleted, temporarily, from the Admiralty's list of ship names.
This, the fifth Victory, was one of twelve ships ordered by the Navy Board on June 6th 1759 ~ more than 40 years before the battle of Trafalgar for which she is famed. Designed by Sir Thomas Slade, construction began at Chatham Dockyard on July 23rd 1759, the 'marvelous year' (Annus Mirabilis). This, the year of victories, marked the turning point of the 'seven years war' for Britain. These facts may well have played a significant part in the naming of the vessel and the name Victory being restored to the Admiralty list of ships.
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A Simpler and More Accurate Way to Teach Money to Students
J.P. Koning
– December 10, 2020 Reading Time: 4 minutes
When we first learn about money and banking in high school or university, we are all taught that money has three functions: medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. Maybe it’s time for educators to throw out this triumvirate. It’s not very accurate.
We need a simple and teachable device to take the triumvirate’s place. I propose the money Venn diagram.
Before I explain the money Venn diagram, let’s revisit the textbook triumvirate.
When something is a medium of exchange, what is meant is that it is generally acceptable in trade. You can use it to buy stuff at the grocery store, or purchase stocks on the stock market, or get things online.
The quality of being a medium of exchange is really more of a gradient than a matter of either/or. Banknotes, for instance, are good at brick and mortar shops, but useless online. Your debit card works great at shops, but forget trying to buy shares with it. But both are sufficiently widely accepted to qualify as a medium of exchange.
Because cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin aren’t widely accepted, they don’t make it across the line to qualify as a medium of exchange. Neither do Walmart or Target gift cards. Cigarettes don’t qualify either, but that wasn’t the case in 1950 when Milton Friedman used them to buy gas:
Milton Friedman describes the time he used cigarettes as money. (I get this from his book "Money Mischief".) pic.twitter.com/1NSjY9vZNX
— John Paul Koning (@jp_koning) November 6, 2020
The unit of account function of money refers to the fact that our economic conversations and calculations are couched in terms of a given monetary unit, whether that be the $, ¥, or £. In Canada and the US, prices are expressed in grocery aisles with dollars, our salaries use dollar units, and our debts are denominated in dollars. We don’t express prices in terms of government bonds, or Microsoft shares, or cigarettes or bitcoins. These things don’t function as a unit of account.
Thirdly, when money acts as a store of value we mean that it preserves value over time and space. Whereas the first two functions are quite useful, the store of value isn’t. Every asset functions as a store of value: houses, diamonds, banknotes, deposits, bitcoins, LSD tabs, lentils, cars, spices. And so it is meaningless to cast store of value as a unique function of money. Monetary economists such as Nick Rowe and George Selgin have proposed, and I concur, that we just chuck store of value from the definition of money.
But we are still left with two useful definitions for money, unit of account and medium of exchange. Which gets us to the money circle.
Note that the two circles in the diagram, medium of exchange and unit of account, don’t perfectly overlap. About 99% of the time the things we use as media of exchange are also the things we use as a unit of account. So the contents of our wallets or our bank accounts, dollar banknotes and dollar deposits are functionally equivalent to the $ units displayed in signs in grocery aisles.
But for the remaining 1% of the time, the unit of account and medium of exchange are separated. The idea of a separation is tough to get one’s head around. Luckily we’ve got a nice example. In Chile the prices of many things, particularly real estate, are expressed in terms of the Unidad de Fomento. But no Unidad de Fomento notes or coins circulate in Chile. It is a purely abstract unit of account.
Apartments for sale, priced in Unidad de Fomento (source)
If a Chilean wants to buy an apartment that is priced at 840 Unidad de Fomento, she must use a separate medium of exchange, the Chilean peso, to make the payment. The peso is issued by Chile’s central bank, the Banco Central de Chile, in both paper and account form.
How many pesos must she pay? Every day the Banco Central de Chile publishes the exchange rate between the Unidad de Fomento and the peso. Right now one Unidad de Fomento is equal to 28,969 pesos. If an apartment were priced at 840 Unidad de Fomento, a Chilean would have to hand over 24 million Chilean pesos today.
Why has Chile separated its unit of account from its medium of exchange? I have discussed the issue at length. But the short answer is that it was a trick the government used to help cope with high inflation in the 1960s. Chilean inflation has been well under control for decades now. The practice of using the Unidad de Fomento as a unit-of-account has continued nonetheless.
You can see why it’s rare for these two functions to be separated. It’s awkward to do conversions every time one wants to pay for something. For the sake of ease, we tend to evolve towards systems where the medium of exchange and unit of account are united. But these exceptions are still important enough that we need a Venn diagram.
To sum up, money isn’t best thought of as a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. Let’s just think of it as just a medium of exchange and a unit of account. For the most part these circles overlap, and the two functions are united. But this isn’t always the case.
J.P. Koning is a financial writer and blogger with interests in monetary economics, economic history, finance, and fintech. He has worked as an equity researcher at a Canadian brokerage firm and a financial writer and publisher at a large Canadian bank. More recently, he has written several papers for R3, a distributed ledger company, on the topics of central bank cryptocurrency and cross border payments. He founded the popular blog Moneyness in 2012. He designs economics and financial wallcharts at Financial Graph & Art.
Koning earned his B.A. in Economics from McGill University.
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The Imperial Presidency Embodies Political and Economic Hubris
– November 28, 2018 Reading Time: 10 minutes
Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger coined the term “imperial presidency” in the 1960s. It was meant to indicate that the role of the president of the United States had dramatically grown in the 20th century from being an important but fairly limited position of implementing the laws of the land as specified in the Constitution and congressional legislation to being the national chief executive wielding wide discretionary powers over both domestic and foreign affairs.
Most presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama have relished having and extending such powers. Wilson believed the traditional Constitution, with its division of powers not only between the three branches of the federal government but between Washington, D.C,. and the individual states, was out of date, an anachronism of an earlier time that needed to be superseded by a concentration of authority and control in the central government.
Franklin D. Roosevelt presided over a new and vast growth in federal power with the New Deal agenda during the Great Depression of the 1930s and then during the war years of the 1940s. An alphabet soup of government agencies, bureaus, and departments swarmed over the country, extending the tentacles of Washington’s control over nearly every facet of social and economic life, including in the early years of the New Deal a comprehensive fascist-like central planning over industry and agriculture. Government spending and taxing also had never been so large, coming along with a new era of budget deficits creating a massive (for that time) national debt.
Presidential Powers at Home and Abroad
In the post–World War II era, another dimension to presidential power was added in the form of foreign wars and major military actions without congressional approval through official declarations of war. President Harry Truman initiated America’s participation in the Korean War through declaring it a “police action” approved by the Security Council of the United Nations.
American military intervention in Vietnam came from a trick by President Lyndon Johnson involving a made-up incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, in which the White House claimed that North Vietnamese gunboats had attacked U.S. naval vessels in international waters. At home, the Johnson administration instituted a series of domestic “wars” on poverty, illiteracy, racism, inequality, and on and on, all bringing with them new federal programs, departments, and agencies with increasing power over economic and social affairs under the oversight of the chief executive in the Oval Office, with diminished state-level responsibilities and accountability to the citizens of the states. (See my article “Paternalistic Follies of the 1960s: Vietnam and the Great Society,”)
This trend has continued ever since, from Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada and George H. W. Bush’s military intervention in Panama, to Bill Clinton’s military action in Somalia and bombing of Serbia, to George W. Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to Barack Obama’s involvement in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and the new world of drone warfare in various places in the Middle East, with Obama personally presiding over the selection and ordering of the attacks on human targets.
Whether it is the growth in government spending, taxing, and regulation, or the use of discretionary presidential power both domestically and in other parts of the world, every president usually has covered his extra-constitutional usurpations and actions with soothing words and moralizing rhetoric of such ideals as justice, freedom, and fairness.
Trump Follows in the Same Footsteps, but More Crudely
The rhetoric lasted until Donald Trump assumed the office of the presidency. What drives critics in the Democratic Party and on the “progressive” political left crazy and what embarrasses a good number of conservatives and some members of the Republican Party is that Trump chooses to do many of the same things that previous administrations controlled alternately by both political parties have done, but he does not envelop it with the same candy-coated rationales.
For more than 70 years, American administrations beginning with FDR have played nice with the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia. President after president has usually looked the other way in the face of authoritarian policies and religious intolerance and persecutions that have kept the Saudi family in power in that desert kingdom.
The Saudi government has tortured and executed opponents of the regime; it has denied any basic civil liberties to women; and it has cultivated extremist religious sects within Islam in pursuit of domestic and foreign policies. And now an international scandal has been created with the murder of a high-profile Saudi journalist in that country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
The world has been equally shocked by President Trump’s response: Well, who knows if the crown prince of Saudi Arabia really was involved in ordering the murder; besides, the Saudi government buys a lot of U.S. military hardware, supports our campaign against Iran, and keeps world oil prices low. In the balance of things, bad things happen but good allies are hard to find. Cold-blooded realpolitik is the order of the day; the traditional verbal niceties be damned.
Trump’s Political Demagoguery No Different Than Others’
In the current administration, the mask is torn off. Politics and presidential power are seen in all their presumption and arrogant arbitrariness. On November 25, the Washington Post ran a story on White House budgetary plans in the face of the return of $1 trillion budget deficits with the 2019 federal fiscal year that began on October 1. A few weeks ago, the president told a cabinet meeting that he expected proposals from each department on where to cut their respective budgets by 5 percent to try to get the budget deficit down. (See my article “$1 Trillion Deficits and the Crisis of the Entitlement State.”)
But the Post reported that when staff members suggested cuts in Medicare, Trump’s response was that “Medicare is popular … and voters wanted it.” When Senator Bob Corker told Trump that he should push more for getting the deficit under control, the president dismissed the idea, saying, “The people want their money” in the form of the entitlement programs, according to two people knowledgeable about this conversation during a round of golf.
In almost-stereotypical populist demagoguery, the president warns of the danger of out-of-control government spending that needs to be reined in. But behind the scenes, he is planning his voter strategy for his 2020 reelection: Give the people what they want, and what they want is government-funded medical care and their Social Security payments. “The people want their money,” as he said. Political support comes from bread and circuses, as has been known since the time of the ancient Romans and the policies that brought about the demise of their empire. (See my article “The Ancient Romans, Who Went From Rule of Law to Corrupting Inflation and Price Controls.”)
But what other president in living memory, or beyond, has not primarily followed the same general strategy? As one of FDR’s leading staff members summarized the essence of modern democratic politics: “Spend, spend, spend; elect, elect, elect.” Was this any less crude than Trump’s reported words? Or when Richard Nixon decided to play up a “war on drugs” to weaken the black vote against him leading up to the 1972 election? More-left-of-center presidents and politicians have spoken of social justice, income equality, socially needed programs and expenditures, and the general welfare. But in what way were the message and the motive any different than Donald Trump’s?
Telling Businesses What to Do, Just Like Other Presidents
On November 26, the Wall Street Journal reported that General Motors had announced major employment and automobile manufacturing cutbacks, with nearly 15,000 workers to be let go and three factories being shut down. GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, explained that this was to position the automobile company when looking years ahead from now in terms of the numbers and type of cars they will be focusing on in the future.
What was Trump’s response? In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the president said in reference to a planned closing of a GM plant in Ohio that he had told Ms. Barra, “I love Ohio. You are playing around with the wrong person.” He said to the Journal reporter, “They better damn well open a new plant there very quickly.” Trump said he had said to GM’s CEO, “It’s not going to be closed for long, I hope, Mary, because if it is you have a problem.… I said, ‘then put in a car that is selling well, but get it open fast.’”
Here on display is the fullest of presidential hubris, the presumption that he can tell a prominent private sector corporate executive where to operate the company’s manufacturing facilities — and it better be soon, with a clear implication that the president would be making trouble for that company if it did not listen.
How? Uncle Sam’s taxing and regulatory arms extend far and wide across the land, and just a word — a hint down the chain of command from the Oval Office — and a swarm of bureaucrats can wreck hell on the financial and business affairs of any person or company in the country. (See my article “Presidential Hubris: ‘Let Me Run the Country.’”)
But, again, which president has not played the same arm-twisting game to get their way with private enterprise? Harry Truman seized the steel mills during the Korean War to force a labor deal on management and the unions. John Kennedy went in for jawboning business on prices and wages. And in autumn 2008, near the end of the Bush administration, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke forced many leading American bank executives to accept an inflow of federal money to shore up their institutions’ capital position in exchange for ceding some stock ownership to the government, whether or not some of those bank executives wanted that partial nationalization of their businesses.
When Paulson and Bernanke told a group of those banking executives in October 2008 that the two would not be leaving the Treasury building in Washington, D.C., until the bankers had signed the papers transferring over partial ownership of their institutions to the government, the Treasury secretary and the Fed chairman said that this was a national emergency requiring quick action to save the country from a banking collapse. The demand was couched in patriotism, the national interest, and the good of the country. But it was arm twisting, nonetheless, in that the government was forcing a group of prominent financial leaders to accept the government’s deal, regardless of whether they wanted it or needed it.
How is this any different in its essential quality — government forcing private enterprises to do what it wants under threat of political coercion — than Donald Trump’s warning to the CEO of General Motors? And why the latter threat? Because Ohio helped Trump win the 2016 election, and he is damn well going to see that Ohioans are good and happy in their work so they will vote for him again in 2020.
Trade Wars Equal Imperial Hubris
Finally, there is President Trump’s wielding a phone and a pen to impose up to 25 percent import tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods through discretionary executive authority. That this will significantly raise the cost of living for tens of millions of American consumers, that this will increase the manufacturing expenses of thousands of American businesses importing component parts and a variety of raw materials from China, that it is already costing American farmers parts of their export trade because of retaliatory Chinese import taxes, and that this will disrupt and imbalance many intricate supply chains through which enterprises are interconnected across the globe all falls by the wayside in the face of an arrogant and pretentious president who thinks he knows how to strong-arm other governments to get his way. (See my articles “Tariff Walls and Trade Wars Equal Government Planning” and “Trump’s Economic Warfare Targets Innocent Bystanders.”)
In the interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump was asked if he could count on the support of the American people if he slapped on new and higher import duties on Chinese goods. The president replied, “Depends on what the rate is. I mean I can make it 10 percent, and people could stand that very easily.” So the trick is to bully China into doing what he wants, but not so much that the tariffs lose him votes in November 2020.
Trump a Product of Prior Presidential Power Lusting
Most politicians go about the task of getting elected and then using their office to serve the special interest groups that provided them with the campaign contributions and votes that got them the power they relish and seem to be unable to live without. But they do all in their ability to get people not to look behind the curtain, as in The “Wizard of Oz — “behind” being where the ugly political trade-offs are made to win the plunder and privileges for which much of politics is fought.
Trump lives most of the time in front of the curtain, with the curtain partly open behind him. He “loves” Ohio, and most people understand that it is not because he loves being there or loves all things made or done in Ohio. No, it is just that it is a swing state and he will need both its popular and electoral votes in the next showdown for who lives in the White House for the four years starting in January 2021.
In many ways, in spite of all the anger and animosity that the president stirs up in a large number of people, he is really nothing more than the end product of the big government and imperial presidency that emerged and have solidified over the last more than one hundred years since before the First World War. Trump is the political establishment of power, privilege, plunder, and patronage. He worked his way up in the real estate market by knowing how to wheel and deal through many corridors of political power at the federal and state levels of government. Many Democrats who scorn him and desire to bring him down were his willing partners in taking his campaign contributions and enabling a variety of his real estate deals and hotel activities.
He is the arrogance of political power, unable to understand why he cannot just tell the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board that the latter needs to stop raising interest rates and even lower them so it’s less expensive to fund the government’s budget deficits. Just set the rate of interest at whatever the president wants. That interest rates, like all other prices in the market, are not arbitrary numbers, but should be the interactive result of savers and investors is a simple truth that seems to be beyond Donald Trump’s understanding. (See my article “Interest Rates Need to Tell the Truth.”)
Only a Turn to Liberty Can Bring Change
Impeaching the president or defeating him in 2020, as many Democrats and “progressives” would be most delighted to do, would merely change the name of the person holding that office and wielding its power. Whoever follows Trump might make many of those on “the left” happy if it is someone of their points-of-view. And many a Republican would not mind if a dark horse were to end up running against and defeating Trump in the 2020 primaries, and then successfully keeping the White House in their party’s hands.
But whether it were to be a Democrat or some other Republican sitting in the Oval Office come January 2021 instead of Trump, what they do and how they do it will, invariably, reflect the imperial presidency. What will separate a Democrat in the White House from some other Republican is for what they use that executive authority and for what goals and purposes that vast concentrated bureaucracy of federal power will be employed. The answer to that question is no doubt important and may lead many a thoughtful citizen to vote one way or the other, if they choose to vote.
But the system will go on with a president’s imperial powers and authority to be used to benefit some at the expense of others, to manipulate and command the actions and interactions of tens of millions of people, to redirect and misdirect the production and supplying of various goods and services from the paths that would have been taken if businesspersons were completely free to just decide and follow what they consider to be the patterns of consumer demands as worked out through free market competition unrestrained by government command, control, and manipulation. (See my article “Donald Trump the Creation of America’s Bankrupt Politics.”)
The system will change, the “swamp” can be drained, the crony politics of favors, privileges, and plunder will be more or less eliminated, only by an end to the imperial presidency and all that goes with it in the halls of government power. That requires a restoration and renewal of the original idea and ideals of the American system that reduces the size and scope of government back to what the founding fathers envisaged and attempted to limit in the Constitution.
In other words, what is needed is a much smaller government so that free individuals can be freer to make more of their own decisions in guiding their own lives rather than a big government with an “imperial” president arrogantly attempting to command and control them.
Richard M. Ebeling, an AIER Senior Fellow, is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina.
Ebeling lived on AIER’s campus from 2008 to 2009.
Books by Richard M. Ebeling
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Hip Fractures and Decline of Hormone Replacement Therapy By Dr. Bruce Albrecht on June 26, 2018
Rise in Hip Fractures Corresponds to Decline in Hormone Therapy Use. 2010 Annual Meeting of the North American Menopause Society.
The authors showed that prescriptions for hormone therapy for elderly postmenopausal women declined significantly after the results of the Women’s Health Initiative were reported in May 2002, and it now appears that there has been a correspondingly steep rise in hip fracture rates, said Roksana Karim, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
“The rise in hip fracture rates in elderly postmenopausal women may be partially attributed to the continued decline in hormone therapy use,” she said at the annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society. “Hormone therapy–related benefits on hip fracture do not carry over after cessation.”
Roksana Karim
The authors performed a longitudinal observational study of 80,995 postmenopausal women aged 60 years or older using data from 11 Kaiser Permanente medical centers in southern California. The study was designed to assess the risk of hip fracture for women who stopped taking hormone therapy (HT), compared with those who continued the therapy. It was also designed to evaluate the risk of hip fracture over time after stopping HT, and to measure bone mineral density (BMD) over time after stopping HT.
The 80,955 women had a mean age of 68.8 years and a mean body mass index of 26.9 kg/m2; the study’s mean follow-up was 5.6 years. There were 1,419 hip fractures (2%) and 6,928 deaths (9%).
Data was collected on hip fracture, HT use, and BMD data from June 2002 through December 2008. HT was defined as estrogen alone or estrogen plus progesterone. Patients were considered to be HT users if they had filled at least two prescriptions in a given year, as each prescription provides a 3-month supply of medication. BMD data of the hip and lumbar regions were available for 54,209 women (67%).
Between July 2002 and December 2008, HT use in this population decreased from 85% to 18%. After adjustments for age and race, women who did not use HT in the previous year had a 55% increased risk of hip fracture (hazard ratio, 1.55). Hip fracture risk significantly increased with 2 or more years of HT cessation. Mean BMD was significantly and inversely associated with cumulative years of HT nonuse.
Dr. Albrecht’s comments:
It certainly comes as no surprise that women discontinued hormone therapy following the release of the WHI study information in 2002. Prior to the release of that study, a very high percentage of women were on hormone replacement therapy. It was thought that that the reduction in cardiovascular disease was so great that it was actually almost medical malpractice to not have virtually all postmenopausal women on HRT.
It also is no surprise that women who discontinued their HRT suffered loss of bone density. This study goes one step further however and shows that these women also suffered an increase in hip fracture rates.
The estimated annual cost for osteoporotic fractures in the United States is $18 billion, and hip fractures result in a greater cost and disability than do all other osteoporotic fractures combined.
The take-home message is that before postmenopausal women and especially women at risk of hip fracture make a decision to stop using HRT that they carefully consider the potential hazards of significantly increasing their risk of osteoporotic fractures particularly hip fractures.
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DAVID KAPPY
Reviewed by Robert Reigle
David Kappy and Stuart Dempster, “Cistern Music” (1996)
Giacinto Scelsi, “Quattro Pezzi” (1956)
Daniel Harris, “Iron Lung (1976)
Andrew Will Recording, no number.
Total time 65.38
http://www.andrewwill.com/
David Kappy is the Professor of Horn at the University of Washington, in Seattle. In Gone, he presents three contrasting works spanning four decades: a series of improvised duets, a meticulously notated composition for solo horn, and a work for horn and electronics.
The album opens with “Cistern Music,” a series of five improvisations Kappy did with Stuart Dempster, in an old cistern with a 45” reverberation—the same place where Dempster had recorded Deep Listening (released by New Albion Records in 1989). This is slow-moving, meditative music, the two master musicians reveling in the blurred overlapping produced by the acoustics of the space. The titles of the improvisations provide some idea of both the character of the music and the concepts of improvisation shared by the performers: “Pedals,” “Overtones,” “Duet,” “Siegfried,” “Didjeriduet.” In addition to playing French horn, Kappy vocalizes during part of the lengthy final improvisation, and Dempster makes beautiful timbral explorations on didjeridu (techniques that he also applies to his trombone playing).
For this listener, the highlight of the album is the world premiere recording of Giacinto Scelsi’s 1956 composition, Quattro Pezzi for solo horn. Oddly, although this is an extraordinarily colorful work even for Scelsi, it was one of the last to receive a commercial recording—some 44 years after its composition. Through the use of different types of muting, quarter tones, and vibratos, Scelsi elicits a wider range of subtle timbral variations than those found in most of his other solo wind instrument works. Later on, Scelsi arranged the third French horn piece for soprano voice, including it as the fourth “evocation” in the five-part work “Taiagaru” (1962).
Since this album’s release, I’ve had the opportunity to hear the Scelsi piece performed by the great Denis Simandy, while we toured together with Iancu Dumitrescu’s Hyperion Ensemble. The second recording of the Quattro Pezzi appeared in 2006, by Andrew Joy, on Edition Zeitklang. Kappy’s recording was done in a winery and has less reverb than Joy’s recording, which was made in a concert hall in Cologne and co-produced by the West German Radio and Edition Zeitklang. I prefer the drier acoustic of the winery, which affords both a greater range of, and more direct access to the extremely fine subtleties of timbral variation wherein lie the spiritual underpinnings Scelsi intended.
All three performers bring out slightly different characteristics of the music, and being the first to publish a recording of this demanding work is a feather in Kappy’s cap. Thanks must go to Chris Camarda of Andrew Will Winery (http://www.andrewwill.com/), whose love for Scelsi’s music led to this album as well as an all-Scelsi concert that included Kappy playing the Quattro Pezzi (http://www.seattleweekly.com/2002-04-24/arts/johnny-one-note/).
The full title of the final piece on Gone is “Music for the Buy-Centennial: Iron Lung for David Kappy, ARP 2000, Tape Delay, and Tape.” Composed by Daniel Harris in 1976, this is the world premiere performance. Harris, born in Chicago in 1943, is an interesting composer, bass clarinet player, and developer of underwater sound systems (see danielharrismusic.com). “Iron Lung” is a free-wheeling, fun piece using the technology of its day to layer and oscillate amongst short melodic phrases, electronic sounds, and echo effects.
This is a fine album, and a nice addition to the scant French horn discography. Kappy is an excellent player, bringing out the diverse aesthetics of meditation, spiritual intensity, and avant-garde critique. Interested readers, who may have to do some digging to acquire a copy of this album (which was limited to a pressing of 1,000 CDs), will be well-rewarded.
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C++ Language
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C is a basic as well as flexible programming language. It was introduced at Bell Labs by Dennis Ritchie during 1972-73. It was basically developed to run on Unix systems. Its demand increased during the year 1980 and now every programmer first learns this language when it enters the computer science stream. It was designed...
Learn Object-oriented Concepts in C++ with Real-world Examples
C++ is an object-oriented language which is developed by Bjarne Stroustrup. All the concepts of object-oriented approach are very interesting. But sometimes we get the problem in understanding the concept and many confusion occurs when we try to understand it. Let’s see all of the object-oriented concepts introduced in C++ with real-world examples which provide the...
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Loops are formed to “Repeat ” one or more continuous desired, number of times. C offers following types of loops:1. for loop2. do while loop3. while loop for loop: Syntax: for(initialization of variables(s); condition; incrementation/decermentation of variable(s)) { statements(s); } when control enters for the first argument gets invoked for the first time only. Generally...
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Syed Zainul Abedeen Vs. The Rajasthan Board of Muslim Wakf
[Civil Appeal No. 7130 of 2010]
Rastogi, J.
The instant appeal is directed against the concurrent finding of all the three Courts below on the issue that the suit filed by the appellant/plaintiff under Section 6 of the Wakf Act, 1954(hereinafter being referred to as the "Act, 1954") was barred by limitation and not maintainable.
2. The appellant/plaintiff filed a suit under Section 6 of the Act, 1954 seeking the following declarations:
"(i) A declaration may be issued to the effect that the property Mandarja Madnumber 14 as mentioned in the suit is not Wakf Allah and the same is Wakf Alal Aulad.
(ii)Hukum Imtanai consequential be issued against the defendant with the direction that the defendant shall not treat the property Mundarja Madnumber as Wakf Allah and the defendant will register the aforesaid property except Mosque and Mazar as Wakf Alal Aulad and if it has been registered wrongly the same be corrected.
(iii)The defendant be directed to the cost of the suit.
(iv)Such further or further(s) orders as may be in the interest of justice."
3. It is not disputed that the subject property in question is a registered wakf under the Act, 1954.
4. The Act, 1954 was enacted for better administration and supervision of wakf and Chapter II provides the procedure to be followed for survey of wakfs. Subsection(4) of Section 4 of the Act, 1954 postulates that the Survey Commissioner while making any inquiry, have the same powers as are vested in the civil Court under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 and Survey Commissioner has to submit his report to the State Government under subsection (3) of Section 4 of the Act. In the instant case, inquiry was conducted by the Survey Commissioner under subsection (4) of Section 4 of the Act, 1954 regarding Dargah Moulana Ziauddin Sahib with attached lands, properties, shops, buildings and other premises and after holding inquiry in reference to the subject property in question and taking note of the rival claims and the evidence of the respective parties which came on record, in its inquiry dated 2nd January, 1965 (Annexure - R1) held as under:"
On a careful consideration of the entire evidence on record specifically the statement of Shri Faqruddin Shah I am satisfied that Dargah Moulana Ziauddin Sahib with attached lands, properties, shops, buildings and other premises is a wakf - AlAllah property and accordingly Order that the above properties be entered as wakf AlAllah in survey record."
5. To be noticed at this stage, the survey conducted by the Commissioner Wakfs under the Act, 1954 holding the subject property as a Wakf-AlAllah in its report dated 2nd January, 1965 was not the subject matter of challenge in the suit filed at the instance of the appellant/plaintiff.
6. On the basis of the survey report, the subject property in question was included in the list of wakfs and was published in the Official Gazette as provided under subsection (2) of Section 5 of the Act, 1954 dated 2nd December, 1965.
7. The appellant/plaintiff, being aggrieved by the declaration of the subject property as published in the Official Gazette in terms of subsection (2) of Section 5 of the Act, 1954 dated 2nd December, 1965 filed Suit no. 23 of 1967 for declaration before the Munsif, West Jaipur City on 17th January, 1967.
8. After the notice came to be served, the respondent/defendant raised a preliminary objection that the suit filed by the appellant/plaintiff is beyond the period of limitation of one year as provided under 1st proviso to Section 6 of the Act, 1954 and accordingly was not maintainable.
9. The defence of the appellant throughout and also before this Court is that the subject property in question has been erroneously declared as WakfAlAllah. But according to the evidence on record, the subject property in question is a "Wakf- AlalAulad" and according to him, the restriction of period of one year under proviso to Section 6 of Act, 1954 may not apply in the case of a declaration being claimed by the appellant in the suit preferred under the Act, 1954 and the period of limitation has to be determined in terms of Article 113 of the Limitation Act to be preferred within a period of three years.
10. In alternative, further submission made is that there is a restriction that suit shall be instituted against the Wakf Board after expiry of two months' prior notice as envisaged under Section 56 of the Act, 1954 and in the instant case, notice was served on 4th November, 1966 and taking note of two months of the statutory period of notice, the suit preferred by the appellant on 17th January, 1967 would be within a period of limitation of one year and this, according to him, is an apparent error being committed by all the Courts below and High Court has also failed to examine the submission made in the right earnest. Accordingly, it has been prayed that the judgments of the Courts below be quashed and set aside and the suit preferred by the appellant be treated to be within a period of limitation and the civil Court be directed to examine the grievance raised by the appellant on merits.
11. Per contra, learned counsel for the respondent, on the other hand, while supporting the finding of all the three Courts submits that the suit was filed by the appellant under Section 6 of the Act, 1954 after the expiry of the statutory period of limitation and Article 113 of the Limitation Act has no application in the instant case. All the three Courts have recorded a finding of fact that the suit was not filed within the statutory period of one year as envisaged under proviso to Section 6 of the Act, 1954, at least at this stage, the appellant cannot be permitted to raise a plea which was never raised at any stage and this being a concurrent finding of fact unless being held to be perverse or not sustainable in law ordinarily is not open to be interfered by this Court.
12. Learned counsel further submits that Section 56 of the Act, 1954 has no application, and after the properties are registered as wakf properties and publication of the list of wakfs in the official gazette, in terms of subsection (2) of Section 5 of Act, 1954, an inbuilt mechanism has been provided under Section 6 of the Act, 1954 to institute a suit in a civil Court of competent jurisdiction within a statutory period of one year from the date of publication of list of wakfs in the Official Gazette under subsection (2) of Section 5 of the Act, 1954 and no other remedy is permissible under the law.
13. We have heard learned counsel for the parties and with their assistance perused the material available on record.
14. It is not disputed that after affording opportunity of hearing to the respective parties including the appellant/plaintiff, a finding has been recorded by the Survey Commissioner of Wakfs in its report dated 2nd January, 1965 holding the subject property with attached lands, shops, buildings and other premises as "WakfAlAllah" and according to the report, the subject property was included in the list of wakfs and published in the Official Gazette in terms of subsection (2) of Section 5 of the Act, 1954 dated 2nd December, 1965 and the suit for declaration was instituted before the Court of competent jurisdiction under Section 6 of Act, 1954 on 17th January, 1967.
15. Indisputedly, from the date of publication of the subject property in the Gazette under subsection (2) of Section 5 of the Act, 1954, the suit was preferred beyond a statutory period of limitation of one year and this statement of fact has not been disputed by the appellant also in his pleadings.
16. The extract of the relevant provisions of the Act, 1954 is reproduced hereunder:"
4. Preliminary survey of wakfs.
(3) The [Survey Commissioner] shall, after making such inquiry as he may consider necessary, submit his report [in respect of wakfs existing at the date of the commencement of this Act in the State or any part thereof,] to the State Government containing the following particulars, namely: - (a) the number of wakfs [in the State, or as the case may be, any part thereof], showing the Shia wakfs and Sunni wakfs separately;
(b) the nature and objects of each wakf;
(c) the gross income of the property comprised in each wakf;
(d) the amount of land revenue, cesses, rates and taxes payable in respect of such property; (e) the expenses incurred in the realisation of the income and the pay or other remuneration of the mutawalli of each wakf; and
(f) such other particulars relating to each wakf as may be prescribed.
(4) The [Survey Commissioner] shall, while making any inquiry, have the same powers as are vested in a civil court under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (5 of 1908) in respect of the following matters, namely: -
(a) summoning and examining any witness;
(b) requiring the discovery and production of any document;
(c) requisitioning any public record from any court or office;
(d) issuing commissions for the examination of any witness or accounts;
(e) making any local inspection or local investigation;
(f) any other matter which may be prescribed.
5. Publications of list of wakfs-
(1) On receipt of a report under subsection (3) of Section 4, the State Government shall forward a copy of the same to the Board.
(2) The Board shall examine the report forwarded to it under subsection (1) and publish, in the Official Gazette, a list of wakfs [in the State, or as the case may be, the part of the State, whether in existence at the commencement of this Act or coming into existence thereafter,] to which the report relates, and] containing such particulars as may be prescribed.
6. Disputes regarding wakfs-
(1) If any question arises [whether a particular property specified as wakf property in a list of wakfs published under subsection (2) of Section 5 is wakf property or not or whether a wakf specified in such list is a Shia wakf or Sunni wakf], the Board or the mutawalli of the wakf or any person interested therein may institute a suit in a civil court of competent jurisdiction for the decision of the question and the decision of the civil court in respect of such matter shall be final: Provided that no such suit shall be entertained by the civil court after the expiry of one year from the date of the publication of the list of wakfs under subsection (2) of Section 5: [Provided further that in the case of the list of wakfs relating to any part of the State and published or purporting to have been published before the commencement of the Wakf (Amendment) Act, 1969, such suit may be entertained by the civil court within the period of one year from such commencement.]
(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in subsection (1), no proceeding under this Act in respect of any wakf shall be stayed by reason only of the pendency of any such suit or of any appeal or other proceeding arising out of such suit.
(3) The [Survey Commissioner] shall not be made a party to any suit under subsection (1) and no suit, prosecution or other legal proceeding shall lie against him in respect of anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done in pursuance of this Act or of any rules made thereunder.
(4) The list of wakfs published under subsection (2) of Section 5 shall, unless it is modified in pursuance of a decision of the civil court under subsection (1), be final and conclusive. [(5) On and from the commencement of the Wakf (Amendment) Act, 1984 in a State, no suit or other legal proceeding shall be instituted or commenced in a civil court in that State in relation to any question referred to in subsection (1).] CHAPTER VII Judicial Proceedings
56. Notice of suits by parties against the Board-No suit shall be instituted against the Board in respect of any act purporting to be done by it in pursuance of this Act or of any rules made thereunder, until the expiration of two months next after notice in writing has been delivered to, or left at, the office of the Board, stating the cause of action, the name, description and place of residence of the plaintiff and the relief which he claims; and the plaint shall contain a statement that such notice has been so delivered or left."
17. The conjoint reading of the provisions of which a reference has been made clearly envisage that the survey is to be made of wakfs by the State Government through its authorised Officer, i.e., Survey Commissioner under subsection (4) of Section 4 of the Act who could make an inquiry with the same powers as are vested in a civil Court under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, and may submit its report under subsection (3) of Section 4 of Act, 1954 to the State Government.
On receipt of the report under subsection (3) of Section 4, the State Government will forward a copy of the same to the Board who may examine the report and publish it in the Official Gazette in the list of wakfs under subsection (2) of Section 5 of the Act, 1954 and any disputes regarding wakfs, to be more specific, regarding the properties which are specified as wakf properties in the list of wakfs published in the Official Gazette under subsection (2) of Section 5 by any person aggrieved may be challenged by way of a suit in a Court of competent jurisdiction under Section 6 of the Act and the Parliament, in its wisdom, consider it appropriate to attach finality to the list of wakfs published in the Gazette added a proviso to Section 6 which has been couched in the negative words that no suit shall be entertained after the expiry of one year from the date of publication of the list of wakfs under subsection (2) of Section 5 of Act, 1954.
18. In the instant case, list of wakfs property was published in the Gazette on 2nd December, 1965 and on its publication, a presumption has to be drawn that it is known to the general public and the suit for declaration was filed by the appellant under Section 6 of the Act, 1954 which is evident from para 19 of the amended plaint on 17th January, 1967:" That the suit is fit under the provision of Section 6 of Wakf Act and within the period of limitation under the provisions of 113 Limitation Act."
19. Indubitably, the suit was preferred beyond the period of limitation and a concurrent finding of fact has been recorded by all the three Courts and we find no manifest error in the finding of fact recorded by the Courts below which needs our interference.
20. So far as the submission made by the appellant regarding the subject property in question that it was WakfAlalAulad and not WakfAlAllah, and for seeking such a declaration, period of one year of limitation may not apply, is without substance for the reason that once the property after the survey has been registered in the list of wakfs as WakfAlAllah on the basis of the finding recorded by the Survey Commissioner in its report dated 2nd January, 1965, the dispute regarding the nature of wakfs registered is open to be examined only within the four corners of Section 6 of Act, 1954 and the plea of the appellant that Section 6 has been erroneously referred to and the limitation has to be guided by Section 113 of the Limitation Act, in our considered view, is without substance and deserves rejection.
21. The further submission made by learned counsel for the appellant taking assistance of Section 56 of the Act, 1954, in our considered view, is of no substance for the reason that Chapter II deals with the survey of wakf and its resolution after the list of wakfs has been published in the Official Gazette under subsection (2) of Section 5 of the Act 1954 in accordance with Section 6 of the Act, 1954 to be instituted within the period of limitation prescribed therein, to be examined by the civil Court. At the same time, so far as Section 56 of the Act, 1954 is concerned, it is dealing with the judicial proceedings under Chapter VII and if any person is aggrieved by any action/inaction of the Board, other than the one which has been specified under Chapter II, it has to serve a legal notice and on expiry of two months, suit could be instituted against the Board and it is not open for the appellant to invoke Section 56 of the Act, 1954 in support of his defence which, in the instant case, has no application.
22. We find no error in the orders passed by the Courts below which calls for our interference.
23. Consequently, the appeal is without substance and accordingly dismissed.
24. Pending application(s), if any, stand disposed of.
...............................J. (N.V. RAMANA)
...............................J. (AJAY RASTOGI)
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Maura Quinn, CEO, Institute of Directors
Maura Quinn CDir is Chief Executive of the Institute of Directors in Ireland and a Chartered Director. Maura has held this role since April 2008. As Chief Executive, Maura is responsible for leading the strategic development of the IoD through growing the membership base, expanding the range of programmes and services and building the profile of the organisation. In 2019, Maura was appointed as a board member to Rugby Players Ireland. She was a a non-executive director of the Coombe Women & Infants University Hospital from 2014-2020.
In September 2008, Maura spearheaded the introduction of the IoD Chartered Director Programme, which is the most sought after and prestigious director qualification in Ireland. She is a leading voice on the importance of director training and board diversity and a keen advocate of the need to improve corporate governance standards and the quality of boards in Ireland.
Prior to joining the IoD, Maura was Executive Director of UNICEF Ireland for eleven years, where she was credited with the resurgence, growth and development of the organisation in Ireland. Having operated at a senior level with UNICEF HQ in New York and Geneva, Maura was also elected Vice-Chair of UNICEF’s Standing Group of National Committees, which generate one third of UNICEF’s income worldwide.
Having studied Law and Marketing, her career has included a range of senior appointments in both the private and not-for-profit sectors.
Q: How have you and your organisation adapted and embraced the new normal?
A: We quickly adapted and were absolutely determined from the outset to remain relevant for our members. Fast adaption to going online and providing a range of quality events and resources for members were key. We also assisted our Chartered Director Programme participants who had completed some modules to sit exams if they wanted to do so. Equally important was recognising the huge human impact of the crisis on everyone and ensuring we were empathetic and supportive. It was not business as usual, it couldn’t be. The IoD team were fantastic at adapting to change and to constantly thinking up new and better ways of communicating with our members. We have learnt from this. The new normal will be different, but I’m a great believer of and advocate for change!
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