pred_label
stringclasses 2
values | pred_label_prob
float64 0.5
1
| wiki_prob
float64 0.25
1
| text
stringlengths 39
1.01M
| source
stringlengths 37
43
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__cc
| 0.69558
| 0.30442
|
1L Torts
First-Year Torts at UMass Law School
The Savory Tort
UMass Law School
It is a common misconception that Americans are sue-happy individuals
By Kristin Moller
It is a common misconception that Americans are sue-happy individuals. As Engel writes, “we are not who we thought we were. America isn’t a nation of trigger-happy litigators after all. We are a nation of lumpers” (Engel 37). Americans are generally seen as suing for any inconvenience, but as Engel explains, that is not the case. In fact, he suggests that America is a nation of “lumpers.” “Lumpers” are defined in the book as “to put up with; resign oneself to; accept or endure” (Engel 20). This idea of accepting or enduring the pain instead of seeking monetary compensation is a different concept that what Americans are commonly known for. Engel states that “approximately nine out of ten injured Americans chose to lump rather than to claim” (Engel 22). This statistic does not support the idea that Americans are just looking to sue.
Engel also suggests through his writings that injured people do not make rational decisions, which is a reason they chose to lump. The idea that an injured individual lies in bed and rationally analyses his or her best options is not realistic. Engel states that “this idealized image of the injured victim as intrepid decision maker was utterly false and highly misleading” (Engel 38). He goes on to say that “when people suffer serious injuries, or even less serious injuries that cause pain and disruption, they don’t behave at all like travelers journeying along a branching pathway. Few…engage in anything like a series of deliberate calculations and considered choices” (Engel 39). This idea was very interesting because it views people as individuals instead of the original, though that they would all make calculated decisions in a time where their lives could very well be in array and distress.
Engel goes on to quote Lous Heshusius, who speaks upon the aftermath of injury and how it can exile the victim. He states that “when intense pain takes over, nothing else exists. There is only a spot, a sharped point of nothingness. And yet it is the only spot where one can still be. Where there is still life. Life without thoughts. Without emotions.” (Engel 40). This was a powerful quote, because when generally thinking of victims of injury we envision them just wanting monetary compensation. We don’t generally think of how these individuals may live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in excruciating pain. This type of pain can change their lives forever, daily tasks become something they no longer do. Simple tasks can no longer be accomplished. They no longer are living the lives they once knew.
Engel states that “perhaps the most immediate sensations of the injured person is the shocked realization of existential change” (Engel 41). Pain changes the way individuals live and conduct their daily activities. As Engel goes on to write that “people in pain form a new sense of their bodies and their very identities” (Engel 41). The way people feel from and injury can change the way they see themselves. People can then feel their bodies are strangers to them: “the painful boy emerges as ‘thing-like’; it ‘betrays’ us and we may feel alienated and estranged from it as a consequence” (Engel 41). These types of injuries affect both the body and the mind and can have life changing consequences. People who suffer injuries this severe do not just have a simple broken leg but are suffering from injuries so severe they cannot function in the same way that they did before they were injured. Engel also notes that, “for some people, years may pass after a severely disabling injury before it becomes possible to regain a stable and positive personality” (Engel 41). These injuries are not fixed with simple medical treatment but instead can ruin these people’s lives. Social isolation is also a large issue when these types of injuries occur. “One of the most common consequences of serious injury is the loss of friends and acquaintances” (Engel 43). This can leave victims with serious mental injury as their support systems are no longer present leaving them feeling alone and helpless.
One of the issues individuals failing to state a claim come across, as the book explains, is being able to verbally voice what they are experiencing. “In order to voice a claim, it’s essential to communicate one’s suffering to others” (Engel 45). It becomes very hard for the victims to be able to do this. A victim of extreme pain writes, “whatever pain achieves, it achieves through in part through its unsharability, and it ensures this unsharability through its resistance to language” (Engel 45). The pain for these people is so server it cannot be explained to others. People also self-blame when injured even when it was not their fault (Engel 47). This could be another reason that individuals are not taking their claims to court.
The new information I learned after reading this book influenced the way I viewed civil dispute resolution system in the United States. I though more Americans were willing to bring all of their claims to court seeking a large amount in damages, but this is not the case. I also never thought about the individual victim and their mental state after suffering an injury. It was eye opening to learn how many of the injury victims experience so much pain they cannot describe the extent of it. I also found it heartbreaking that victims who suffer serious injury lose friends and even blame themselves for what happened to them. My previous conception was that there were people who suffered minor injuries and wanted to sue others for a large sum of money. My view was very different from reality, which is people whose lives have changed for the worse and don’t even seek damages because they are consumed with other areas of their lives falling apart.
If I could reform the torts system in the United States, I would make it more user friendly and accessible for average Americans. I would try to bring more support for people who have suffered serious injuries to help them through the process and seek justice. One of the biggest issues that I saw for people who have been though a serious injury was that their lives were changed so greatly that the last thing they should worry about is suing the party that caused this injury. These people have so much more to worry about like taking care of themselves, their families, and their own well-being that they don’t have much spare time. I think it would be beneficial to give support to people who have suffered serious injuries to help them through the litigation process without large cost in order to help them seek justice.
This blog features the work of first-year law students in Torts II. This year's essays reflect on the book by University at Buffalo Law Professor David Engel, The Myth of the Litigious Society (U. Chi. Press 2016) (Amazon).
Lumping and the Default Human Reaction
The Truth of the Fearful American Society
Asking the Logical Folk to Think Illogically
Do We Have To Litigate?: Claiming vs. Lumping
Book uncovers the mistaken world view that America...
Conceptualizing injury: When and who gets to hurt?
Step One: Admitting We Have a Victim Problem
The Social Totem Pole vs. the Magic Wand
Have we muzzled the dog?
Victims of Everything
Reflections on Engel
Engel’s next voyage should head toward #MeToo
A Litigation-Happy Country?
A Journey of a Thousand Steps
Legal stoicism is having a moment
'Why doesn't that dog bite?'
Why does the dog not bark in the night?
'Nothing is real but pain now'
Lumped Up
Where are the lumps?
Against Popular Belief
Lumping or claiming, you choose
It is a common misconception that Americans are su...
Engel's Mind-Body Connection Argument
Americans don't sue as much as people think they do
Does society control how we react to being injured?
Making Litigious Decisions: We Are Not Alone
David Engel (2)
legal education (2)
tort reform (2)
Simple theme. Theme images by dino4. Powered by Blogger.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line0
|
__label__cc
| 0.699056
| 0.300944
|
Products of Iran
Iran is a country with diverse geographical and climatic conditions and this has made it very rich in natural resources. It has rich reserves of oil, minerals and agriculture and has long been the exporter of these items around the world.
Most of the export products are related to mineral products and mineral industries such as cement, petrochemical products, petroleum products, raw materials and agricultural products. Below are the ten main groups of Iranian export products.
Mineral fuels including oil
Plastics, plastic articles
Organic chemicals:
Iron, steel
Fruits, nuts
Ores, slag, ash
Fertilizers:
Salt, sulphur, stone, cement:
Iran is the world’s second holder of gas reserves and the fourth largest holder of oil reserves in the world, which almost owns the first rank in the world in the case of aggregation of oil and gas reserves. The largest share of the export value of Iranian goods is in the field of mineral fuels, mineral oils and their distillation products, bitumen and mineral waxes. Also, plastic materials and objects made from these materials, organic chemical products, cast iron, steel and iron are in the next ranks. In the next category there are plastic materials and objects made of these materials, organic chemical products, cast iron, steel and metal ore are in the next ranks.
After passing through this group of goods, the export of products made of natural leather, edible fruits, citrus peels, vegetables and plants and fertilizers were ranked next in Iran’s exports. Iran, with a share of more than 95 % of the world’s saffron production, exports its products to 45 countries and has the best quality saffron in the world.
Iran has long been one of the largest producers and exporters of dates. The values of the indicators in most years show the relative advantage of Iranian dates. Iranian pistachio is one of the most popular types of pistachios in the world. Also, agricultural products such as medicinal plants, raisins, barberry, cumin and dozens of other various products are cultivated and exported in Iran with the best quality.
Iran is one of the major producers of caviar
the field of handicrafts, Iran, by owning the very rich and diverse scattered cultures that exist in cities and villages and among nomads, as well as the different climatic and environmental conditions, we face the breadth of handicrafts. These industries are usually produced in rural and nomadic areas and in the residence of artisans. It is noteworthy that more than seventy percent of Iranian handicraft producers are women. One of the most important handicrafts in Iran is Iranian handmade carpets, which are ranked as one in the world in terms of quality and are often woven by Iranian women. Other handicrafts include metalwork, pottery, woodwork, ornaments, glasswork, stone works, leatherwork, mats, kilims, and more
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line5
|
__label__cc
| 0.565478
| 0.434522
|
HOME : Coin Jewelry : Jewish Coin Rings : Bronze Coin of the Jewish War Against Rome
Bronze Coin of the Jewish War Against Rome - FJ.2567
Origin: Israel (Jerusalem)
Circa: 66 AD to 70 AD
Collection: Coin Jewelry
Medium: Bronze and Gold
The dissatisfaction of the people during the period of Roman Procuratorial rule in Judea led from time to time to outbreaks and blood shed, and to their suppression by the Roman legions. In 66 A.D., serious rioting broke out at Caesarea, which soon spread. The Jews quickly gained the upper hand and the roman occupation forces were driven out of much of the country, which encouraged the population to openly oppose the roman army. For the next several years, a bitter war was waged in Judea between the Jewish inhabitants and the Roman legions, with the latter slowly regaining the positions they had lost at the beginning of the revolt. Nero, the emperor at the time the war began, sent the general Vespasian to command the roman forces. He reconquered the northern part of the country and then laid siege to Jerusalem. On the ninth of Av, 70 A.D., the second temple was destroyed. By this time, Vespasian had already been proclaimed emperor in Rome, and his son, Titus, had taken over as commander. Many thousands were killed in the fighting and, when the temple fell, aspirations for Jewish independence faded for generations. The coins issued during this dramatic period in history carry "revolutionary" slogans as well as depictions of symbols that are characteristically Jewish. This distinctive coin features the image of a vine leaf, evoking the peaceful abundance that the leaders of the revolt so fervently longed for. The reverse side of the coin portrays a holy chalice. This expressive coin stands as a timeless and significant symbol of age- old ideals and ongoing faith. This distinctive coin features the image of a vine leaf, evoking the peaceful abundance that the leaders of the revolt so fervently longed for. The reverse side of the coin portrays a holy chalice. This expressive coin stands as a timeless and significant symbol of age- old ideals and ongoing faith. - (FJ.2567)
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line7
|
__label__wiki
| 0.853074
| 0.853074
|
Supreme Court rules against Surry Hills developers to back out of deals
The Supreme Court gave a landmark decision in favour of off-the-plan buyers which challenges the current property purchases protection legislation.
The developer of Surry Hills building took to court a group of off-the-pay buyers, arguing that he is entailed to rescind buyers’ contracts, after not finishing the project on time. On the other hand, the buyers claim that the developer is just trying to cancel the contract in order to resell at a higher price.
On Wednesday, Justice Rowan Darke rules against the developer stating that it is not justly or equitable to cancel the contracts. He also made the developer pay the difference of cost and trial fees.
Tom Christensen, one of the buyers who put the deposit for a new apartment four and a half years ago said: “Hopefully this will create a legal precedent that will make it so much easier in future for off-the-plan buyers, so they won’t have to go through all the pain and agony that we have.”
The main developer’s office said that Joel Redelman is “traveling and cannot be disturbed”, so there is no declaration from his part.
Finance, Services and Property Minister Victor Dominellowho introduced important changes to the legislation, in order to protect buyers from developer’s abuses, as clawback taxes, is happy with the decision saying that justice was served. “This verdict has shown that justice has been served, and home-buyers can now make their decisions knowing they aren’t defenceless against developers who try to abuse their power.”
He also comments on the precedent this court decision creates: “It gives me enormous comfort to know that they now have a lot more protection,” he said.
It was taken to the court attention that in late July and early August a 16-unit building on Mary Street was being bought from its original developer, who ran out of money, by Mr Redelman, of Parker Logan and OZD Pty Ltd.
The “hopefully scary” letters were sent under his name. But in 2015 the legislation changed, so the developer has to apply to the Supreme Court for permission of rescinding buyers contracts.
Mr Redelman, focusing on profitability, persuaded some of the buyers to rescind their contract, or to pay up more for the same apartment. But 12 of them could not be budged and took him to court.
Mr Redelman sent letter to them stating that the apartments might be smaller or that the company might not finish the project.
After the Court’s ruling, Mr Redelman has to give up his newly completed apartment to the initial buyer in 7 days.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line8
|
__label__wiki
| 0.659001
| 0.659001
|
Cliff Young, The Elderly Ultramarathon Runner From Australia Who Conquered Age
Motivational Personal Success Personalities Sports Personalities May 26, 2015 Oendrila De
All our lives, we work hard, so that our golden years are expended in peace and comfort. It is the time when we are supposed to rest and relax, and enjoy the house and savings and health benefits. We are conditioned to believe that we are too old and feeble to behave otherwise, and even have age limits for our activities – at 60, we retire from our day jobs, and the retirement strikes even earlier in case of other physically demanding activities, like sports.
But, one old man resolved to break all age-related stereotypes and the restrictions thus imposed. He did something that made him a remarkable name in the world of sports. This man’s name is Albert Ernest Clifford “Cliff” Young, and he was an ultra-marathon runner who got awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his extraordinary performance at the Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon.
The Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, held between 1983 and 1991, was an endurance race of 875 km, and was considered the toughest in the world. It used to be a five-day race and was hence one of the most demanding ultra-marathons, with only the world-class athletes daring to attempt running in it. They underwent rigorous training to participate in the event. Most athletes who partook in this ultramarathon were under 30 years of age, and were sponsored by big brand names like Nike.
The almost unknown Cliff Young first participated in the Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon in its inaugural year, i.e. 1983. Cliff was a potato farmer from Australia. When he partook in the race, he was unlike the other participants, because, he was 61 years old at that time. He had no specialized sportswear. Instead, he wore galoshes overalls and work boots. When he appeared at the venue, the onlookers thought that he was probably there as a spectator. But, to their consternation, Cliff picked up a race number.
Cliff had come to the race, having been trained by his mother who was 81 then, and his informal training regime once comprised chasing sheep as a child. Having grown up on a farm, he had to go out to round up the sheep every time there was a storm churning up, mainly because his family could not afford horses or tractors. Two thousand sheep scattered across two thousand acres of land – it took him as long as three days of chasing the animals, but he always succeeded in completing the ordeal.
Since only well-trained professional athletes were expected to run in such races, Cliff’s decision made everyone fear that he might collapse midway during the race due to fatigue and heat. But, since he could run after sheep for several days at a stretch, Cliff was veritably confident that he could also compete with humans. His only previous brush with a professional race was in 1982 when he had trained around the Otway Ranges to break Siegfried Bauer’s record for 1600 km in 11 days and 23 hours, but he had to opt out of the race after 805 km, because they were inexperienced and under-prepared.
The race began, and the stout and young pro racers started leaving Cliff behind. The live audience, as well as the television viewers, was amused by his performance, as he appeared to be shuffling strangely. The racers had a strategy. They would be running hours each for the five days of the race, and sleep for the remaining 6 hours. Nonetheless,, Cliff’s strategy was different – he had no such strategy! Being an untrained, amateur athlete, he was not familiar with any such game plan. So, he just ran on and on, and the next morning, when the other athletes woke up, they were astounded as they found that just like the slow and steady tortoise, the old man had caught up with the others, by jogging all night, while the ‘hares’ had slept.
When Cliff was asked about his tactics for the rest of the race, he shocked everyone when he said that he would run through the entire distance straight to the end, with no plan to sleep. He did continue running, non-stop. And, by the final night of the race, he had surpassed the other competitors, even though they were half his age, and were equipped with twice his training and ability. He was the first competitor to cross the finishing line. He had completed the race in a surprising time of 5 days, 15 hours and four minutes. This was a new record for any other race between Sydney and Melbourne.
Cliff was pleasantly taken aback when he was awarded a whopping $10,000 as the winning prize. He was unaware that there was such a substantial prize waiting for him, and had not entered the race for money. Finally, he did something that was absolutely unexpected – he gave the entire sum of money to several of his competitors. Thus, once again, Cliff Young surprised everyone, and won several hearts.
The following hear, Cliff entered the race again, but this time, he was only able to secure the seventh place. This was quite a few places behind the successful previous run’s result, but he still did a commendable job, because this time, he ran with a displaced hip. Just like he had ignored his age and lack of formal training, the first time around, it was his physical condition that he beat. He entered the Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon numerous times after that, but he never managed to repeat his glorious performance.
The next time Cliff caught attention again was several years later. It was 1997, and he was a man of 76. But he still had his indomitable spirit alive inside him. He took up the challenge of running along Australia’s border, across a distance of 16,000 km. And there was an amazing reason for him to take up this herculean task – he wanted to raise money for homeless children. Unfortunately, his crew member fell ill, and Cliff had to pull out of the race, after running for 6520 km. Later, Cliff achieved a world age record in a six-day race in Victoria in 2000.
After the 1983 race, Cliff, who had remained single all his life, got married to 23 year old Mary Howell, with Westfield, the race sponsor, organizing the wedding to entertain the shoppers. The two got separated five years later. In 2003, at the age of 81, Cliff passed away, after suffering from illness for a prolonged period of 5 years. Posthumously, he was honoured with the construction of a gumboot-shaped memorial in Beech Forest. Later, in 2013, a telefilm named Cliffy was made by ABC1, about his fabled 1983 ultramarathon.
Cliff had run 20,000 km in his short racing career. His unique style of racing came to be referred as the Young Shuffle, which was adopted by ultramarathon racers in the later years, since it was considered as an energy-efficient style. At least three Sydney-Melbourne champions have been noted to shuffle. Besides, they also made it a strategy to not sleep at night during the long race, to follow Cliff’s footsteps.
Cliff Young, a simple farmer, created a one-of-a-kind history. He set records that athletes look up to even today. He left a legacy, and created new standards in the field of endurance race. And, he did it all at the age of 61. Instead of withering away, he started his life anew, and showed the world that it’s never too late to start following the heart and pursuing dreams. His story is that of will and courage, and a man’s positive attitude that led him to embrace all that came his way, in pursuit of his desires.
In life, we often hesitate to take a step forward, because we ourselves impose certain limits on ourselves, and condition ourselves that we are not cut out to cross such hurdles. We hold back, in fear of starting anew, too nervous to give life another shot due to a lack of a proper plan and formal training. Nevertheless, there is never a bad time to take a leap of faith. Cliff Young never let his dotage become an excuse to stop him from becoming the elderly ultramarathon runner from Australia who clinched the gold medal. He competed against time, and that is where he emerged as the ultimate winner.
Source: Wikipedia, Self Growth, Elite Feet
Images: Change Minds, Herald Sun, AntonK, Sporteology,Brains and Careers
21 Ways to Dump Pessimism
Solitude: The Singledom where Lies our Inner-strength
Rick Guidotti, Founder of Positive Exposure
Dutch Teen Completes A Year-long Solo Circumnavigation Around The World
Oendrila Email Author
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line9
|
__label__wiki
| 0.561863
| 0.561863
|
Dalal al mughrabi ehud barak pronunciation
Posted By: Kajigis 0 Comments
Posts Tagged ‘Dalal al-Mughrabi’ Remembering Dalal al-Mughrabi, symbol of the struggle for liberation (Palestine) Monday, March 14th, Dalal al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian fighter who became a legend for many years, led a group of 12 fighters in one of the most . Jan 22, · How to pronounce Ehud vid. My how to pronounce Ehud vid will teach you how to say Ehud 's name in the right pronunciation. If you want to learn how to pronounce Ehud . Dalal Mughrabi (Arabic language: دلال المغربي , Dalāl al-Muɣrabī; ca. – 11 March ) was a Palestinian militant who was a member of the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and participated in the Coastal Road massacre in Israel. The attack resulted in the death of 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children.
According to some reports, Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defense Minister at the time, led the military operation against Mughrabi in person. The moderate Palestinian Authority has honored terrorist Dalal Moughrabi In March of , Riad al Malki, the Foreign Minister of the Palestinian Authority stated at the. Similarly, around the March 11 anniversary of arch-terrorist Dalal Mughrabi's . In fact, Arabs cannot even correctly pronounce the word Palestine in their After killing Dalal al-Mughrabi, Israeli commander Ehud Barak (now Deputy. Israeli Arab MK: Barak enjoys classical music and killing Gaza children Arab MK Jamal Zahalka directed harsh criticism at Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who 6- Municipality: The Dalal Mughrabi Square in Al Bira, Ramallah region .. from Gitmo went there, and one of them, and I may not pronounce his name correctly. Gaza emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said 15 other people .. suggests that, following US President Barack Obama's offer to help broker a .. the path walked by Dalal Mughrabi, Hanadi Jaradat and Reem Riyashi.” .. The Israeli TV channel's analyst Ehud Yaari says Abbas seems to be. Lebanese-Israeli borderline as viewed from Maroun al Ras. since Ehud Barak, the then-Israeli Prime Minister was voted into office and found The staccato and sober pronunciation of these final words reverberates operation headed by Dalal Mughrabi whose remains were included in the prisoners and. Le persone assassinate a Gaza al 17 luglio , IMEMC .. Anche nella guerra del il premier israeliano pro-tempore, Ehud Olmert, ha ceduto . Those who took up arms or pens — Che Guevara, Ghassan Kanafani, Naji al-Ali, Dalal. Mughrabi, Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, Steve Biko, Salavador Allende, Rosa. President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and US President . Dalal Mughrabi, a female terrorist who participated in the deadliest attack in newspaper Al Hayat Al Jadida in early that, 'Israel has gone beyond all an uncomplimentary drawing, giving him warts, and saying that you pronounce. معاناة المرأة الفلسطينية تحت الاحتلال الإسرائيلي Sami el-Salahat, Mariam of the Jordanian election law of pronouncing the right of a municipal vote Palestinian cause Whereas Dalal al-Mughrabi carried out the operation However, the occupation army under the command of Ehud Barak terminated the deal. The emerging narrative of “al Aqsa is in danger” from the Jerusalem Mufti Amin . the domestic requirement that he must pronounce on Iranian compliance every 90 .. Ehud Barak, with the launch of his terror war (euphemized as the “al- Aksa . Dalal Mughrabi, who led the March terrorist attack on an Israeli civilian.
See This Video: Dalal al mughrabi ehud barak pronunciation
Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Barak on Hafez al-Assad, time: 4:38
Tags: Lagu 6ixth sense 7 kali malam minggu, Inchiesta su maria augias games, Jan 22, · How to pronounce Ehud vid. My how to pronounce Ehud vid will teach you how to say Ehud 's name in the right pronunciation. If you want to learn how to pronounce Ehud . Dalal Mughrabi (Arabic language: دلال المغربي , Dalāl al-Muɣrabī; ca. – 11 March ) was a Palestinian militant who was a member of the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and participated in the Coastal Road massacre in Israel. The attack resulted in the death of 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children. Editors involved with the Dalal Mughrabi page may wish to add a section on the recent White Hands Campaign controversy involving Dalal Mughrabi, or at least link to it in some form. Also, I would point out that there's a mistake in the first paragraph of the DM article: it should say "while in Israel *and elsewhere* she is a figure reviled as a. Ehud Barak: learn how to pronounce Ehud Barak in Hebrew with the correct pronunciation approved by native linguists. Read about Ehud Barak. Posts Tagged ‘Dalal al-Mughrabi’ Remembering Dalal al-Mughrabi, symbol of the struggle for liberation (Palestine) Monday, March 14th, Dalal al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian fighter who became a legend for many years, led a group of 12 fighters in one of the most .
See More b day beyonce zip
0 thoughts on “Dalal al mughrabi ehud barak pronunciation”
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line10
|
__label__cc
| 0.651979
| 0.348021
|
Filter by division/collection
Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound
Found 8 collections related to Canby, Henry Seidel, 1878-1961
Canby, Henry Seidel, 1878-1961
Henry Seidel Canby letters, 1930-1933
0.1 linear feet (1 folder)
MacLeish, Archibald, 1892-1982
Archibald MacLeish collection of papers, 1923-1981
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature | Berg Coll MSS MacLeish
This is a synthetic collection consisting of typescripts, manuscripts and correspondence.
Day, Clarence, 1874-1935
Clarence Day papers, 1796-1993 [bulk 1890-1953]
The Clarence Day Papers document the literary career, business activity, personal life and family background of the author and illustrator. The papers include personal and professional correspondence; notebooks, manuscripts, typescripts, galley... more
The Clarence Day Papers document the literary career, business activity, personal life and family background of the author and illustrator. The papers include personal and professional correspondence; notebooks, manuscripts, typescripts, galley proofs and publication tearsheets; business and financial records; family papers; news clippings and literary reference files; school and college records; drawings, photographs and artifacts. Correspondents include Helen Dore Boylston, Henry Canby, Paul De Kruif, Francis Hackett, Learned Hand, Carl Hovey, Albert G. Keller, Troy Kinney, Sonya Levien, Rose Wilder Lane, Alice Duer Miller, Elsie Clews Parsons, William Lyon Phelps, Harold Ross, Miriam Finn Scott, Upton Sinclair, Signe Toksvig, E. B. White and Katharine White. The Clarence Day Papers are an important resource for the study of American magazine literature during the 1910s-1930s, and provide essential background information regarding Day's most popular and enduring work, Life With Father. less
Wolfe, Humbert, 1885-1940
Humbert Wolfe collection of papers, 1901-1944
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature | Berg Coll MSS Wolfe
ca. 3,567 items
This is a synthetic collection consisting of manuscripts and typescripts, correspondence, a notebook for 1901-1902, legal documents, and portraits.
Thompson, Ralph, 1904-
Ralph Thompson papers, 1929-1960
Ralph Thompson (1904-1979) was an American author, teacher and editor. He was a book critic at the New York Times and a contributing editor at Time Magazine, wrote reference works and translations, and was editor of the Book-of-the-Month Club from... more
Ralph Thompson (1904-1979) was an American author, teacher and editor. He was a book critic at the New York Times and a contributing editor at Time Magazine, wrote reference works and translations, and was editor of the Book-of-the-Month Club from 1951 until 1975. Collection contains correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and printed matter relating to Thompson's work. Bulk of the correspondence consists of letters to Thompson mainly from authors and readers of his reviews while he was a book columnist at the New York Times. Also, original manuscripts by Thompson and others, pamphlets on literary works, and photographs of a mountain-climbing expedition to Mount Everest. less
Letters » CANBY, Henry Seidel, 1878-1961
Railroad Hour Radio Program
The Railroad hour, radio program [sound recording], 1948-1954
Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound | *L (Special) 88-03
490 sound discs, analog 33 1/3 rpm, 16 in.; 490 sound discs, analog 33 1/3 rpm, 16 in.; 42 sound tapes, analog 7 1/2 ips 2 track mono, 7 in.; 42 sound tapes, analog 7 1/2 ips 2 track mono, 7 in.
The Railroad hour was a program which presented excerpts of famous musical comedies, as well as original stories, for radio audiences. Each half-hour episode of the program presented the highlights of one musical. Gordon MacRae was the host and... more
The Railroad hour was a program which presented excerpts of famous musical comedies, as well as original stories, for radio audiences. Each half-hour episode of the program presented the highlights of one musical. Gordon MacRae was the host and leading man for each episode; his leading ladies came from radio and the Metropolitan Opera. less
Series III: Favorite Story (Radio program). » Sire de Maletroit's door.
Anthony, Alfred Williams, 1860-1939
Alfred Williams Anthony collection, 1679-1944
Alfred Anthony Williams (1860- ), theologian, author and educator, was an executive and administrator of the Committee of the Federal Council of Christ, founder of the Federation Committee of Good Will Between Jews and Christians, and treasurer of... more
Alfred Anthony Williams (1860- ), theologian, author and educator, was an executive and administrator of the Committee of the Federal Council of Christ, founder of the Federation Committee of Good Will Between Jews and Christians, and treasurer of the General Conference of Free Baptists. Collection consists mainly of 18th-20th century autographs, with the bulk from the mid-19th to 20th centuries, representing both primary and secondary figures from diverse fields including literature, music, education, politics, and royalty. Names include Susan B. Anthony, John Bigelow, Edwin Booth, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, H.L. Mencken, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Margaret Sanger, Philip Schuyler, and Daniel Webster. Figures represented are mainly Americans. Many letters are to Anthony. Following the name file is a subject file consisting of miscellaneous autograph letters arranged by profession or institution. Also, two boxes of unsorted material, including photographs usually relating to individuals whose autographs are contained in the collection; an autograph fan; and a glass plate negative. less
I. Prominent Correspondents » Canby, Henry Seidel
Mills, Emma, d. 1956
Emma Mills correspondence, 1920-1946
Emma Mills (d. 1956) was a literary agent in New York City. Collection consists of Mills's correspondence with literary and theatrical figures and relates to her management of banquets, parties, luncheons, and foreign travels.
Canby, Henry Seidel
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line15
|
__label__cc
| 0.697075
| 0.302925
|
Cornish Geothermal: Hello from Francesca Tirotto
I am Francesca Tirotto and I am from the wonderful island of Sardinia! I took my Master’s Degree in Psychology of Social and Work processes at the University of Cagliari (Italy). During my university experience, I developed a keen interest in the research topic of Environmental Psychology. This discipline focuses on the study of the relationship between people and their surroundings. In particular, my aim was to understand psychosocial processes underlying sustainable behaviours. As a PhD student on the geothermalRead more
Director’s Diary – July 2019
11 July Pseudotachylyte film screening Plymouth As part of a NERC-funded research project ‘Geological Record of Earthquakes in the Lower Crust’, principal investigator Luca Menegon (SoGEES) and co-investigator Iain Stewart worked filmmaker Heidi Morstang (Arts) to develop a documentary film based on the research team’s 2016 data collection campaign in Lofoten, northern Norway. The first informal viewing of Heidi’s full-length film will be screened in Jill Craigie Cinema. More details of the work can be found on the website. Friday 5Read more
Director’s Diary – June 2019
Saturday 29 June Devon’s Children’s University University of Plymouth, Plymouth As Chancellor of Devon’s Children’s University, Iain will have the fun job of presenting children from local primary schools with their Children’s University badges at a special graduation ceremony held to celebrate their achievements alongside their friends and family. Wednesday 26 June Environment Platform Wales National Museum of Wales, Cardiff Iain joined researchers, policy makers and environmental professionals from across Wales to celebrate the official launch of a new policyRead more
George Monbiot – Rewilding and its place on the global development agenda
Don’t watch this video if you have (and wish to retain) a romantic attachment to the rural idyll of sheep grazing the upland pastures of Britain. George Monbiot informs us that the maintenance of swathes of upland areas as grassland keeps biodiversity to a minimum and leads them to resemble, in ecological terms, landscapes found in the tundra above the Arctic Circle. In contrast farmers in continental Europe have gradually retreated from the less fertile upland areas, which have reforestedRead more
Cornish Geothermal: Hello from Dr Nicola Langdon
Dydh da! Ow hanow yw Nicola and I’m a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Law, Criminology and Government with a background in International Relations. I have always been interested in issues of social justice, sustainability, as well as the power of language, which has led to a continued research focus on the relationship between the media, public and policy spheres. In 2018 I was awarded my PhD, with a thesis that examined the UK media’s moral framing of conflictRead more
Cornish Geothermal: Talking about United Downs research at EGU
Every year, Vienna in Austria hosts the second biggest meeting of geologists and geoscientists in the world, called the European Geoscience Union (or EGU) General Assembly. During the week of the 7th to 12th of April 2019, the meeting was a melting pot of over 16,000 scientists and researchers from 113 countries across Europe and the world and two of our researchers were lucky enough to go. Dr Hazel Gibson and Francesca Tirotto both presented some initial results at the meetingRead more
Towards a sustainable Earth
The Sustainable Earth Institute is about promoting a new way of thinking about the future of our world. It's about the science of the planet, its health and well-being and what that means for us. It's about understanding the fine balance between using our environment as a resource and maintaining its function as a critical life-support system. It's about recognising the social, economic and political pressures that influence the way society confronts it's looming challenges. And it's about celebrating a complex, dynamic, vibrant and ultimately completely unique human planet.
View previous posts
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line20
|
__label__wiki
| 0.907743
| 0.907743
|
Fri, 15 Jan, 2021
Telugu film star Nani’s next film ‘V’ to release on an OTT platform
Back to Regional Filmy Buzz
Ashwin Sheshware | August, 20 2020
Telugu film actor Nani has shared a two minute video about the release of his next film ‘V’ on his Instagram page on Wednesday.
Through the video, Nani has given hint that his next release would be on home theaters, not in movie theaters. “Theater Intikochhindi,” he announced, making it clear that ‘V’ will stream on Amazon Prime. In the video, Nani says there will be an announcement about the film on Thursday.
‘V’ was originally slated for March 25, 2020 release. The thriller also features Sudheer Babu in a lead role.
The multi-starrer is the first major Telugu movie to skip theatrical windows and stream on the OTT platform. This decision was taken after considering the current situation due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The makers of ‘V’ were initially not in favor of direct OTT release but they have left with no option.
Directed by Mohana Krishna Indraganti, ‘V’ features Nivetha Thomas and Aditi Rao Hydari as the female leads. Dil Raju is the producer of it. Amit Trivedi composed the music of this movie. The trailer of the film will drop in a few days.
Link of the video - https://www.instagram.com/p/CEEpsHgDicH/
एक म्यूजिक वीडियो में साथ नजर आएंगे खुशाली कुमार और पार्थ समथान
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line23
|
__label__wiki
| 0.672973
| 0.672973
|
27:16 I also told the priests and all the people, “The Lord says, ‘Do not listen to what your prophets are saying. They are prophesying to you that 1 the valuable articles taken from the Lord’s temple will be brought back from Babylon very soon. 2 But they are prophesying a lie to you.
27:19 For the Lord who rules over all 3 has already spoken about the two bronze pillars, 4 the large bronze basin called ‘The Sea,’ 5 and the movable bronze stands. 6 He has already spoken about the rest of the valuable articles that are left in this city. 27:20 He has already spoken about these things that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon did not take away when he carried Jehoiakim’s son King Jeconiah of Judah and the nobles of Judah and Jerusalem away as captives. 7 27:21 Indeed, the Lord God of Israel who rules over all 8 has already spoken 9 about the valuable articles that are left in the Lord’s temple, in the royal palace of Judah, and in Jerusalem. 27:22 He has said, ‘They will be carried off to Babylon. They will remain there until it is time for me to show consideration for them again. 10 Then I will bring them back and restore them to this place.’ I, the Lord, affirm this!” 11
1 tn Heb “don’t listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you….” The sentence has been broken up for the sake of English style and one level of embedded quotes has been eliminated to ease complexity.
2 sn This refers to the valuable articles of the temple treasury which were carried off by Nebuchadnezzar four years earlier when he carried off Jeconiah, his family, some of his nobles, and some of the cream of Judean society (2 Kgs 24:10-16, especially v. 13 and see also vv. 19-20 in the verses following).
3 tn Heb “Yahweh of armies.” For the significance of this title see the note at 2:19.
4 tn The words “two bronze” are not in the text. They have been supplied in the translation to help identify the referent.
sn The two bronze pillars are the two free-standing pillars at the entrance of the temple (Jakin and Boaz) described in 1 Kgs 7:15-22.
5 tn The words “the large bronze basin called” are not in the text. They have been supplied in the translation to help identify the referent.
sn “The Sea” refers to the large basin that was mounted on twelve bronze bulls. It stood in front of the temple and contained water for the priests to bathe themselves (2 Chr 4:6; cf. Exod 30:17-21). It is described in 1 Kgs 7:23-26.
6 tn The words “movable bronze” are not in the text. They have been supplied in the translation to help identify the referent. See the study note for further reference.
sn The bronze stands are the movable bronze stands described in 1 Kgs 7:27-37. They were the stands for the bronze basins described in 1 Kgs 7:38-39. According to 2 Chr 4:6 the latter were used to wash the burnt offerings. The priests would have been very concerned especially about the big bronze basin and the movable stands and their basins because they involved their ritual purification apart from which they would have had no sanctity. These articles (or furnishings in this case) were broken up and the bronze carried away to Babylon along with all the other bronze, silver, and gold furnishings when the temple and the city were destroyed in 587 b.c. (see 2 Kgs 25:13-15; Jer 52:17-19).
7 tn 27:19-20 are all one long sentence in Hebrew. It has been broken up for the sake of English style. Some of the sentences still violate contemporary English style (e.g., v. 20) but breaking them down any further would lose the focus. For further discussion see the study note on v. 21.
8 tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” For the significance of this title see the note at 2:19.
9 sn Some of the flavor of the repetitive nature of Hebrew narrative is apparent in vv. 19-21. In the Hebrew original vv. 19-20 are all one long sentence with complex coordination and subordinations. I.e., all the objects in v. 19 are all objects of the one verb “has spoken about” and the description in v. 20 is one long relative or descriptive clause. The introductory “For the Lord…has already spoken” is repeated in v. 21 from v. 19 and reference is made to the same articles once again, only in the terms that were used in v. 18b. By this means, attention is focused for these people (here the priests and the people) on articles which were of personal concern for them and the climax or the punch line is delayed to the end. The point being made is that the false prophets are mistaken; not only will the articles taken to Babylon not be returned “very soon” but the Lord had said that the ones that remained would be taken there as well. They ought rather pray that the Lord will change his mind and not carry them off as well.
10 tn This verb is a little difficult to render here. The word is used in the sense of taking note of something and acting according to what is noticed. It is the word that has been translated several times throughout Jeremiah as “punish [someone].” It is also used in the opposite of sense of taking note and “show consideration for” (or “care for;” see, e.g., Ruth 1:6). Here the nuance is positive and is further clarified by the actions that follow, bringing them back and restoring them.
11 tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”
TIP #26: To open links on Discovery Box in a new window, use the right click. [ALL]
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line24
|
__label__cc
| 0.747901
| 0.252099
|
Advice and tips about life and learning English in the UK.
Learn English with Twin
Twin's English school in London
Twin's English school in Eastbourne
Top attractions in London and Eastbourne
At Twin we have English Schools in London and Eastbourne, giving our students the option of being in the hustle and bustle of England’s capital city, or the quiet and relaxed environment in the seaside town of Eastbourne. What is there to do when you visit these centres though? Obviously everyone knows there are plenty of things to do in London, so only a couple of favourites are mentioned here, but also mentioned are some places worth visiting in Eastbourne you may not yet know about. So, read on and see four of our favourite attractions to visit near our English Schools.
The first attraction is one you’ve probably heard of, but we love visiting the London Eye with our students so it had to be on this list. The London Eye was built to mark the new Millennium, costing a massive £70 million pounds! However, the huge expense was well worth it, as this magnificent structure stands at 135 metres (443ft) tall, and has a diameter of 120 metres, making it the tallest and biggest Ferris wheel in Europe. Facts aside, what makes it so great is its location as it is on the south bank side of the River Thames, right in the heart of Central London. This gives everyone who goes on it an absolutely fantastic view across London. Don’t take our word for it though, see it for yourself and then you will understand why over 3.5 million people visit every year, making the London Eye the second most popular place to visit on this list. It really is a brilliant and unique way to view London, so if you are visiting anytime soon, make sure the London Eye is at the top of your sightseeing list.
For the next attraction on this list we are heading down south, as Eastbourne Pier is definitely worth visiting if you are studying at our nearby school. This traditional Victorian pier, built in the 1870s, is over 1000ft long and a great place to visit with friends to see the views along Eastbourne’s sea front, or to have a quiet walk on your own. With amusements, rides, (which are mainly for children but good fun for adults too), restaurants and even a nightclub, the pier is full of things to do at any time of day! The pier is also thought of as one of the best places to visit in Eastbourne by people that live there, so it is definitely a must see whilst visiting. It also gives you a taste of something that is different to most historical landmarks in the UK, as you can see one of England’s oldest piers and a piece of history while having fun at the same time.
Beachy Head is another fantastic place to visit near Eastbourne, especially if you like to get outside and experience the elements. The peak of the cliff rises to 162 metres above sea level, and gives any visitor a beautiful view across Eastbourne and the surrounding landscape. Beachy Head is a place of real natural beauty, and is a unique site which is well worth a visit. It has also been used in a number of blockbuster films, such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and one of the James Bond films, so make sure you go and see these chalky cliffs!
The final location is one for those of you who are London-bound, and we have to admit that it is definitely one of the more obvious sights to see; Buckingham Palace. You have to go and see the Royal Family when in London though, don’t you? Possibly the most exclusive building in the UK, going inside to visit the Queen is definitely something most of us won’t be invited to do. However, you can marvel at it from the outside or even book a tour too if you want to see what the Palace is like inside, (don’t expect your tour guide to be one of the Royal Family though). Buckingham Palace is also one of the oldest stately buildings in the UK, which was originally built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1705.
There are also many other top attractions to visit while in London or Eastbourne, too many to fit into this article unfortunately, so here is a shortlist of different attractions that aren’t mentioned above, but are definitely worth visiting:
London – The Tower of London & Tower Bridge, The Palace of Westminster, St Paul’s Cathedral, Big Ben, The British Museum, The Natural History Museum, Hyde Park, The National Gallery, The Tate Modern and The London Zoo.
Eastbourne – Seven Sisters Sussex, South Downs country park, Towner Gallery, Devonshire Park Theatre, Sovereign Harbour,
It was tough choosing which attractions to write about for this article, and all of those shortlisted above arguably could have been in our favourite four. So, make sure you try and visit these locations if you are coming to London or Eastbourne soon. We hope this article has given you helpful information about some of the UK’s best attractions and that you feel inspired to go and see them!
10 Traditional British Foods and Where to Try Them in London
London is a multicultural and vast city, full of restaurants catering to a variety of cultures and taste-buds from every corner of the glo...
Top 7 Traditional British Drinks
From a comforting cup of tea, to a vibrant glass of Pimms, Britain is home to a variety of delicious drinks to enjoy on a hot summers d...
Win 8 weeks of free English lessons in London!
Why do you want to learn English? Your answer could win you 8 weeks of free English lessons from Twin! Entering the competition...
My IELTS exam preparation course experience
I've been taking English lessons at Twin English School for the last two months and I really have to say that it has been a great expe...
Top 10 Winter activities in London
London is beautiful (but cold!) in Winter. If you want to know more about the best things to see and do in London when the temperature drops...
English telephone phrases: how to talk on the phone in English
One situation many English learners find difficult is talking on the phone in English. It can be difficult to hear people properly or they...
My Top 10 Words That Make You Think of Christmas
By Jake Taylor; Christmas is a wonderful time of year, there’s loads of things to get excited about; amazing food, presents, catching up w...
NEWS: Win an iPad with Twin English Centres
Recommend Twin English Centres to a friend and you could win an iPad . To celebrate the launch of our brand new English Centres website, w...
My Multi-Cultural Food Experience
Hi! My name is Mayoumi. I am from Japan, and currently living in France! I’ve been in one of the Twin English Schools in London for one mont...
5 activities for learning English in London fast!
London is an amazing place to live and learn English. But did you know that as well as going to a language school, there are lots of activit...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line26
|
__label__cc
| 0.61264
| 0.38736
|
The Dilemma by B.A. Paris
Thank you B. A. Paris, HQ and NetGalley for gifting me this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. The book will be published in the US on January 9, 2020.
A couple of words about the digital copy that downloaded to my Kindle from NetGalley as it was a bit of a jumble. There was no title page, just a few pages of reviews, a publishing page and then in the middle of a page the book begins. The bold function often over highlights into portions of the text. The body of the text is often separated out into single sentences. But the most perplexing glitch is that either the title of the book, The Dilemma or the author’s name, B.A. Paris is randomly inserted during paragraphs—often in the middle of sentences. Hopefully all this will be resolved before publishing, my version was readable but these glitches did make for cumbersome annoyances while reading.
This book is billed as general adult fiction. Ms. Paris takes a dramatic look into the domestic human psyche—a study of love, life choices, best intentions, secrets and lies—and it proved to be a “clear all decks” edge of your seat kind of read. This is the first book that I have read by B. A. Paris but I am sure to read more now that I have read this one.
Ms. Paris weaves a tale around a married couple who are each keeping a secret from the other and the efforts made to keep them that way. They both have convinced themselves that they are keeping their respective secret with the purest of best intentions—neither wants to ruin the other’s life and their family—not to mention the party.
The wife, Livia, is turning 40, she became pregnant while an unwed teenager and her ashamed parents disowned Livia and never spoke to her again. She and Adam, the father, subsequently got married after Josh was born— but these life choices totally broke to pieces the type of life that she had imagined leading. One of her biggest regrets was that she never got a “big splashy wedding” the type of which she and her mother had spent hours dreaming of and planning for—some future day.
Livia decides, promises herself, and plans for years in advance to give herself an over the top 40th birthday party instead. While Livia and Adam may have had a quick forced wedding they also had a love that endured, and their relationship grew with them as they matured.
Adam was also forced to make hard choices when the reality of life circumstance stood in front of his dreams, he gave up university and took up a trade. It took Adam a while to grow up and he still has lingering regrets about the road not taken. He only came fully to terms with the realities of fatherhood after the birth of his second child— daughter, Marnie, which has often led to a prickly relationship with his first born son, Josh.
Josh, now a University student, is about to take an internship in America at a prestigious IT firm. Marnie, is also at University and at present is away studying in Hong Kong. Livia and Adam are facing an empty nest for the first time in their marriage.
We quickly find out that Livia is sitting on a secret about their daughter, Marnie. She hasn’t told Adam because she wants to talk to her daughter first and on some level it is not her secret to tell.
All we know at the beginning is that this revelation would destroy Adam, her family, and wreck the party. She is secretly relieved when Marnie tells her she can’t make the party and decides to solve her “dilemma” by waiting to tell Adam after the party.
Of course, Adam, realizing how much this party means to Livia, secretly arranges for Marnie to come home and surprise her mom at the party.
The story takes place over a slightly extended 24 hour timeline on the day of the party and told in a manner that allows for flashbacks and backstory. The story is told in alternating chapters between Livia and Adam. Ms. Paris also gives good denouement, the “after party”, which is an element of novels that I always appreciate.
While Adam is in town picking up his gift for Livia he hears some news that presents him with a potentially devastating secret about Marnie. But because he does not know all the facts Adam also decides to solve his “dilemma” by not telling Livia the news until after the party. Telling could mean the end of the family as they know it and he desperately seeks to give his wife this special night that she has dreamed of for so long.
I feel that sharing my opinions about how things further develop might come at the expense of supplying spoilers and this is not fair to other readers or the author. But I cannot resist a little more commentary on humanity, secrets, and lying.
This book on the surface is about secrets and lies, it is also about families, and friendships, but on a deeper level Ms. Paris is exploring elements of love and the lengths a person might go to keep a loved one from learning harmful truths.
I believe that it is an universal truth that the majority of humans will state that they always prefer to know the truth and that they do not liked to be lied to about anything. I further believe that the majority of these same humans will make the opposite decision when faced with the necessity of telling a damaging truth to a loved one, deciding to withhold the truth—until it can be told with kindness at a better time, or not at all— in order to protect this person.
Sometimes this done out of love, sometimes out of self interest, or more likely, as we see here —a combination of both. I find this contradictory dichotomy in the human brain to be fascinating and the geek science girl that lurks beneath my surface wonders what kind of brain chemistry accounts for this quirkiness.
The notion that while I am capable of knowing this truth I think it is best not to tell *whoever* as this person can’t handle the truth and needs protected does seem a little condescending and patronizing. It deserves noting that both Adam and Livia, to their credit, fully intend to come clean with their other half but both decide to wait before breaking the news— not out of malicious intent but out of perceived kindness.
It is also worth noting that their respective decisions were not always completely altruistic as both held elements of denial as well, that longing to live a little bit longer in the imagined reality of their clueless loved ones.
Part of the “fun” of this book is how the author engages your mind as she fills up with your thoughts with decisions and judgments about how all the various characters handle their various choices surrounding these dilemmas.
For my own part, I can wrap my head around the mind set of Livia and Adam as they decided to keep their dilemma about Marnie secret from each other, but as I imagine being the spouse on the “receiving end” of the news I realized that I would be hard pressed to forgive some decisions not to tell.
How Ms. Paris resolves The Dilemma for all her various characters makes for valuable reading time well spent. I will definitely be reading her previous books.
About this Author:
B A Paris is the internationally bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors, The Breakdown and Bring Me Back. Having sold over one million copies in the UK alone, she is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller as well as a number one bestseller on Amazon and iBooks. Her books have sold in 38 territories around the world. Having lived in France for many years, she recently moved back to the UK.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line31
|
__label__cc
| 0.653581
| 0.346419
|
Jacquelyn A. Jetton O'Banion, MD, MSc
Director, Global Ophthalmology-Emory (GO-Emory)
Jacquelyn A. Jetton O'Banion, MD, MSc, joined the Emory Eye Center in January 2016 and serves as an assistant professor in the Comprehensive service. She brings a solid foundation in public health to enhance our leadership team and support Emory Eye Center’s growing and expanding international programs in global ophthalmology.
Dr. O'Banion received her MD from the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, in 2009. Her residency in Ophthalmology (2013) and a Global Eye Care fellowship (2014) were completed at the University of Oklahoma. She most recently completed a Masters in Public Health, MSc, at the world-renowned London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2015).
Dr. O'Banion's primary practice location will be at the Emory Eye Center and at the Grady Eye Clinic. She is the director for the Eye Center's Global Ophthalmology-Emory program (GO-Emory). Her clinical work includes routine eye exams, cataract surgery and other comprehensive eye care services.
Her research interests include pediatric vision screening and improving access to address health care disparity for underserved populations, both locally and abroad. She has participated several studies in underserved populations such as in Peru and Swaziland. Dr. O’Banion is works with local hospitals, clinics and ministries of health to establish national eye care plans.
Dr. O'Banion is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society (inducted 2008, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio); the American Academy of Ophthalmology; and the Oklahoma Academy of Ophthalmology.
She has been an invited lecturer speaking about both eye care for the primary care provider and about global eye care opportunities.
• Routine eye exams
• Cataract surgery
• Comprehensive eye care services
Undergraduate: BA, Spanish and Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, cum laude, 2005
Medical School: MD, University of Texas health Science Center at San Antonio, 2009
Internship: Transitional Year: Legacy Emmanuel Medical Center, Portland, OR, 2010
Residency in Ophthalmology, University of Oklahoma, Dean McGee Eye Institute, 2013
Fellowship: Global Eye Care, University of Oklahoma, Dean McGee Eye Institute, 2014
Master of Science: MSc Public Health for Eye Care, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, 2015
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line40
|
__label__wiki
| 0.576312
| 0.576312
|
ArtArticlesBody
Cartographer’s Conundrum Revisited – Sanford Biggers Was Right
Cecilia Wong November 29, 2015 October 1, 2020
The Cartographer’s Conundrum (2012), Sanford Biggers (USA b.1970, Installation view from art21)
Church pews ascend towards the heavens as they recede from the altar which is formed of a star-burst of organ pipes emanating from a pile of old musical instruments: trumpet, guitar, French horn… and a baby grand piano hung askew. Those wooden pews become translucent Lucite as they move up, reflecting the colored light coming through the windows. Sounds of spiritual Brazilian music permeate the space…
The environment created by Biggers here is completely engrossing —it is his intention to create an atmosphere where the viewer can be ‘lost’ by being engaged viscerally and emotionally, through the eye and the ear—a deep experiential involvement. But the viewer is not lost for long—for the ‘guiding light’ is on the balcony above the ‘altar’: Here is hung the reproduction of a mural Quilting Party (1980) by John T. Biggers (USA 1924-2001, possibly a cousin). It’s full of geometric patterns and futuristic visions in what is called Afrofuturism. Quilting Party is the backstory for Sanford Biggers’ Cartographer’s Conundrum (2/4–10/31/2012) at MassMoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. Quilts, in the old American South, were allegedly used by slaves to communicate information about escapes; often by the way they were folded at a certain time.
I wrote about Biggers here three years ago. At the time, I was responding to his assertion that his exhibitions did not need explanatory wall texts. Here after a re-visit (virtually) to Cartographer’s Conundrum and reading the many reviews (of varying quality and understanding) of the show, I try to put his wall text-less art in context.
First, I agree, this exhibition did not need wall text—though he did say that reading the backstory is helpful. So basically he just does not want the reading and the viewing to be in the same room. The reading is sort of ‘priming’ the mind into a receptive mode, like marinating meat before cooking. But also, I think his art is so visually rich and enticing that it etches a deep memory in the viewer—who, once intrigued, may otherwise proceed to read the backstory. The latter is what happened to me after my first experience of his powerful Notions (2006) in London. The refreshing and energetic nature of his installation jolted me into a new state of mind.
The human body-brain together learns slowly; and old habits and viewpoints change even more slowly because they are entrenched, often fortified by hallowed religious rituals, or political and financial enticements. So it follows that the most effective kind of learning involves the changing of these set-habits which are linked to muscle actions programed in our unconscious brain stem—as in the act of praying. The same process also holds many of one’s beliefs, unconsciously picked up over a lifetime: religious, moral, ethical, racial, sexual… that are similarly entrenched and guarded in the body-brain, refusing to budge. Such strong habits are the cause of so much violence in our world because change is so uncomfortable to the point that some people would kill rather than switch.
Sanford Biggers is a multifarious talent, a pianist, composer, bandleader, visual artist, philosopher, teacher, and techno-tinkerer: he has fashioned a baby grand piano into a mini-player piano which can be played or self-play with a pre-recorded CD of his own music. He holds a professorship at New York’s Columbia University and has lectured in many others, including a teaching residency at Harvard. All his activities have one single goal: communication. He believes effective communication can change habits. (Waving arms and screaming ‘peace’ may grab attention but apparently have changed few but facile minds).
His views of the condition of black people in America are nuanced and broad—seeing it as part of the global African diaspora—and through the eyes of a traveler. In addition to travels in Africa, he has spent time in residencies in Europe and Asia: from Florence, Italy, the cradle of Renaissance art; to studying Buddhism in Japan (which he calls his spiritual home). He speaks of a Japanese traveling reggae sound system which clashes with other sound systems: They had a better understanding of Rastafarianism than most people I knew stateside”
Biggers’ art is as wide as it is deep, addressing social, political, historical, racial… as well as philosophical issues. His ultimate aim is to communicate information in such a way that it can become knowledge which is a fluid kind of habit that can respond differently to different situations.
In a far-ranging conversation (2006) with poet and musician Saul Williams, a fellow alumnus from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia,* they revealed a comradery, an agreement on the essence of art, even how an artist could make a living—like at what point does one draw the line between promotion and artistic integrity (authenticity)? Said Williams: “I feel that a lot of the poetry I am writing is really the residue of the work that I am doing to become a more harmonious person.”
Biggers spoke of where art came from and how it could become ‘impotent’ when embraced by the masses, often for reasons beyond art: “…Hip-Hop is like, everything and nothing to me. It is everything because when it first hit, it wasn’t about the fad… [or anything] but being really new and fresh and coming from someplace close to US! Now it often seems impotent.”
Art, for Biggers, is above all communication. In old African traditions “There is no specific name for poetry, or dance, or music, or art, it was all done in the name of communication and sharing…” Music and ritual performance are for him all part of a system of visceral and emotional direct-actions and responses; a communication where language takes a back seat. He believes the audience should first be engaged on a ‘gut’ level. His art aims to first ‘grab’—even on a superficial level—a viewer’s attention; and then it proceeds to reveal further meanings, layer by layer. He uses a ‘coded’ language of metaphors and symbols and wants to explore “how symbols operate within the mind, and that visceral affinity humans have for symbols [e.g. the meditative mandala in Buddhism].”
Learning and memory are much on his mind—how information is transformed into knowledge within a human being. And for him, symbols and rituals are good conduits. (In today’s biology we know that the actions of the body have a direct route to the mind —even though artists and yogis have always known that.) He wants the viewer to come away from his exhibitions with a knowledge—which I certainly did in my first encounter with his work Notions show back in London in 2006 in which a blinding disco ball illuminated lively dance steps on the walls and floor. That memory of glitter and entertainment now represents to me a heart-rending story of the struggle of the slaves for freedom and survival—yet viewed by their masters as entertainment. **
There is no more powerful and explicit example of the nature of knowledge leading to creation than what Marcus Samuelsson (the celebrated Ethiopian-Swedish chef, a fellow Harlem resident) described during a conversation with Biggers at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2012) on how he developed a new dish (I’m paraphrasing): “…In the process of cleaning the foie gras, it occurred to me a new way of cooking it. That cleaning action [muscle memory] reconnected the emotions and sensations I experienced growing up working in my grandmother’s kitchen. I was thinking about the liver’s texture and its umami [special 5th taste]. That’s authorship [authenticity].” ***
Sanford Biggers is right after all—art to be effective as a form of communication—should not need verbal explanations alongside, which could detract from a viewer’s in-the-moment, unconscious, visceral immersion that is important for knowledge. But it remains true though, that in today’s world, far from the old village square, the museum is a very different setting for showing art. Most people go to a museum as an occasional event, not as an everyday habit—and reading, before or after, is far from their mind. Furthermore, making Biggers’ kind of art available to large numbers is still a difficult task—museums are physical spaces that can accommodate a very limited number of people compared to the internet.
* The all-male liberal arts college was founded in 1867, two years after the Civil War. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was an alumnus, class of 1948.
** “…‘Calenda’… makes reference to a dance that slaves adopted and which was initially perceived by their masters as both entertainment and a form of exercise. But it transpired that there were deeper and more subversive thoughts being expressed by their workforce, namely methods of escape… As a traditional spiritual reminded the escapees: “Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd,” an Africanized reference to an asterism within the constellation Ursa Major, or the ‘Big Dipper.’ Two stars in its bowl point to Polaris – the North Star, and for the slaves, freedom via the Underground Railroad” – rovetv
*** Cleaning the precious foie gras in the kitchen is a delicate exercise of pulling out the veins in one piece without breaking the precious goose liver. While he was doing it he thought of why the dish was always served in a tureen (French tradition); and the American young chefs were then serving them pan-seared with figs and mangoes on toast. Such connections led to his own new dish.
2016 3 6 Can anyone of us imagine… See latest update here.
Previous Post Tech Use In Museums – Tate Sensorium & More…
Next Post When A Museum Experiments – The Hillman Photography Initiative At CMOA
Abstract art Abstraction Andy Warhol Art & Beauty Art & commerce Art & Science Art & technology Cezanne City Secrets Paris Conceptual art Confucius Consciousness Creativity Darwin DNA Duchamp Einstein Ellsworth Kelly Epigenetics Eric Kandel Evolution Francis Crick Harvard HHMI implicit memory Jackson Pollock John Cage Learning Le Corbusier Met Museum Michelangelo Mirror neurons MIT Monet Nietzsche Picasso Renaissance Richard Feynman Surrealist art Tate Unconscious Venice Biennale Video games Vision Zaha Hadid
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line41
|
__label__wiki
| 0.828167
| 0.828167
|
Born: Dec 16, 1775 in Steventon Rectory, Hampshire, England
Died: July 18, 1817 (at age 41) in Winchester, Hampshire, England
Famous For: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma
Regency era author Jane Austen may have penned some of the English language’s most well known novels, but her own private life might be called by some quiet, secluded, and even insular. In fact, however, it is that very closely focused existence that allowed her to scrutinize and study human nature and draw universal conclusions that are as relevant today as they were when her fiction was first published.
Austen’s Early Life
Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, in England. Her father was Reverend George Austen, and her mother was Cassandra Austen, of the Leigh family. She had only one older sister among her seven siblings, also named Cassandra, and the two were close through their lifetime. Among her six brothers, Jane was closest to her older brother Henry.
Jane Austen was raised in a household that welcomed learning, discourse, and creativity. She and her father, who took on side jobs outside of his duties as rector in order to support his family, including farming and teaching, had an extremely close bond.
At the age of eight, Jane and her sister, Cassandra, went to boarding school to begin their formal education. However, at that time a woman’s formal education was limited to foreign language (usually French), music, and dancing. But Jane’s education was thorough, rounded out by her own reading and lessons she learned from her father and brothers. George Austen had an excellent library that was open to all of his children, and Jane took full advantage of it. A forward-thinking man, he also made sure he kept the young writer supplied with paper and writing supplies.
Austen’s Early Writings
By 1787, Jane Austen had penned three notebooks filled with poems and fictional explorations, a body of work that would later be known as the Juvenilia. In 1789, she wrote Love and Friendship, then dove into playwriting.
She gradually took her writing more seriously, and before 1796, she had completed a work she called Elinor and Marianne, from which she would read aloud to amuse her family.
Romance with Lefroy
In December 1795, Jane Austen was introduced to Tom Lefroy, and the two began spending a great deal of time together.
Both families noticed, and Tom’s family was none too excited about a possible match between the two, due to the Austen family’s lack of expansive fortune. They sent Tom away, and the young couple was never to be reunited again.
The author did admit to falling in love with Lefroy, but even though the experience ended with the couple living separate lives, she did not allow her heart to become closed or embittered.
Austen as an Author
Jane Austen was prolific when she settled down to write, usually having several projects actively working at the same time. She began working on serious revisions to Elinor and Marianne, completing the process in 1798. She then turned back to an earlier work, Susan, which would later become the novel Northanger Abbey, while simultaneously polishing an earlier manuscript of a play.
Next, she finished the first draft of perhaps her most beloved work, First Impressions, or as it would later come to be known, Pride and Prejudice, in 1799.
In 1811, her novel Sense and Sensibility was published, and the first edition sold out completely within two years. In 1813, Pride and Prejudice was published, to both popular success and critical acclaim.
Next came the publishing of Mansfield Park, then Emma, Northanger Abbey, and, after the author’s untimely demise, Persuasion.
Later Years and Legacy
In early 1816, Jane Austen’s health began declining. By early 1817, she found herself unable to walk at the age of 42. In July of 1817, she passed away.
However, though Jane Austen saw some success as a writer during her life, her actual identity was not revealed until after she died, by her brother, Henry. Her siblings, especially Henry and Cassandra, worked hard to keep her works in publication and to ensure that Persuasion was published.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line42
|
__label__cc
| 0.726227
| 0.273773
|
Home » Controversial Topics » Politics » Congressman Cohen Will Introduce Resolution to Abolish the Electoral College
Congressman Cohen Will Introduce Resolution to Abolish the Electoral College
January 12th, 2021 at 8:35:14 AM permalink
The memphis area elected an African American congressmen, Harold Ford in 1974 and then his son in 1996. In 2006 Harold Ford Jr lost a race for Tennessee Senate. In 2006 Steve Cohen was one of the first white congressmen elected to represent a district that was majority African American, when he defeated a second son of Harold Ford. Steve Cohen has won his 8th election to congress.
Upon election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006, Congressman Cohen, immediately distinguished himself on the Hill for his thoughtful legislation and quick wit. He also quickly earned a reputation as a champion of civil rights and justice on the highly influential Judiciary Committee, with then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi referring to him as the “conscience of the freshman class” in 2008. That same year, he was instrumental in passing the first-of-its-kind House resolution apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African Americans.
odiousgambit
I assume he knows that the elimination of the electoral college would mean the two coasts elect the President ... he represents Tenn. That OK in TN?
Beware of Old Wive's Tales. And you better watch what your younger wives are saying too.
AZDuffman
Hillary Clinton did the same when she was first elected. It gets proposed all the time. It is not happening.
Who is John Galt?
SOOPOO
Member since: Feb 19, 2014
Quote: odiousgambit
OMG.... he DOES NOT represent Tennessee! He represents his Congressional District in Tennessee. And yes, the members of HIS district i would surmise would be happy if the winner of NY and California automatically become President.
As far as the resolution.... it is the usual Democrat wanting to impress his party wasting time tactic. He would need Republican support, and he will not get it.
January 12th, 2021 at 12:03:09 PM permalink
Quote: SOOPOO
There is no wide spread support for passing a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral college in either party.
The consititution does not tell the states how to assign their votes. In the 19th century it was often done by state congressional vote and not by popular vote. All states are free to follow the lead of Nebraska and Maine and let individual congressional districts have a vote.
The "all or nothing" method of determining electoral college votes was the decision of each state to maximize the attention they could get from candidates.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line48
|
__label__wiki
| 0.8853
| 0.8853
|
Women’s Service in the IDF: Between a ‘People’s Army’ and Gender Equality
November 10, 2020 | Written By: Dr. Idit Shafran Gittleman
Dr. Idit Shafran Gittleman presents an overview of 70 years of women in the IDF
Illustration | Flash 90
With the establishment of the Israel Defense Forces and the dismantling of the underground militias in 1948, the government decided to draft women into the army under a law requiring mandatory service. This extraordinary measure was primarily the result of a shortage of military personnel and of Ben-Gurion’s concept of a “people’s army,” which he tried to instill at the time. Over the years and especially in recent decades, the concept of gender equality has also become relevant to the discussion of military service, and more and more roles have been opened up to women serving in the IDF. While the first two considerations depend on one’s point of view and on the army’s needs, it is clear that in the current debate on women’s military service we must give high priority to the principle of gender considerations.
The IDF is among the only armies in the world that conscripts women into its ranks under a mandatory draft law. Women served in the IDF upon its establishment in 1948, and in 1949 their service in the Women’s Corps –established by women officers who had served in the British army-- was anchored in the Defense Service Law. Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, gave two justifications for the decision to draft women to the IDF under a mandatory draft law. One was that mandatory service served the security needs of the young Jewish state, with these requiring everyone able to serve to do so. The other was the army’s commitment to the principle of social equality.
These two justifications are often seen as the underlying principles of the people’s army model according to which the IDF was established, and which continue to be a matter of almost complete consensus as to the relationship between the army and Israeli society. The view that women are drafted because the IDF is a people’s army and should therefore apply the principle of equality to all segments of society remains unchallenged, as does the approach which holds that security needs require that Israeli society’s man (and women)power potential be utilized to the fullest possible extent.
Yet despite the temptation to see the people’s army model as guaranteeing progress in promoting gender equality, this ethos does not always reflect the actual reality. As we will see, the fact that women are drafted on the basis of a mandatory draft law reflecting the people’s army model does not go very far toward guaranteeing them pro forma equality, to say nothing of equality on the ground. In this essay, I will list three factors that have impacted the integration of women in the IDF for many years, as well as on the decisions regarding opening up military units to them:
1. The perception of the IDF as a people’s army
2. Security needs
3. Social processes that contribute to, or undermine, gender equality
Women’s Conscription as an Obvious Matter
In October 1949, approximately a year and a half after the proclamation of the establishment of the State of Israel, the Institute for Applied Social Research conducted a poll asking the public whether it was in favor of equal rights for women, and indeed 92% were in favor. However, opinions were divided on the question of whether women should be drafted during peacetime (in other words, whether there should be mandatory conscription for women): 52.5% were in favor and 47.5% were opposed. Israel’s leaders, among them David Ben-Gurion, were unequivocal in this regard: Ben-Gurion believed that the state should both demand as much from women as from men, and at the same time---grant them equal rights.State of Israel, Institute for Applied l Social Research (October 1949). Public Opinion on… Drafting Women into the Army and Equalizing Women’s Rights, Publication 10 (Hebrew).
Yet despite Ben-Gurion’s firm stance regarding gender equality, at first women were allowed to serve in the army only as office workers, nurses, and teachers — positions traditionally perceived as feminine roles. It is interesting to note that despite this inherent discrimination, in the early days, the sense of mission and the motivation of soldiers in the Women’s Corps were relatively high — as demonstrated for example, by the poll conducted in September 1948 in the Women’s Corps Battalion 205, whose findings indicated that 93% of women soldiers reported being proud to belong to the Women’s Corps.
Expanding Women’s Army Service
The view according to which women belonged on the home front, and men-- on the front lines also prevailed after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a time of pronounced gender inequality, despite the fact that a woman was serving as prime minister at the time. During this time, women were excluded from playing a part in the three primary tasks of warfare: military defense, civil administration, and military production.Einat Lachover, “Women in the Six Days War through the eyes of the media.” Israel 13 (2008): 38. After the war, due to the need to build up its troops, the army adopted a new and expanded policy regarding women’s placement in military roles, enabling women to be trained for roles that, until that time, had been open only to men. The opening up of these new roles was based on the view that drafting women should free up men from positions on the home front, enabling them to participate in combat, and so--most of the training effort was directed toward positions such as instructors, drivers, aircraft mechanics, and communication jobs.
Nevertheless, we can identify far-reaching measures that were taken during those years regarding women’s military service, such as lifting the restrictions that had existed until then on women’s presence in combat areas, particularly over the border (1982), and removing the section of the Defense Service Law that listed the positions and roles closed to women (1987).On the relationship between this statistic and the issue of women taken prisoners, see Brig. Gen. Rachel Tevet-Wiesel and Lt. Col. Ariel Weiner, “Forward in spite of everything,” Ma’archot 456 (August 2014): 39 (Hebrew).
To sum up, from the day the IDF was established until the 1990s, commitment to women’s equality was expressed mainly in the mandatory draft for women and the anchoring of their conscription in law. But as for integrating them into units and the scope of positions open to them, the needs of the hour along with gender stereotypes regarding “feminine” roles, dictated the reality on the ground.
The Turning Point: The Alice Miller Case
For the most part, the IDF’s approach to women’s service can be divided up into two periods of time: the first---before the Alice Miller case (1995) — or more precisely, before the Defense Service Law was amended in 2000 following the High Court of Justice’s ruling on the case — and afterward. The significant difference between these two periods does not lie in the number of units that were opened up to women — a process that was accelerated once the ruling was issued — nor in the percentage of women who enlisted, which actually decreased. Rather, what changed was the motivation for integrating women into army units and the principle underlying the integration of women into the IDF and utilizing their potential to the maximum.
As noted, Alice Miller submitted her petition to the High Court of Justice when the army rejected her as a candidate for the pilots’ course because of her gender. The High Court of Justice ruled that women had the right to equality in their military service—both formally and on the ground, and that the army’s policy of barring them from service as pilots was unacceptable. Not surprisingly, this ruling had a profound effect on the various units that the IDF ordered opened to women, including those that until then had been an exclusively male monopoly. But the turning point created by the ruling was not just a matter of procedure. For all practical purposes, the court’s ruling ordered the IDF to integrate women into its ranks not only as a function of defense and security needs, but also based on the commitment to the principle of equality. This historic ruling sought to make it clear to the state that the principle of equality was not being upheld as long as the phrase "defense requirements” was cited; the principle of equality must, for the most part, take precedence. As Justice Tova Strasberg-Cohen wrote: “In the conflict between the value of equality and the value of national security and military needs, national security may be regarded as of higher-priority, notwithstanding the importance of equality. But national security is not a magic word; it does not take precedence in every case and under all circumstances, nor is it of equal weight for all levels of security and for every security threat.”HCJ 4541/94 Miller vs. Minister of Defense, 49(4) P.D. 94 (1995).
From the Ruling on the Miller Case to the Present Day
On January 1, 2000, following the High Court of Justice’s ruling on Alice Miller’s petition, the Defense Service Law was amended to state that every woman, just as every man, had the right to serve in any position in the army unless the inherent nature of the position required otherwise. The first new position to be opened to women was that of air force pilot. This was followed, gradually, by fourteen other positions such as naval officer, combat soldier in the Border Police, anti-aircraft combat soldier, soldier in the Caracal combat unit, and combat soldiers in the Combat Rescue, Evacuation and Airborne Medicine Unit.
Combat Positions Opened to Women, by Year:
Year Position
1995 Pilots
1996 Combat soldiers in the Border Police
1997 Combat soldiers in anti-aircraft units; naval officers
2000 Combat soldiers in the Caracal unit (the first mixed-gender combat unit); combat soldiers in the Combat Rescue, Evacuation and Airborne Medicine Unit; combat soldiers in the Artillery Corps
2001 Parachuting instructors
2003 Combat soldiers in the Oketz (canine) unit; battalion communications officers
2006 Combat soldiers in the field intelligence collection unit
2015 Combat soldiers in the Lions of the Jordan Valley unit
2017 Combat soldiers in the Lion of the Valley unit (the fourth mixed-gender battalion)
November 2018 The first five women were recruited to combat navy positions on “Yasur 6” missile ships. A sixth female soldier will join the other women at the end of basic training.
2019 A woman was appointed to the position of Commanding Intelligence Officer (Central Command)
2019 A woman was appointed Battalion Commander in a regular regiment (Northern Bashan Regiment)
May 2020 1st female Battalion Commander in artillery corps
The first mixed-gender infantry unit, Caracal, was established in 2004. Since then, the percentage of military roles open to women has increased steadily. In the 1980s, 55% of the positions in the IDF were open to women; in 1995—73%; and in 2005—88%, and since 2012, 92% of the IDF’s units have been open to women.Neta Moshe, “Women’s Military Service in the IDF.” Submitted to the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women. Jerusalem: Knesset Research and Information Center, May 2013 (Hebrew). See also: Meytal Eran-Jona and Carmit Padan, “Women’s Combat Service in the IDF: The Stalled Revolution,” Strategic Assessment 20 (4) 2018: 92. In addition, according to IDF statistics, the number of women combat soldiers in the infantry increased by 350% between 2013--2017, and the total number of women combat soldiers has increased sevenfold since 2005, as per the graph below.IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.
Concomitant with the increase in the percentage of women serving as combat soldiers, IDF officials report a decline in the percentage of women serving in clerical positions (Graph 2).From: A Special Survey: Women’s Service in the IDF. IDF Spokesperson’s Office, July 2009.
Alongside the expansion of roles open to women, the IDF has taken measures to change its overall approach to women’s military service. As a reflection of this change, the Women’s Corps was dismantled in 2001, and the position of Advisor to the Chief of Staff on Women’s Affairs was established in its place (its name was later changed to the Advisor on Gender Affairs). The position was established to reflect the view that there should be no specific gender-based treatment of women’s affairs; rather, that women soldiers—just as their male counterparts—should be subordinate to their commanding officers in every way, except when it came to dealing with characteristics unique to women. The unit’s role includes promoting equal opportunities for women in the IDF.A survey published by the IDF Spokesperson’s Office stated, in part: “Unlike the Women’s Corps, which to a large extent fixed the role of women in the army, the role of the chief of staff’s advisor on women’s affairs is to promote the conditions for equal opportunity, using the talents and abilities of women in the army to the fullest, and providing women serving in the army with an environment that is safe and free of discrimination” (A Special Survey: Women’s Service in the IDF. IDF Spokesperson’s Office, July 2009). Army officials saw this act as a significant milestone in shaping the approach to women’s integration in the army.
The committee charged with defining women’s service in the IDF over the next decade, headed by Maj. Gen. (res.) Yehuda Segev, published its report in September 2007. The committee established the principle of “the right person in the right place”, according to which “the abilities of men and women will be utilized to the fullest extent possible in service in an identical manner, according to objective criteria reflecting the army’s needs, and the energy, abilities, and personal traits of the conscripts, and not their gender.” The committee also stated: “No positions or units shall be categorically closed to women or to men.”From the Segev Committee Report.
Even though most of the Segev Committee’s recommendations were never adopted — due, among other things, to pressure from religious officials who opposed them — since the ruing on the Alice Miller case, commitment to gender equality has been the main motivation underlying the integration of women in the IDF. This holds true despite the fact that all agree that the decision to open up more units to women also stemmed from the army’s need for highly motivated recruits. Evidence of this may be found in the statement of Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi in 2009, when he mandated that the IDF, as a people’s army, give high priority to striving for and implementing gender equality.
In his statement, Chief of Staff Ashkenazi listed three motives for integrating women on an equal footing as men into the IDF: 1) Women must serve in the army because the IDF is a people’s army; 2) As a people’s army, the IDF is committed to the principle to the integration of women; 3) Women are integrated into the IDF as part of operational requirements that are vital for keeping the army strong and professional. Yet despite the obvious trend toward opening up the army to women, this equality is being challenged from new directions.
Defense Needs and the People’s Army: A Twist in the Plot?
In parallel to the opening up of more and more units to women following the High Court of Justice’s ruling on Alice Miller’s petition, the percentage of national-religious men in the officers’ ranks of combat units has increased, as has the percentage of ultra-Orthodox conscripts.See, for example, Yaniv Magal: Srugim Bakane: The Story of Religious Zionists’ Integration into the Army. Tel Aviv: Yedioth Ahronoth, 2016 (Hebrew). It became clear that conflict between the gender revolution in the IDF and the demands of religious male soldiers is unavoidable. For this reason, IDF officials ordered the development of regulations for joint service, with the intention being that these regulations would be anchored as standing orders. At first, in 2002, this order, which was known as the Proper Integration Ordinance, set the rules for separate living quarters and modesty restrictions, while also stipulating the rights of the religious soldiers, such as refraining from certain activities requiring being with women in close quarters. With the increase over time in the number of women’s’ complaints that this order was being interpreted in an offensive manner and was leading to discrimination against and exclusion of women soldiers, the order was suspended. After many versions, and while it still aroused a public uproar of rare magnitude, the order was updated and its final version issued in December 2017 as the Joint Service Ordinance. Its opening statement reads, in part, as follows:
“The purpose of the joint service policy is to meet the operational goal of the IDF and maintain unity in the military environment. It is based upon the fact that the IDF is the army of a Jewish and democratic state — and on the view of the IDF as a people’s army [emphasis mine], according to which soldiers of all types, religions, and ethnic groups serve in the IDF. The policy was established based on an official, egalitarian, and tolerant view, which is anchored in the values of human dignity and the spirit of the IDF.”
The profound debate on the ordinance, which evolved into a fight between the religious Zionist community and women’s rights organizations, was conducted simultaneously along two tracks: a formal track with IDF officials, and a second track that took the form of a large-scale, bitter public campaign. The uproar about the ordinance and the way that it was handled in the army is fascinating, and raises many questions and issues. Of particular interest is the fact that the campaign, led primarily by the national-religious sector, cited both factors — the model of the people’s army and defense needs, which had been the primary motivations for integrating women into the IDF when the state was established — as fundamental reasons to oppose the integration of women into various units. Time and again, the religious officials justified their opposition to the integration of women into operational units by stating that such integration, influenced as it was by radical feminist agendas, violated the principle of a people’s army and jeopardized the operational capabilities of the IDF and the defense of the state.
For example, one of the pamphlets distributed as part of this campaign stated: “The army is not a tool for promoting agendas, but rather –a people’s army.” Another booklet listed the values violated by the trend toward “joint service”.
Although IDF officials report that the Joint Service Ordinance has been updated for the last time, the uproar it caused has not subsided. Alongside clarifications about the IDF’s commitment to equality and its recognition of women’s role in the army’s functioning (as Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot said, “A cutback in women’s service will be detrimental to the IDF and its performance”)https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/514113 (accessed August 26, 2018)., army commanders have recently been making statements that seem to be dragging the IDF backward.
As far as views on women’s service, the two arguments that seem to underlie the integration of women in the IDF over the years—are the people’s army model and defense needs — with the emphasis on one or the other depending on personal points of view. They can be used at will as reasons to support egalitarian integration, or to oppose it. But the commitment to actual gender equality is the only commitment that keeps the idea of women’s integration in the IDF from backsliding — and it was this very commitment that the High Court of Justice cited in its historic ruling, informing the state that it also applied to the army and was not to be left at the gates of the induction center.
Milestones in Women’s Service in the IDF
1949 — The Defense Service Law, making army service compulsory for women, is passed. At the time this law was passed, the duration of military service was 30 months for men and 18 months for women. According to the law, women could ask to be released from the army on grounds of religion or conscience
1952 — Amendments made to the Defense Service Law listed positions open to women — 25 in all. The amendments also stated that women could volunteer for additional positions
1987 — The three permanent restrictions on women’s army service enumerated in the Defense Service Law, barring women from serving in combat roles, in positions in which conditions were not appropriate for women, and in positions that required physical strength, were abolished
1995 — Alice Miller’s petition is submitted to the High Court of Justice. The court rules that women have the right to equal opportunity, both formally and in practice, in their military service, and that the army’s policy of barring women from serving as pilots is invalid
1998 — Sheri Rahat, a combat navigator, becomes the first woman to graduate from the pilots’ course
2000 — An amendment is adopted in the Defense Service Law stipulating that every woman has the right, equal to that of men, to serve in any position during her army service unless the inherent nature of the position demand otherwise
2000 — Ora Peled becomes the first woman graduate of the naval officers’ course
2001 — The Women’s Corps is dissolved
2004 — The first Caracal Battalion is established
2007 — The Segev Committee report is published. The report establishes, among other things, that placement should be based on the principle of “the right person in the right place,” and states that no positions or departments shall be closed categorically to either women or men
2011 — The first woman is promoted to the rank of Major-General: Orna Barbivai, head of the Manpower Directorate
2014 — Or Ben Yehuda is appointed the first woman company commander in an infantry officers’ course
2016 — The title “Chief of Staff’s Advisor on Women’s Affairs” is changed to “Chief of Staff’s Advisor on Gender Affairs”
2017 — The Joint Service Ordinance is updated
2018 — A woman is appointed commander of a flight squadron for the first time
May 2020 — Chief of Staff's decision to extend pilot program integrating women in armored corps
November 2020 — The Supreme Court decided to allow four women to submit a petition for the IDF to allow female conscripts to serve in elite combat units. The Justices also asserted that the IDF must complete the work of the existing committee that is examining the integration of women into combat units.
Security and Democracy,
Equality,
Military and Society,
IDF,
IDF service,
exclusion of women,
Religious-Secular Relations,
The Decade in Review: Women’s Service in the IDF
MK Liberman: " If third elections are held the outcome will be different"
Israel needs a draft law that will uphold the principle of civic equality
The Erosion of the Status Quo in the Relations Between Religion & State in Israel
Non-Jewish Courts in the Jewish State
Adapting Israel's Education System for the Challenges of the 21st Century
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line50
|
__label__wiki
| 0.697698
| 0.697698
|
Wednesday, April 5 - Sunday, April 23, 2017
Anthony Hassett: Last Evenings on Earth
Anthony Hassett's life has been an unceasing and courageous half-century of philosophical inquiry, civil disobedience, defiance of existing socio-political structures, flagrant rebellion, and pursuit of the Real, of which his many ink, marker, and glaze drawings, that combine Hassett's powerful poetic voice with his equally powerful renderer's hand, reflect.
As an "angel-headed" adolescent, Hassett was among the last disciples of the Beats: the mid-century writers and artists whose work shared themes of spirituality, environmental awareness, and political dissidence. He left Venice Beach at the age of fifteen with his thumb pointing skyward. By the time he reached the classrooms of William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Hassett's early life was already one of uncompromised nonconformity, intentional obscurity, and above all, radiant poetry. His life continues to embody Marcuse' "Great Refusal", and has found him variously in jail cells with infamous political dissidents; in the salons of Nepalese poets; deported from Morocco; arrested in Athens; in detention by British military in caves beneath the Rock of Gibraltar; at dinner tables with famed writers and filmmakers in Rome, Paris, Istanbul, NY, and LA; and on the sofas of Chavistas, Panthers, and Weather Underground; in riots in Chile; at Marxist-Lacanian conferences in Berlin; in confinement in Frankfurt during the Chernobyl meltdown; in Beijing and Stockholm with Kung-Fu masters; at tango parlors in Buenos Aires; in Tahrir Square with a million Egyptians...
In recent years, Hassett struggled with late stage cancer, but continued to live his life by his terms: in perfect alignment with his belief system, fearlessly, poetically, and with limitless compassion. Despite his great physical discomfort, he maintained the highest level of grace: acknowledging and thanking, even bringing a smile or a laugh, to every nurse, doctor or human who briefly entered his realm-- just as he had with the many, many people he interacted with all over the world. He was a Bodhisattva among men, and, just as he lived by his terms, he died by his terms: at home, at the precise moment that the sun emerged from a glorious morning sky.
The opening on Sunday April 9, 2017, is an opportunity for the family and greater community to gather in memorial. This event is free and open to the public.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line54
|
__label__wiki
| 0.744672
| 0.744672
|
Mask Up! Don't Let Down Your Guard Against COVID-19
TUESDAY, June 30, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Even as the United States reopens, it's crucial that people wear face masks when they can't maintain proper social distancing, experts emphasize.
"While it's tempting to view [things] as being back to normal, that's simply not the case," said Dr. Patrick Gavigan, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Penn State Children's Hospital.
"The virus is still out there. We still have cases every day," he said in a Penn State Health news release.
In fact, 36 U.S. states are now seeing increases in COVID-19 infections, with Texas, Arizona and Florida posting record-breaking case counts in recent days. Much of that increase is being fueled by younger people testing positive for COVID-19, experts note. By Monday, the U.S. coronavirus case count passed 2.5 million as the death toll neared 126,000, according to a New York Times tally.
Wearing a face mask, social distancing and hand-washing are essential defenses against transmission of the coronavirus, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
Face masks or other face coverings are especially important because research shows that people become contagious before they start having symptoms or feeling ill. And some people who test positive never have symptoms.
But Dr. Ping Du said less than half the people she sees -- especially young adults -- are wearing a mask when they should be.
"Current cases indicate that more and more young people are getting the disease. Maybe they feel they're not at risk or they'll only get a mild form of the disease," said Du, associate director of the doctor of public health program at Penn State College of Medicine.
"For whatever reason, they're not wearing their masks. They might have mild symptoms or be asymptomatic, but they can pass COVID onto others who are at greater risk of getting sick. Everyone should be wearing masks," added Du.
Face masks should be worn by anyone 2 years and older whenever and wherever social distancing measures are not possible, the CDC advises.
"It's easy to get mask fatigue and fatigue from all of the COVID-19 restrictions across the nation," Gavigan said. "But we can't let our guard down. Masks right now and for the foreseeable future remain a key part in keeping us safe..."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19 protection.
SOURCE: Penn State Health, news release, June 2020
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line55
|
__label__cc
| 0.68328
| 0.31672
|
Free the Princess
Science fiction and fantasy books and other media
About Matthew
Deconstructing Men's Regency Clothing
The Regency era in the United Kingdom is the period from 1811 to 1837, from the time King George III was declared unfit to rule through the reign of his son, George IV, first as Prince Regent and then as King in his own right after his father's death in 1820. This is the era of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility, as well as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and other great literature. The literature of the period isn't my focus today, however. Rather, I'd like to pull apart the common dress of an upper-crust gentleman in the wider Regency era of fashion, which actually runs from 1788 to 1825.
My focus is on the upper crust because they were the only ones who would be able to afford the latest styles coming from London or Paris. Your average drover or textile worker would be lucky to get a quality shirt and trousers handed down several levels from the lord of the nearest manor. In detailing clothing of any particular period then, the best (and really only) recourse one has is to look at images of the upper classes.
The prototype of fashion for men in the early Regency period (1797 to 1810) is one Beau Brummel. In the image at left (Jessamyn's Regency Costume Companion), Brummel wears the standard tailcoat cut without a waist seam (all Victorian coats had waist seams), and you can see approximately two inches of his cream-colored waistcoat beneath. The U-shaped way the tailcoat was cut gave the hips their distinctive shape, and also created some bunching in the coat itself, which you can see if you look closely. The sleeves, as you can see, are extraordinarily long. Modern men's shirts and jackets are worn with the cuffs touching the wrist, but these cuffs hang about half-way down the hand. The coat itself would've been made from wool, fancy bengaline, or serge, and it was only the dark blue jackets that had gold buttons. Every other color of tailcoat had buttons the same color as the fabric. Note also the M-shaped lapels of the jacket.
The waistcoat Brummel wears here extends over the pants and slightly below the edge of the tailcoat. Gentlemen's waistcoats in this period would be made of wool, linen, or silk; with a single row of buttons and sometimes sharp collars. More often than not, the waistcoat would be of a brocade or similar pattern, even though solid-colored ones did exist.
A gentleman's shirt, however, would not have a long line of buttons. Rather, there would be a single button near the collar of the shirt, and a ruffle to cover the button when it was worn. A gentleman slipped his shirt on over his head, rather than buttoning it up in the Regency period. Shirts were made from linen or cotton.
To a proper gentleman, according to Brummel, the cravat was one of the most important parts of the outfit. There were easily a dozen different ways to tie a cravat, some very outlandish indeed. The work Neckclothitania (1818) described 14 distinct ways of tying a cravat, with the specific amount of starch, type of material, and color of cloth that should be worn with each. One of these tying styles was the Oriental, which was tied thus: "The Oriental made with a very stiff and rigid cloth, so that there cannot be the least danger of its yielding or bending to the exertions and sudden twists of the head and neck. -Care should be taken that not a single indenture or crease should be visible in this tie; it must present a round, smooth, and even surface - the least deviation from this rule, will prevent its being so named. This neck-cloth ought not to be attempted, unless full confidence and reliance can be placed in its stiffness.-it must not be made with coloured neck-cloths, but of the most brilliant white. It is this particular tie which is alluded to in the following lines. 'There, had ye marked their neck-cloth's slivery glow, Transcend the Cygnet's towering crest of snow.'" (The Regency Collection).
The breeches, worn here tucked into knee-high boots, were either buckskin or nankeen (a fabric originally acquired from Nanking, China). Buckskin was definitely the more common of the two, and nankeen was generally only used for summer wear. The front of the breeches were actually a flap of fabric affixed with buttons. You can see the edge of the flap beneath the curve in the jacket if you look closely; this is in stark contrast to the fly front of today. Breeches were generally light-colored, in contrast to the darker tailcoat, and didn't become fashionable for evening wear until later in the century.
Pants would come more into vogue as the century wore on, and between 1810 and 1825 really came more into prominence, as the image at right (again from Jessamyn) of Lord Grantham shows. How can you tell that Grantham is wearing pants? Look at the height of his boots. They're mid-calf length here, as opposed to Brummel's knee-high boots. If Grantham were wearing breeches, we would be able to see the ends of the legs with boots that low.
A word about boots as well -- good leather boots were essential for the gentleman of the Regency period, even when they went into town on business. According to Jessamyn, this reliance on boots as part of proper attire is the key thing that shows the roots of Regency fashion in the riding dress of the previous century.
Lastly, there's the accessories. Leather gloves, a top hat, and a cane were the proper accessories that no gentleman would be seen around town without. An aside: you might not see it in Grantham's picture, but by the time the 1820s rolled around, the common U-shape cut on the tailcoat had more or less been replaced by a straighter cut across the torso.
One very interesting note is that no Regency gentleman of any social standing would be seen without his coat on. There's an image of Hugh Grant lounging backstage at the filming of a movie version of Sense & Sensibility with his tailcoat off. It's useful so one can get a good look at the shirt sleeves common to the Regency period, but it's something that would never ever have happened during the actual Regency period. It would be a scandal if a gentleman was seen without his tailcoat on.
Now, I can kind of tell what you're thinking. What does talking about Men's clothes in the Regency period have to with Steampunk, seeing as Steampunk is a Victorian aesthetic and not a Regency one? Well, many of today's most formal apparel still has its roots in Regency fashion, and if you have an older man in a Steampunk alternate-history story set in 1865 in England (for example), then that gentleman would probably still wear Regency-style clothing. We see even today that older generations hold on to the clothes that were fashionable when they were young. A Victorian gentleman who came of age during the Regency period might do the same.
Posted by Matthew Delman at 3:51 PM 4 comments Links to this post
Labels: Steampunk Fashion
From Natural Philosopher to Scientist
Open the 1818 novel Frankenstein and, though the very plot of the story deals with science, the eponymous Victor is never referred to as a "scientist." This isn't because of a lack of scientific theories in the novel, far from it in fact, but rather because the term itself didn't exist until nearly two decades later. Englishman William Whewell, a gifted polymath and wordsmith, coined the word in 1833, four years prior to his book History of the Inductive Sciences. Whewell was a gifted wordsmith, and in fact suggested the words "anode" and "cathode" to Michael Farraday (one of the first researchers into electricity and batteries).
Prior to Whewell's creation of the term, those few men who investigated the world around them were known as either "natural philosophers" or "men of science." Even that's stretching the definition though, as natural philosophers tended to only craft theories and not perform rigorous experiments to prove their theories. Men placed in the pantheon of scientific achievement, such as Aristotle, saw no need to test their thoughts about the world. Instead they merely crafted the theories and let them stand as is. It wasn't until Alhazen's Book of Optics, written between 1011 and 1021 C.E., that a basic form of the contemporary scientific method was even introduced.
Fast-forward to the 1500s, when Francis Bacon championed inductive reasoning -- conclusions reached by experimentation -- that Europe slowly began getting on the proverbial bandwagon. Even then, the most common form of scientific inquiry was still the deductive reasoning of Aristotle. Bacon stridently rejected the a priori (independent of experience) reasoning that the Church carried through from the ancient natural philosophers and such famous Christian thinkers as Saint Anselm and Thomas Aquinas. Instead, he focused on empirically gathering information from the natural world.
"There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms: this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried."-- Francis Bacon
Of course, Bacon's methods didn't really begin to gain traction until Robert Boyle (of Boyle's law fame) wrote his 1686 work called A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature. Inductive reasoning quickly gained prominence after Boyle's work, even though the sciences remained lumped together under the phrase "natural philosophy."
It wouldn't be until around Whewell's time that the scientific method became its modern form, and scientific investigation took on a more divided form. It was actually Whewell himself, in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), that classified the field of scientific inquiry into the divisions we know today.
Whewell's classification of the sciences (from VictorianWeb.org)
This classification system, and Whewell's authorship of one of The Bridgewater Treatises, cement his place in the scientific pantheon. He also famously opposed the concept of Evolution, publishing an 1845 book called Indications of the Creator, which refuted Charles Darwin's theories.
You might perchance be wondering why this all matters to a writer of Steampunk fiction. Truth be told, it's more a matter for the writer of historical fiction set in the years before or immediately after 1833. But, seeing as a lot of Steampunk is alternate history, the fact that the word "scientist" didn't exist until Whewell came up with it is an important thing to note. You can't use the word "scientist" in a pre-1833 story because the word didn't exist then. Also, it wasn't until the 1830s that men of science began to specialize in a set discipline. In other words, it was excessively uncommon for someone to only study biology, or chemistry, or physics before Whewell's period.
Taking this to its (somewhat) logical conclusion, the splitting of science both during and after Whewell's active period means that the writer of alternate history Steampunk needs to take care with what time frame they set their story in. Even though the story is alternate history, that's no reason to use words that didn't necessarily exist in that timeframe, unless you can come up with a very good explanation (and really, "natural philosopher" serves perfectly well for "scientist" for pre-1830s stories. Gives you the writer more freedom.).
Labels: Steampunk Science
Changing Things Up (Yet Again)
I'm back from vacation, folks! Did you miss me?
I know I said my blog break would last a full two weeks, but I'd been sending an idea through the gears in my head while I was gone, and I wanted to get it out in the open (so to speak) as soon as possible.
Effective immediately, Tuesday posts on this blog will no longer be my Writing Thoughts. For that particular brand of musings, you'll have to visit The Secret Archives of the Alliterati every Wednesday. From here on out, you'll see all Steampunk all the time. So, without further adieu, here's my new posting schedule:
Monday: Steampunk Technology/Science/Industry
Tuesday: Steampunk Culture/Fashion/Architecture
Wednesday: Secret Archives Day
Thursday: Steampunk Books (both contemporary and classic)
Friday: Random Historical Nonsense/Whatever Comes Up
This will serve the dual purpose of focusing my blog more, and giving me a clearer idea of what the heck to post about each day in each place. Also, since Steampunk means (at least to me) the period between 1800 and 1920, you'll see a lot of posts about various real bits of history and how it's related to the genre.
Stick around for the ride. I promise I'll try to make it interesting.
Posted by Matthew Delman at 11:12 PM 3 comments Links to this post
Labels: Randomness
REPOST: The Crafting of a City Map
This post originally appeared on March 23, 2010.
My propensity for doing a lot of research is well-known across various people's blogs (and now on Twitter), but perhaps less well-known is my need to do a lot of background figuring because of this.
One of the criticisms I got from my fantabulous betas (you know who you are) was the lack of a sense of place/time differential when Moriah travels through the city of Callarion. The easiest way to fix this is to design a map of the city. However, one of the problems with doing such a thing is my lack of any drawing ability whatsoever. Instead of drawing that map then, I've decided to craft some background information on architecture and distances in various parts of the city.
This amounts to yet more research (and some unrepentant cribbing of real places) to craft the exact city map that I need in order to give the city its verisimilitude. So far, today, I've written capsules on Marketplace, Quayside, and Woodsedge (three districts of the city) and will at some point finish the ones on Lowtown, Academe, and Gardens Hill as well.
The map and geography that I'm using for Callarion borrows from three places -- Rome, San Francisco, and San Diego. San Fran and San Diego provided the proper winding coastline that I imagined, and Rome's Seven Hills provided the basis for what I kind of wanted to do terrain-wise (turns out Callarion's looking more and more like San Francisco by the minute, but that's beside the point).
What purpose does all this serve? Perhaps the biggest benefit to doing this is having a map means I don't accidentally place Thomas's shop in two different sections of Marketplace. It also means Gardens Hill consistently stays in the center of the city, and other landmarks start to gain more and more importance because they're located in a concrete place in the fictional city. Correction: the biggest benefit is that my distances stay the same. That's important, because I can't have Moriah cross Marketplace on foot at two different speeds. There lies inconsistencies my friend.
And I very much dislike being inconsistent (which is why I always like people to point out when I am). What about you, loyal blog readers? Do you craft maps of your settings? Or do you let it fly like Terry Pratchett, who's of the opinion that "You can't map a sense of humor"?
Posted by Matthew Delman at 7:00 AM 1 comments Links to this post
Labels: Background Information, Repost, Writing Thoughts
REPOST: Steampunk and Automatons
This post originally appeared on February 12, 2010.
Back in my post about cyborgs in steampunk, I mentioned that the Ancient Greeks had automatons. This is borne out by the historical record: Philo of Byzantium (3rd Century BCE) crafted an automaton maid that would pour water or wine when a cup was placed in its left hand.
The very word, automaton, is derived from the Greek word automatos -- "acting of one's own will." And, as so many cool advances that occurred in Greece during the time of the great inventors, the automatons were considered toys, religious tools to impress worshipers, or even as ways to demonstrate general scientific principles. Hero of Alexandria (who gets more press on this blog than any other inventor besides da Vinci) created siphons, a fire engine, and a programmable cart among other things as examples of his automaton skills.
There's a stanza from Pindar's Seventh Olympic Ode that refers to the island of Rhodes, well known for its proliferation of automatons:
The animated figures stand
Adorning every public street
And seem to breathe in stone, or
move their marble feet.
The Ancient Chinese also had automatons, as evidenced by this excerpt from Lie Ze:
"The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted."
Automatons have existed in the Middle East since the 9th Century CE, and are described in numerous texts from the time of Islamic scholarship. Al-Jazari, the famous Muslim inventor of the 13th Century, described a boat with four automatic musicians that he used to entertain partygoers. There was even an automaton duck in the 18th Century that mimicked digestion.
Suffice to say, automatons have existed for a really, really long time. What's this mean for the writer of steampunkery?
Playtime! Because the science of how to craft automatons has existed for so long, it's a well-documented method of adding robotics to your steampunk tale without applying too much modern science. Studying the texts of Signore da Vinci and those of Jacques de Vaucanson, the French inventor who crafted the aforementioned Digesting Duck, is a good start for more contemporary designs. Philo's automatic maid is well-documented via translations of his works, if you want to go more ancient.
George Mann's automatons in The Affinity Bridge are controlled via punch cards, if you want a literary example of how to do it. And The Difference Engine has an example of the Japanese Karakuri ningyō, which were designed in the 19th Century.
A tea-serving Karakuri, designed in 19th Century Japan, with the mechanism at right.
It functioned exactly as Philo's automatic maid did.
All you have to do, of course, is to make sure your automaton design makes sense. There's little worse than crafting some awesome technological advance and having it fall flat because the design isn't logical.
Labels: Repost, Robotics, Steampunk Technology
REPOST: The Affinity Bridge by George Mann
This post originally appeared on May 13, 2010.
The Affinity Bridge by George Mann can easily be called a blend of Urban Gothic, Detective Fiction, and Scientific Romance into the milieu that becomes Steampunk. Mann, who is the head of a major British SF/Fantasy publishing imprint, takes tropes from each of the three aforementioned genres, and has a grand old time twisting them into one mystery after another.
Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes, his brilliant assistant, are charged with the tracking down of an escaped automaton, the investigation of a series of strangulations attributed to a glowing policeman, and oh yes, the plague of revenants ravaging London's slums.
Newbury himself is a detective in the vein of Sherlock Holmes -- brilliant, logical, fascinated by the new steam technology spreading around England, and slightly addicted to drugs. Of course, the Holmes enthusiasts among us will correct me that Holmes wasn't actually addicted. He merely experimented.
The story itself is in 1901 London, with airships and other steam-powered and mechanical innovations spreading quickly around the nation. Queen Victoria is kept alive by a rudimentary life support device of bellows and mechanical workings, and is still very much in the thick of the action. Newbury acts on her orders and hers alone -- as an agent of the Crown he goes where the Empire wills him to go. And Hobbes follows behind him, partially to help, but also to make sure Newbury remains a loyal servant.
The "affinity bridge" of the title is a link that allows for transference of a human consciousness from a living person into one of the story's ubiquitous automatons. Newbury and Hobbes uncover the secret behind this act in a factory belonging to some automaton makers, who are also connected to the plague revenants (zombies). We have Urban Gothic from the fog of the slums and the "hidden city" therein, the Detective Fiction piece from Newbury and Hobbes' investigations, and the Scientific Romance from the dark use of technology in the form of the affinity bridge.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this novel is that it ends up being very Victorian in language and grammar. It's a fascinating choice for Mann to make, and one that actually ends up working quite well when you get into the swing of the novel. Mystery, action, science, and a breakneck pace ... what more could you want?
Labels: Repost, Steampunk Books
REPOST: Originality
This post originally appeared on November 25, 2009. Is it still plagiarism if I copy myself?
"Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright." -- Sam Seaborn, The West Wing Season 4, Episode 2 "20 Hours in America."
One of the banes of the writer's existence is the push to produce something that is fresh, new, and original. Some people actively try to write something truly original, and in fact purposely avoid anything even close to what they're attempting to compose.
I can't think of any artist (of any stripe) working in a vacuum that can produce something accessible to the general populace. Even the great epics of ancient history -- Gilgamesh, The Iliad, the creation of myths of Scandinavia and other nations to name a few -- came from rich oral traditions of these same stories. The Iliad and the Odyssey were even spoken for decades before someone wrote them down.
No worthwhile art, I feel, is "original" in the purest sense of the word, i.e. that nothing like it ever came before. Mozart, Stephen King, Archimedes of Syracuse, Leonardo da Vinci, and other artistic and scientific luminaries of the past how-ever-many thousand years of human history all had influences from somewhere. And yet we call the greatest among us "original thinkers."
Because they had the ability to synthesize what was available into something new. Leonardo da Vinci took concepts that already existed in the Renaissance and used them to design his inventions. Archimedes developed weapons of war that held back the Romans through experimentation and study. Stephen King's Dark Tower series was, by his own admission, based off a viewing of Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. And Mozart composed some of his most famous music -- The Marriage of Figaro among that -- while at court in Vienna, where he was exposed to other composers.
This process, synthesizing our influences, is how we create original works. Everything we write is influenced by something else. Accept that, and you'll be better equipped to make a story that shines with the one original element you possess.
Labels: Repost, Writing Thoughts
REPOST: Steampunk Aeronautics
I'm taking a two-week break from the blog. My official vacation starts Thursday, but I want to spend what free time I have this week working heavily on my various writing projects. Hence, you get a look back, on schedule, of my various posts on Steampunk, Writing, and etc. This post originally appeared on November 2, 2009.
Airships such as zeppelins, hot-air balloons, dirigibles, and blimps, which are collectively known as lighter-than-air aircraft, operate based on the principle of buoyancy. The principles of buoyancy were first described by Archimedes (the genius Greek as I call him), and are also the reason why ships float and submersibles sink.
Now, the three above types of airships are also called rigid (zeppelin), semi-rigid, and nonrigid (blimp). The first manned flight of any airship, though the buoyancy concept is several thousand years old, came about in 1783 when the Montgolfier brothers (Joseph and Etienne) flew their hot-air balloon over their hometown of Annonay, France.
The Montgolfiere balloon, 1783.
According to About.com, the first passengers were a sheep, a goat, and a duck. The history of using animals as test pilots goes back quite a bit, apparently. In October 1783, Pilatre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes became the first human passengers in the Montgolfiere balloon; the balloon was in free flight during that October journey, meaning that it wasn't tethered to the ground.
Subsequent advances added flaps to control the balloon's flight (Jean Blanchard, 1785), and crafted a silk balloon that was filled with hydrogen gas (Jacques Charles, 1783) instead of the superheated air that filled the Montgolfiere balloon.
Blanchard's hydrogen balloon with flaps, 1785
These early balloons couldn't be navigated very well (at all really), and several advances were made to improve that aspect of their design. One of the first was adding an air screw that operated similar to a rudder on a ship; the balloon's shape was also elongated into the cigar that we know today.
Steam power as a method of propulsion and navigation came into play in 1852, when Henri Giffard's dirigible was the first to add the system onto an airship. Giffard's invention flew from Paris to Trappes, a distance of 17 miles, but didn't have enough power to fly against the wind in order to make the return journey.
Giffard's airship, 1852
The top speed of Giffard's airship was 5 miles an hour, which was the top speed until Brazilian Albert Santos Dumont crafted his gasoline-powered airships in the late 1890s. Airships, for lack of a better phrase, really took off after Dumont's innovations.
In 1900, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a German count, designed and flew the first successful rigid airships. His designs were so successful that rigid airships are commonly called Zeppelins in his honor. It's these rigid airships that figure strongly into steampunk, sometimes with elaborate designs as seen in the Girl Genius online comic (Castle Wulfenbach) and in other literature in the same genre (Keith Thompson's War Zeppelin).
The LZ-126, USS Los Angeles, 1924
The above photo is of one of the Zeppelins that were ubiquitous before the 1937 Hindenburg disaster that pretty much ended the commercial use of lighter-than-air aircraft.
Because of this, in fact, one of the easiest ways to show that you're writing steampunk is to include zeppelins zipping across the skylanes or other aerial vessels that aren't airplanes, helicopters, or gliders.
For design considerations, take a look back at the Steam's Limitations Series.
Labels: Repost, Steampunk Technology
New Project (Because I'm Crazy, Apparently)
So as if writing a Steampunk short story, an academic research article on Steampunk, and a Steampunk novel wasn't enough to keep me busy, I've today (upon coercion from L.T. Host and suggestion by Gail Gray) decided that I'm going to write a non-fiction primer for anyone wishing to write a Steampunk story in any way, shape or form.
The primer will contain, but isn't limited to, the following topic areas:
Major Industries
Factory Conditions
Design of Homes
City Layout
Layout of Homes
Republics
Speech Patterns
Backslang
Slang of the American West
I'm planning on using Steampunk novels of all stripes, and the research I've done for this blog, as a jumping-off point for putting this sucker together.
Why am I telling you about this, loyal blog readers? Well, because I'm curious as to what you'd want to see in a book like this. Is there a particular topic area you'd love to see covered? Something on my list you think should be struck?
Truth be told, you're the reason I'm putting this together. I know there's an interest in Steampunk in place, and I want to contribute the knowledge I've gained over the past year to help further the aspirations of Steampunk novelists everywhere.
Labels: The Steampunk Primer
Resources on the Victorian Era (and Steampunk)
When I talk about the Victorian Era, most people think I'm limiting myself to England. This is partly true, but partly a misnomer as well. The phrase "Victorian Era," for me at least, refers specifically to the events of world history that happened during Queen Victoria I's reign (and what a reign it was). It also refers to specific cultural changes that went on in the latter part of the 1800s across the Industrialized nations.
I limit myself to the Industrialized nations for two reasons: Friend-of-the-blog Ay-leen the Peacemaker has the market cornered on non-Eurocentric Steampunk at the blog Beyond Victoriana, and the requirements of the Steampunk aesthetic almost forces one to pay more attention to the Industrialized nations. Ay-leen will disagree with me, but that's why Beyond Victoriana is so epically awesome. If you're not reading that blog, then you definitely need to. (Ay-leen will also do some guest posts here in a few weeks.)
Anyway, since I first began writing CALLARION AT NIGHT more than a year ago, there have been several websites that have been my go-to sources for Steampunk and Victorian Era information:
Victoriana Magazine -- Kind of an ad-heavy website, but if you want a good resource in terms of furniture, fashion, and general Victorian society then this is the place to go.
VictorianWeb -- This is a very intense research experience; the fine folks at this site have detailed pretty everything you need to know about the Victorian Era in England in one fell swoop. They've also got very detailed sections on primary sources in every topic area on their site. It's helped out of innumerable tough spots to get the sense I want.
About.com's Age of Invention page -- From Benjamin Franklin, through James Watts, and the rest of the manic innovations that peppered the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries, the About.com page on the Age of Invention has showcased a whole heck of a lot about the inventions that flavor the world of Steampunk.
The Computer History Museum -- Charles Babbage theorized the Difference and Analytical engines in the 1820s. At the Computer History Museum's website, you can learn all about the innovations that led us straight into the Computer Age. This includes Babbage, punch cards, and all the other assorted mechanical computer goodness.
Wikipedia -- As a launching point for research, there's few sites better than Wikipedia. Yes, it's user-generated content, and yes it's notoriously unreliable for certain topics, but all that knowledge in one corner of the Internet is astounding.
Gentleman's Emporium --Dozens of photos of actual clothing worn in the 1800s and early 1900s. They also have a Steampunk section, with minimal outfits but certainly enough to get the creative juices flowing. As an added bonus, there's an Old West section for anyone who wants to write Steampunk set in the American West.
The National Maritime Museum (London-based) -- They've got ship plans, weapons of the 19th Century, and all sorts of other fun bits of information you can make use of to suss out your military's culture. Or that of your tyrannical government.
Crabfu Steamworks -- The innovator behind this site is brilliant. I'm not even talking slightly brilliant; I'm talking genius-level. He's designed and built a whole mess of radio-controlled Steampunk vehicles and showcases them on his site here. It's also the place I found resources on how to draw Steampunk tech. His Lobster tank influenced my Turtle tank quite a bit.
And lastly, though this is a new resource, I have to give props to my Twitter friends. You want to talk random knowledge? The folks on there have it in spades. I've asked questions on corsets, the proper use of a grappling hook, gunshot wounds, etc -- you name it, there's probably someone on there who knows the answer.
Posted by Matthew Delman at 10:54 AM 7 comments Links to this post
Labels: Random Historical Nonsense, Research
Mainspring by Jay Lake
Mainspring (2007) is Jay Lake's third novel, and his first offering to the Steampunk subgenre. Like Boneshaker, Soulless, and The Difference Engine, Lake's offering to the subgenre is an alternate history. However, unlike those stories, the point of divergence with our world occurs at the very moment of Creation.
God, called the Tetragrammation in Mainspring, created the world as a giant clockwork mechanism placed on brass tracks. There's an Equatorial Wall that splits the industrialized Northern hemisphere from the agrarian Southern hemisphere, and the tracks that lead the Earth around the lamp of the sun run along it. The Mainspring of the title is the mechanism at the center of the world, which needs to be rewound or disaster will strike.
The story opens with the archangel Gabriel's visit to one Hethor Jacques in New Haven, Connecticut. Gabriel informs Hethor that the mainspring of the Earth is winding down; he charges Hethor with finding the Key Perilous and rewinding the spring before disaster strikes. This is the same action that the Brass Christ (Jesus) performed centuries ago prior to his horofixion (crucifixion) on a wheel and gears. In fact, the wheel-and-gears and not the crucifix are the symbols of Christianity in the Mainspring universe.
The story itself is a classic example of the Hero's Journey blended into a Christ-like, messianic tale. That Hethor will succeed in rewinding the mainspring is never in doubt, and the message of the story seems to be that if God wants you to accomplish a task then by-gum you're going to accomplish that task.
There appears to be some token conflict from the Rational Humanists, a group that wants the mainspring to wind down so humanity can be free, but Hethor never gets into a situation where you think he might fail. There's not even a sense that the "DISASTER!" of the mainspring actually stopping is a real possibility.
The most interesting thing about this story, I find, is the Steampunking out of Christianity. Lake actually makes Intelligent Design theory interesting by making the gears of creation visible for everyone to see. There's no question in Lake's universe that God exists. I mean, look at the brass tracks the Earth runs along around the lamp of the sun. That there are still people who doubt the existence of God in that mechanistic world, even when the evidence is right in front of their faces, is absolutely fascinating.
Also, and this is kind of cool, Lake actually Steampunks the Lord's Prayer:
“Our Father, who art in Heaven
“Craftsman be thy name
“Thy plan be done
“Forgive us this day our errors
“As we forgive those who err against us
“Lead us not into imperfection
“And deliver us from chaos
“For thine is the power, and the precision
“For ever and ever, amen. (102-03)"
That is ten different kinds of awesome, that Lake decided to go full-tilt and Steampunk out a major world religion. Even if Hethor Jacques isn't that interesting of a character, or is in any real sort of danger at all, I'd suggest reading Mainspring purely to get a sense of the sheer scale inherent in wholesale alteration of a religion to fit your fictional universe's worldview.
Labels: Jay Lake, Steampunk Books
The Influences on My Writing Style
Last night on Twitter, I was bemoaning the fact that I couldn't come up with a post for your regularly scheduled Writing Thoughts segment. Then, lo and behold, the talented Cynthia Reese suggested I talk about my writing influences. I figured: "what the heck, I've got nothing else to discuss." And besides that, if you're reading this collection of random ramblings you might want to know about who I can think can rub two words together the best. (Then again maybe not, but I'm nearing 100 followers and figure I've got some breathing room.)
To say my writing influences are many and varied is kind of like saying Thai food is spicy. If you've never tried Thai food, you really really need to. Pad Thai is my favorite dish -- with peanuts and shrimp and rice noodles -- oh so very good. Excuse me while I clean the drool off my keyboard.
Anyway, in the interest of time (and word count), I'm limiting myself to the five major authors that I can say most influenced my style. The reason for this is mostly because these are the authors that I've read multiple books from; every book I've read influenced me, but these five writers more so than others. So here goes:
Glen Cook
Glen Cook is well-known among fantasy readers as the author of The Black Company series of books, among other military fantasy stories. His recent series, The Instrumentalities of the Night, takes place in a world torn apart by religious factionalism and battling against the forces of the Old Gods for control of civilization. The Night, in this context, is the darkness of the Old Gods and their agents.
Cook's fantasy has been described as "Vietnam War fiction on peyote" by several reviewers, and is some of the sparest, tautest writing you'll ever see in a fantasy novel. Heck, the only reason you even know you're reading a fantasy story is because he talks about gods and magic. Pull Else Tage, the hero of the Instrumentalities books, out and drop him in Arabia of the Middle Ages and boom you've got historical fiction.
I've borrowed a lot of Cook's sparse writing style, particularly for fight scenes and for my more militaristic characters. He's one of those authors who's never written a massive bestseller, and yet has quietly changed the face of fantasy fiction irreversibly.
David and Leigh Eddings
The husband and wife team of David and Leigh Eddings wrote the Belgariad and Mallorean cycles -- both about ancient prophecies and how sometimes no matter what you do the prophecy comes true. Their characters carry a uniformly biting wit and refuse to let the main character get away with any sort of childish silliness. Their characters Belgarath the sorcerer and his daughter, Polgara, served as both guides and "controllers" for the main character of both novels -- Garion, who was Polgara's many-times great nephew, and Belgarath's many-times great grandson.
The Eddingses created one of my all-time favorite redeemed hero characters too -- a thief named Althalus, who ended up saving his world from a dread god's servants with the help of the goddess of fertility (who would later become his wife).
Most every fantasy fan has read either The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings or C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia as their introduction to the genre. I'm no different. Tolkien was my first introduction into the wonderful world that fantasy opened up, and I've never looked back. If you want a world of brave warrior kings and hallowed halls of ancient law standing against encroaching darkness, then you could do much worse than Tolkien's Middle-Earth.
King's The Dark Tower series has offered a lot of the dark flavor my writing's taken on in recent years. Prior to when I started reading those stories, I tried to focus too strongly on the "good" side of the good guys and on the "bad" side of the bad guys. Now, after reading those stories, I find myself much more interested in the darkness and light that all sides have.
You'll notice that Moriah, my heroine in CALLARION AT NIGHT, is not the nicest person in the world. She's been betrayed one too many times to keep putting herself out there, or so she thinks, and keeps people at an arm's distance through her (admittedly) bad attitude. She is a hero though, and will do heroic things to save those that need it. Like Roland Deschain, except without the whole letting a boy die because saving him would deter you from your goal thing.
And now we come to the grandmaster of humorous fantasy. Pratchett's Discworld novels are some of the few that I reread over and over again. He lovingly skewers the tropes of fantasy and science fiction, with a skill borne only from someone who knows the styles and cliches backwards and forwards. His sarcastic brilliance has influenced my own snarky characters, and I plan on using Ponder Stibbons as a basis (along with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who) for the revamped hero of SON OF MAGIC.
I thought I could write mystery stories for awhile, and for that I place the blame squarely at Sir Conan Doyle's feet. I devoured the Sherlock Holmes stories when I was younger, loving every adventure of Holmes and Doctor Watson. Still now, if you hand a book that even obliquely attempts to mimic the Sherlock Holmes stories I will read it quicker than you can say Banana Biscuit.
Conan Doyle's sparsity and logical thrust had a massive influence on my own. Because of his writing, probably more than any other, I find myself leaving out more details than I put in. Of course, later authors have helped to mitigate that tendency. In particular, King, Cook, and Pratchett have crafted tremendously vibrant worlds. In fact, it was Pratchett's detailed description of how much food Ankh-Morporkians consume on a daily basis that really struck home how hard it was to create a fictional city (I think it was in Night Watch he did this; unfortunately I don't have the book in front of me).
So there you go, dear readers, the five primary influences on my writing style. Other authors that I've adopted things from have included Cherie Priest, Simon R. Green, Jim Butcher, China Mieville, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Gail Carriger, and Brian Jacques. And then of course there's the fantastic writers, both pubbed and unpubbed, that I've met through the blogosphere. There are far too many to name.
Posted by Matthew Delman at 7:58 AM 11 comments Links to this post
Labels: Writing Influences
Steampunk Mass Communications
A lot of Steampunk takes place in the latter half of the 19th Century, or possibly the very early days of the 20th. As such, one of the things that takes prominent position -- especially for those stories in the 1890s/1900s -- is the concept of improved mass communication. In The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, which takes place in the 1850s, mass communication innovation takes the form of a machine that can slap handbills up on walls while the worker rides in comfort inside the body of the machine.
In terms of historical innovations, there are several inventions that improved mass communications far beyond what it was for hundreds of years. These include the telegraph, the radio, and improved printing presses as some of the primary changes happening in the 1800s. In the early portion of the 1800s, we also see the invention of the postal system in Britain and the first stamps issued in 1840 -- invented by a schoolmaster named Rowland Hill. Hill was also the first one to design a system where the price of post was determined by weight instead of size.
Samuel Morse invented the electrical telegraph in 1837 while working at New York University as an artist. Yes, Samuel Morse was an accomplished portrait painter, and worked at NYU teaching students how to paint while he also perfected his design for the telegraph. He would eventually receive patents from both the United States government and European nations, and permission to build telegraph lines linking major cities around the world.
In 1843, after receiving permission to connect Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland, Morse first attempted to lay telegraph wires underground using a machine designed by Ezra Cornell (the founder of Cornell University). However, experiment soon showed that the underground method was unacceptable. Thus, we see Morse deciding to string the wires along poles. Eventually, telegraph wires would become such an integral part of communications in the United States that the Native Americans cut the lines in order to effectively disrupt any and all communication between outposts.
Newspapers also took a quantum leap forward during the mid- to late 1800s. The New York papers realized that the telegraph would change the way people communicated, and were thus early adopters of the technology. Also at this time, we see Robert Hoe's invention of a double-cylinder, steam-powered printing press that exponentially increased the number of broadsheets a newspaper could print. Then, in 1845, his son Richard developed the rotary press. This steam-driven rotary press could produce 100,000 newspapers per hour, a 250 times improvement over traditional hand-cranked presses.
A second, but no less important, innovation that affected newspapers and communication in general was the typewriter. For the first time, people didn't have to rely on hand-written documentation (which as we all know can be nigh unreadable depending on penmanship). In 1868, Christopher Latham Sholes, in collaboration with Samuel Soule and Carlos Glidden, invented the first usable typewriter.
However, the initial machine was prone to mistakes and could break easily. Eventually James Densmore, an investor, bought Soule and Glidden out, and he and Sholes built several machines in succession to perfect the device. Densmore and Sholes offered the machine to Remington in 1873, who would eventually purchase the patents after the machine was perfected.
By the 1880s then, we have the telegraph, the improved printing press, and an actual postal system that are connecting the world. Move into the 1890s and the early 1900s, and we see Guglielmo Marconi and the invention of wireless telegraphy, which would change the communications landscape yet again. (But that's an entirely different post).
Anyway, what does all this mean for Steampunk? Well, it means several things. First off, you've got a vast array of communications technologies to play with. No television yet, but motion pictures arose in the late 19th Century, and Gibson and Sterling had a kinotrope that was used as a rudimentary projector for presentations.
As with most Steampunk then, you can take these inventions -- printing presses, radio, telegraphs, etc -- and turn them into some sort of entertaining blend of mechanics to craft an innovation that makes sense for your world. Case in point: in CALLARION AT NIGHT, there's a device called a Wireless Aetheric Communicator. Could I have called it a radio? Probably, but that wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining.
Labels: Steampunk, Steampunk Technology
Karl Marx and His Theories
Hal Draper (1914-1990), who was a leading Karl Marx scholar in the U.S., once remarked that "there are few thinkers in modern history whose thought has been so badly misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike." Draper's magnum opus, in fact, was a complete and total re-evaluation of Marxist theory based on extensive study of the writings of both Marx and Friedrich Engels. He eventually postulated the theory of "socialism from below" -- from the working class -- as perhaps the purest form of Marxism.
Karl Marx was born in Prussia in 1818, the son of a lawyer who converted from Judaism to Lutheranism in order to advance his career. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all that's known about Marx's childhood. He was married in 1843 to Jenny von Westphalen. The couple had seven children, but only three survived to adulthood. Perhaps the most interesting part of Marx's life is that his main source of support was from Engels, who drew an ever-increasing income from the family business in England. Marx supplemented this income by writing weekly articles for the New York Daily Tribune for a short time in 1851.
Marx's theories on social evolution were based on several things (from Wikipedia):
Hegel's dialectical method and historical orientation;
the classical political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo;
French socialist and sociological thought, in particular the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier;
earlier German philosophical materialism, particularly that of Ludwig Feuerbach
the solidarity with the working class of Friedrich Engels
Marx eventually composed what became known as a "materialist conception of history." This idea is based on the thought that humanity enters into a series of certain productive relations throughout different eras. These relations involve hunting and gathering, master and serf, capitalist and laborer, etc, which then give rise to a certain form of social consciousness. "He maintained that: 'It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. . . .' (VictorianWeb.org)
One of the more interesting things about Marx is that he advocated social revolution of the masses to move toward his ideal society. He recognized capitalism as a necessary historical step, but did not see it as sustainable because it took too many things from too many people while giving too much to too few. Marx envisioned socialism as the first step after capitalism, where the government allocated resources to everyone and then, when the government was no longer needed, it would disband.
Human nature, however, very much gets in the way of this process. People in power tend to like being in power, and thus make many moves that keep them there. For object lessons, take a look at the numerous "Marxist" governments around the world today. Marx himself was disgusted by these variations on his work, and refused to acknowledge them as anything less than pedantic tripe.
In fact, Marx wrote letters in 1883 "to the French labour leader Jules Guesde and to Paul Lafargue (Marx’s son-in-law) — both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles — accusing them of 'revolutionary phrase-mongering' and of denying the value of reformist struggle (Wikipedia)." These letters gave rise to the now-famous declaration that "If that is Marxism, then I am no Marxist."
What does the study of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and their theories offer to Steampunk writers? Flavor more than anything, particularly for those writers who play in First-World Steampunk. Seeing as Marx was a prominent thinker during the timeframe, his socialist thoughts would be read by quite a few people. Maybe even some would be attempting implementation of the theories.
Of course, as with any political theory, the more interesting side for writers is how it can go wrong rather than how it can go right.
Labels: Karl Marx, Random Historical Nonsense
A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! By Harry Harrison
Published also as Tunnel Through the Deeps, Harry Harrison's alternate history about the 1970s, A Translatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! was first serialized in Analog magazine beginning in April 1972. With Michael Moorcock's Nomad of the Time Streams series, this is one of the first novels to be considered Steampunk in tone.
Like Moorcock's Warlord of the Air, Harrison's A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! takes place on a world parallel to our own. On Harrison's fictional world, the American Revolution was halted in its infancy and George Washington executed as a traitor to the Empire. However, where many writers would mark that as the point of divergence between our world and the world of the story, Harrison's divergence point occurs several centuries earlier than the late 1700s.
Harrison postulates that Spain never emerged as a world power because the Moors were never booted from the Iberian peninsula. He accomplishes this by having the Moors win the Battle of Navas de Tolosa in 1212. Because of this, the Catholic states in Spain never allied under Aragon and Castille. This then extended to Columbus never getting his funding for the cross-Atlantic voyage in 1492 and left the way open for John Cabot to discover America instead.
This would eventually translate into Britain dominating both North and South America, and creating a worldwide empire of such power and magnitude that it could do pretty much whatever it wanted. From Harrison's 1976 article explaining the genesis of the story:
"Now the idea of the transatlantic tunnel became exciting -- and possible. With the English explorers opening up all of South, Central and North America, as well as India and all the rest, the power of the empire would have been incredible. The African colonies of the other European colonists could be picked off one by one if needs be. If the European countries united early enough they might have stopped the growing British strength, but in my book they never got around to it. Divide and rule is the name of the game, so the European states still exist and monarchy is the rule, with all the royal families united -- as they once were -- and the power of Britain behind each one if needs be."
With this newfound strength on the part of Britain, can you see why the American Revolution failed so utterly in Harrison's world? Which of course immediately brings up the hero of the novel -- Augustine Washington, the descendant of George, who wants to clear his ancestor's name. Gus works with Sir Isambard Brassey-Brune, the descendant of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, on the project of building a Transatlantic tunnel between the heart of the Empire and its far-flung North American colonies.
The story is Neo-Victorian in that it takes Victorian ideals and technologies and places them squarely in the 1970s. Harrison discovered the novel had to be this way based on research he did over the course of a five-year period. He also figured out that he couldn't write a Victorian novel straight, and thus had to make it either humorous or at the very least a parody. Except ... according to the people in the fictional world, the novel would be taken at face value. We, on the other hand, would laugh at the differences -- the burned-out Mount Vernon and the paltry Washington house next to it, secondary characters such as detective Richard Tracy and the minor Royal British Intelligence executive J.E. Hoover.
Through the course of the story, we see coal-powered flying machines among the vast array of late Victorian high technology that makes up part of the Steampunk aesthetic. In addition, we also have a classic tale of engineering that fits quite nicely in with the science aspect of Steampunk novels. As a result of this, and the language of the novel, Harrison fits into the proto-Steampunk canon quite nicely.
Labels: Harry Harrison, Steampunk Books
How I Know What Preserved Frog Guts Taste Like -- My Embarrassing Moment
I place all the blame for this squarely at the feet of one of four women -- Kari Lynn Dell, Tawna Fenske, Susan Adrian, or Linda Grimes.
So, Tawna and Susan today posted on their blogs about some of their most embarrassing moments. Tawna's moment about throwing up in her underwear was pleasantly hysterical, and Susan's rapid-fire embarrassing stories had me fairly well laughing the whole way through. Since Kari Lynn Dell suggested we make it a blog tour, I figured "what the heck? I have no shame left anyway."
Picture, if you will, me in seventh-grade science class. That was the year that we did our first dissections -- Life Sciences was the intro to Biology, which we took sophomore year -- and one of the assignments was to dissect a preserved frog.
Well, yours truly being the awkward smarty-pants 13-year-old that he was, was plugging along with his group pinning back and cutting free the pieces of the frog. I've always loved doing dissections (kind of morbid, I know, but this me we're talking about).
So there I am, awkward, trying to impress the girls in my group (Again: I was 13), and we get assigned by the teacher to blow air into the frog's lungs so we can see them inflate. We were to insert an eye-dropper down the frog's throat and blow. My team chooses me to blow into the eye-dropper, and so we shove the eye-dropper down the frog's gullet.
I take a deep breath and blow, only to have nothing happen. What did I do next you might ask? Take my mouth away, inhale another deep breath and try again, right?
Weeell ... you're half right.
I did take another deep breath. But I ... umm ... kind of forgot to take my mouth off the end of the eye-dropper.
Lo and behold, I get a full-on mouthful of preserved frog guts. Two things happened next -- I hear an "ewwww" from the girls, and I run out of the room to scrub my tongue clean of frog guts. Then I had to go back to class and well, yeah, suffice to say that if the girls in my class already thought me a dweeb they now also thought me a gross dweeb.
And that's just my favorite embarrassing moment out of the myriad in my repertoire.
Posted by Matthew Delman at 4:46 PM 12 comments Links to this post
Labels: Blog Tour, Blogs
REPOST: Books vs. Movies
This post on the differences between books and movies based on books originally appeared on July 20, 2009. I'm reposting it now because I've been thinking about this again lately, and wanted to reference it without rehashing my thoughts (which haven't changed).
I saw the newest Harry Potter movie yesterday, and I got to thinking afterward about the differences between books and movies. J.K. Rowling's books are a perfect guinea pig here because both the books and movies are wildly popular, so a wide swath of the population will see the movies after reading the books and go "wait a second here, they cut x, y, and z out."
That's enough of a lead-in I think, so onto the discussion (read: my thoughts). Books are, by their nature, more detailed than movies. Think about it ... a movie can be at most 2 to 2 1/2 hours long. Any lengthier and people tend to stop paying attention (Lord of the Rings notwithstanding) and begin wondering when they're going to be able to go home. These same people may happily spend 12 hours reading a book however, and there's usually enough detail in the really good stories to keep the average reader entertained for at least that long, between the multiple subplots and supporting character motivations that thread most novels.
Movies can focus on one, maybe two storylines at any given point. Books can have as many subplots and tangents as you the writer can shove into 300 pages, and have those subplots be woven into the fabric of the main story. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the novel does this several times: Remus and Tonks' romance, Fleur and Bill getting engaged, Harry and Ginny getting together, Kreacher is gone, so is anything about 12 Grimmauld Place, and an entire bit with Dobby gets lost. The scriptwriter of the movie decided, rightly, that we want to mostly see the story directly involving the Golden Trio. But to do that, the scriptwriter was forced to cut out huge swathes of the book, losing a lot of the rich characterization those subplots afforded.
Side note: Joe Queenan over at The Guardian wrote an article recently about movie novelizations and how they work (link taken from Pimp My Novel -- thank you Laura and Eric!).
I'm not saying books are better than movies, and if this post came across that way I apologize. Both forms of storytelling have their pros and cons, and there's something magical about watching your favorite books come to life on the big screen (anyone else think Dumbledore looked cool in the scene with the Inferi?) that can't be described. So in the end, movies made from books will almost inevitably leave things out in order to translate the story from one medium to another.
Doesn't mean it's bad. Just means it's different.
Labels: Books, Harry Potter, Movies, Writing Thoughts
What is This Thing Called Steampunk Anyway?
Steampunk, in its most simple definition, is a type of fiction that places contemporary technology in the Victorian Era with Coal (and thus Steam) as the primary power source instead of Gas or Electricity.
Wikipedia defines it as "works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used — usually the 19th century, and often Victorian era Britain — but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy." Mike Perschon, The Steampunk Scholar, calls it "an aesthetic that mixes elements of technofantasy, and neo-Victorian retrofuturism."
At Free the Princess, I subscribe to both definitions. Defining Steampunk isn't my concern though: telling you the information needed to write it is. And here I give you this practical literary guide to writing Steampunk. The guide may occasionally deviate into commentary on events in the community, but hopefully not too often.
Visit The Steampunk Writers Guild
The Secret Society of the Allierati
Oh yeah ... we're here
Visit Steampunk Empire
Fellow Writers (and Authors)
A Walk In My Shoes
Stephanie Thornton
Author's Echo
Finding What Works for You
My Life Is (In) A Zoo
Life Update: The Title of This Blog No Longer Applies (Sort Of) Edition
The Public Query Slushpile
QUERY: THE TALISMANS OF SUMER
My Daley Rant
My Unprofessional Bio
Natalie Bahm
Your Unique Writing Journey
Laura's Simple Pleasures
Thoughtful Thursday: A Slew of Firsts in Yellowstone
C'MERE says K. Marie Criddle
It's the most wonderful time of the COUGH HACK..I'm okay...
Bane's Blogging Blues
Stephanie Damore
Update time!
The Literary Lab
Unhinged...Seriously
RENEE PINNER
One Mystake at a Tyme
A dead man fell from the sky...
Fellow Aetheric Travelers in Steampunk
Alex Keller
Author Gail Carriger - Hail the Victorious Parasol
Caught in the Cogs
Dr. Johann von Lithos
Mystice Pieces: Time Traveling Jewelry
S.S. Icarus
Steam Century
Steampunk Empire
Steampunk Scholar
The Wandering Legion
The WriteRunner
Tom Slatter
Matthew Delman
William F Hayek
The Concept Market
conceptmarket
The Secret Archives of the Alliterati
Friends, loyal countrymen/women, Alliteratus, lend me your ears
Gear Bits and Clockwork
Leprechauns Eat Unicorns
Princess Freers Extraordinaire
Publishing Blogs
Things to leave out of your query
Complicated questions for sophisticated writers: Short Stories- how do you make them SHORT!
This week in books 7/14/17
The Rejecter
Pub Rants
Pub Rants Has Moved!!
a very happy New Years update!
Editorial Anonymous
My First App
Editorial Ass
How much does an agent cost?
The Swivet [Colleen Lindsay]
And the winner of the Kelly Gay/Alan DeNiro book set is:
How I Know What Preserved Frog Guts Taste Like -- ...
Adam Heine (1) Alliterati (1) Alternate History (3) American Steampunk (2) Ancient History (1) Answers (5) Anthologies (1) Archimedes (2) Article Database (1) Ask and Ye Shall Receive (2) Audience (1) Award (7) Awards (1) Ay-leen the Peacemaker (1) Background Information (2) Baked Goods (1) Blog Tour (2) Blogs (4) Books (6) Busy Busy (2) Callarion at Night (28) Characterization (2) Coding (1) Commentary (1) Contest (4) Cool Stuff (4) Critique (2) Cross Post (1) Dark Days in Bright City (6) Davin Malasarn (1) Detective Fiction (2) Dystopias (1) Editing (1) Edittorrent (1) Encouragement (1) Fake Diary Entry Contest (2) Family (1) Fantasy (2) Flying Pen Press (1) For Fun (10) Foreign Languages (1) Frankenstein (1) Freelancing (1) Friends of the Blog (1) Fun (1) Gail Carriger (1) Gary Corby (2) Geek Out (2) Genetics (1) Gothic Literature (2) Grammar (5) Guest Bloggers (1) Guest Post (17) H.G. Wells (1) Happy Holidays (1) Harry Harrison (1) Harry Potter (3) Haunted London (1) Her Highness the Missus (2) History (3) Honeymoon (1) Insanity (4) Internet (1) Jack London (1) Japan (1) Japanese Steampunk (1) Jay Lake (1) Jaymee Goh (1) Jules Verne (1) Karl Marx (1) Leanna Renee Hieber (1) Linkapalooza (2) Literature (3) Logo (1) Michael Moorcock (1) Movies (2) Multiculturalism (7) My Brain is Fried (3) Nevermet Press (1) News (2) Novels (1) Oddities (1) Off Topic (1) Open Post (3) Patty Blount (1) Pimpery (1) Platforms (1) Positivity (1) Pretties (1) Publishing (5) Quakers (1) Queen (1) Queen Victoria (2) Query (1) Questions (3) Random Historical Nonsense (11) Random Thoughts (1) Randomness (31) Rant (2) Recommendations (1) Religion (1) Repost (7) Research (5) Research Project (1) Revisions (2) Rising Phoenix Takes Flight (1) Robotics (2) Romance (5) Sales (1) Secret Archives (14) Sherlock Holmes (1) Social Media (1) Son of Magic (5) Soulless (1) Sports (1) Star Wars (1) Steampunk (55) Steampunk Animation (1) Steampunk Author (2) Steampunk Books (10) Steampunk Character Types (6) Steampunk Chat Topic (3) Steampunk Culture (14) Steampunk Fashion (1) Steampunk History (1) Steampunk London (1) Steampunk Science (2) Steampunk Shakespeare (3) Steampunk Silly (1) Steampunk Technology (14) Story Ideas (1) Storytelling (1) Submission Guidelines (2) Suckiness (1) Super Mario Bros (2) Technology (16) Ten Word Novel Contest (6) Terry Pratchett (2) The Con Report (1) The Iron Heel (1) The Literary Lab (3) The Process (1) The Roots of Steampunk (18) The Steampunk Primer (1) Time Magazine (1) Turkey Day (1) TVTropes.com (1) TVTropes.org (1) Twitter (1) Upstate Steampunk (2) Urban Gothic (2) Vacation (1) Victorian London (8) Video (2) Video games (4) Warlord of the Air (1) Website (1) Wedding (1) Welcome (1) With The Crazy-Making (54) Worldbuilding Considerations (1) Writing (96) Writing Influences (1) Writing Thoughts (3) Writing Tips (1)
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line59
|
__label__cc
| 0.675619
| 0.324381
|
Barbourula
kalimantanensis
Barbourula kalimantanensis
Kalimantan Stream Frog
Barbourula kalimantanensis is the sole representative of the family Bombinatoridae on the island of Borneo. The species was described first in 1978 by Iskandar, and until recently was known from only two specimens. A second species, B. busuangensis, is known from the Palawan group of islands of the Philippines.
Barbourula kalimantanensis is strange-looking: it belongs to an archaic family of frogs with many primitive character states in their anatomy, but on the other hand, shows extensive adaptations for an aquatic mode of life in streams.
The reproductive mode and most aspects of its ecology and physiology remain unknown. It is reported to be the only frog species in the world that lacks lungs.
Size of adults: approx. 70 mm
The rare images of living specimens on this web page were kindly provided by ©Dr. Tan Heok Hui of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, Singapore and by Lars Fehlandt.
Bornean Bombinatorids
Joomla Templates: from JoomlaShack
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line60
|
__label__wiki
| 0.96715
| 0.96715
|
Home > Format >
Bright Young Things
Original album - Format
Producer - Chris Zippel, Pet Shop Boys
Subsequent albums - Release 2017 reissue Further Listening 2001-2004 bonus disc
Other releases - bonus track with single "Numb"
British actor, comedian, writer, and (now) director Stephen Fry asked the Pet Shop Boys to record two songs for his 2003 film Bright Young Things. This track was to have been the title song, but the film's producers decided against using it, opting instead to use period music exclusively. (Incidentally, the other song that Neil and Chris are reported to have recorded for the project is a cover of the Noël Coward classic "The Party's Over Now," which does indeed coincide with the period in which the story is set.) Although an unauthorized audio demo circulated briefly on the Internet soon after it was recorded, it had to wait several years for official release. Neil had stated on the official PSB website that "Bright Young Things" might yet be released as one of the bonus tracks on a single from Fundamental. The "Numb" single provided that opportunity, with the released track boasting a somewhat more elaborate arrangement than the aforementioned demo.
The film—a dark, satiric comedy loosely based on Evelyn Waugh's 1930 novel Vile Bodies—concerns a "smart set" of fashionable young Brits living a wild life of parties, booze, and free sex in the period between the two world wars. The label "Bright Young Things," used in the novel but hardly original with Waugh, was often used by contemporaries to collectively describe this set of trendy but aimless youth. (Thanks, by the way, to Jeff Durst for providing information about Waugh and Vile Bodies. I must confess that I've never read the book myself.)
The PSB song bears in many ways a marked similarity to one of their other soundtrack numbers, "Nothing Has Been Proved" (from the film Scandal), most noticeably in the way that its lyrics refer cryptically (from the perspective of anyone who hasn't seen the movie) to various characters in the story, providing tantalizing "snapshots" of their attitudes and actions. It's obvious that these are people who lead lives of scarcely concealed desperation, partying ceaselessly to escape their troubles. ("Sometimes a party's a port in a storm.") Neil's omniscient narrator seems to pity them—"flying," as it were, "on chemical wings"—but it's only an impression; he's too subtle and skillful a lyricist to come right out and say so unambiguously.
Again like "Nothing Has Been Proved," the music could be described as a "slow burn," starting out softly but ominously, building in intensity, employing shifting rhythms (at times noticeably faster in tempo than in the original demo) to evoke different moods while working its way toward several cathartic climaxes. Neil uses his "low voice," à la "Birthday Boy," to add to the overall air of foreboding.
By the way, it's interesting to note the reference in the lyrics to "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," a 1915 romantic standard that would surely be quite familiar to the characters Neil is singing about. Another of Neil's lines from the song, "Nancy's got a monkey on a silver chain," has its origins not with the novel but rather with a letter written by Waugh at around the same time, describing someone he observed "with a pet monkey on a silver harness." Neil has said that "Nancy" is Nancy Cunard, a British writer and activist who was indeed part of that betwixt-the-wars "smart set." And the line about a character named Stephen—who, after all, has a camera—could be an "in joke" reference to the film's director, Mr. Fry himself. But, as one of my site visitors insightfully noted, later confirmed by Neil himself in the Format booklet, it more directly alludes to Stephen Tennant (1906-87), another prominent "bright young thing" who is generally recognized as having served as one of the models for Sebastian Flyte in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Given their common surnames (though no relation), could Neil resist?
This song was written for (but, as it turns out, wasn't actually used in) the 2003 film of the same name, which itself is loosely based on the Evelyn Waugh 1930 novel Vile Bodies. The title phrase appears repeatedly in the novel, but otherwise the lyrics have little or nothing to do with the book. The term "bright young things" (used alternately with "bright young people") was coined by the London tabloid press of the 1920s to refer to youthful urban socialites of the period.
As briefly touched upon above, the names mentioned in the song—Lucy, Boy, Nancy, and Stephen—are not those of characters in the film Bright Young Things or the Waugh novel on which it's based. They have other sources, some real-life and others fictional. Again, "Nancy" was inspired by writer/activist Nancy Cunard, and "Stephen" alludes to Stephen Tennant. "Boy" could have been inspired by a relatively minor character (Viscount "Boy" Mulcaster) in another, better-known Waugh novel, Brideshead Revisited. "Lucy" is the most problematic of the bunch, although it could have been inspired by the character of Lucy Simmonds in Waugh's unfinished novel Work Suspended. Then again, it's possible (but doubtful) that Neil chose the name Lucy more or less at random.
"Sometimes a party's a port in a storm" – A "port in a storm" is an old English-language metaphorical expression that refers to the fact that, in stormy weather, a ship and its crew are generally much safer docked at port rather than afloat on the rough, open sea. So this line suggests that a party can provide temporary shelter—or at least the temporary illusion of shelter—from the worries and cares of "the real world."
"Listen, a nightingale sings in Berkeley Square" – The popular song “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" is a romantic standard written in 1915 that has been performed by numerous artists. Its biggest hit rendition was in 1940 by the Glenn Miller Band. Its allusion in "Bright Young Things" serves largely to help "set the period." Berkeley Square is an actual place, a town square in London's West End. Once a fashionable residential area, it's now mostly commercial, though there remains one highly sought-after residential block.
"… flying on chemical wings" – The chemical in question is most likely alcohol, although cocaine was a popular enough drug in the 1920s and '30s to earn a notorious mention in Cole Porter's 1934 song "I Get a Kick Out of You." Other recreational drugs are certainly possible as well.
Mixer: Chris Zippel
Album/b-side version (4:55)
Also on one of the "Further Listening" bonus discs accompanying the 2017 Release reissue
Mixer: [unknown at this time]
Demo (4:26)
On one of the "Further Listening" bonus discs accompanying the 2017 Release reissue
Real places mentioned by name in PSB songs
Real people mentioned by name or title in PSB lyrics
PSB tracks that contain samples of other artists' music (a "negation" entry that refutes alleged sampling)
Pop songs mentioned by title in the lyrics of PSB songs
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0037.json.gz/line62
|
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
No dataset card yet
- Downloads last month
- 8