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Fran Ryan
(November 29, 1916-January 15, 2000)
Prolific American actress
Known for playing, 'tough, mean-lipped, earthy and gruff but lovable female characters'
Appeared in the movies 'Scream, Evelyn, Scream' (1970). 'The Million Dollar Duck' (1971), 'Flush' (1971), 'The Apple Dumpling Gang' (1975), 'Straight Time' (1978), 'Rocky II' (1979), 'The Long Riders' (1980), 'Stripes' (1981), 'Savannah Smiles' (1982), 'Pale Rider' (1985), 'Chances Are' (1989) and 'Suture' (1993)
Regular on the soap operas General Hospital and Days of Our Lives and on the TV series Green Acres, 'Sigmund and the Sea Monsters,' Gunsmoke, 'No Soap, No Radio,' 'The Wizard' and 'The Dave Thomas Show'
Acted in the made for TV movies 'Stalk the Wild Child' (1976), 'Panic in Echo Park' (1977). 'Goldie and the Bear' (1979), 'The Adventures of Nellie Bly' (1981), 'Life of the Party: The Story of Beatrice' (1982), 'Ghost Dancing' (1983), 'The Return of Marcus Welby MD' (1984), 'Fuzzybucket' (1986), 'Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge' (1987), 'Nick Knigh', (1990). and 'River of Rage: The Taking of Maggie Keene' (1993)
Provided voices for the animated TV series Hong Kong Phooey, Devlin, Mr T, Little Dracula, and Tiny Toons Adventures
Guest starred on the TV series Batman, The Beverly Hillbillies, Marcus Welby MD, Adam-12, I Dream of Jeannie, The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Night Gallery, Columbo, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Waltons, Taxi, Laverne & Shirley, Falcon Crest, Three's Company, Hill Street Blues, Punky Brewster, Murphy Brown, surprisingly enough Baywatch and not surprisingly Murder, She Wrote and, in her final paid acting assignment, The Commish
She dropped out of Stanford after three years.
She started performing at only six years old.
She was never nominated for any type of award for her acting.
Starting out on stage as young, attractive song and dance and light comedic actress, her entire film and television career consisted of playing the same grumpy, older, female character.
She proved a poor replacement for Amanda Blake on Gunsmoke in its final season.
She made an incredibly irritating Hungry Jack commercial in the seventies that featured her screeching 'Hooongry Jaaack!' at the top of her lungs.
She tragically lost her first husband in a plane crash after only three years (1949 - 1951) of marriage. Their son, her only child was born after his father's death.
Her second husband was also killed in a plane crash after less than a year (1953) of marriage. The crash site was not found for fifteen years and his body was never recovered. She never remarried and remained a widow almost fifty years until her death in 2000.
She performed with the USO in WWII.
She had a very long and productive career in the most competitive industry in the world.
She had an excellent professional reputation.
She was sensational as the widowed mother of Frank and Jesse James in the movie 'The Long Riders.'
Although her roles usually did not call for physical beauty, she was actually quite attractive and had a great smile.
Credit: tom_jeffords
In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
In 2015, Out of 25 Votes: 8.00% Annoying
College Drop Outs
Fat Bottom Girls
I Attended Stanford
I Gave Birth Within a Year of Becoming a Widow
Murder She Wrote Guest Stars
Redheads - Female [M-Z]
Sploshers [Overweight Women]
Tom Jefford's Profiles [Series 07]
TV Series Replacement Parts
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Anedjib
Anedjib (“safe is his heart”) ruled ancient Egypt during the first dynasty (Early Dynastic period). He is recorded as a Thinite (from This, near Abydos) king on the Saqqara Kings List. Anedjib was probably the son of Den but it is not entirely clear who his mother was, although Seshemetka seems to be a likely candidate. He may have been married to Queen Betrest the mother of his successor Semerkhet, but it is also possible that Betrest was one of Den’s wives, making Semerkhet his brother or half-brother.
He is probably Manetho’s King Miebidos, who reigned for twenty-six years. However, most Egyptologists agree his reign was likely much shorter due to his brief impression on the historical record. Wilkinson has proposed (following his reconstruction of the Palermo Stone) a reign of around ten years despite the fact that he celebrated a Sed Festival which normally took place in or around the thirtieth year. As Den reigned for around thirty years he may have been of a fairly advanced age when he became king and there is some evidence that he had to contend with a number of uprisings in Upper Egypt. The fact that his name was erased from a number of artifacts suggests that he may have been deposed by Semerkhet.
Anedjib may have been the first king to have a nebty (Two Ladies) title and the nesu-bit (He of the sedge and bee) name in his royal titulary, although the nesu-bit title (without a name) had already been introduced in the reign of Den. This title reunited the two divine antagonists of the north and south in the person of the king.
His tomb echoes the construction of Queen Mereneith’s. It was poorly constructed, and very small, but did include a chamber made entirely of wood (a luxury in Egypt).
Manetho; Miebidos
Nebti; Merpibia (strictly Mer-spt-bja)
Nomen; Mer-ba-pen (from the Saqqara List, strictly transliterates as Mr-sntr-pn but the glyph for incense “sntr” is usually transliterated as “ba” or spirit)
Nomen; Mer-bja-pen (from the Turin list, strictly transliterated as “Mr-grg-pn”)
Nomen; Mer-bja-pe (from the Abydos kings list)
Kathryn Bard (2008) An introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
Peter A Clayton (1994) Chronicle of the Pharaohs
Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton (2004) The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt
Toby A. H. Wilkinson (1999) Early Dynastic Egypt
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This Week In History News, Aug. 11 – 17
By All That's Interesting
Atomik Vodka produced in Chernobyl, Viking beer hall unearthed in Scotland, Holocaust survivor's 104th birthday held in Jerusalem.
Introducing Atomik Vodka: The First Liquor Made From Crops Grown In The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
University of PortsmouthThis is currently the only product made and sold by the Chernobyl Spirit Company — and within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
April marked the 33rd anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. After the 1986 explosion, which released untold amounts of radioactive material across the continent, a 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone around the Chernobyl plant was established to mark the region deemed too radioactive for habitation.
Consequently, thousands were evacuated and what was once a functional satellite city became a ghost town. However, this town might be back in business with the advent of an artisan vodka made right where the disaster occurred.
1,100-Year-Old ‘Beer Hall’ For The Viking Elite Discovered In Scotland
Archaeologists discovered this Viking drinking hall on the island of Orkney in Scotland.
The Vikings are not only known for their prowess in war but also their penchant for drinking — with a particular fondness for beer and mead. The latest archaeology discovery reinforces the latter notion as archaeologists have uncovered a massive Norse hall dating back to 1,100 years ago. Given the structure’s design and location, researchers believe that the Medieval stone structure may have been a drinking hall meant for the leisurely gatherings of the Viking elite.
A team of researchers, students, and local residents have been excavating the site for years before the beer hall was discovered. The team was studying the site as a farming complex to learn more about the era’s dietary habits and its people’s farming and fishing practices.
As the team continued to dig on the site, they soon stumbled on mound walls extending from below the settlement that have been confirmed as part of a large Norse structure. Although only partially excavated, the stone walls appear to stretch more than three feet wide standing at about 18 feet from each other. Stone benches have been unearthed along both sides of the walls.
Dig deeper in this report.
Auschwitz Survivor Celebrates 104th Birthday With 400 Descendants At Wailing Wall
TwitterAbout 400 relatives traveled from all over the world to celebrate Ovitz’s 104th birthday. Nonetheless, about 10 percent of the family was missing.
Holocaust survivor Shoshana Ovitz celebrated her 104th birthday at the Wailing Wall (or Western Wall) in Jerusalem recently. This triumphant occasion was made all the more memorable by having about 400 of her descendants join her for a photo.
Ovitz survived the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp 74 years ago. Many of her loved ones weren’t as fortunate, however, and perished in detention. Her grandson, Meir Rosenstein, revealed that Ovtiz’s mother was forcefully separated from her before things got even worse.
Read more of her story here.
All That's Interesting
Your curiosity knows no bounds. Neither do we.
Fraud And Poor Record-Keeping Are What Account For Many of Earth's 'Oldest People,' Study Says
Meet Timothy Leary, The 1960s Harvard Professor Who Became The 'High Priest Of LSD'
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WELCOME TO THE ART OF ASKING EVERYTHING, the PODCAST
Do you know that I love to talk to people? About hard and uncomfortable things? Well, I do. For this podcast, I sit down with (or occasionally, phone) guests from all walks of life: doctors, sex workers, musicians, writers, teachers, painters, parents, activists, TED speakers, friends….basically anyone who wants to have a deep and honest conversation with me about The Big Stuff. This podcast is professionally produced and includes music, tangents, and best of all: NO BRANDING OR PAID ADVERTISEMENTS because we are 100% patron-supported. My patrons also get access to the podcast book club, blogs and behind-the-scenes stuff, plus a live chat with me and almost every guest to ask us their own questions and catch up with each other, so please join to support us...and keep us ad-free! Listen and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything and join the Patreon: http://patreon.com/amandapalmer.
Leslie Salmon Jones: The Heart Doesn’t Lie
Bodies are weird, and feeling at home in our body can be, well, complicated at the very least. Leslie Salmon Jones is a trainer, a wellness coach (but don't let that scare you off), an accomplished dancer and the founder of Afro Flow Yoga. I've known her for over 15 years, and she was one of the first people on my podcast wish-list. We talk about Leslie’s incredible family and what it was like for her growing up in one of the only Black families in an affluent Toronto neighborhood; we discussed learning how to speak your truth, how bodies remember trauma, the importance of self compassion, finding your light in the darkest times...and why the best way to mend your mind and body is through something real simple: your breath.
How We Can Actually Use The Internet for Good Things
IT IS THE EVE OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION and things are crazy and scary on the Internet right now. Information is nine-dimensional and hard to trust. If you've seen "The Social Dilemma" and learned more about the dark-profit side of the internet, you may be considering throwing your laptop off a bridge. Eli Pariser has been paying attention to this stuff for ages. He's an author, activist, and entrepreneur focused on how to make technology and media serve democracy. He became executive director of MoveOn.org in 2004, and then he went on to co-found Upworthy.com, and he wrote a book called "The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You". We met up at a TED conference in Scotland and talked wide and deep about how the Internet is like a coity, why it is so hard to be an artist in America, how to have empathy for people you don’t agree with, the struggle to raise children with the right amount of determination and grit, and how shame is a cultural tool to create conformity.
Laura Jane Grace: Punk Guilt
Laura Jane Grace is the lead singer/songwriter for Against Me! and author of the recent memoir Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout. She's been powerfully open about her own experiences with gender dysphoria, transitioning, imposter syndrome and - most interesting to me - what it means to be truly authentic in this world. Our conversation went all over the place, as you'd expect, from how we write songs and deal with "finishing" things, to how we deal when the head-weasels come scurrying.
BJ Miller: An Expert on Death Talks About Life
Why are we so bad at death, dying, dealing with it, talking about it? Dr. BJ Miller is a palliative care physician who has spent his whole adult life trying to figure that out. His own traumatic experience has informed his ability to know compassion, see the far grander picture, and help people sort out the blurry lines between care, pain and reality. In college, BJ lost both of his feet and one hand in a tragic accident, and despite becoming a triple amputee, he still returned to university and got his medical degree. Now he's a doctor who helps people deal with dying, and he's got a lot of thoughts on the matter....we talked about art and beauty as therapy, mindfulness, coping skills, and a topic so needed right now: how independence is really an illusion. This is a really great episode for people who may be dealing with a recent loss, or an imminent one.
Lenny Henry: Humor, Trauma, and Flipping the Cosmic Spatula
Humor. Armour. Racism. Voice. How our youth really shapes why we want to do what we wanna do, especially when we are drawn to the stage...this long yarn with Sir Lenny Henry, one of the most celebrated comedians in British history, was one for the books. We talk candidly about the paradoxes of celebrity and social media, how The Internet is a buffet, starting a career in entertainment in working mens’ clubs, using humor as armor against racism, the history of minstrelsy in the UK, making your work the structure of your life, giving your loved ones fair warning when you publish a memoir, the beautiful meld of words and images in comic books, the power of masks and fiction and why giving advice to younger artists is so important.
Elizabeth Lesser: Bullshit Is Everywhere
HERE WE GO A-ASKIN’! It isn’t a coincidence that I chose Elizabeth Lesser to be the inaugural guest of this podcast. She’s a bestselling memoirist who attacks dark and difficult matters of the heart. She’s written candidly about her divorce and her struggles with life, work, people and feminism, and she’s one of the most unapologetically compassionate people I’ve ever met. We discuss the difference between telling your own story versus somebody else’s, what it’s like to navigate life as a single mother after a divorce, how the patriarchy gets passed down through the generations, and how BULLSHIT IS…EVERYWHERE!!! I left this conversation so inspired; I hope you do, too. Her new book, Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes, just came out this September 2020….we will be discussing it in the podcast book club, so GET READING.
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The 2020 Ooredoo Ride of Champions’ Corporate Challenge Provides a Friendly Match Between Qatar’s Fittest Firms 16 December 2020
Champions and Public Continue to Win with the 2020 Ooredoo Ride of Champions 8 December 2020
The Qatar Cyclists Center organised 2020 Ooredoo Ride of Champions Believed to Be The Most Accessible Mass Participation Event in Qatar’s History, Featuring Best Buddies, Accessible Qatar, and More! 19 November 2020
Safety First to Enable Fun Was the Key Theme at the 2020 Ooredoo Ride of Champions, Enabling Thousands to Have Fun, Get Exercise and look after their Mental Health in 2020 14 November 2020
Inmates Could be Freed to Ease Virus Pressure on Jails due to Coronavirus 25 March 2020
Coronavirus to be Tracked Using its Genetic Code 22 March 2020
Japan PM Abe says Postponing Tokyo Olympics an Option 22 March 2020
China Reports 39 New Confirmed Cases of Coronavirus, All Imported 22 March 2020
The Best and Wworst of F1’s Esports Weekend 22 March 2020
Italy Sees 651 New Virus Deaths, Toll Nearly 5,500 22 March 2020
US Downplayed the World Body’s Resolutions on the Middle East Conflict
Headlines 24 July 2019 Arabia Day Newsdesk 0
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy faces strong criticism from members of the UN Security Council, including Washington’s own allies, after he downplayed...
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy faces strong criticism from members of the UN Security Council, including Washington’s own allies, after he downplayed the world body’s resolutions on the Middle East conflict and said the Israeli-Palestinian issue cannot be resolved by relying on “fictions” of global consensus.
Addressing a UNSC meeting in New York on Tuesday, Jason Greenblatt dismissed the notion that international law and UN resolutions must serve as the foundation of any solution to the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Greenblatt said the issue will not be settled by references to international law, which he called “inconclusive.”
“A comprehensive and lasting peace will not be created by fiat of international law or by these heavily wordsmithed, unclear resolutions,” he said. “The vision for peace that we plan to present will not be ambiguous, unlike many resolutions that have passed in this chamber,” referring to the so-called peace plan Washington had been developing without Palestine’s consent to end the conflict.
Greenblatt also noted that the upcoming plan — which Trump himself calls the “deal of the century” — would not be based on “fictions of international consensus” as it is often “nothing more than a mask for inaction.”
“So let’s stop kidding ourselves. If a so-called international consensus had been able to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it would have done so decades ago. It didn’t,” he added.
His controversial comments against international law triggered strong rebuttals from the UNSC’s four other permanent members, namely France, Britain, Germany and Russia.
Security Council members, in response, underlined the need for respecting international law and UN resolutions in efforts to resolve the Palestine issue.
Germany’s UN Ambassador Christoph Heusgen stressed that UNSC resolutions are binding under international law, saying, “For us, international law is not menu a la carte.”
“For us, international law is relevant; international law is not futile,” he said. “We believe in the force of international law; we do not believe in the force of the strongest.”
British representative Karen Pierce also reminded all countries that they “have a responsibility” to implement UNSC resolutions.
Similarly, Russia’s UN envoy challenged Greenblatt’s assertions.
“This international consensus is international law, because Security Council resolutions are international law — they merely need to be complied with,” Vassily Nebenzia said. “The matter lies not with a lack of international consensus; rather the matter has to do with the fact that there is utter disregard for this internationally-acknowledged consensus by the United States at present.”
Moreover, French UN Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere emphasized that Paris would support any peace effort “so long as this aligns with the approach that we have set out together, so long as this adheres to international law, specifically all resolutions of the Security Council.”
Greenblatt, has worked with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, on the US president’s highly-contentious “peace” deal, which the Palestinians have already dismissed “the slap of the century.”
The economic section of Trump’s proposal was released during a Washington-sponsored conference in Manama, Bahrain, on June 25-26 despite a Palestinian boycott of the event.
Critics say Washington is offering financial rewards for Palestinians to accept the Israeli occupation. Palestine, similarly, called that a “humiliating blackmail.”
This article has been adapted from its original source.
© ArabiaDay 2020. All Rights Reserved. Site by www.arabiaday.com
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City tour cartagena
From $18 USD/person.
2 m.a.s.l. Cartagena 31 ºC All ages
Inicio » Cultural activities » City tour Cartagena
Discover the crown jewel of Colombia, perhaps the most beautiful city in the Americas, and one of the most important ports in history and even today. From Cartagena, incredible riches entered and left the Americas. The city is protected by strong defense walls that have stood for almost two centuries. Few places contain as much early Spanish history as this colorful and impressive city. Cartagena is full of tradition, enticing smells and flavors, and historic sites. On this tour, we’ll visit five key sites. We promise you’ll end the day enchanted by Cartagena’s history and charm. Let yourself by won over by San Felipe de Barajas Fort, one of the seven marvels of Colombia. The fort is over 250 years old and remained impenetrable by numerous enemies. Reflect on the history and role of slavery at the Santuario Museo San Pedro Claver, where you can learn about the life and work of the Saint Pedro Claver SJ. Walk the streets of historic Cartagena, a city named UNESCO World Heritage and nicknamed the Walled City, with his colonial architecture and modern sensibilities. You can feel the pride of its people and its independent spirit, a legacy that comes from the first declaration of independence from Spain in 1811. Enter the Cartagena Museo de Oro, a museum that pays tribute to the artistic and economic value of gold. Here, you can interact with the culture, wealth, and artifacts of the Zenú people. You’ll find goldsmithing, ceramics, shells, and bones from this indigenous history. Finally, walk along the Cerro La Popa to get a sense of history and antiquity. The hill was discovered in 1510 by the Spaniards, and they later built a convent for Augustinian Recollects, 148 meters above sea level. It is an imposing place that has withstood attacks and barrages. This tour is an adventure filled with history and culture
Basic Tejo and Beer
START TIME: 8:00 a.m
DURATION: 1 hour and 30 min approx.
Meeting point: "La Bodeguita" port
Shared transportation on bus
Entry tickets for San felipe castle, La Popa and museums
City Tour Cartagena Full
Personal tour Guide
SKU: AV0054P Category: Without category
City Tour Medellín Basic
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Lucius w/ The Cactus Blossoms
Dan Smalls Presents Lucius live in Asbury Hall with The Cactus Blossoms
Tickets: $20 advance, $25 day of show at Ticketweb, Babeville Box Office (M-F 10a-5p), or charge by phone 866-777-8932, General Admission Standing.
7pm Doors 8pm Show
What a difference three years makes. Lucius went from being the five-piece Rolling Stone claimed was the “Best Band you’ve never heard of” to the group you can’t get enough of.
Fronted by the sleek and compelling look-alike twosome of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig and backed by their counterpart bandmates Dan Molad, Pete Lalish and Andy Burri, Lucius spent more than 250 days on the road in the past year. They’ve sold out shows big and small, headlined all over the US and Europe, played slots at Bonnaroo, Newport Folk Festival, Lollapalooza, End of The Road, Reading and Leeds Festivals and more and shared the stage with a variety of musicians including Roger Waters, Jack White, Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy, Sara Bareilles, The Head and the Heart, Tegan and Sara and David Byrne.
The band’s uphill ascent began when Jess and Holly crossed paths while at college in Boston; more than 10 years ago, Lucius started making music and hasn’t stopped since. Along the way they’ve become NPR darlings, grist for Britain’s prestigious Guardian and favorites of the Nobel-prize winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. Since the critically acclaimed release of their 2013 debut LP Wildewoman they have built a stunningly loyal following, and share an intimate bond with their fans. It’s not uncommon to see Lucius doppelgängers in the crowd.
Sitting with Jess and Holly to discuss the band’s sonically-grand and emotionally-honest sophomore release Good Grief, the first thing that strikes you when you meet the frontwomen of Lucius is how fine-boned and delicate they both are. But even more striking is that they don’t actually look alike once you see them offstage. Their builds are markedly different: Jess is curvy, with a generous mouth and eyes that tilt up at the corners; Holly is willowy and angular, serious and with the pale complexion that conjures up the image of a Nordic princess.
But despite the six-inch disparity in their height on stage you could swear they were identical. Of course it helps that they always dress exactly alike, their hair is the same style and shade — right now a warm curry red — and they sing in a strong unison, doubling their high, clear voices and creating a third sound that is as unnerving as it is lovely, like two mirrors, creating an infinite number of reflections that reveal as much as they obscure.
“We wanted to feel like we were transforming ourselves and going into a different head space while performing,” Jess says. “In some way I think what we do is like a fantasy. We wanted to take people along with us for a ride. We wanted to present that visually so when you look at us you’re seeing what you’re hearing.”
What you’re hearing (and seeing) when Lucius takes the stage are two voices becoming one. The band’s distinctive play on duality showcases Jess and Holly’s powerful voices at the center — bolstered and surrounded by the mathematically precise drumming of Dan with the graceful, chiming guitars of Pete and Andy. Together the quintet create a sound the New Yorker calls “seemingly impossible with flawless grace that brings delicate beauty to even the most bombastic moments.”
The recordings on Lucius’ second studio album Good Grief mirror the band’s distinguishing on-stage configuration. One shared figure 8 mic serves as an anchor for conversation between the band’s lead duo, which has resulted in the 11 raw and often heart wrenching songs you hear on the album. Among these is the explosive track “Gone Insane,” which gives a direct look into one of the few arguments between Jess and Holly.
“Some songs really feel like an expulsion of emotions, beyond your control,” Holly says. “The writing of ‘Gone Insane’ was based on the feeling after one of those loose cannon type of heated fights, with helplessness and rage hitting you in alternating waves.”
“But maybe the perfect description of this song comes in the recording process,” Jess adds. “Holly and I have seen maybe three arguments in the past 12 years. But perhaps the biggest of all, came the day we were to record this song. Emotions were running high, and at some point, Holly blew up at me. In shock, I yelled back and we both stormed off.
“This was a prime example of our partnership because a short while later she returned, we apologized, hugged and immediately went to record. It was just the two of us in the dark. There was no plan for vocal arrangement, we wanted to use the intensity of the moment and go for it. The ‘falling off’ part at the end of the song was completely organic, the two of us screaming into the same mic, losing it, together, in song form, as the lyrics suggest. “
“It was definitely one of those magic studio moments you can’t quite explain,” Holly finishes.
A majority of the tracks on Good Grief fall in line with the overarching theme of discovering the goodness that can come from any hardship. The album proves to be a release for the band both physically and emotionally, after experiencing the highs and lows of being on the road for almost two years, the band moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn where the album was recorded during the spring and early summer of 2015 at Grammy-winning engineer and producer Shawn Everett’s studio.
However, a few songs including the first single “Born Again Teen” became what Holly describes as something like “the antithesis of the other things that we were working on, to give ourselves some relief.”
From the first swooping, synthy intro of “Something About You” to the alarm-clock menace of “What We Have (To Change),” there’s a sense that these expertly wrought pop songs are full of emotional depth.
They veer from sassy, soul-drenched vocals to glitzy rhythmic pop to songs that call up the charm and crushed innocence of ’60s girl groups, but in the end there is no comparison to the dark secrets Jess and Holly convey when they put their two voices together.
“There are songs here that are deeply personal and emotional, and in a way we’ve exposed ourselves to reveal parts that are fragile, maybe even a little broken, but not destroyed,” Jess says. “There’s certainly a little bit of humor, and there’s also a lot of truth and sadness.”
The lyrics of Good Grief read like personal journal entries because the friendship and writing partnership established between the band’s cofounders has given the women of Lucius an outlet to express their unusually parallel experiences.
“I always say Holly’s been the healthiest and longest relationship I’ve ever had,” Jess says.
That relationship has clearly blossomed musically into a many-faceted, enthralling sound and image sure to resonate deeply with music lovers everywhere.
March 2016 brings the release of Good Grief, the bands highly anticipated sophomore effort.
When The Cactus Blossoms started making music there wasn’t a big plan. They cut their teeth performing some well known and obscure country songs that were popular or unpopular pre-1960, partly out of curiosity and deep appreciation, but mostly because it was fun. Early on they were given a residency at the Turf Club in St. Paul, Minnesota. They got a band together and it became their weekly practice-in-public where they would pull out every song they could think of, no matter how well they knew it. That’s when the wheel got going and gave the illusion of spinning backwards. They weren’t born in the wrong era. They just got into some music from a different era and found a way to make it their own.
Make sure to catch The Cactus Blossoms before Lucius at Asbury Hall.
Asbury Hall
341 Delaware Avenue - Buffalo
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Measles Outbreak That Started In California Expanding
Filed Under:Baltimore, Disneyland, Health, measles, Outbreak, Virus
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — A health warning. The extremely contagious measles virus is back. An outbreak that started at Disneyland is starting to sweep the country.
Christie Ileto has the push for children to get vaccinated.
Measles was thought to have been eliminated in the U.S. 15 years ago. Now its back, targeting those who haven’t been immunized.
The outbreak that started in California’s Disneyland is expanding. At least 75 cases of measles span six states.
“It’s scary to think the happiest place on Earth is infected with measles,” one Disney employee said.
For this Disney employee, knowing co-workers are infected is cause for concern.
Measles has a 21-day incubation period, meaning people can travel far before they know they’re sick.
“We’re seeing the resurgence of measles because a lot of the parents are not getting their children vaccinated,” said Dr. Peter Andrews, Sinai Hospital.
Dr. Andrews says that problem is prime. In Maryland, all students K-12 must get two shots of the measles vaccine.
“It just didn’t make sense to me,” said one Annapolis mom.
In a revealing interview with WJZ, an Annapolis mom explained why she didn’t vaccinate her kids.
“I didn’t understand why a little human had to get so many drugs at one time,” she said.
Still, the vaccine proves very effective if given at two doses.
Doctors say the virus is highly contagious. For instance, if someone has the measles and doesn’t cover their mouth when they sneeze, they can pass it on to anyone standing nearby.
Symptoms like fever, cough and rash soon follow.
“The younger, the older, the immune compromised. Those are the three target areas that really can get sick and die,” said Dr. Andrews.
Most people who have already had the measles or got the vaccine are not at risk.
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Batman: Kings of Fear #4 review
Casper Rudolph
This series has been great so far. In a time where this so-called “deconstruction” approach seems to be the way to go in DC land, especially when it concerns Batman titles, it is refreshing to see a creative team come in and actually manage to pull this off successfully. So what makes this particular issue of Kings of Fear so good? Well, let’s have a look!
This “deconstruction” approach is not something that I’m fundamentally against. However, I think that creators do run the risk of reducing their character to an uninteresting, needlessly gloomy figure that I—as a reader—am not particularly willing to follow issue after issue. Especially not if said character doesn’t really seem to get out of his “deconstruction” misery. I don’t need my heroes to behave like spoiled kids that don’t get what they want. I need my heroes to keep fighting, even if their lives are going downhill. Enter Scott Peterson and Kelley Jones.
These gentlemen are crafting a fine tale. Instead of taking the aforementioned approach of “deconstruction” that I tend to dislike, the creators have opted to take a more psychedelic approach. And that word is important. “Psychedelic.” It means that we take a look inside Bruce’s mind and see his worries and insecurities and fears made visible by hallucinations. Instead of stripping Bruce of everything he holds dear and making him uncharacteristically angry, we have a psychedelic compound that is coursing through Bruce’s veins. In this comic, Bruce isn’t scared or insecure because he is truly doubting his own abilities as a superhero. On the contrary, Bruce only seems to momentarily believe he is scared and insecure because this is what Scarecrow’s fear gas does. And Bruce knows this, so he fights back. The entire battle with Scarecrow isn’t physical. Instead, it takes place in the mind, which is perhaps the most dangerous battleground that we can imagine. What if Batman loses? This is a literal fight against insanity, and so far it seems that Scarecrow has the upper hand. It will be exciting to see how Batman will manage to defeat him at the end of the series.
More specifically, this issue first and foremost shows how Batman sees himself. Rather than relying on an extensive narration to convey this, Peterson remains silent and gives Jones all the room he needs to show us how Batman sees himself. As such, Jones first presents us with an image of Batman in a suit that resembles Superman’s. He still has his own cowl and cape, but his suit is light-blue and he has a big B on his chest instead of an S. However, in the next panel guns appear and they fire at him, and we see Batman falling to the ground, bleeding. This sequence can be interpreted in various ways, depending on how you look at it. It could, for example, mean that Batman truly does see himself as a hero, but at the same time he knows that without superpowers he is vulnerable, and his fight against crime is an uphill battle because of this. Here, it is presented as an almost defeatist outlook on his life, as if he’s failing as a superhero. But if we take this approach to interpreting the scene we must never forget that he is tripping on Scarecrow’s fear gas, so it makes perfect sense for him to hallucinate such a bitter outcome. That is the point of the fear gas and, in my opinion, the point of this issue. Batman needs to be deconstructed by the fear gas so that Peterson and Jones can build him back up and have him beat Scarecrow at his own game.
The B-plot involves Gordon trying to find out where Scarecrow is. Peterson and Jones write and draw him as a true badass. We see Gordon going up against a group of thugs and he overpowers them fairly easily with punches and kicks, until he’s facing off against his last opponent. Both of them have drawn their guns and are aiming at each other at point-blank range. How exactly this encounter ends, you will have to see for yourself, but I do want to raise a point. I wonder to what extent Gordon should be capable of beating this group of thugs this easily. If it was Batman who was doing it, I would not have questioned the scene, of course, but in this case Gordon suddenly has martial arts skills that go beyond just throwing a good punch. The fight almost seems to be effortless for Gordon. He even grabs one of the thugs by the collar and demands that this thug tells him where Scarecrow is, and in this particular panel he looks so much like Batman—in the way that he is intimidating this thug—that I’m just not sure if this is the right way to portray Gordon. But, despite all of this, it is still a great scene and if we forget about these complaints it is actually fun to see the commissioner be a total badass for a moment.
With regards to the artwork, I think that Kelley Jones is doing a great job here. Yes, his renditions of bodily proportions are still off every so often, and yes, Batman still has his long ears. But it’s clear that the man is having a blast drawing this story. His Scarecrow truly looks scary, with a menacing face and glowing eyes. Jones emphasizes this by making Scarecrow tower over Batman in certain panels. Jones also effectively conveys how much Batman is struggling with the compound in his body as Batman hallucinates walls closing in on him, or when Batman hallucinates a past lover and her face morphs into Scarecrow’s. While the more straight-forward action with Gordon is fun to see unfold, I think it’s definitely the hallucination sequences in this issue where Jones shines, because he is pouring a lot of his imagination into those sections, what with backgrounds constantly changing: from the faces of all the people Batman has not been able to save to jacuzzis and even an image of Gotham City without a Batman.
Recommended if…
You are into psychedelic horror comics
You want to see Gordon being a total badass
You want to see this “deconstruction” stuff done right
Overall: A great issue of a great series. We venture deep into Batman’s psyche, and rather than spelling out everything in captions, Peterson fully trusts Jones to illustrate Batman’s hallucinations and tell the story that way, and Jones is doing a great job. Especially in a time where other Batman titles fail to successfully “deconstruct” our hero, it is a real treat to see it done right in this book. Recommended to all Batman fans!
Disclaimer: DC Comics provided Batman News with an advance copy of this comic for the purpose of this review.
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Sunday, March 15 • 3:30pm - 4:30pm
SXSW Accelerator: Entertainment and Content Tech 3
SXSW Accelerator pitch event presented by Oracle is a platform to allow early stage technology startups to pitch their product and/or services to industry technology experts, high profiled media personnel, and Venture Capitalists / Angel Investors.
Three companies that have advanced from the previous day and earlier round within the Entertainment and Content Technologies category, presented by Technology Industry Group, will dazzle a live audience, panel of three judges and co-emcees with their ideas, innovations, product and or services. A grand prize winner for this category will be announced tonight at the SXSW Acccelerator Award Ceremony at 7:00pm in Salon F&G.
The Entertainment and Content Technologies category highlights applications and technologies for gaming, music, film, television, video, news and publishing, streaming and digital story telling, as well as new and hybrid forms of entertainment. These are reinventing the ways in which we learn, relax and enjoy our time.
For an entire list of 2015 SXSW Accelerator Finalist go to http://sxsw.com/interactive/2015-sxsw-accelerator-finalists
View official listing on sxsw.com
Creative Dir, Portalarium Inc
Richard Garriott is a key figure in two industries, computer games and commercial spaceflight. In games he has founded 3 noteworthy companies (Origin, Destination and Portalarium), he created the Ultima series and Ultima Online among many other products. He is a hall of fame inductee... Read More →
Brad King
Co-Dir Center for Emerging Media Design & Dev, Ball State University
Brad King is an assistant professor in Ball State University’s Department of Journalism, the co-director of the Center for Emerging Media Design & Development, and the director of the Center's Creative Projects Lab.
Kay Koplovitz
Co-Founder, Springboard Enterprises
Kay Koplovitz Founder of USA Network, and Chairman and CEO of Koplovitz & Co. LLC. Kay Koplovitz is the Founder of USA Network, and the Sci-Fi Channel and USA Networks International and the visionary who created the business model for cable networks by introducing the concept of two... Read More →
Bob Metcalfe
Prof of Innovation, The University of Texas at Austin
Bob Metcalfe is Professor of Innovation and Murchison Fellow of Free Enterprise in The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering.
Hamet Watt
Venture Partner, Upfront Ventures
Hamet Watt is a Venture Partner at Upfront Ventures. He is also co-founder and Chairman of bLife, — a wellness innovation company, and co-founder and Chairman of MoviePass — a subscription service for movies in theaters.
Sunday March 15, 2015 3:30pm - 4:30pm CDT
Interactive, Pitch Event
Theme Startup Village and Business
Type Pitch Event
Tags interactive-badge, gold-badge, platinum-badge, startups, accelerator, sxsw
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Youth Orchestra
Legends Peter Asher & Albert Lee Kick Off A Week of Classic and New Music with Soulcial Hour, Bruce In The USA, The Nighthawks Film Premiere & More
August 15, 2016 /0 Comments/in Live Music Weekly /by Michael Mathews
Tuesday (8/16) Music legends Peter Asher and Albert Lee will take to the BBJ stage! As one half of Peter & Gordon, Asher’s voice soared through Carnegie Hall while Lee has been called “the ultimate virtuoso” by Eric Clapton. Influenced from their earliest days as musicians and performers by great American artists like Buddy Holly and The Everly Brothers, Peter Asher and Albert Lee bring those influences to the fore in their first series of shows together as an acoustic duo. Albert Lee began his career as a touring musician in the early sixties and soon catapulted onto the stage with the likes of Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, and Emmylou Harris. A 25-year run as Music Director of his beloved Everly Brothers coincided with studio and stage work with Vince Gill, Roseanne Cash, and also Paul McCartney & Ringo Starr (“The Concert for George”). We came to know Peter Asher via 10 Top 40 hits with Peter & Gordon, whose debut “A World Without Love” topped the charts in the US, UK, and over 30 other countries. His days as A&R Director for the Beatles’ Apple Records made history, and he became a legend as Producer and Manager of James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, and a host of others. Asher & Lee will perform “I Go to Pieces,” “The Highwayman,” “Handyman,” “Crying in the Rain,” “Bye Bye Love,” and other beloved tunes. Special guests Naked Blue draw from the Americana tradition, are firmly grounded with a pleasing pop sensibility, and have become a mainstay on the folk/pop scene. The concert starts at 8pm.
Wednesday (8/17) Come out for Soulcial Hour! Soulcial Hour is a smooth jazz, R&B, and soul band from the Washington, DC area – as smooth and funky as George Benson and Brian Culbertson, as soulful as the Average White Band, Luther Vandross, and Chaka Kahn, with the pizzazz of Jill Scott and Ledisi and the ingenuity of Earth, Wind & Fire. Also on the bill is Darrell Hill, who auditioned for the Apollo Theater Live and made his debut in 2012. While hanging with rap artist Mob Deep, Darrell received the opportunity to sign with the record label, 25 to Life. He wrote songs for people such as G-Eddie and F MC Shan. Later, he became a member and sang with Bowie, MD-area group, 99 Percent before taking on his own musical career. Some of Darrell’s inspirations are legendary singers such as Luther Vandross and Teddy Pendergrass. Darrell Hill brings plenty of R&B passion to the mic. The show starts at 8pm.
Thursday (8/18) Come out and enjoy some great local music with Lock 7 and The Mighty Peacemakers! Lock 7 performs guitar-driven rock and blues classics from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, as well as some hard-charging originals. Veteran DC-area musicians, Martin McGurn, Ian Davis, and Will Travis have come together to produce a large, full, driving sound – its sum being greater than its individual parts. McGurn leads with a high-energy beat and seasoned, soulful vocals from behind the drum kit. On guitar, Davis delivers a blistering, bluesy performance, while Travis completes the sound from the back row, with a steady bass groove providing depth and structure. The Mighty Peacemakers – veteran musicians and a longtime staple in the DC music scene – deliver a mix of classic rock, blues, and originals behind the lead vocals of Rob Kilgore. TMPM’s song selection is guitar-driven rock like The Allman Brothers, ZZ Top, Eric Clapton, Santana, and Pink Floyd, as well as original songs. Mike Nakamura and Dan Lopez provide a blend and variety of styles with their slide and lead guitars and vocals, the rhythm section is driven by Bruce Allen on drums and vocals and Jim Grice on bass. This rockin’ musical journey gets started at 7:30pm.
Friday (8/19) Don’t miss the DC Metro-area premiere of Nighthawks on the Blue Highway documentary film! The movie will start off the night, followed by the area debut of Chicago’s North Avenue Stompers, featuring Eric Shoutin’ Sheridan. Longtime locals will remember Sheridan as the voice behind The Uptown Rhythm Kings. The Nighthawks will close things out with a killer set! The evening’s festivities start at 7:30pm.
“In this unflinching documentary film, the Washington DC-based Nighthawks struggle to keep their music alive after more than four decades in the brutal music business. Hopeless record deals, weary days on the road, and conflict among the four members threaten to bury them. But the hardest working blues band in America soldiers on, carrying the torch of the blues into the 21st century. Directed by Washington DC native and Johnny Cash biographer Michael Streissguth, the film stars George Thorogood, John Hammond, Luther ‘Guitar Junior’ Johnson, and Mark Wenner.”
Saturday (8/20) More than just another tribute… This is Bruce in the USA! This high-energy musical experience is a note-perfect and visually accurate recreation of a Bruce Springsteen & The E St. Band show. Matt Ryan is a veteran of professional live performance artist in full scale production shows on the Las Vegas Strip and around the world. He has performed the Springsteen character as a cast member of the world famous Legends In Concert since the year 2000. After years of perfecting his craft in thousands of shows, Matt has evolved the Springsteen character into the national touring show it has become today. This show has met with critical acclaim from Vegas to large performing arts centers to Bruce’s old stomping ground, The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ. Sellout crowds are on their feet from the first song to the last! This homage to The Boss starts at 8pm.
Sunday (8/21) Unit 3 Deep is a bold new direction in jazz and R&B featuring three of the industry’s world-class musicians. Super Bassist and Billboard-charting artist David Dyson (Pieces of a Dream, Lalah Hathaway, Rick Braun, Gerald Albright, Norman Brown, Bobby Lyle, Phillip Bailey) joins forces with the dynamic and sultry piano melodies of Billboard-charting artist Patrick Cooper who has performed with the likes of Angela Bofill, Jean Carne, Nick Colionne, Bobby Lyle, to name a few. Wayne Thomas, who has built a solid reputation as one of the industry’s most sought after drummers, adds his prolific skills to this awesome group. The show starts at 8pm.
Of course, we’ve got more music coming right up! Check out our Music Calendar for upcoming shows including Kenny Lattimore, Poppa Chubby, Jeff Bradshaw, Mike Peters of The Alarm, Rahsaan Patterson, Marcus Johnson, a Michael Jackson Birthday Tribute Concert and much more.
Thanks so much for supporting great music and comedy in downtown Bethesda. We’ll look forward to seeing you soon!
https://bethesdabluesjazz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/blog-8-15-16.png 375 600 Michael Mathews https://bethesdabluesjazz.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/logobbj-300x146.png Michael Mathews2016-08-15 14:17:022016-08-15 17:31:37Legends Peter Asher & Albert Lee Kick Off A Week of Classic and New Music with Soulcial Hour, Bruce In The USA, The Nighthawks Film Premiere & More
Bethesda Blues and Jazz
Bethesda, Maryland 20814
Mon-Fri. 10am - 6pm
(on Fri. 1 hr. after show starts)
Sat-Sun 11am - until 1 hour after show starts
Business Hours Mon-Fri - 10am-6pm
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© Copyright - 2018 Bethesda Blues & Jazz
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Sky Sports News, a channel of British Sky Broadcasting, is a 24 hour sports news channel aired in United Kingdom and Ireland. Sky Sports News was launched in 1998 and it is operated by Sky Sports. Replacing Sky Sports Center, Sky Sports News is dedicated to providing sports information from across the world.
Though this news channel is mainly
24bett.com
devoted to football fans providing everything that you could possibly want on football, Sky Sports News also does report on various other sports such as Baseball and F1. Since the channel does not have the broadcasting rights of these games, they receive limited coverage.
The program format of Sky Sports News is very entertaining and also informative. The news is presented by two reporters. Short clips which feature the highlights along with interview on a wide variety of topics undoubtedly are a section of the program format. You can also get unrelated sports information while the news progresses throughout the tabs towards the bottom of the screen. For unrelated league tables or any other information you just have to take a look at the screen sidebar.
The first live match that the channel broadcast was the Conference Play off between Exeter and Morecambe in May 2007. Until then Sky Sports News wasn’t available via digital terrestrial platforms and live sports were occupying other Sky Sports channels. Sky Sports News then went on to broadcast the Wales V/S New Zealand game and also the Espanyol V/S Barcelona game in May and December, 2007 respectively.
Another reason making Sky Sports News as famous is its coverage and speculation over Premier League Manager appointments. These speculations have been so accurate they’ve already led the Football Association to instigate investigations suggesting “insider trading. However, no action has been taken with that regard until now. Probably the most famous feats were the Newcastle United manager positions that had been taken by Harry Redknapp and then again by Kevin Keegan. Along with them, the channel has also speculated over several Tottenham Hotspur managers.
Sky Sports News was re launched as Sky Sports.com TV. This move was taken to tie Sky Sports News with the launch of skysports.com, the official Sky Sports website. Though the channel faced a lot of criticism in its initial years due to the content and also style, it continued its successful run. It was because of this success that the.
Com TV was finally scrapped and retained its original name. From April 2002 to 2004 Sky Sports continued to test out its look. Giving it a facelift and subsequently a new image by 2004 the channel had a host of new programs such as the Afternoon Report, Evening Update, Through the night, Good Morning Sports Fans and Sky Sports at Ten.
The ultimate revamped look of the channel arrived in time with the 2007 football season. Unveiled on the 5th of August, this revamping displayed a wider reimaging of the Sky Sports brand. Although the main program format was retained, a whole new theme tune, new title sequence and most prominently a brand new studio became a component of the brand new look.
Owing to its popularity, Fox Soccer Channel in Usa and Fox Sports World, Canada acquire 2 hours of live feed and one hour of delayed feed from Sky Sports News.
bonus betting
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Bianna Golodryga: 3 Major Implications of the Panama Papers Leak
by Bianna Golodryga | Apr 18, 2016 | Current Events, Economics, Politics, Russia | 0 comments
11.5 million documents and dozens of scandals later, the implications of history’s largest leak have only begun to unfold.
In early April, 2016, the International Consortium of Journalists leaked a wealth of sensitive documents known as the Panama Papers. The leak consisted of 2.6 terabytes of data from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, and linked 140 world leaders from more than 50 companies to secret offshore accounts in 21 different tax havens.
The use and abuse of offshore accounts has long been controversial. The practice involves individuals or companies opening bank accounts in low-tax jurisdictions — of which Panama is one — to gain monetary privacy and avoid taxation. Though the avoidance itself is largely legal, shell companies and the like are known to be associated with illegal activities like tax evasion, money laundering, fraud, and the underground economy.
The Panama Papers cracked into a vault of well-kept secrets and potentially ill-gotten wealth, revealing vast corruption among the world’s political elite. The major revelation, however, is not that powerful humans hoard billions in offshore banks, but rather the detail in the proof their dealings.
The Panama Papers is, in fact, larger than WikiLeaks in 2010 and the Snowden’s NSA leak in 2013 combined. The sheer breadth of information unveiled will help investigators understand how the industry evolved over time, and how individuals and corporations work together to shield their wealth.
The impact of this massive leak is likely to reverberate for a long time, whether or not changes come about as a result. Here are some of the effects that we are beginning to see as a result.
1. Lost credibility
Politicians and companies in Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia were implicated in the leak, investigations have been opened in Britain, Germany, France, Australia, Belgium, among others. The revelation is proving most troublesome in Europe, where times are tough and populations most demanding of accountability.
The prime minister of Iceland stepped down due to a conflict of interest between his offshore dealings and banking negotiations, and UK’s PM David Cameron is under scrutiny over shares he himself owned before taking office, which clash in an ugly way with his administration’s transparency claims.
This could also potentially impact the upcoming Brexit referendum: Britain’s decision whether or not to leave the European Union could be tilted in favor of an exit.
In countries like Brazil, the leak has adding fuel to the flames of heated protests, linking Mossack Fonseca to the nation’s corruption scandal and the President’s impending impeachment trial.
Under authoritarian regimes, the impact will be less damaging. In Russia, where multiple individuals that appear to be part of Vladimir Putin’s “inner circle” were implicated, the incident is being branded “Putin-phobia” and ignored; in China, a censorship campaign seeks to curb online discussion on the leak, which implicated President Xi’s brother-in-law.
2. A new light on corruption
The Panama Papers prove that corruption is much more widespread than believed. That’s saying something, because it was already pretty bad: the annual Corruption Perceptions Index, most recently found that serious corruption problems were perceived by citizens in 70 percent of nations.
Countries in Africa have consistently ranked the worst on the CPI, and the continent stands out as one people frequently associate with corruption: case and point, the Ugandan company that avoided $400 million in taxation, more than the entire country’s annual health budget.
Now, it has become apparent that corruption is an international problem. The leak has also proven that it’s not just governments, but private individuals and corporations involved in morally dubious dealings.
If you’re wondering where the US comes into play, the answer is that it doesn’t for the most part. Panama is not a tax haven for the United States, and in fact, it is much easier to create a shell company in any US state than it would be to do so there.
As President Obama stated, “There are folks here in America who are taking advantage of the same stuff… the laws are so poorly designed that they allow people, if they’ve got enough lawyers and enough accountants, to wiggle out of responsibilities that ordinary citizens are having to abide by.”
3. Pressure to clean up
Investigations have been launched, outrage has been ignited, and public figures have sworn to take the matter seriously and pass laws that reflect their disdain. To put a significant dent in the practice, though, would require much more than may be feasible.
There will be pressure for tax reform, crackdowns on evasion, and international cooperation. Nations, companies, and wealthy individuals will be pressured into cleaning up their act, at least on the surface. There is promise, however: tax investigators from over 28 countries will meet in Paris to launch an international inquiry into the leak to better understand the offshore industry.
In addition, Panama’s President Juan Carlos Varela said the government will create an international committee of experts to recommend improvements in transparency in the offshore financial industry, which would share its findings with other nations in the interest of taking a united front.
Even so, it is more likely that this pressure will bubble into resentment than change. With attitudes toward the political establishment and elite already sour, the Panama Papers leak reaffirms and amplifies populations’ perception that the rich and the powerful play by different rules.
Unsurprisingly, it will take more than 2.6 terabytes to curb global-scale greed.
Featured image: Perspecsys Photos via Flickr
Copyright © Bianna Golodryga
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U.S. Bioethics Commissions
Scholars, students, and educators interested in materials from U.S. National Commissions on Bioethics will find a rich resource at the Bioethics Research Library. The Library has transcripts, reports, briefing and agenda books, and related materials. The Library has provided reports and appendices for various digitization efforts so that full-text of these historic documents could be made available online. Links are provided below for those resources which can be found online.
In addition to our work with the U.S. National Commissions, the Library has spent nearly 40 years collecting government materials from dozens of Federal agencies and committees. There are also materials from national governments, state and local governments, and many non-governmental organizations (NGOs). You can access these collections both by visiting our Government and NGOs in Bioethics Collection and by searching our OneSearch Tool, that limits your search to government documents held by the BRL.
We also invite you to visit the Library to use any materials in our archives of interest to you. In order to best prepare for your visit, we ask that you contact the Library in advance so that we can be certain to have the documents you wish to use readily available. Please use our archives appointment form describe your research work, to let us know when you will visit, and to identify the specific materials you wish to review.
The Bioethics Research Library holds original documents from the earliest U.S. Presidential Commissions about bioethics as well as archived websites containing reports and transcripts from more recent Commissions. View a list of publications from 1974 to 2009 here.
Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, 2009-2017
President’s Council on Bioethics, 2001-2009
National Bioethics Advisory Commission, 1996-2001
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, 1994-1995
Biomedical Ethical Advisory Committee, 1988-1990
President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and in Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1978-1983
National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1974-1978
Presentation on the U.S. Bioethics Commission Archives
Hakkarinen, Mark. Exploring the Bioethics Archives: Public Bioethics in the New Millennium: Creatively Communicating the work of the Presidential Bioethics Commission. American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities (ASBH) Annual Meeting. October 24, 2015. Available online: PDF with notes. PowerPoint slideshow.
The current Presidential commission on bioethics, appointed by President Obama, is no longer actively meeting. Information about that Commission may be obtained at the archived website here: https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcsbi/.
Appointed by President George W. Bush. Web site archived at the Bioethics Research Library, https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcbe/.
Appointed by President Clinton. Web site archived at the Bioethics Research Library,https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/nbac/.
A stand-alone commission making its final report in 1996 was the presidentially-appointed Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE); its agenda books and related items can be found at the Bioethics Research Library. These materials have not yet been digitized. ACHRE’s interim and final reports were digitized and are available at https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/achre/.
The 14 initial members of this Committee were selected by the Biomedical Ethics Board, which was made up of six senators and six members of Congress. The group functioned only briefly from late 1988 to early 1989 and had two meetings before its parent group became politically deadlocked due to abortion politics, its appropriations were frozen, and finally its term expired in 1990. The BEAC did not release reports.
In 1978, the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and in Biomedical and Behavioral Research was established by Public Law 95-622. The reports of this commission and a collection of correspondence and copies of many of the transcripts of its meetings are in the Bioethics Research Library. Full-text access to reports and appendices is now available online at https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcbe/reports/past_commissions/.
Ethics Advisory Board (EAB), 1978-1979
This group began in 1978 under the auspices of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Its pronouncement on human embryo research in 1979 followed by the EAB dissolution began a 15-year moratorium on such research. Materials are held in the Bioethics Research Library’s Archive and are available upon request. An EAB finding aid is available here.
In the early history of bioethics, the Executive Branch’s Department of Health, Education and Welfare established the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. Most of the transcripts and reports of this early commission are in the Bioethics Research Library. The reports are also online at https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcbe/reports/past_commissions/.
View the finding aid for the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research archival collection. Contents of the archival boxes have also been digitized into image sets and made available on Flickr.
View all U.S. Bioethics Commission Reports available on DigitalGeorgetown.
Or, jump to top-accessed resources in this collection:
May 12, 2016 – Bioethics for Every Generation – Deliberation and Education in Health, Science, and Technology
March 11, 2016 – PCBE September 9 2005 Full Transcript
This page last updated on July 11, 2016.
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Setbacks Hit All-Stars the Hardest
Individuals with high-status careers may seem to have the resources and connections they need to recover if those careers turn south.
DS011/Thinkstock
But research finds that their performance suffers even more than that of lower-status workers after experiencing significant setbacks.
High-status individuals rely on their positions to bolster their self-worth. When that disappears, they can lose confidence, say assistant professors of organizational behavior Jennifer Carson Marr of Georgia Institute of Technology’s Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business in Atlanta and Stefan Thau of INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.
Marr and Thau conducted an examination of salary arbitration in Major League Baseball. They found that, in the MLB, when baseball players did not receive their proposed salaries during arbitration, those with the highest status experienced the greatest decline in performance the following year. Low-status players saw little change in their quality of play.
The pair also conducted two experiments in which they randomly assigned high or low status to participating students. They then set up conditions in which high-status participants lost that status arbitrarily. The researchers found that those who had held and then lost high status performed worse on a word exercise than other participants. The only exception was a group of high-status participants who completed a self-affirming exercise at the beginning of the experiment, which helped offset the perceived threat to their self-worth.
Lead author Marr suggests that those who experience significant setbacks in their careers take steps to bolster their self-worth—they should take time off, if possible, or even change jobs if they feel unfulfilled or disrespected in their current roles.
“Over time, individuals find ways to affirm themselves and come back,” she says. “Steve Jobs is a prime example of that. Maybe we’ll see the same thing with [New York Yankees shortstop Alex Rodriguez] now that he has a year off courtesy of a Major League Baseball arbitration. He’s talking about coming back better than ever—and, who knows, if he’s learned his lesson, he just might.”
“Falling from great (and not so great) heights: Initial status position influences performance after status loss” appears in the February/ March 2014 issue of the Academy of Management Journal.
That’s the number of new accreditation standards that AACSB International’s Blue Ribbon Committee has drafted— the first revision of AACSB’s standards since 2003. These proposed changes, to be presented to association members for a vote this April, have inspired spirited discussions about innovation, impact, engagement—and the future of management education.
Going (Almost) Paperless
Bentley University uses course management system Blackboard to simplify the promotion and tenure process.
Mission: Imperative
When accreditation is mission-based, mission statements are essential. But how do schools craft and implement the perfect mission statement?
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Blizzard Comedy
A safe space for comedy
Perform at Blizzard
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Interviews Shows we love
“We own it, we aren’t afraid of laughing at ourselves.” | Siân Davies talks coming of age in her late twenties on austerity sponsored travels
by Blizzard
Tell us about your show, About Time.
About Time is the story a year in my life. At the start of 2010 I was on the cusp of a life changing year. I was going traveling around the world on my gap year.
Due to my working class background, at 27, I was older than a lot of backpackers and experienced my travels in a different way than an 18 year old would. Despite my age, I was still quite immature and in my typical way, got myself in to plenty of hilarious situations.
The show is about how I navigated those situations and became who I am today. It’s about time, about growing up, about finding your place in the world and knowing what you are here to do. Ultimately it’s a coming of age story about a gap year sponsored by austerity.
What inspired you to write a show about your travels?
Travel is so ripe for comedic situations, there is so much happening and you experience so much, funny things crop up all the time. From the people you meet to the places you visit and the misunderstandings you have, it’s a funny time.
It was also such a big year in my life, it altered so much in my world and made me who I am today.
Plus it’s a story I’ve always wanted to share with people. I experienced so much during that year and sharing it with people who maybe haven’t had those experiences is really important to me.
Your show is specifically about what it’s like to travel as a working class person. How do you think your background affects the experience of your journey?
We’re all a product of our upbringing and the things we experience in our formative years. That means we all come at things from different angles. Being working class affects how you experience the world on all levels, whether that’s how you talk to people or your expectation of things.
Specifically my experience was different to more middle class friends I met because I had saved every bit of my cash myself and I wasn’t being financed by the bank of mum and dad. I knew one middle class traveller who got given a car by her parents when she went to uni, which is great if you can afford to do that for your children. When she went travelling her parents bought the car off her to keep as a little run around. When she came back to the UK, they gifted it back to her.
I think financing a round the world trip entirely through your own efforts makes you appreciate it more and understand the value of it.
How do you feel discussing serious topics like class through comedy can help stimulate conversation in broader society?
Comedy and the arts should always hold a mirror up to society and the big issues. By doing this, we help open up dialogue and challenge people’s perceptions. Working class people are vilified in society at the moment, there is this caricature of white working class people who all stupidly voted leave, hate foreigners and want to go back to the 1970’s.
My experience of working class communities are totally different from what is portrayed in the media. I grew up around smart, enquiring minds who welcomed diversity and strived for better lives for everyone. If this show helps to challenge other people’s perception of my community that can only be a good thing.
What is your trick to finding the funny side of subjects like this?
You’ve got to laugh! Even in the most difficult of situations there is humour to be found. A typical way of dealing with trauma in working class communities is to joke about it.
We grow up laughing at ourselves and the lives we have. We own it, we aren’t afraid of laughing at ourselves. But we don’t want to be the butt of other peoples jokes, as is quite often the case in comedy. Lazy jokes that punch down on Aldi shoppers or job seekers by people who went to private school aren’t helping anyone.
It’s my situation and if I can find a way of laughing at it, I will, but it’s mine to own.
What do you hope people take away from your show?
I want the story to stay with people, I want them to still be working their way through it all for a long time after seeing the show. I want them to strive for better for all of us.
Do you have any advice for people looking to get into comedy?
Work hard and be nice to people. It really is the best advice I can give.
Siân is performing About Time at Leicester Comedy Festival on 9th February. Book your ticket here.
She is performing at Vault Festival from 20th to 22nd March. Book your ticket here.
You can keep up with Siân’s work by checking out her website and following her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
TagsLeicester Comedy Festival • Sian Davies
Blizzard Chat #7: Jonny Collins
Blizzard Chat #6: Tom Burgess (Peter Fleming)
Blizzard Chat #5: Eleanor Morton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZBrTkZNwlQ&t=1436s
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Gerard Tichy
Gérard Tichy (also Gerard Tichy, Gerhard Tichi, and Gerardo Tichy) was a Spanish actor of German descent, who appeared in numerous movies, including several international productions. He was born in Weißenfels, Germany, on March 11, 1920, and died in Madrid, Spain, on April 11, 1992. Tichy participated in World War II and held the rank of a lieutenant when it ended. He was put in a French POW camp but soon managed to escape to Spain. There he started his film career in the war epic Balarrasa (1951) and quickly became a prominent character actor in Spanish cinema, ultimately appearing in 99 films over the course of his career. A capable if not fluent English speaker, Tichy also appeared in several international productions that were filmed in Spain, most notably King of Kings (1961), as Joseph, El Cid (1961), playing King Ramirez, and Doctor Zhivago (1965), as Liberius, a Red partisan commander. He appeared in numerous spaghetti Westerns, most notably Sergio Corbucci's Compañeros (1971).
Gladiators Seven
GLADIATORS SEVEN revolves around a Spartan warrior who rises from the masses and leads a group of seven brave gladiators into battle, vowing to free Sparta from the cruel tyrants who have been controlling the city with an iron hand. A thrilling one-of-a-kind Italian made...
Italian Sword and Sandal
Pedro Lazaga
GLADIATORS SEVEN revolves around a Spartan warrior who leads a group of seven...
Source: Gerard Tichy on Freebase, licensed under CC-BY
Other content from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
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The Soviet military program that secretly mapped the entire world
The Pentagon is visible at bottom left in this detail from a Soviet map of Washington, DC. printed in 1975.
ALL images from the Red Atlas: how the Soviet Union secretly mapped America, by John Davies and Alexander J. Kent, published by the University of Chicago press
From National Geographic by Greg Miller
The U.S.S.R. covertly mapped American and European cities—down to the heights of houses and types of businesses.
During the Cold War, the Soviet military undertook a secret mapping program that’s only recently come to light in the West.
Military cartographers created hundreds of thousands of maps and filled them with detailed notes on the terrain and infrastructure of every place on Earth.
It was one of the greatest mapping endeavors the world has ever seen.
San Francisco Bay area (1980)
Soviet maps of Afghanistan indicate the times of year certain mountain passes are free of snow and passable for travel.
Maps of China include notes on local vegetation and whether water from wells in a particular area is safe to drink.
The Soviets also mapped American cities in remarkable detail, including some military buildings that don’t appear on American-made maps of the same era.
These maps include notes on the construction materials and load-bearing capacity of bridges—things that would be near-impossible to know without people on the ground.
This Soviet map of lower Manhattan, printed in 1982, details ferry routes, subway stations, and bridges.
New York Manhattan
Much of what’s known about this secret Soviet military project is outlined in a new book, The Red Atlas, by John Davies, a British map enthusiast who has spent more than a decade studying these maps, and Alexander Kent, a geographer at Canterbury Christ Church University.
The Red Atlas dives inside the secret Soviet mapping program.
Beginning in the 1940s, the Soviets mapped the world at seven scales, ranging from a series of maps that plotted the surface of the globe in 1,100 segments to a set of city maps so detailed you can see transit stops and the outlines of famous buildings like the Pentagon (see above).
It’s impossible to say how many people took part in this massive cartographic enterprise, but there were likely thousands, including surveyors, cartographers, and possibly spies.
A Soviet map of Boston printed in 1979.
Most of these maps were classified, their use carefully restricted to military officers.
Behind the Iron Curtain, ordinary people did not have access to accurate maps.
Maps for public consumption were intentionally distorted by the government and lacked any details that might benefit an enemy should they fall into the wrong hands.
The Soviets mapped North America at different scales,
as seen in this 1959 small-scale map of the San Francisco Bay area.
Davies and Kent argue that the maps were a pre-digital Wikipedia, a repository of everything the Soviets knew about a given place.
Maps made by U.S. and British military and intelligence agencies during the Cold War tended to focus on specific areas of strategic interest.
This small-scale map printed in 1981 shows the area around Montreal.
Montreal is shown in greater detail on this large-scale Soviet map printed in 1986.
The Soviets also mapped European cities, including Copenhagen,
shown here on a map printed in 1985.
Soviet maps contain plenty of strategic information too—like the width and condition of roads—but they also contain details that are unusual for military maps, such as the types of houses and businesses in a given area and whether the streets were lined with greenery.
This 1982 Soviet map of London took up four panels, stitched together in this composite image.
Exhaustive notes on transportation networks, power grids, and factories hint at the Soviets’ obsession with infrastructure.
Davies and Kent see the maps not so much as a guide to invasion, but as a helpful resource in the course of taking over the world.
The Berlin Wall is outlined in magenta in this Soviet map printed in 1983.
“There’s an assumption that communism will prevail, and naturally the U.S.S.R. will be in charge,” Davies says.
Very little is known about how the Soviet military made these maps, but it appears they used whatever information they could get their hands on.
Some of it was relatively easy to come by.
In the U.S., for example, they would have had access to publicly-available topographic maps made by the U.S. Geological Survey (legend has it the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. routinely sent someone over to check for new maps).
To obtain more obscure information, they would have had to get creative.
A Soviet map of San Diego from 1980 (top) shows the buildings at the U.S. Naval Training Center and Marine Corps Recruiting Depot in more detail than does the USGS map published in 1979 (bottom).
In this map of San Diego, the added detail may have come from satellite imagery, which the Soviets had access to after the launch of their first spy satellite in 1962.
In other cases, detail may have come directly from sources on the ground.
According to one account, the Russians augmented their maps of Sweden with details obtained by diplomats working at the Soviet embassy, who had a tendency to picnic near sites of strategic interest and strike up friendly conversations with local construction workers.
One such conversation, on a beach near Stockholm in 1982, supposedly yielded information about Swedish defensive minefields—and led to the Soviet spy being deported after a Swedish counterintelligence agent lurking nearby overheard the conversation.
This red white and blue map of Zurich, Switzerland, printed in 1952, is an interesting departure from the typically more earthy Soviet cartographic color scheme.
Exactly how the Soviet maps came to be available in the West is a touchy subject.
They were never meant to leave the motherland, and they have never been formally declassified.
In 2012, a retired Russian colonel was convicted of espionage, stripped of his rank, and sentenced to 12 years in prison for smuggling maps out of the country.
In researching the book, Kent and Davies had hoped to speak with some of former military cartographers who worked on the maps, but they never found anyone willing to talk.
As the Soviet Union broke up in the late 1980s, the maps began appearing in the catalogs of international map dealers.
Telecommunications and oil companies were eager customers, buying up Soviet maps of central Asia, Africa, and other parts of the developing world for which no good alternatives existed.
Aid groups and scientists working in remote regions often used them too.
Map of Boston (1965)
For anyone who lived through the Cold War there may be something chilling about seeing a familiar landscape mapped through the eyes of the enemy, with familiar landmarks labeled in unfamiliar Cyrillic script.
Even so, the Soviet maps are strangely attractive and very well made, even by modern standards. “I continue to be in awe of the people who did this,” Davies says.
National Geographic : Secret Japanese Military Maps Could Open a New Window on Asia's Past / See the Historic Maps Declassified by the CIA
Soviet Maps by John Davies
Architect of the Capital : Hyper Detailed Soviet Maps Of Washington (about errors in the Soviet maps)
Canterbury University : Cartography and the Kutznetsov
News : Secret Soviet maps among hundreds on display at British Library exhibition
Android App (Atlogis Geoinformatics) : Soviet military maps Pro
Medium : Mapmaking behind the Iron Curtain
Wired : The Soviet military's eerily detailed guide to San Diego
GeoGarage blog : Inside the secret world of Russia's cold war mapmakers /
The CIA is celebrating its cartography division’s 75th anniversary by sharing declassified maps / How maps became deadly innovations in WWI
geogarage November 1, 2017 at 11:14 AM
National Geographic : Secret Soviet Posters Demystify Map Symbols
geogarage April 27, 2018 at 12:52 PM
The Guardian : Quiz: can you guess the world city from its cold war Soviet spy map?
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Symbolism is the practice of representing things by symbols. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a book of much symbolism. Set in 17th century New England, the book starts with the public punishment of Hester Prynne, a convicted adulterer. One of themost complex and misunderstood symbols in the book is Hester's illegitimate daughter, Pearl. Throughout the story, she develops intoa dynamic symbol -one that is always changing. Pearl represents her mother's punishment, a rose, and the scarlet letter.
In The Scarlet Letter, the Puritans forced Hester to wear a scarlet letter "A" across for her chest, for the crime of adultery. The punishment continued as Hester was treatedas outcast and mocked by the town. "Tomorrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, so would the next," the narrator explained. On the other hand, God's treatment of Hester for her sin was quite different than just aphysical token: he gave Hester a very unique childwhich she named Pearl.The child was a constant mental and physical reminder to Hester of what she had done wrong and how she could not escape it. In this aspect, Pearl symbolizedGod's way of punishing Hester for adultery.
"She named the infant Pearl as of being of great price-purchased with all her mother had," the narrator says. Pearl grew to be a very passionate and lively young girl. She becomes a contradicting factor in her mother's life. To her mother, Pearl symbolized the rosebush outside of the jail, because at some times she could be bright and vibrant. However at other times,she could be wilting.It was at these times when she was "wilting"that brought Hester the most grief.
One final way in which Pearl symbolized something in the novel was her association with the scarlet letter. Hester began to think of the letter and her daughter as both &quo…
Ambiguity in The Scarlet Letter
Themes of the Scarlet Letter
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The Intellectual repository for the New Church. (July/Sept. 1817 ...
By New Church gen. confer
and New Jerusalem Magazine and the Juvenile Magazine, though increasing, is far below what we might reasonably hope. We cannot but think that a little effort on the part of our readers might considerably increase the number of our subscribers; and as the Confer. ence and Sunday School Union, of which these magazines are the organs, have always manifested a disposition to apply any increased funds to their improvement, this extension of their sale would be certainly followed by an improvement in their appearance and quality. With the present volume we enter upon some new arrangements, from which the conductors hope to reap advantages to the work itself, and we may, therefore, confidently appeal to our readers to help us in the work in which we are engaged.
SPAIN. One of the most marked political events is the revolution in Spain. The utter depravity of the Queen, combined with the tyranny of her Government, has at length so completely outraged the people, that they have risen against her authority, and banished her from her throne and country. A transitional Government has been formed, and, at the time we write, the future is involved in no small obscurity. Meantime there are certain features in this movement which it may be interesting and useful for members of the New Church to carefully note.
Spain has been pre-eminently distinguished for its attachment to the Romish Church. It has been the stronghold of the Papacy. Its catholic unity, secured by the terrible persecu. tions of the Inquisition and the fearful tyrannies of the secular Government, has been its glory and its boast. Here, if anywhere, we may look, therefore, for the natural fruits of this system of priestly assumption and ecclesiastical ascendency. Here it has had uninterrupted sway. Italy has rebelled ; Spain has been quiet. Italy has allowed the introduction of the Bible and the open teaching of Protestant pastors; Spain has set her face as flint against every movement which could disturb her quiet or infringe her catholic unity. With all her efforts, she has not entirely
succeeded. She has been more successful, however, in producing infidelity than Protestant aspirations—aspirations towards intellectual freedom and Christian faith and love. Nothing can be more disheartening, says the correspondent of one of our leading journals, than the religious question in Spain :
“Ask any man you meet whether he is a Catholic; his answer is, 'I am a Spaniard.' The religion, the abuse of which has been the ruin of his country, is with him, if a believer, a subject of national pride ; if a sceptic or arrant infidel, a kind of irresistible fatality. 'I am a Spaniard'—that is, a being doomed to be a Catholic or nothing *For other people there may be, on religious subjects, inquiry, intellectual development, rational emancipation ; for us, in Spain, there is no mid-way between the sheer unbelief which befits a man and the grovelling superstition which is good for a woman.' Strange enough, the priests are aware of, and thoroughly acquiesce in this arrangement. Tell a priest boldly in his face you are an infidel, and he has done with you. As he can no longer burn you, he rather looks upon you as an auxiliary; for, he reasons, 'if all religions are the same to you, perhaps you will have no objection to your wife fol. lowing her religion rather than any other. Perhaps you will find one religion in Spain a lesser evil than that confusion of creeds reigning in Eng. land.' Be it borne in mind that it is unbelief, and not belief, that stands in the way of religious freedom in Spain. Could you abstract professed or secret deists and atheists, could you freely address yourself to the mass of churchgoers, to the frequenters of the confessional, to those who are most assiduous in their observance of the precepts of the Church, you would only be astonished at the narrow limits within which the belief of these people reduces itself. Ask any of the ladies who have signed the Madrid, Seville, or Valladolid peti. tion what are her particular objections to Protestantism. “Call you that a religion ?' she will answer. “Why, their priests marry, and have children like other men,' and she will giggle at the notion. What else does she know about other people's religion or her own? Roman Catholicism south of the Alps or the Pyrenees is a thoroughly dumb show ; it never argues or discusses; it never addresses the under standing ; never countenances inquiry or controversy."
Such is the fearful night of mental and religious darkness to which this system of priestcraft has reduced the national mind.
“The influence of the clergy,” says the same writer, “is to loosen all moral restraint. The charity they inculcate is encouragement to idleness. Their aspirations to a future life resolve themselves into a disregard of the duties of the present. Their own example sup plies the best apology for idleness and indulgence.”
No power of external authority can permanently bind the minds of the people. Liberty of thought is secured by a higher influence than earth. All the agencies of Divine providence are active to secure the regeneration of nations, the setting up of a purer wor. ship, and the promulgation of a truer faith. Protestantism in many of its features is not in harmony with the wants of the present or the hopes of the future. Nevertheless, its mental freedom and open promulgation of the word of God, present to the nation the means of progress and of religious enlightenment. And these agencies are already at work. Public Protestant worship has been organized in Madrid by a congregation of French, Swiss, English, and German Protestants, the latter of whom are very numerous. The correspondent of the Post thus describes the opening Protestant service :
“Don Antonio Carrasso, who shared the dungeon and the dungeon food with the Spanish Protestant martyr, Señor Matamoros, performed the Protestant service in the Spanish language before a numerous congregation, who expressed the utmost astonishment that Protestants believed in the principles of Christianity-for Spanish Catholics are taught from their childhood the most monstrous of fables concerning the creed of those whom they are taught to loathe as heretics. The pastor' preached a very judicious sermon, perfectly adapted to his auditory of imaginative children of the south. In stead of fiercely denouncing Roman Catholic dogmas, like that indiscreet enthusiast who narrowly escaped being
torn to pieces the other day at Cartha. gena, for ridiculing the Immaculate Conception, he expounded, in words that proved his perfect knowledge of the Spanish language, from the text, 'Simon Peter, lovest thou Me. Feed My lambs.' He announced that Father Ruet, an ex-catholic priest, would officiate occasionally, but that he would go to preach the pure faith in the provinces. The committee intend to build a Pro. testant church without delay. A London committee has also taken in hand the building of a Protestant church. A Spanish Protestant journal has been started, the prospectus of which announces that the editor, Cordova y Lopez, and other democrats, accept and proclaim the Reformation of Martin Luther.”
As was to be expected, the British and Foreign Bible Society are availing themselves of the opening thus made to introduce the Word in the Spanish language in large numbers. The way is thus opened for the promulgation of truth. Much that passes under this name may not be in harmony with the teachings of the New Church. It is immeasurably superior, however, to the degrading superstition and scarcely concealed atheism so extensively prevalent. So far also as it opens the mind, and gives increased activity to thought, it is preparing the way of the Lord, and hastening the progress of the latter-day glory of the Church.
PUBLIC MEETINGS OF THE SO.
CIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRIS-
TIAN KNOWLEDGE.
So many and so varied are the evidences of improved feeling and sentiment among intelligent Christians, that we are sometimes led to suppose that a more rapid progress has been effected than has really taken place. This feeling is often interrupted, however, by some outbreak of the old spirit of narrow exclusiveness, which reminds us that old things have not entirely passed away. Some church meetings which have been recently held have manifested some of the worst features of clerical intolerance. At a meeting of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge, held on the 6th of October, on the motion of Mr. E. A. Fitzroy, a motion was carried,
granting the sum of £2000 to the Dean of Pieter Maritzburg and the Church Committee in the diocese of Natal. This resolution set aside the Bishop (Dr. Colenso), and recognised a rival and hostile establishment. The friends of the motion, however, were in the ascendant, and all opposition was put down by the most disorderly and vio lent means. A writer in the Spectator, who had attended a meeting of trades unions in Leeds, where some two or three thousand working-men were present, says, “I am obliged to confess, with shame and regret, that their sense of order, their manliness and gentlemanliness of feeling, were miles above anything that I could find in the clergy and excited young laymen who flocked to Lincoln's Inn Fields this afternoon. Interruptions, shouts, a clamorous refusal to listen to any one on the other side, the most entire absence of any recognition of the ordinary rules of a public meeting, broken windows, and vehement gesticulations, —these were the features of the venerable society. It was simply a tumult like that at Ephesus; and there was no
town clerk’ in the chair, with power to appease' and courage to dismiss' the assembly.” A clergyman writing to the same paper gives a similar ac. count of this turbulent and disorderly assembly, citing some special examples of unfeeling and unchristian conduct. The purpose, however, of the promoters of the resolution was accomplished, but followed by notice of motion to repeal the resolution at a subsequent meeting This meeting was held on the 8th of December at the Freemason's Tavern. This large room was quite inadequate to accommodate the excited crowd of members who flocked to the meeting All the avenues of approach were blocked up, and the room so crowded that it was found necessary to close the doors, and thus forcibly prevent any further admissions. The remarks of the public press on the disorders, the partizan zeal, and the intolerance of the former meeting, it was reasonably supposed would exercise some restraint on this assembly. The Archbishop of York, who was in the chair, appealed to the meeting as 66 an assembly consisting so largely of men who, like himself, were ministers of the gospel of our blessed Lord, to conduct its business in a spirit of charity
and fairness, and with a desire to do justice to all.” The appeal was in vain. The same turbulence as at the former meeting seems to have prevailed. Clergymen of high standing were refused a hearing. Others spoke amid the most unseemly interruptions, and the business of the meeting was transacted in the midst of angry altercation, confusion, and uproar. In the end a resolution affirming the grant of £2000 for the promotion of Christian knowledge in the colony of Natal, but leaving its expenditure in the hands of the Committee, was carried by a majority of 91. It is painful to witness proceedings so utterly at variance with the commonest elements of Christian decorum, and which manifest such a total disregard of the commonest teachings of Christian truth. It is important, however, to note such conduct and if possible to discover its cause. Principles will always sooner or later work out their effects. What is in the mind of man is certain, at some time or other, and in some form or other, to be manifested in his words and actions. The cause of these disorders is to be found in the false position of those who have taken part in them. The gratuitous assumption of their own superiority, combined with a mistaken life's training of uncontradicted ascendency in their parishes, renders the bulk of our parochial clergy impatient of contradiction, fills their minds with the pride of spiritual despotism, and renders them oblivious of what is due to the feelings and sentiments of others. The great want of the church is a higher and truer Christian dogma, and a more cordial blending of all her members, both lay and clerical, in the ordinary business of their several congregations. The assumed superiority of the clergy, and their exclusive management of everything belonging to the worship and services of their churches, tend more to the development of the natural selfwill than to the maturing of brotherly kindness and Christian charity. Until the Church is delivered, however, from its narrowing doctrine of faith only, and possesses a genuine doctrine of charity, and realizes its vital importance in the formation of Christian character, it is hopeless to expect any. thing like a general and real manifestation of Christian courtesy and love.
ITALY.—A correspondent of the Lon don Guardian of November 18th writes:
_“Italy is in every sense a new country now to one who remembers it before Majenta and Solferino, when Italy was, as Prince Metternich used to say, only 'a geographical expression.' It is not only that the demarcations of the map are effaced, the petty sovereignty of grand dukes and titular princes abolished, and Florence itself, as the capital of Italy, no longer an inexpensive residence for our countrymen. The change of political relations affects the national life in its every aspect. Instead of the swarms of friars and monks which the traveller met everywhere, it is a rare thing now to see the picturesque garb of the monastic orders. What would Torquemada and his myrmidons think of a book-stall in the great piazza at Milan, close to the very walls of 'Il Duomo,' with New Testaments in the vernacular freely displayed for sale to the passers-by ?”
Into the quickened life of this great nation, awaking from the slumbers of ages, and slowly shaking itself free from the nightmare of the papacy, the merciful Providence which is over all the nations of the earth is preparing to insert the glorious and soul-reviving truths of His second advent. The following letter of the Rev. Mr. Ford, the minister of a small society of the New Church at Florence, is extracted from the Messenger of November 11th, and will be read with interest. We offer no apology for its insertion at length.
FLORENCE, Oct. 15, 1868. While I was passing the hot season at the Baths of Recoaro, in the Italian Tyrol, I received a letter dated Lau. sanne, August 4, 1868, and signed “Loreto Scocia, Minister of the Italian Evangelical Church,” in which the writer stated that he had been for some time desirous of learning something about the doctrines of the New Church, but had only the previous day heard of the existence of a New Church at Florence from an English gentleman, who gave him my address. He therefore applied to me to know how he should obtain the information he desired. To this I replied by giving him a list of some of Swedenborg's works, beginning with H. & H. and D. P., to be ordered from Paris. I said, among
other things, that I wrote a little in the dark, not knowing whether he was moved to investigate the doctrines of the New Church by mere theological curiosity, or whether, having conceived à favourable impression of them, he wished to know more about them, “ seeking the truth for the truth's sake, and conscious of a purpose to leave all in order to acquire it and profess it.”
To this Signor Scocia replied in a letter dated Lausanne, September 1st, 1868, from which I make the following extracts :
“ These words of yours (referring to those just given), my dear sir, make it my duty to give you some explanations. Have the kindness, then, to pardon me if I shall speak a little about myself. My first profession was not that of theology, but of law, in which I have received the degree of doctor. In 1860, being then in France, I was converted from Roman Catholicism to Wesleyan Methodism, through the instrumentality of men who deserved and still deserve my esteem and affection. Believing that I had found the truth, I gave up everything to profess it, and for seven years I devoted myself to it entirely.
“Having completed the studies preparatory to the ministry in France, I returned to Italy, and commenced my mission in Parma. In this city there gathered . about me several · hundred persons, and in the short period of a year I had the satisfaction of seeing the establishment of a church of full five hundred members. I was then called to evangelize in other cities, Milan, Monza, Varese, Pavia, Savona, and in 1864, in Bergamo. This last is one of the strongholds of Popery, and had already, more than once, with resort to violence, driven off a Waldensian missionary and a Plymouthist. I send you by the same mail with this two numbers of the ‘Pungolo' of Milan. In that of the 13th of December 1864, an article marked on the first page will inform you of the serious danger to which I was exposed in Bergamo. In the other, of the 1st January, 1865, an 'article similarly marked will serve to show you the complete triumph gained by the evangelical truths in that city. I was subsequently recalled to the churches of Milan and Pavia, and finally sent to Vicenza, there to initiate a missionary movement.
“But at this period there was going on within me a complete spiritual revolution. Mon.
an excellent friend of mine, opened my eyes to the absurdities of the doctrines self-styled orthodox, based, almost all of them, on material and ignorant interpretations of the sacred Scriptures. In consequence, perceiving that I was in a Church which not only does not possess the truth, but what is worse, oppresses by its heavy organization, by its method ism, all spirit, intelligence, and evangelical liberty, I could not hesitate, and at the first opportunity I offered my resignation to the Methodist Church.
"I came last May to Lausanne, where the relations of my wife reside, for the benefit of her suffering health, and am here seeking the truth, because I feel that I must not be wanting to my vocation, and desire with all my soul to return at the right time to preach the gospel in my dear native land.
"I had already some general ideas of the doctrines of the eminent philosopher Swedenborg, and was desirous of investigating the beliefs of the New Church which professes his doctrines; but up to the last month I never knew to whom to apply, when, as I wrote you the first time, Mr. Dixon, an English gentleman of my acquaintance, spoke to me about you, and gave me your address.
“I am expecting from Paris the works you have recommended to me. I shall study them seriously, and since you so kindly offer me your aid, I promise that I will have recourse to it frankly whenever I may need it, whether to overcome some difficulty or to clear up some doubtful point. What. ever may be the result of my investigations into the works of Swedenborg, I shall always be glad of having under. taken it, since it has put me in correspondence with you."
The next letter of Signor Scocia shows the impression made on hinn by his first acquaintance with Swedenborg :
To I am happy to inform you that I have read the work on Heaven and Hell, and that on the Divine Providence. What sublime philosophy, what deep knowledges, pyschological, physiologi
usichological, physiologi. cal, anatomical, physical, and natural ? 6. I venture to send you a short
more of my reading, and of the deen impression it has made upon me,
with the hope of some suggestions from you in reply.
[Here follows an excellent summary of the doctrines of the New Church, which we omit for want of room. EDS. MESS.]
“Thus you see, my dear sir, thanks to these writings, that my mind has entered upon a new horizon-a horizon immense and elevated. It is not, however, I will tell you frankly, one entirely pure and serene. Certain obscure and cloudy vapours prevent me from sending my sight abroad when it would fain contemplate the wonderful beauties of Swedenborg's doctrines.”
His difficulties have respect to justi. fication by faith alone, and predestination, which he finds. as he supposes, explicitly taught in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and he cites several passages which seem to teach these doctrines. Perceiving in these doubts an illustration of what Swedenborg tells us, that truths ought not to be received all at once, and that therefore things which make against them are usually suggested, I contented mysell, using very little argument against these dog. mas, with saying that he would find occasion, in his further investigations, to see that the Epistles of the New Testament formed no part of the Divine Word. The following is his reply, being the last letter which I have received from him :
“LAUSANNE, Oct. 1, 1868. “You can well imagine, my dear brother, my happiness in being able to write you -as I can your satisfaction in learning it—the good news, that the Lord has wonderfully fulfilled my long cherished desires. The happy prognostications expressed in your last letter have been completely realizedrealized even beyond all that could have been expected.
“But to show this it is necessary that I should tell you of the wonderful success which I have received from the Divine Providence. First of all, however, I must premise that when your welcome letter reached me, I hadojust finished reading the precious book of Swedenborg, entitled the True Christian Religion, which gave me clear and precise ideas about the doctrines of the New Church, and of the logical and harmonious connection existing through.
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Books To Travel With Africa, Kenya books, Malawi books, Tanzania books, Uganda books, Zambia books, Zimbabwe books adventure, Africa, books, cycling, Dervla Murphy, Kenya, travel, Uganda Leave a comment
In January 1992, Dervla Murphy prescribed herself several carefree months and embarked on a cycle tour (pedalling and pushing) from Kenya to Zimbabwe via Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia on the cyclist’s equivalent of a Rolls Royce called Lear. Before long, she realized that for travellers who wish to remain stress-free, Africa is the wrong continent. Inevitably she was caught up in the harrowing problems of the peoples she met; the devastating effects of AIDS (ukimwi is Swahili for AIDS), drought and economic collapse; scepticism about Western “aid schemes”; and corruption and incompetence, both white and black.
The Ukimwi Road: From Kenya to Zimbabwe
Don’t Let’s Go To The Dog’s Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller
Books To Travel With Africa, Malawi books, Zambia books, Zimbabwe books Africa, Alexandra Fuller, books, Malawi books, travel, Zambia books, Zimbabwe books Leave a comment
Don’t Let’s go to the Dogs Tonight is a wonderfully evocative memoir of Alexandra Fuller’s African childhood. Fuller regards herself “as a daughter of Africa”, who spent her early life on farms in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia throughout the turbulent 1970s and 80s, as her parents “fought to keep one country in Africa white-run”, but “lost twice” in Kenya and Zimbabwe. This is a profoundly personal story about growing up with a pair of funny, tough, white African settlers, and living with their “sometimes breathlessly illogical decisions”, as they move from war-torn Zimbabwe to disease and malnutrition in Malawi, and finally the “beautiful and fertile” land of Zambia.
Central to Fuller’s book is the intense relations between herself and her parents, a chain-smoking father able to turn round any farm in Africa, her glamorous older sister Vanessa, and the character who sits at the heart of the book, Fuller’s “fiercely intelligent, deeply compassionate, surprisingly witty and terrifyingly mad” mother.
Fuller weaves together painful family tragedy with a wider understanding of the ambivalence of being part of a separatist white farming community in the midst of Black African independence. The majority of the book focuses on Fuller’s early years in war-torn Zimbabwe, with “more history stuffed into its make-believe, colonial-dream borders than one country the size of a very large teapot should be able to amass.” This is the most successful dimension of the book, as Fuller describes growing up on farm where her father is away most nights fighting “terrorists”, and stripping a rifle takes precedence over school lessons. The sections on Malawi and Zambia are more prosaic, but this is a lyrical and accomplished memoir about Africa, which is “about adjusting to a new world view” and the author’s “passionate love for a continent that has come to define, shape, scar and heal me and my family.”
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Discuss this book in the comments section!
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Home > Asia Pacific > South Asia > Nepal
Stupa at the sacred pool
by Piya, The Hindustan Times, May 29, 2008
Lumbini, Nepal -- Located a short distance from the India-Nepal border at Sonauli, Lumbini is easily accessible from India by road, train or air from India.
<< Young monks sitting under the Bodhi tree at Lumbini, Nepal. Lumbini is believed to be the place where Mayadevi gave birth to Siddhartha Gautama, who later became known as Buddha (Gautama Buddha)
The rickety bus that took me to Lumbini, was a time machine that transported me back to an age when the entire town was a beautiful garden, shaded by Sal trees.
This tranquil environ was owned by the Shakya and the Kolia clans, and it was here that Maya Devi, wife of King Suddhodhana, gave birth to Prince Siddhartha, (later known as Buddha) under the shade of a Sal tree.
With efforts by local and international communities, the Lumbini gardens and its excavated ruins have been preserved well enough to showcase their archaeological and historical value.
Sacred bathing pool
I hired a cycle rickshaw through the gardens, the monasteries and the excavation sites. It was a pleasant journey and along the way I caught sight of Nilgai and deer. The gardens are also home to rare birds like the Black Ibis, Asian Magpie Robin and the Blue Tailed Bee Eater.
My first stop was at the temple of Maya Devi, the most important place in the gar dens. It is believed to have been built over the foundations of more than one Ashokan stupa. A bas relief depicts Maya Devi with her right hand holding on to a Sal tree with a newborn child standing upright on a lotus petal, an oval halo around his head. Currently due to ongoing, excavations, this nativity scene has been moved to a separate shrine.
It is also where the newborn had his first bath. Architecturally the pool has amazing brick masonry with projecting terraces.
The most important place in Lumbini is the sanctum sanctorum, a stone slab foundation containing a set of foot imprints that pinpoints the Buddha's exact place of birth, and draws thousands of pilgrims from around the world. On the south of the temple is Puskarni, the sacred bathing pool where Maya Devi is believed to have taken a bath before giving birth to the prince.
A leisurely walk through the gardens took me to the bazaar area which sell colourful thangkas (Buddhist paintings), prayer wheels, singing bowls and funky junk jewellery Pause for chai and . a snack before proceeding further.
I visited the beautiful monasteries built by Buddhist nations like Korea, Japan and Burma.
Each monastery reflected a unique architectural style through intricate carvings and statues of the Buddha. The stark white Thai monastery commands particular attention, with its pristine interiors and attention to detail.
The Chinese monastery has a large statue of Buddha and is built like a forbidden city. The Myanmar pagoda is built in the style of the Shwedagon temple in Yangon (Rangoon).
For those interested in archaeology, the museums within the gardens are a must visit. The Lumbini Museum located in the Cultural Zone was funded by the Indian government and contains Mauryan and Kushana coins, religious manuscripts, terracotta fragments, and stone and metal sculptures. It also possesses an extensive collection of stamps from various countries depicting Lumbini and the Buddha.
Opposite the museum, the Lumbini International Research Institute provides research facilities for the study of Buddhism and religion. It contains some 12,000 books on religion, philosophy, art and archi tecture. To study the ruins further, a visit to Kapilavastu, 27 km away, is recommended. The museum there has a rich collection of pottery, coins and other artefacts.
Scattered across the gardens are excavation sites, mostly kiln brickand-mortar foundations of groups of stupas and viharas built in the Mauryan, Kushana and Gupta period (between the third and second centuries BC), which probably indicates that devotees of the time wanted to lived close to the Buddha's birth place.
For those who come here for religious reasons, the ideal time to visit is April or May when Buddha Jayanti, or the birth anniversary of the Buddha, is celebrated. This is also the time, on full moon nights, when Hindus flock to worship Maya Devi as Rupa Devi, the Goddess of Lumbini.
The area outside the garden has several small villages, where the local life of the Terai region can be sampled at close quarters. There are several archaeological sites in this area, as well as a few lakes that are a bird watcher's paradise. Visit the Crane Sanctuary, home to sarus cranes, the tallest flying birds in the world.
As my bus trundled back to the Nepal border, I was overcome with a profound calm that can only come from a visit to the birthplace of the Buddha.
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Tags: President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
Lenten Protest Blames US for Economic Crisis
Web Master April 7, 2009 Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, economic crisis, Kalbaryo 2009, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, US Embassy in Manila
Protesters Blame US for Economic Crisis
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Gov’t, AFP Claims of NPA Weakening are Lies – Ka Roger
Janess Ann J. Ellao March 31, 2008 AFP chief of staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), counter-insurgency, CPP spokesperson Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal, Jose Maria Sison, Lava leadership of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP), military insurgency, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
CPP spokesperson Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal has belied claims by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the AFP that the strength of the CPP’s armed component, the NPA, has been halved in the last two years and that it will certainly face defeat by 2010. BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO Bulatlat Vol. VIII, No. 8, March 30-April 5,…
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Graf Ignatievo
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Dissecting “The Sacred Geometry Movie” (Part 1?)
Coincidentally, soon after I posted about Sacred Geometry and The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life, one of the most popular purveyors of pseudoscience on YouTube, Spirit Science, decided to release a movie one hour and forty-five minutes long discussing the subject. The film is, predictably, full of baseless assertions, nonsense, bad math, and dishonesty. In this post, I will be dissecting “The Sacred Geometry Movie,” showing once again that the supporters of Sacred Geometry haven’t got a clue what they are talking about.
Before we get into my analysis, here is the actual video. All of my timestamps will be referencing this.
00:00:00 – Disclaimer
The video opens with a disclaimer which reads “Don’t believe or disbelieve anything we discuss in Spirit Science. Simply have your own experience.” This is an attempt at justifying the mistakes the film will inevitably be making by pretending that the author is simply recounting his own experiences. However, the film makes claims about history, science, and mathematics which are unequivocal factual errors. These are not matters of subjective experience. These can be rationally and objectively assessed. Allow me to propose better advice: “Disbelieve anything we discuss until such time as we have sufficiently supported our claims with reasonable evidence.”
00:00:16 – Revolution
Spirit Science mentions a social revolution of the late 1700’s during which religion’s influence over society was lessened. I assume he means the “Enlightenment” period of history. However, that makes the diagram which appears sixteen seconds into the film fairly confusing, since it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Enlightenment, and is presented wholly without explanation or context. To be fair, a notation does refer the viewer to watch a previous video in the series, “Spirit Science 5,” but it remains curious why this diagram, which seems to discuss the 25,000 year cycle of the equinox, is linked to something which occurred less than 300 years ago.
00:00:40 – Superstition
At this point in the video, Spirit Science claims that society’s attempt to shed superstition threw the baby out with the bath water by dismissing things like consciousness, intuition, human connection, and paranormal phenomenon. Firstly, out of those four items, the only one which has been dismissed, entirely, as superstition is paranormal phenomenon. Prior to Spirit Science, I had never heard anyone associate consciousness, intuition, or human connection with superstition. He then goes on to say that “we have proven these things, today, to be real.” I would very much like to see where paranormal phenomena have been proven to actually exist, since I have never encountered any such proof– nor have thousands of others who have been actively looking for it, including some whose entire profession revolves around this search. Of course, Spirit Science blithely claims that paranormal phenomena have been proven to be real without any actual source for their claim.
00:00:51 – Consciousness
“Mainstream science is still going with the assumption that consciousness is just a part of the brain.” Of course it is. Every demonstrable example of consciousness available to science throughout history has been inextricably linked to a physical brain. If one wants to overturn the assumption that consciousness depends on the brain, one must demonstrate that consciousness can exist without the brain. No such demonstrations have ever been made, therefore the assumption remains. As for not having “a single, rational explanation for it,” I’m fairly certain that consciousness as a byproduct of electrochemical neuron activity qualifies as a single, rational explanation. While it is by no means an all-encompassing understanding of consciousness, it is certainly better formed and backed by more evidence than the idea that consciousness somehow exists in a disembodied state.
00:01:14 – Scientific Institutions
Spirit Science claim that there are scientific institutions which have “proven” that paranormal phenomena are real. As an example, the video shows a picture of the Institute of Noetic Sciences website. Of course, IONS has done no such thing, and a quick perusal of the Research section of their site shows absolutely no work published in respected, peer-reviewed science journals. In fact, one of the first articles I saw in their Research section simply repeats a very common and longstanding misinterpretation of the Double Slit experiment in physics. IONS has not proven anything as regards paranormal phenomena.
The video goes on to mention Rupert Sheldrake, whose hypotheses have been widely panned by the scientific community for a complete lack of evidence. Of course, lack of evidence has never mattered to the New Age community, so Spirit Science claims that Sheldrake has “definitely proven that mass consciousness exists and is not a part of the brain.” It is impossible to “definitely prove” a hypothesis for which no evidence has been provided.
00:01:50 – Sacred Geometry
Spirit Science explains that Sacred Geometry is the “geometry of consciousness.” Of course, this is complete nonsense– especially when combined with his previous assertion that consciousness is non-physical. Geometry is a method of describing physical quantities and dimension. If something is not physical, it cannot be described using geometry. A new assertion is made, here: “all consciousness is solely based on Sacred Geometry.” This, despite the fact that no geometry– sacred or otherwise– provides any mechanism for explaining consciousness. If you want to construct regular polyhedra, geometry will be indispensable; but if you want to describe the feeling of happiness you get from smelling a flower, geometry has absolutely no explanatory power.
00:02:24 – Big Bang vs. Creation Theology
Spirit Science says that the universe is infinite. It then proceeds to explain that neither modern science nor modern religion actually views the universe as being infinite (though, to be fair, it seems like Spirit Science is only aware of the Abrahamic religions, since the video specifically mentions 6 days of Creation by a single deity who rested on the 7th). Spirit Science attempts to juxtapose theological Creation with Big Bang cosmology to discern similarities between the two, but he gets these fairly wrong. He says that both models begin with Unity. While I can understand viewing the spacetime singularity of the Big Bang model as “Unity,” traditional creatio ex nihilo theology would explicitly state that the universe was not in Unity with God at any point; that is, God created everything, not from his own essence, but from nothing, wholly separate from God, himself. Spirit Science then asserts that “Light is Fundamental,” though it does not seem to be the case for either description of cosmology; in both the Big Bang model and Creation theology, light is a subset of the universe, not an ingredient for it. The claim that “We all share the same source” is generic and vague enough to work, but as a result, the comparison becomes somewhat meaningless.
00:03:40 – Infinite Universe
Spirit Science recognizes that it just contradicted itself by asserting that the universe is infinite, but has a beginning. We are promised an explanation of this claim. Then, the video abruptly changes subject, as if having forgotten what it just said.
00:03:55 – Energy!
We are treated to a nice word salad about Energy. Of course, the video never actually defines what it means by “Energy,” but it tells us lots of other vagaries about how that “Energy” can be described. This section is completely meaningless. You could replace all instances of the word “energy” with the word “literacy” (or pretty much any other noun) and produce just as cogent a discussion.
00:04:30 – Fibonacci (Math Error #1)
After four and a half minutes, we finally get to the first actual mathematics in a video which is, ostensibly, about geometry. Unfortunately, that also means that we run up against the first mathematical errors made in the video. The diagram of the Fibonacci Spiral is actually not bad, but the equation in the bottom left has a few problems. First of all, it is only tangentially related to the Fibonacci Spiral, though this is never explained. The equation describes the Golden Ratio, a proportion of two numbers A and B such that the proportion of A to B is equal to the proportion of A+B to A. As you calculate larger and larger terms of the Fibonacci Sequence, the proportion of term N to the previous term in the sequence becomes a closer and closer approximation of the Golden Ratio. However, the more striking problems occur when the equation states φ=1.61803. There are a couple of problems, here. In mathematical formulae, the Golden Ratio is usually represented by a Greek capital letter Phi, Φ. The lower-case letter phi, φ, is usually used to represent a different proportion– in fact, the complete reciprocal of Φ. However, the use of φ instead of Φ is a fairly minor error. The more egregious problem is that Φ is not equal to 1.61803. The Golden Ratio is an irrational number. No matter how many decimal places you decide to list, you can never write out a single term which is exactly equal to Φ. If you want to represent the Golden Ratio exactly, the simplest expression is Φ = (1+√5)/2. What Spirit Science should have written, here, is that the Golden Ratio is approximately 1.61803, or Φ ≈ 1.61803.
Also, the claim that the Fibonacci sequence is “present in all life, everywhere” is an oft-repeated lie. The pattern does occur in nature, and fairly often, but that is a far cry from the claim that it is a part of every living organism.
00:06:46 – Brain Hemispheres
“Okay, brain hemispheres: we have two of them.” That’s fairly obvious, considering “hemisphere” literally means “half of a sphere.” It’d be pretty nonsensical to have more than two halves of a single whole. After this gaff, the video presents the oh-so-popular, but still completely unscientific myth that people predominantly utilize the different halves of their brain for particular tasks. A two second Google search led me to a nice little response to this myth from Christopher Wanjek, at Live Science. Spirit Science doubles-down on their complete lack of research, here, by then claiming that the human species is 90% left brained. That claim would be fairly preposterous even if the brain was actually functionally divided in the manner the video describes.
00:07:54 – The Pattern of Creation
“Everything in the universe comes out of this pattern. I’m not making this up.” No, Spirit Science, you are not making this up. As I’ve previously discussed, Drunvalo Melchizedek made it up. You’re just uncritically regurgitating the nonsense that he has written. For instance, when you say that “the Flower of Life was known around the world, in ancient times.” While this rather simple geometric pattern was used aesthetically by a people in disparate cultures, there is no evidence that any of them ever called it the “Flower of Life,” and there is certainly no evidence that any of these cultures ascribed the cosmological significance to the pattern which Spirit Science claims for it. In fact, prior to Drunvalo Melchizedek’s seminars in the 1980’s and 90’s, there exists absolutely no literature which refers to this pattern as the Flower of Life, nor that describes its demiurgic properties.
00:09:59 – The Vesica Piscis (Math Error #2)
First of all, for some reason, Spirit Science does not seem to be able to pronounce the word “piscis.” Perhaps the narrator’s New Age proclivities have him thinking about astrology, because he keeps saying “Pisces” (pie-sees) instead of “piscis” (pis-kiss). We are then treated to the assertion that “within the vesica piscis is a vast and incredible amount of knowledge about width, proportion, depth…” Unfortunately for Spirit Science, the knowledge he’s referencing comes from geometry, in general, not from the vesica piscis, in particular. His mistake here is like saying a hammer has the ability to shelter someone from the rain. The fact that you can use a tool to build something with interesting properties does not mean that the tool, itself, has those properties.
Then he gets into the square roots. But now his diagram becomes a bit nonsensical. Assuming that the radius of the two larger circles is assigned a value of 1, his labels for √2 and √5 are fairly accurate. But what is that √3 supposed to be in reference to? The √2 describes the green diagonal line directly to its right– it is the proportion of the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle to one of its legs. Similarly, the √5 describes the green diagonal line directly below it– it is the proportion of the hypotenuse to the shorter leg of a right triangle whose larger leg is twice the length of the shorter. But the diagram does not contain any line which would seemingly be described by √3. Following the previous two examples, we would expect to see a right triangle with legs of lengths 1 and √2, whose hypotenuse would then be accurately described as √3, but no such triangle is found in this diagram.
Neither are √2, √3, and √5 numbers “which go on forever.” This is a common misunderstanding of what it means for a number to be irrational. The decimal representation of these numbers can never be written exactly but these numbers do not “go on forever” any more than 2, 3, or 5 do. These are precise, finite values.
00:10:06 – Let There Be Light
Spirit Science tells us that the Vesica Piscis can tell us “geometric information about light.” Of course, he then completely avoids telling us what the vesica piscis says about light, or how it says it, to instead assert that since both Genesis 1 and the vesica piscis are related to light, the pattern must have demiurgic significance. If I were inclined to be kind, I’d call that a specious claim; instead, I’ll go ahead and say that it is baseless nonsense.
We are then told that the things in the Bible which don’t match this nonsense are a result of the Bible’s having been “changed a lot.” It’s fairly obvious that the author of this script has absolutely no understanding of what he’s talking about. While there certainly have been copying errors, interpolations, redactions, and other sorts of changes to the texts which compose the Bible, throughout the centuries, that does not give a person free license to just throw out the words they don’t like in order to build a completely arbitrary cosmology from whole cloth.
Furthermore, his assertion of how the “ancient Egyptians” would disagree with Biblical cosmology is particularly asinine. He specifically notes that they would be aghast by the Bible’s lack of consideration for the relativity of motion; however, there is absolutely no evidence that the ancient Egyptians had any understanding or discussion of such a topic, at all. The Greek philosophers would touch on the subject briefly, but it wasn’t truly explored until the last few centuries. Not to mention the fact that ancient Egyptian cosmology also purported that the universe began as primordial waters, just as Genesis does.
I don’t even know what he means by “earlier Bibles said, ‘in the beginning, there were six,'” since the narrator completely fails to elucidate that claim in the slightest. He doesn’t seem to be referring to Genesis, at all, since there are no extant textual variants which read in that way. What does he consider “earlier Bibles?” Which specific texts is he referencing? This whole claim is nonsense without further information.
00:13:00 – The Egg of Life
The ancient Egyptians never called the referenced cluster of spheres “the Egg of Life.” I would challenge Spirit Science to produce a single piece of Egyptian literature which even mentions such a three-dimensional object. Nor is the “Egg of Life” representative of early cell mitosis. Even in the image of a cell which this very video juxtaposes against the Egg of Life, it’s easy to see that the two patterns have very little in common. But, of course, as soon as Spirit Science begins discussing the topic, he moves on to another. No explanation or data will ever be given for these assumptions. The video simply makes ridiculous statements as if they are entirely credible, then builds its next points off of these unsubstantiated assertions.
00:13:22 – More Flower of Life Claims
“All around the world, the Flower of Life was always made the exact same way.” All you have to do to discredit this claim is to scroll back to 00:09:00, where Spirit Science shows us a number of examples of this pattern (or similar) having been found across numerous cultures. Seriously, if Spirit Science had actually paid attention to the few bits of actual data that it actually presented, it would have realized that this claim is entirely bogus. So, when Spirit Science tells us that they “always, ALWAYS stopped after 19 circles,” apparently it doesn’t remember showing us a Flower of Life pattern with far more than 19 circles in this very video, at 00:08:10.
00:14:00 – The Fruit of Life
So, if you add a whole bunch of stuff to the pattern we already have, then remove a whole bunch of other stuff, you get an entirely new pattern. Forgive me if I am not amazed by this revelation. Also, forgive me if I am not impressed by the entirely baseless claim that this is one of the holiest, most sacred symbols in human history. Nor by the nonsensical assertion that this pattern somehow causes the emergence of the whole physical cosmos.
Also, connecting the centers of these circles does not produce an image known “throughout the universe, everywhere, as Metatron’s Cube.” Just as with the Flower of Life, earlier, there is no evidence that anyone ever referred to this pattern as Metatron’s Cube prior to Drunvalo Melchizedek making all of this up. Furthermore, the image of Metatron’s Cube shown isn’t even correct. There are several connecting lines missing from the image.
00:14:45 – The Platonic Solids (Math Error #3)
The video shows, once again, that it lacks any understanding of actual geometry by stating that “there are five unique shapes in the universe.” This is, of course, stupid. There are an infinite number of unique shapes in the universe. What Spirit Science means to say, here, is that there are only five regular polyhedra in the universe. Unfortunately, this would have required our dear narrator to have just a modicum of actual geometric study under his belt. Or, you know, about a three-second Google search. Either way, it seems more than Spirit Science can handle.
The tangential relationship between the Platonic Solids and spheres is not, as the video claims, part of what defines a regular polyhedron. Rather, it is an emergent property of the Platonic Solids due to the other constraints. Also, it is almost mind boggling that the narrator could not take the time to find out how to correctly pronounce the word “icosahedron” (i-kos-a-hee-dron). If you are going to assert that something is wildly important to understanding the universe, don’t you think you should learn how to say its name properly?
The Metatron’s Cube image does not contain all five Platonic Solids. There are exact two-dimensional projections of the tetrahedron, cube, and octahedron contained within its lines, but the same cannot be said for the icosahedron and the dodecahedron. The diagram would need to be significantly altered in order to accommodate exact projections of the larger Platonic Solids.
Alchemy did not originate with the Platonic Solids. Pythagoras was neither an alchemist nor the Father of Greece, and he certainly didn’t ascribe any elemental nature to these figures. That ascription didn’t occur until centuries after Pythagoras’ death, when Plato wrote his Timaeus dialogue– which is why we now, affectionately, refer to these shapes as the “Platonic Solids.”
00:16:14 – The Aether
As I mentioned, the Pythagoreans did not associate the regular polyhedra with any elemental nature. So, while it is true that it seems this school of philosophy viewed the dodecahedron with some level of awe and mystery, their attachment to it had nothing to do with the Aether. There are indications that some people may have been killed for exposing the secrets of the dodecahedron– for example, Diogenes Laertius cites this as the reason why Hippasus was drowned, rather than the now common legend that it was due to his discovery of irrational numbers.
Plato’s lack of discussion of the dodecahedron was not due to the fact that it was mystical, or that it occupied a higher energy field or consciousness, as the video asserts. Plato avoided the dodecahedron because it did not fit with his elemental geometry. Plato had proposed that all four of the elements were, themselves, composed of two smaller types of atoms. One of these atoms was an isosceles right triangle (a 45-45-90 triangle, for those of you who remember your high school math) and the other was the right triangle which is half of an equilateral triangle (that is to say, a 30-60-90 triangle). Fire, Earth, Air, and Water were related to the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, and icosahedron, respectively. All four of these shapes can be built using only the two atomic triangles which Plato had proposed. However, the dodecahedron cannot be constructed with such triangles. Its faces are pentagons, and pentagons are not so easily broken down into right triangles. Since they didn’t fit, Plato brushed over the subject.
00:16:34 – The Moon Model
The video claims that every known element has a “geometric relation” to one of the five Platonic Solids. Furthermore, it claims that this was proven by Dr. Robert Moon, in the 1980’s. Unfortunately, our narrator once again displays a complete lack of understanding in regards to what he’s talking about. Dr. Moon did, indeed, suggest that all of the elements might have atomic structures corresponding to the Platonic Solids, but it was certainly not on a one-to-one basis; he proposed that the subatomic particles were organized according to different nested configurations of multiple Platonic Solids. However, more importantly, Dr. Moon’s hypothesis remains just as unsubstantiated as Kepler’s Mysterium Cosmographicum, which inspired it. That is to say, not only is there a complete lack of evidence to support the Moon Model, there are other models which provide much better explanations, and which have strong empirical support.
00:17:09 – Parade of Hexagon-like Things (Math Error #4)
Spirit Science asserts, “We have five Platonic geometries that form everything in Creation, but we don’t have a hexagonal shape.” Newsflash, friend. We absolutely do have a hexagonal shape. It’s called a “hexagon.” Revolutionary concept, I know, but it’s true. Now, perhaps what our esteemed narrator intended to say was that there exists no regular polyhedron which has hexagons for its faces. That would be a true statement.
Spirit Science then goes on to superimpose a bunch of lines onto the Flower of Life pattern, from earlier, in order to declare that its “ultimate form” is a six-pointed shape. Of course, the average, rational person viewing the Flower of Life might have thought that the ultimate, elemental form of the pattern was the circle, but definitional fiat tells us that would just be silly. Obviously, our interlocking circles are, ultimately, a hexagon.
We are then treated to a largely irrelevant parade of images of a ton of vaguely hexagonal shapes which occur in life. He includes art, architecture, and crop circles in this parade, which seems a bit silly to me, but considering the fact that the whole thing is largely irrelevant, I guess I won’t nitpick. Especially since the examples from art and architecture (and hoaxes) are, at least, actually hexagons, rather than just shapes which kinda look like they’ve got six sides but aren’t actually hexagonal (which describes most of these images).
00:18:11 – Cuboctahedron (Math Error #5)
Yes, Buckminster Fuller called this shape the “vector equilibrium,” but that’s a fairly stupid name, so I’ll be referring to it as a cuboctahedron. Firstly, it is not formed by three hexagons “swiveling around each other.” Rather, it is formed by joining eight equilateral triangles and six squares, all of which share the same side-length, such that twelve identical vertices each join two of the triangles and two of the squares together.
Another example of the narrator knowing absolutely nothing about the subject under discussion comes when he says that the cuboctahedron is “the perfect shape” because “every single line is the same distance away from every other point.” Of course, that’s a fairly preposterous statement, as there are very obviously points on that diagram which are closer to a given line than other points are. Judging from the diagram, it looks like he’s attempting to say that the distance between each vertex and its opposite vertex is equal, but that’s a fairly silly statement, as well. The same can be said of any of the Platonic Solids, or of the Archimedean Solids (which include the cuboctahedron), or of countless other shapes.
00:19:43 – Quantum Mechanics (Math Error #6)
“The mathematics of quantum mechanics shows us exactly how our universe works,” Spirit Science proclaims. Of course, this isn’t actually true. The mathematics of quantum mechanics are a description of how our universe works. Think of it this way: imagine you’ve just met someone who has never seen Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. That person asks you to describe the painting to them. That painting is composed entirely of things for which we have words: shapes and images and colors and such. Could you describe the painting exactly to that person? Of course not. Similarly, quantum mechanics attempts to describe the universe, but it is incorrect to say that it does so “exactly.” There are known problems with quantum mechanics– the biggest one, currently, being that we do not understand how gravity works on that scale of reality. Even those things which quantum mechanics does describe are notoriously inexact.
I’m going to stop here. At least, for now. After 4000 words worth of rebuttal, including six major misunderstandings of mathematics, I am only 20 minutes into this movie. Which means that, despite the fact that this is already the longest post I have yet written on my blog, I am less than 20% of the way into this thing. And that just makes me cry inside. I’m gonna go have a drink, now.
Posted in Mathematics, Philosophy, Science and tagged Flower of Life, Metatron's Cube, pseudoscience, sacred geometry, Spirit Science
9 thoughts on “Dissecting “The Sacred Geometry Movie” (Part 1?)”
Randall Hood on 2014/07/23 at 3:37 pm said:
While you are good at dissecting and spouting off about every false assertion and minor error, I think your article would make for a better read if it were unbiased.
Boxing Pythagoras on 2014/07/27 at 7:09 am said:
Thanks for your input! While I certainly make no effort to hide my disdain for pseudoscience, I can assure you that this does not affect my ability to honestly and accurately assess the claims made by Sacred Geometry enthusiasts.
sean on 2015/08/02 at 12:46 pm said:
But better read
Renee on 2016/03/02 at 3:13 pm said:
I’ve recently stumbled upon your website, and though I’m an avid ‘student’ of sacred geometry, quantum physics, mysticism, spirituality and other topics (including plenty of mainstream stuff), I really enjoy your intelligent perspective, your clarity (and your humor) in regards to mathematics. There’s certainly more to reality than meets the eye – in my opinion and experience – which could never be fully or accurately described with math, geometry, physics, or science in general, but I enjoy your critical, rational look at many of these spiritual topics that in many ways have become all too vague and wishy-washy (and loaded with inaccuracies) for the mainstream to take seriously, much less ‘evolve’ with. (‘Evolve’ in the sense to become more intelligent, rising to higher potentials, creating a world with more abundance and justice for all – which is important to me.)
I’ve read The Ancient Secret of the flower of Life vol. 1 & 2, and I found about 20% of it to be useful. Drunvalo is too polarizing for me to take seriously and his writing style in those books is appalling. Robert Lawlor’s “Sacred Geometry Philosophy and Practice” is 1000 times more helpful (to me).
Spirit Science videos, in my opinion, make a childish mockery of interesting and potentially transformative information. (Yes, I see they are rife with errors. I never liked them.) I cringe watching them, though I’m sure it’s helped some people out there, or at least I hope it has.
I’m in the process of writing my own ‘essays’, I guess I could call them, about various topics including sacred geometry, physics, spirituality and the interconnectedness of reality, among other things. It would be a dream for someone like you to edit them, potentially picking them to pieces with that sharp, logical, critical eye. I just imagine someone of your proclivities collaborating with someone with more ‘spiritual/mystical’ proclivities could produce an amazing piece of literature on math, geometry and the cosmos, but only if both of you fully respected the other’s opinions and perspectives.
What can I say? I’m a fan of learning from all sides. Neither mainstream science nor mainstream religion cuts it for me, just as neither using only my creative side or only my logical side cuts it for me.
I see where you’re coming from, and I enjoy it, even though I’m coming from another direction.
Anyways, if you keep writing critiques of sacred geometry, I’ll keep reading and learning from them.
Boxing Pythagoras on 2016/03/02 at 3:53 pm said:
I’ve recently stumbled upon your website, and though I’m an avid ‘student’ of sacred geometry, quantum physics, mysticism, spirituality and other topics (including plenty of mainstream stuff), I really enjoy your intelligent perspective, your clarity (and your humor) in regards to mathematics.
Thank you for the kind words, and I am glad that you have enjoyed my work!
Robert Lawlor’s “Sacred Geometry Philosophy and Practice” is 1000 times more helpful (to me).
I’m not familiar with Lawlor’s work, but I’ll add this to my ever-growing reading queue. Thanks!
I’m in the process of writing my own ‘essays’, I guess I could call them, about various topics including sacred geometry, physics, spirituality and the interconnectedness of reality, among other things. It would be a dream for someone like you to edit them, potentially picking them to pieces with that sharp, logical, critical eye.
I can certainly read over some of your work and give my critique, if you’d like! I’m honored that you would hold me in such regard!
Thank you, very much!
Adam Nixon on 2016/10/03 at 9:10 am said:
you are polite and sound like you actually are on a bit of a learning journey, not just a search for confirmation bias. That’s actually fairly rare in this scene. With that in mind I’ll take the time to tell you why we brush off this subject with such disdain and point you towards some truly amazing mathematics that actually does produce results. What’s more, it’s simple, understandable, observable, beautiful, and all around you. Start here, with this excellent documentary “The Secret Life of Chaos”.
Having seen that you should now understand how simple mathematical rules, reiterated and evolved over time, can produce all of the complexity you see around you. Now here’s the beauty part… Complex non-linear functions. These here actually create four dimensional objects and what you’re actually seeing is their three-dimensional shadows. This space and all variations are the result of this one simple algorithm.
x = X_add – abs(x)
y = Y_add – abs(y)
z = Z_add – abs(z)
rr = x*x + y*y + z*z
if rr < sqr(Min_R) then m = Scale/sqr(Min_R) else
if rr < 1 then m = Scale/rr else m = Scale
x = x * m + Cx
y = y * m + Cy
z = z * m + Cz
All variables are Complex of course. Soundtrack by Negativland (crank it!)
Now, doesn't a bunch of interlocking circles seem a little boring and trivial once you've seen that? Google "Mandelbulber3D" for much much more, that's the name of the program, and it's free!
michael on 2017/07/18 at 6:12 am said:
Also doing some serious study into sacred geometry, and looking for more resources. Got Lawlor’s ‘philosophy and practice’ and Wooden Book’s ‘quadrivium’ edition.
How can we get in touch? I am also preparing some essays for publication.
Dear Don Quixote
Thank you so much for taking on this subject. There’s not much out there so far in the way of critique and the rest of us are busy playing whack-a-mole with vaccines and autism, explaining why Tesla was wrong, and explaining why Nassim isn’t even wrong. You have I see, found out how exhausting it can be to body and mind. Know that we are with you though in the battle and that I have brought you a word-spell of great power to aid you in hard times. It is not easy to cast and may require practice, so, repeat this phrase three times as quick as you can…
“The business in bismuth was brisk on the isthmus.”
Thee? Now you thound thtoopid! It might help you with shit like this…
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/alien_galacticfederations43.htm
Don’t get too close, it burns!
Donald on 2020/11/06 at 4:09 am said:
Your knowledge is just waste of time , because your are not looking at source of creation i.e Quantum vacuum energy called Aether with scared geometry. Our ancient people was more knowledgeable then present generation. In next two years all secretes of creation will be open by Spiritual science only and ego materialist scientists will vanish from earth in third world war…New Godly world order will start on earth with Atlantis civilization..
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Lake Macquarie financial team celebrates early success
May 16, 2018 May 7, 2019 Bridges Lake Macquarie
Bridges Lake Macquarie has taken out the Branch of the Year award and key staff were acknowledged for their outstanding contributions at the Bridges group annual awards, recently held in Adelaide.
The Lake Macquarie-based franchise has firmly established itself as a leading provider of financial advice and planning services in the Hunter region since its launch in 2016.
Branch Manager, Daniel Irving, said the team was surprised but honoured to be acknowledged after such a short period of operation.
“This achievement and level of success can be credited to the team’s focus and commitment to their clients,” he said. “Our philosophy is simple – it isn’t about finding the quickest solution, it’s about really knowing our clients and taking the journey with them to the best possible outcome.”
In further testament to Bridges Lake Macquarie’s reputation, Craig Orbell was awarded Young Advisor of the Year.
An authorised representative of Bridges, Craig is currently completing formal qualifications as a certified financial planner with a key focus on investment strategies, superannuation, retirement planning, salary packaging and estate planning.
“Craig is a deserving winner of this title, with ten years’ experience guiding clients on their financial and investment affairs, backed by a Bachelor of Business/Finance and a Diploma of Business Studies,” Daniel said. “He is a highly regarded member of the Bridges Lake Macquarie team, and integral to our success.”
To round out the annual awards, Daniel and Craig were named among the Top Ten advisors within the Bridges network for 2017, with Craig coming in second closely followed by Daniel in third.
“We are grateful our hard work in establishing Bridges Lake Macquarie is being acknowledged amongst our peers,” Daniel said.
“It just goes to show that working with a close-knit group of professionals who truly care about their clients can reap incredible results.”
Founded in 1985, Bridges are one of Australia’s largest national financial planning and stockbroking organisations. With offices in around 65 regional, suburban and metropolitan locations, its network of over 170 financial planners service more than 50,000 clients.
This article first appeared on Hunter Headline.
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Wapping Wharf and the New Bristol Gaol
On Saturday July 2, 2016
The state of Bristol’s prisons
In the early 19th Century Bristol’s Newgate prison was one of the worst in the country, where many inmates died of disease and malnutrition. In 1816 an Act of Parliament approved a purpose-built ‘New Gaol’ for Bristol.
An excellent arrangement
£60,000 went towards building the New Gaol on the outskirts of the city overlooking the hills and fields of Bedminster. The design used Jeremy Benthan’s ‘Panopticon’ theory that a central watch tower would positively influence inmates’ behaviour, who act on the assumption that they are being observed at all times. The facilities were heralded as a great success.
New Gaol’s perimeter was designed to resemble a castle fortification with an imposing gatehouse and mock portcullis. The gatehouse doubled as a stage for holding public hangings, with a trap-door built into it, through which the condemned were dropped.
The city suffered the worst civil disturbances in its history during the Bristol riots of 1831. The New Gaol was attacked by rioters who breached the iron gates, freed the 170 inmates and set light to the buildings.
Despite rebuilding after the riots, the buildings are inmate conditions at the New Gaol soon deteriorated. It was closed in 1883 replaced by a new facility at Horfield.
In 1895, the New Gaol was sold to The Great Western Railway. Most of the buildings were demolished and replaced with a coal yard and railway sidings. The surviving gatehouse and perimeter walls are Grade II listed structures.
The first execution
On Friday 13 April, 1821, John Horwood was hanged for the murder of Eliza Balsom. Horwood had thrown a stone at Eliza, injuring her head. Sometime later a Dr. Richard Smith operated for a depressed skull fracture. This intervention caused an abscess which proved fatal. When questioned by police, Dr. Smith gave Horwood’s name and testified against him for Eliza’s murder. Horwood’s body was given to Dr. Smith for dissection and study. He used the boy’s skin to bind the case notes. Dr. Smith’s ‘Skin Book’ is on display at the MShed Museum.
The last hanging
On Friday 20 April 1849, the servant girl Sarah Thomas was hanged for murdering her elderly employer. A huge crowd gathered to watch Sarah’s hanging. The event was so moving the Prison Governor fainted and he spectators were deeply disturbed. Sarah’s was the last execution in Bristol and the last teenager girl in Britain.
Source: Information Board on site © Crown Copyright and database rights (2015) Ordnance Survey 100023406.
Prior to the construction of the Gaol, the area was unreclaimed marsh – the name Wapping derives from the Saxon word for marsh – until it began to be used for shipbuilding from the end of 17th Century. Various dockside buildings and docks were constructed, largely connected with the shipbuilding and ship repair industry. The shipbuilding industry ceased and the docks were infilled with the coming of the railway and several granaries were built. These were bombed in the Second World War and the present M Shed was built in the 1950s. The area is now undergoing major redevelopment, the first phase of which is virtually complete
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NBA Betting – Free-scoring Lakers host stingy Bulls
Sports betting players will be treated to a matchup of offense against defense on Thursday night when the Los Angeles Lakers will host the Chicago Bulls in the final game of TNT’s televised triple-header. Can the Bulls slow down Kobe Bryant and company?
Bulls vs Lakers odds – Thursday, November 19, 10:30 PM ET
The Bulls have won two in a row, although that probably won’t be enough to make them NBA betting favorites on the West Coast. They’re having some troubles scoring with only one 100-point game so far this year, but their defense is stellar as the Bulls are sixth in points allowed. The Bulls were hurt by an early-season injury to Derrick Rose, who is the key to their NBA betting odds, but John Salmons and Taj Gibson have been coming on as of late as well. Rose averaged 25.0 points in two games against the Lakers last year.
Bryant answered any questions about a groin problem with a 40-point performance in the Lakers’ 106-93 win over Detroit. This will be the third of four straight home games for the Lakers, who recently found that they’ll be without Luke Walton for at least six weeks with a pinched nerve. Still, the Lakers have enough parts to make up for him, and Ron Artest is getting more used to the triangle offense, so look for his production to go up. Bryant averaged 24.5 points in two games against the Bulls, while the injured Pau Gasol actually led the way with 28.5 points.
Sportsbook odds should have the Lakers as an NBA betting favorite in this contest, and they’ve won six of their last seven against the Bulls. Last year’s games were both high-scoring affairs, but the Bulls may want to avoid that approach this time out or it will be a blowout. They’ll need a big game from Rose and Salmons, who will be closely watched by Artest. Andrew Bynum also only played in one of the two games against the Bulls last year, and he is averaging 20.3 points and 11.8 boards this year, and he should be a major factor here.
Internet betting pick: Los Angeles Lakers
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Home » Celebrities » Who Is Ben Smith? 5 Things to Know About the ‘Bachelorette’ Contestant
Who Is Ben Smith? 5 Things to Know About the ‘Bachelorette’ Contestant
Is Ben Smith about to sneak his way into Tayshia Adams’ top two? The Bachelorette fan-favorite returned during part one of the season 16 finale on Monday, December 21.
Tayshia, 30, initially sent Ben, 29, packing during the December 15 episode after she met his sister and their family friend — Top Chef’s Antonia Lofaso — during the hometown dates. Tayshia subsequently solidified her final three: Ivan Hall, Brendan Morais and Zac Clark. During their goodbye, Tayshia was upset that Ben didn’t show any emotion.
The personal trainer returned during Monday’s episode and revealed that he was still in love with Tayshia, something he failed to mention during the hometown dates.
“I know I’m supposed to be long gone, and I know you sent me home already, but the way that that ended, I was so completely caught off guard, I just didn’t even know what to do or say. And I’m sorry for that,” Ben began after he showed up at her room at the La Quinta Resort in Palm Springs. “For two days after, all I’ve been saying is ‘What the f—k just happened?’ I didn’t even see that coming. And the feelings that I’ve had for you, I’ve been describing this entire time. I just didn’t know what it was, but I’m in love with you.”
Ben added that he knows he “blew” it by not revealing his feelings sooner.
“But I am in love with you,” he continued. “Like, the life we could have together. The thought of that, it keeps me awake at night. And I’m not sure what to do right now, I’m not sure what I’m asking for. I don’t even know what I’m doing. I just couldn’t leave. But I just had to tell you. Like, I see a life with you.”
Tayshia, who was visibly emotional, walked away, unsure of what to do as Ivan and Brendan waited for the rose ceremony. (Brendan, meanwhile, self-eliminated during the fantasy suite dates.)
The Bachelorette season 16 finale airs on ABC Tuesday, December 22, at 8 p.m. ET.
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Feuduccio Fonte Venna Montepulciano D'Abruzzo
2017 Biale Black Chicken Zinfandel 750ml
Producer: Robert Biale Vineyards
Condition/Note:
Available Vintages:
Varietal: Zinfandel
For a long time, Zinfandel's history has been much disputed. Originally thought to be a descendant of Puglia's Primitivo in southern Italy, extensive DNA profiling by UC Davis have established that Primitivo and Zinfandel are actually offspring of Crljenak Kaštelanski, a virtually extinct variety recently identified on the Croatian island of Kaštela. Planted widely by miners turned farmers in California’s gold rush, it thrived in the warm, sunny, and dry conditions. While it grows well across most of California, some of the finest examples come from Sonoma, Paso Robles and the Sierra Foothills in particular. A good Zin should be bursting with big, ripe, jammy fruit, peppery spices and have good levels of tannin and acidity giving it backbone and structure.
Although wine is made in all 50 states, it is understandable, with almost 90% of the country's production, that California is synonymous with domestic wine. As of 2010 harvest, reports indicate that Washington, New York & Oregon account for additional 6% of production, meanwhile Virginia, Missouri and Texas's wine industries are growing to a point beyond that of just a tourist attraction.
California is one of the most diverse wine producing regions of the world. Although it has a history spanning over 200 years, it has experienced most of its growth in the last fifty years. The regions of Napa Valley and Sonoma County have become as renowned as France’s Bordeaux and Burgundy. While Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Chardonnay are by far the most popular fine wine varieties, producers in the Golden State have also experimented with an unparalleled array of diverse varieties, including Zinfandel, Syrah, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, and Tempranillo.
Sub-Region: Napa Valley
The country’s most famous wine producing region, Napa Valley stretches from the North bay of San Francisco Bay in the South, all the way up to Mount Saint Helena in the North. Although the climate is suitable for a wide range of varieties, Cabernet Sauvignon is dominant and practically synonymous with the region. To account for its geographical diversity, the valley is split up into a number of AVAs. From north to south, the valley consists of Calistoga, St. Helena, Rutherford, Oakville, Yountville, and Oak Knoll. Higher elevation sites include Howell Mountain on the east and Mount Veeder on the west. On its own, Stags Leap District is tucked into the very south east corner of the valley.
Red wine is wine made from dark-coloured grape varieties. The color of red differs based on the grapes variety or varieties used. Interestingly, black grapes yield a juice that is greenish-white. The actual red color comes from anthocyan pigments (also called anthocyanins) from the skin of the grape (exceptions are the relatively uncommon teinturier varieties, which produce a red colored juice). Most of the production centers around the extraction of color and flavor from the grape skin.
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← Barrow Midfielder Joins The Lions
Jail Sentence Doubled For Pistorius →
Ireland Winger Interesting Burnley
Posted on November 23, 2017 by chadwig3
Clarets Interested In Jordan Jones
Burnley are monitoring Northern Ireland winger Jordan Jones ahead of the January transfer window. The winger has been starring for Kilmarnock in the Scottish Premier League, prompting an international call-up from Michael O’Neill who also handed him the No 7 shirt for their World Cup play-off against Switzerland.
The Northern Ireland manager believes Jones has the potential to become an established Premier League player, fulfilling promise he first showed as a trainee at Middlesbrough. Jones was given the number seven shirt as an incentive because the shirt is symbolic among Irish fans with the great George Best.
Jones is a firm favourite at Kilmarnock utilising his pace and skill to good effect and improving under the tutelage of manager Steve Clarke. He has made 19 appearances this season and scored two goals but his pace and trickery consistently helps set up chances for teammates. This has alerted Premier League Burnley as they scour the market for bargains while Championship side Norwich City have also taken notice.
Jones made his first team debut for Middlesbrough as a 19-year-old but admitted was left ‘heartbroken’ when he was released by the club. It followed on from his part in a street attack which saw a friend of his sent to prison. Jones has since described how he vowed to be “a different person’ as a result and has got his life back in order with football. I’ve learned the hard way, made the worst mistakes you can make, I’ve made them and I know I won’t do it again.”
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Burnley Football Club, George Best, Jordan Jones, Kilmarnock Football Club, Michael O'Neill, Middlesbrough, Northern Ireland International, Norwich City, Scottish Premier League, Sky Bet Championship, Steve Clarke, Switzerland, World Cup 2018. Bookmark the permalink.
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UN Peace and Security Reform: Cautious Steps in the Right Direction
On Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ first day in office, he signaled his intention to reform the peace and security pillar by immediately co-locating staff from the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and establishing an internal review team to work on the bigger proposals for change made by the High Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), the Advisory Group of Experts (AGE) on the Review of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture, and the Global Study on the Implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. CIC supported some of the independent review team’s work through our report Restructuring the UN Secretariat to Strengthen Preventative Diplomacy and Peace Operations. The Secretary-General has now made proposals based on the team’s recommendation.
Topic(s): International Security, Peace Operations, United Nations
Diplomacy in Action: Expanding the UN Security Council’s Role in Crisis and Conflict Prevention
The UN Security Council has the potential to play a greater direct role in crisis response and mediation not only in New York, but in the field. It has done so sporadically in the past. In its early years, the Council experimented with inter-governmental missions to investigate potential conflicts and undertake mediation in cases including the Balkans and Indonesia. In the post-Cold War period, Council missions engaged directly in crisis diplomacy in multip=le conflicts, playing an important peacemaking role in East Timor in 1999.
Region/Country: Middle East, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa
Topic(s): Peace Operations, United Nations
© Global Peace Operations Review
This is the second edition of the Global Peace Operations Review (GPOR) annual compilation. It is the first to collect a full year’s worth of content from the website in a single publication. Using an online platform allows us to constantly innovate, and we plan to continue to evolve between these annual releases. Producing the annual compilation allows GPOR to curate this material thematically in a fully searchable and citable electronic book. If you’re reading this in PDF format, any text highlighted in blue is hyperlinked back to the website.
Author(s) / Contributor(s): Sarah Cliffe, Alexandra Novosseloff, Hanny Megally , Richard Gowan, Jason Stearns, Ryan Rappa, Gizem Sucuoglu
Region/Country: Europe, Middle East, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, West Africa
Topic(s): Global Governance, Humanitarian Crises, International Security, Peace Operations, United Nations
Syria peace conference: Don't hold your breath
Diplomatic Fallout: Has Russia Won the Syrian War?
Brahimi to quit as Syria peace envoy - diplomats
A New UN Brigade Will Make Combat Moves in Congo
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Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories
Developed by Square
Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories Review
By Will_Ball on 09/16/2018
Will_Ball gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Will_Ball gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
I recently decided to jump back into the Kingdom Hearts world with Re:Chain of Memories. This was originally released as Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories for the Gameboy Advance (GBA) in 2004. The GBA version was a 2D role-playing game and card game mixed into one. Re:Chain of Memories is a 3D version that was created for the Playstation 2 in 2007. It contains the same core gameplay, but rather than being in a 2D world, you are playing it in a 3D world, using much of the same assets from the original Kingdom Hearts. The version I played was an updated Playstation 2 version that was made for the Playstation 4.
Chain of Memories is a very interesting game. It takes the... Read All I recently decided to jump back into the Kingdom Hearts world with Re:Chain of Memories. This was originally released as Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories for the Gameboy Advance (GBA) in 2004. The GBA version was a 2D role-playing game and card game mixed into one. Re:Chain of Memories is a 3D version that was created for the Playstation 2 in 2007. It contains the same core gameplay, but rather than being in a 2D world, you are playing it in a 3D world, using much of the same assets from the original Kingdom Hearts. The version I played was an updated Playstation 2 version that was made for the Playstation 4.
Chain of Memories is a very interesting game. It takes the Kingdom Hearts gameplay, restricts the game world size (more on that in a bit) and introduces a card game for the battles. The battles are really different. You still have the 3D movement along with jump and roll from the first Kingdom Hearts game, but to do actual attacks/most of the defense, you must play a card. You have different types of cards. There are magic cards, attack cards, item cards, character cards and monster cards. Each card has a number between zero and nine. Both the monsters and you play cards to attack each other. When a card is played there is a very small window for someone else to play a card. If the second player (you or the monster) plays a card that is a zero, equal to, or higher than the original card, the original card is thrown out. If a zero card is played first, it is the lowest card, but if it is played second it is the highest card. Zeros can break anything (this too will be explained in a bit). If the second player plays a card with equal value, the other player will be stunned. If they play a card higher than the first player, their card will also be acted upon.
On top of playing one card at a time, you can queue up three cards for a combined attack (their value is the total value of the cards). These three cards will do different things depending on what cards you play. If you play the right combination of cards you can act out a Sleight, which will do a special move. Only zero cards and a combination of three cards with an equal or higher value can beat a player playing three cards. This is where zero cards are really useful. They are quicker to cancel out three cards than building up an equal or higher amount of three cards to defeat what was played.
For creating decks, you have a certain amount of CP (I assume this means card points). Each card costs a certain amount of CP, so you have to try to maximize the usage of your CP to the best of your ability. When your character levels up, you have the chance to increase your CP by a certain amount. You can create up to three decks. Some deck builds work better than others for certain enemies. In the end I had to modify and create new decks on occasion to move past monsters/bosses.
Each character has a certain amount of hit points (including you). You end up winning battles when all the monsters have been defeated. You lose when all your hit points are gone. This is standard game mechanics here.
Overall the card game was hit and miss for me. On one-hand it was unique. On the other hand it moved too fast for me. It was hard to take in the battle field, where you are in your deck and what cards the monsters are playing. A lot of the time I felt I did not have enough time to respond to a monster’s play. For the most part, I would just put a decent deck together and spam the monsters with cards (and sometimes Sleights). Later in the game you really have to put more thought into what cards you play and the order you have them in your deck in order to get past some of the monsters and bosses.
In between battles you traverse rooms. These rooms are not all that big and get a little monotonous after a while. You do have control over what rooms you see though. As you exit each room, you are allowed to play a room card, which in turn determines the type of room you will see next. This was a cool gameplay mechanic that opens up replayability.
The story is the best part of this game. Chain of Memories picks up right at the end of the original Kingdom Hearts. Sora, Goofy, Donald and Jiminy run into a mysterious stranger. The follow this stranger into a castle and learn that their memories aren’t all that they are cracked up to be. The end result is a game that plays upon the character’s memories and really does a great job telling this story.
As for replayability, I feel this game has a lot of it. From the way you can define a room to the secret character that is unlocked at the end of this game, I could see myself revisiting it. The strong story helps too.
Overall I would recommend this game. It is a lot of fun to play. I am also curious to see the GBA version in action. I might end up tracking down a youtube video of the gameplay to see the differences. The Kingdom Hearts world definitely grew for the better with this game.
GregoPeck Super Member wrote on 09/16/2018 at 07:19pm
I believe I own this game and enjoyed it, too. I also liked Birth by Sleep. Too bad I don't have a PS4, so I won't be seeing the new KH game, but I've been enjoying the series since it started.
Will_Ball Game Mod Super Member Post Author wrote on 09/16/2018 at 08:54pm
I have Birth by Sleep on my PS4 remix compilation.
I liked it's mini game, it was like Monopoly.
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1Then Adam had intercourse with his wife, and she became pregnant. She bore a son and said, “By the LORD's help I have acquired a son.” So she named him Cain.#4.1 Cain: This name sounds like the Hebrew for “acquired”. 2Later she gave birth to another son, Abel. Abel became a shepherd, but Cain was a farmer. 3After some time, Cain brought some of his harvest and gave it as an offering to the LORD. 4#Heb 11.4Then Abel brought the first lamb born to one of his sheep, killed it, and gave the best parts of it as an offering. The LORD was pleased with Abel and his offering, 5but he rejected Cain and his offering. Cain became furious, and he scowled in anger. 6Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why that scowl on your face? 7If you had done the right thing, you would be smiling;#4.7 you would be smiling; or I would have accepted your offering. but because you have done evil, sin is crouching at your door. It wants to rule you, but you must overcome it.”
8 # Mt 23.35; Lk 11.51; 1 Jn 3.12 Then Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let's go out in the fields.”#4.8 Some ancient translations Let's go out in the fields; Hebrew does not have these words. When they were out in the fields, Cain turned on his brother and killed him.
9The LORD asked Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”
He answered, “I don't know. Am I supposed to take care of my brother?”
10 # Heb 12.24 Then the LORD said, “Why have you done this terrible thing? Your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground, like a voice calling for revenge. 11You are placed under a curse and can no longer farm the soil. It has soaked up your brother's blood as if it had opened its mouth to receive it when you killed him. 12If you try to grow crops, the soil will not produce anything; you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth.”
13And Cain said to the LORD, “This punishment is too hard for me to bear. 14You are driving me off the land and away from your presence. I will be a homeless wanderer on the earth, and anyone who finds me will kill me.”
15But the LORD answered, “No. If anyone kills you, seven lives will be taken in revenge.” So the LORD put a mark on Cain to warn anyone who met him not to kill him. 16And Cain went away from the LORD's presence and lived in a land called “Wandering”, which is east of Eden.
The Descendants of Cain
17Cain and his wife had a son and named him Enoch. Then Cain built a city and named it after his son. 18Enoch had a son named Irad, who was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael had a son named Methushael, who was the father of Lamech. 19Lamech had two wives, Adah and Zillah. 20Adah gave birth to Jabal, who was the ancestor of those who raise livestock and live in tents. 21His brother was Jubal, the ancestor of all musicians who play the harp and the flute. 22Zillah gave birth to Tubal Cain, who made all kinds of tools#4.22 who made all kinds of tools; one ancient translation ancestor of all metalworkers. out of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal Cain was Naamah.
23Lamech said to his wives,
“Adah and Zillah, listen to me: I have killed a young man because he struck me.
24 # Mt 18.22 If seven lives are taken to pay for killing Cain,
77 will be taken if anyone kills me.”
Seth and Enosh
25Adam and his wife had another son. She said, “God has given me a son to replace Abel, whom Cain killed.” So she named him Seth.#4.25 Seth: This name sounds like the Hebrew for “has given”. 26Seth had a son whom he named Enosh. It was then that people began using the LORD's holy name in worship.
Good News Bible. Scripture taken from the Good News Bible (r) (Today's English Version Second Edition, UK/British Edition). Copyright © 1992 British & Foreign Bible Society. Used by permission.
1Adam had sexual relations with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. Eve said, “With the Lord’s help, I have given birth to a man.” 2After that, Eve gave birth to Cain’s brother Abel. Abel took care of flocks, and Cain became a farmer.
3Later, Cain brought some food from the ground as a gift to God. 4Abel brought the best parts from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, 5but he did not accept Cain and his gift. So Cain became very angry and felt rejected.
6The Lord asked Cain, “Why are you angry? Why do you look so unhappy? 7If you do things well, I will accept you, but if you do not do them well, sin is ready to attack you. Sin wants you, but you must rule over it.”
8Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out into the field.” While they were out in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
9Later, the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”
Cain answered, “I don’t know. Is it my job to take care of my brother?”
10Then the Lord said, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground. 11And now you will be cursed in your work with the ground, the same ground where your brother’s blood fell and where your hands killed him. 12You will work the ground, but it will not grow good crops for you anymore, and you will wander around on the earth.”
13Then Cain said to the Lord, “This punishment is more than I can stand! 14Today you have forced me to stop working the ground, and now I must hide from you. I must wander around on the earth, and anyone who meets me can kill me.”
15The Lord said to Cain, “No! If anyone kills you, I will punish that person seven times more.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain warning anyone who met him not to kill him.
Cain’s Family
16So Cain went away from the Lord and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. 17He had sexual relations with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. At that time Cain was building a city, which he named after his son Enoch. 18Enoch had a son named Irad, Irad had a son named Mehujael, Mehujael had a son named Methushael, and Methushael had a son named Lamech.
19Lamech married two women, Adah and Zillah. 20Adah gave birth to Jabal, who became the first person to live in tents and raise cattle. 21Jabal’s brother was Jubal, the first person to play the harp and flute. 22Zillah gave birth to Tubal-Cain, who made tools out of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah.
23Lamech said to his wives:
“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice!
You wives of Lamech, listen to what I say.
I killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for hitting me.
24If Cain’s killer is punished seven times,
then Lamech’s killer will be punished seventy-seven times.”
Adam and Eve Have a New Son
25Adam had sexual relations with his wife Eve again, and she gave birth to a son. She named him Seth and said, “God has given me another child. He will take the place of Abel, who was killed by Cain.” 26Seth also had a son, and they named him Enosh. At that time people began to pray to the Lord.
The Holy Bible, New Century Version, Copyright © 2005 Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.
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Jails/Horrendous Crimes In Columbus Indiana
Jails/Horrendous Crimes In Columbus Indiana May 12, 2006 20:02:21 GMT -5
Yes, I know...the title of this folder is just a tad bit sensational, and it is supposed to be...
I want to start off this folder with a very poor picture of the jail that once sat on the northest corner of 2nd and Jackson Sts.
From the Evening Republican (The Republic), Friday, June 15, 1962:
July 11 has been tentatively set as the date for occupancy of the new city-county law enforcement building, with a public open house expected to be held before that time.
The $515,684 building on the southwest corner of the courthouse block just west of the present jail building is virtually completed with only minor finishing touches and erection of a radio tower for the poice department remaining to be done.
The tentative July 11 "moving day" for the various city and county offices to occupy the building was set at a Tuesday meeting of the Columbus - Bartholomew County Building Authority. The Building Authority financed the law enforment building through a 20 year, $565,000 bond issue to be repaid by the city and the county on an annual cost of $18,425 to the city and $31,575 to the county.
The repayment of the bonds was based on the percentage of the floor space the city and the county will use. The total ocst of the building contract was $465,525 with a contingency fund of about $22,225 and architectural and engineering fees of $27,934 bringing the total construction cost to about $515,684.
In addition to the annual amount for repayment of the bonds, operation and maintenance costs for the building are expected to cost the city about $5,200 and the county $8,800 a year. For the city, the building will provide 234 sq. feet for parking meter repair, 180 sq. feet for Operation Life, 476 sq ft for the city police detectives, 756 sq ft for police officers lockers, 1,155 sq ft for police headquarters, and 644 sq ft for the municipal court.
Floor space in the 3 story brick building for the county's use includes 327 sq ft for the bull pen, or open area between the individual cells but within the lockup area, 240 sq ft for the county Civil Defense, 450 sq ft for the sheriff's offices, 330 sq ft for the jail kitchen, 1206 sq ft for women's prison, and 3,290 sq ft for the men's prison.
In addition, the building provides 7,866 sq ft for common use by the city and the county, including the garage area below the 1st floor and a state police room, making 17,154 sq ft in the building.
The building will replace the present 85 year old jail, which has repeatedly been condemned by local grand juries as well as state agencies. The present jail will probably house just 18 prisoners while past records show an average of 22 prisoners a day for several months during the year.
The new structure will provide six, 4-man cells housing 24 prisoners, two maximum security cells for men housing two prisoners, three juvenile male cells house 3 prisoners, one 4-woman cell, one maximum security cell for one woman prisoner, a juvenile female cell housing one prisoner, a female "drunk tank" housing 4 prisoners, a male "drunk cell" housing 12 prisoners, and a padded cell for one prisoner.
This gives a total of 17 cells, housing 52 prisoners, and the capacity could be increased to 83 prisoners on a short duration basis.
There is a little more to this article, but I'll not add it here.
The numbers here will show you how the city of Columbus has grown since the article was written in 1962. It seems that, even back in 1962, overpopulation in our city/county jail was a problem. But, even with that said, Columbus was a much safer place to live in the 1960's...
"...10-4..."
Last Edit: Apr 22, 2008 14:08:35 GMT -5 by David Sechrest
For many years, the Goldsmith-Skillman case was remembered as the cause celebre in the local courts. Robert T. Skillman and Lambert N. Goldsmith, Jewish traveling men, played cards one afternoon in 1889 coming down from Indianapolis on the JM&I. The game ended in a quarrel, which grew more violent when the men left the train here. One accused the other of cheating and finally, standing on the platform, not far from the water tank, Goldsmith drew his revolver, fired several shots and Skillman was dead. Goldsmith claimed self defense, that Skillman had raised his grip and was about to crash it on his head.
A long a bitter series of court trials followed, not ending till five years later, invoking all the technicalities that a skilled corps of lawyers could devise. Billy Everroad began the prosecution but before it was over, Wm. M. Waltman of Nashville (our counties were a combined court circuit) succeeded him and it was he who caused a yarn the lawyers never forgot when he declared that Goldsmith had used a "Smith & Western" revolver. Congressman George W. Cooper and his brother Cassuis Cooper, Francis T. Hord who afterwards was circuit judge, Dave Emig, and a Louisville attorney, Aaron Cohn, formed the defense battery. Judge Marshall Hacker for some reason disqualified himself and an attorney, L. J. Hackney, was named special judge to try the case.
When the last of a series of trials was held in Shelby County, on change of venue, Goldsmith made his self-defense story stick and was acquitted. But the case was not over then. In 1894, the widow, Mrs. Skillman, sued Goldsmith for $10,000 damages for the loss of her husband and after this ground through the Kentucky courts for over a year or two longer, the same self-defense plea deprived her of any recovery.
John B. Petilliot Sr., who had gravitated from the office of mayor, through saloon-keeping to raising a criminal son, once got in a fight with Columbus' most famous murderer, Buck McKinney, on November 20, 1857. Petilliot took a shot, missed, and McKinney, in reply, shot and killed Jacob Rubrecht, in Petilliot's saloon. McKinney was jailed and a mob formed to lynch him, but his attorney, Dave Emig, talked them out of it and he was slipped away to the Madison Jail. He escaped, had a short and bloody career of crime and landed back in our jail. Again, a mob came to lynch him, resulting in a guard killing a close friend of the sheriff. McKinney got life at Jeffersonville prison, killed a fellow convict, and eventually was pardoned by Govenor Hendricks as his last official act. Again in Columbus, he was shot in self-defense and then nearly beaten to death by his own sons for abusing their mother. He finally was admitted to the Soldier's Home at Marion, where he died December 8, 1899.
On May 27, 1893, Ralph Drake, a brother of the respected contractor, Lester Drake, registered at the Plymate Boarding House, 630 Seventh St, just east of the Lutheran Center, with his mistress, Mrs. Ida Ward. At the dinner hour on June 1st, he fired several shots at her and then tried to kill himself, but made on ly a scalp wound. Dr. George T. MacCoy, who was passing the house at the time, was called in, found the woman dead and Drake's wound superficial. He pleaded insanity and alcoholism and Reverend Z. T. Sweeney appeared as a character witness. The woman's husband attended the trial but was not called. Drake served several years at Michigan City, and when he was discharged, his mother, waiting for him at the Pennsylvania Station, stepped on the tracks and was killed by the engine of the train on which he was riding.
John Petilliot was a bad egg, although descended from an old family, his father, John B. Petilliot, having been mayor of Columbus in 1869. He lived with his mother, Mrs. Hannah Petilliot, and his brother, Louis A., foreman of the Republican, at 713 Ninth Street. John had worked as a painter but now was barkeeper at the Bissell Hotel (nw corner of 3rd and Franklin, later the Belvedere). Mary, his wife, had left him, sued for divorce, and was working as a waitress at the Western Hotel (sw corner of 2nd and Washington). John got tight on July 4th, 1890, went to the hotel dining room and shot her 4 or 5 times in the presence of the hostess, Mrs. Shepherdson, and several diners. He walked to the jail and surrendered, was indicted, and eventually tried before Judge Nelson Keyes, being prosecuted by Billy Everroad and defended by Beck & Davidson.
He had a rather unique defense: that he was the son of a saloon keeper and grew up to see nothing wrong in getting drunk; and that Mary had ruined his life by infecting him with venereal disease and--after women were excluded from the courtroom--exhibited himself to prove it. He received a life sentence to Jeffersonville, was transferred to Michigan City in 1897, and 30 years later, pardoned on the intercession of Reverend Z. T. Sweeney. He spent his last days a broken old man, with a relative in Chicago. He once caused his sister Hannah to take a shot at Henry Palmer, the saloon keeper.
Post by Deleted on May 13, 2006 14:14:04 GMT -5
The old jail at 2nd and Washington St. a short time be for the new jail was built behind it, the time would have been around 1960.
The front of the old jail, this picture is dated May 1969 ??, what year was the old jail taken down. I did notice that the hood of the truck in the for ground is a 1964 Chevy.
George, thanks for posting that pic of the "old jail." I wonder what the capacity was...
By the way, the accounts of crime that I posted last night all came from Will Marsh's book I Discover Columbus. There were a few more cases discussed, but I grew tired and didn't post the accounts.
There was one other account that was fairly interesting, with ties to Columbus and awe...what the heck...here it is...
The Herman Mudgett Murder
We narrowly missed providing one of the victims for Herman Mudgett, alias H. H. Holmes, probably the greatest of American murderers. This interesting gentleman operated in Philadelphia, Indianapolis, and Chicago just before the end of the century, his specialty being murders to collect insurance. By his own confession, which he wrote the night before his execution in the Philadelphia jail, as a newspaper feature to pay his attorneys, he had killed 28 people, but the police authenticated only 14, including that of the 3 Pietzel children who were butchered and their bodies burned in a house at Irvington (by the by, I lived next door to this house around 1979). He married a number of his victims before the insurance and murder. One, the last of his wives, was a young woman named Georgiana Yoke, a Franklin girl, who had cut quite a swath when she taught school in Columbus township in 1890. She, however, got out of his clutches, with a whole skin, even though Columbus got the publicity after his arrest.
Last Edit: May 13, 2006 16:38:37 GMT -5 by David Sechrest
The history of the Bartholomew County Sheriff Department can be found by clicking on this link:
bartholomewco.com/sheriff/history.php
Does anyone know if there were any ties between our county and John Dillinger?
A pictorial evolution of jails in Columbus. This page came from Columbus: 125 Years
Excerpt from I Discover Columbus:
The very earliest I can remember, round 1888, peace and quiet were preserved in Columbus by the county sheriff and his two or three deputies, one of whom stayed at the jail to serve the grub the sheriff's wife cooked, and a city Marshal. My memory of the former is mainly that Sheriff Bill Smith's horse laugh carried two blocks further than Yank Schrieber's and he could spit tobacco further than any other county official; later sheriffs were J. W. Phillips and Irvin Cox. Of the latter, I remember only that he was always a deserving (usually) Democrat and during the years George Lewellen held the job, he walked home so regularly at 5:00 (every one else worked till 6) that the housewives set their clocks by him, after spending an arduous day ranging from the court house to 7th Street, watching for the petty crime that did not seem to exist. Frank Harvey, Bill Schooler, and Chris Vollmer were other Marshals of my day.
The best City Marshal we ever had, I think, was Pat Hagerty, who not only was fearless, but had considerable detective sense. He held the office for several terms before Lewellen and eventually was drafted by one of the steel companies as a plant officer at McKee's Rocks, Pennsylvania. He and my dad were cronies and I remember when my mother's $180 gold watch was stolen May 15, 1889, Pat devised an elaborate scheme worthy of the great Sherlock, to find it. We had a suspicion that it had been taken by a young woman at Hope, who had worked occasionally at our house. Pat went up there in plain clothes, and canvassed every house in two blocks of the woman's home, on the pretense that he was a deputy tax assessor taking the makes and serial numbers of all watches. He got a lot of serial numbers but not my mother's watch. That never came back any more than did her wedding ring that was stolen by a tramp a year after her marriage, which dad replaced with a new one in 1900. That was still the day of the old half inch wide wedding rings and the gold in that one now rests, recast in modern form, on our oldest daughter's finger.
Around 1895, the city added our first real police force of 4 men, all working the 12 hour night shift while the Marshal got his rest. And we usually did have some very good cops! John Ferguson, Newton Clark, George Smitha, who on September 29, 1905 had to kill a fleeing robber, William Allen, in what was then an open passage just west of the Ulrich Building; Roger Dixon, who, in his pre-alcoholic days, was an efficient and fearless officer, Ed Garrison, Dad Hoffman, who was not afraid of the devil, and the other Hoffman (no relation) the enormous Henry, good natured but peace preserving by his sheer majesty of size, who finally gave up copping to become a Prudential 10c-premium collector. And Jim Henry alternated between the police force and selling liquor. This force had no headquarters, either to keep their equipment or where they could be called when needed. Our morning paper had an all night force, and dad invited the police to make it their headquarters, where the few people who had phones could call for help. This required them to drop in frequently (especially on cold nights) and the big piles of newsprint were pretty comfortable beds. When George Caldwell became Mayor, he broke up that arrangement immediately by putting up a little 8 x 10 foot building just east of Crump's Theatre, between the then Donner Jewelry Store and Patterson's Livery Stable, with a telephone. But he did not have the nice piles of newsprint.
The Smitha-Hoffman-Hoffman-Dixon force, which I consider the best of my time, was however, given to tippling. In 1902, just before the Republican took over the council, they all felt it their duty to spend part of 2 days in Elizabethtown pursuing a local thug, Leoti Gable, and getting howling drunk, all but Smitha. The new Council fired them all and put in Newt Clark, Charley Shepard, Curtis Vailes and Ed Christie.
The J M & I, after it became part of the Pennsylvania, had its own quiet, efficient, unobtrusive force, mainly to protect against the petty thievery of freight cars and hold down the percentage between paying passengers and non-paying hobos who rode the rods. George Bassett served many years as a "merchant policeman" and night watchman for the stores.
Lacking traffic, we had no traffic cops, and state police were not needed when it was an all day job to drive as far as the 20 miles to Nashville. We had a few major criminals and the few we had lacked the skill to long keep out of jail, and once in jail, they got an honest trial on the merits of their cases, not on the chessboard strategy of the present day army of skilled legal shysters and the judges who today put much more stress on the position of a comma in the indictment than on the possession of the swag in the prisoner's pocket. And once in the Pen, you stayed there.
We were a law abiding community,--or some of us were...
mrmoosey
Jails/Horrendous Crimes In Columbus Indiana Aug 23, 2006 19:26:49 GMT -5
Post by mrmoosey on Aug 23, 2006 19:26:49 GMT -5
George, I think the old jail came down in 1969 but I'm not positive. My Dad was a city policeman so I used to be down there off and on to visit him. Dad also was on Operation Life when it first began.
I remember when the weather was warm there was an old guy sat out in front of the jail. Seems there was a cage there with an animal in it too. Can't remember what kind. Eddie Jordan or Cleon Sweeney may remember it.
Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2006 19:39:41 GMT -5
MrMoosey,
Thanks very much for the date on the jail. I believe the animal in that cage was a monkey, there was one there at some time, also was J Walter Johns the sheriff at that time?.
Did your dad work on operation life when it was at fire station # 3, if so I my have worked with him, I was with the fire dept. at the time.
Also welcome aboard.
Shelley Kazmierczak
Jails/Horrendous Crimes In Columbus Indiana Dec 28, 2006 21:24:54 GMT -5
Post by Shelley Kazmierczak on Dec 28, 2006 21:24:54 GMT -5
I just read the brief article about the Mudgett Murder. I'm in the middle of a book entitled "The Devil in The White City" which is an account of the events surrounding this story. I too used to live in Irvington and would like to know what the address of the house is where the murders took place. Hope it wasn't our house! Could you please let me know?
ksjkaz@sbcglobal.net
Cindy Sorley
Post by Cindy Sorley on May 26, 2009 14:46:02 GMT -5
Hi, I am searching for any information on the murder of Donna Smith, the wife of Harry or Harrison Smith. Donna worked at the Pearl Street Cafe. He apparently went to visit her and she would not talk to him because she was busy. He killed her because they were going through a divorce or had recently divorced. I know NO dates. Harry fled to Alaska and lived under the name Donald Harrison for a year or more and was stopped for failing to stop at a stop light in California and sent back to Indiana where he did a number of years (15 - 25). At some point a niece took his sister to Columbus every week to visit him so I don't know if he served all the time in Columbus or what?
johnw
Post by johnw on Dec 22, 2009 15:02:55 GMT -5
Hi, Im new to the site, this seems like the appropriate forum, Im looking for information, exact dates, names of victims/perpetrators, regarding 2 shootings, 1 of which was a murder, in the 400 block of 4th St, (4th and Sycamore), between 1974 and 1980.
I searched at the library, but all they have are 3x5 cards with hand-written notes about historically significant events to cross reference to their microfish films. They show nothing about any shootings/murders.
I know the name of the survivor of one of the shootings (Samantha Roy a beautician by trade), but I need the boyfriend name and exact date of this incident.
The story on the first is, Ms Roy's boyfriend is released from Quinco against his will, he is highly destraught, an arguement ensues in their home, he forces a .22 into her mouth and fires 2 or more times. She survives due to heroic efforts by Police, Ambulance, and Emergency Room personnel. The boyfriend is later apprehended/prosecuted.
In the second story a husband/wife, whose names and exact date of incident, I dont have, is divorcing after long marriage, she goes out to eat with friend, husband drives by, finds her car there, she is gone and slashes tires on her car that are facing the street . Upon her return, a neighbor lady shows her the tires, and as they are inspecting the damage, the husband lays a high powered rifle on the passenger window sill, drives up behind them and opens fire. The wife is struck in the back twice, killing her, and the neighbor escapes. The husband is found later in a farmers field having commited suicide. On this one I need the exact date, victim/perpetrator names.
Ive been to the Library, the Republic, and Police Dept. Any help will be appreciated.
Last Edit: Dec 22, 2009 16:14:19 GMT -5 by johnw
Jails/Horrendous Crimes In Columbus Indiana Dec 23, 2009 1:03:31 GMT -5
Post by David Sechrest on Dec 23, 2009 1:03:31 GMT -5
John said: Any help will be appreciated.
John, I'm sorry, but I'm no help in this matter. I didn't live in Columbus during that time.
The only shooting I remember happened at Paul's Cafe on 2nd Street. I can't remember what year (1975? 1976?), but I happened to be in town that day and a bunch of us went there that night. Some of us took off before the person was shot. I can't remember if he lived or not, and I'm also uncertain as to why he was shot.
The only advice I may offer is to to go through the Republic on microfilm at the library.
Jails/Horrendous Crimes In Columbus Indiana Jan 3, 2010 1:36:18 GMT -5
Post by johnw on Jan 3, 2010 1:36:18 GMT -5
i already tried that approach, they aren't any help. to access microfisch you must go to info desk and ask for access to 3x5 cards. these have hand written notes about historically significant events that cross reference to microfisch rolls. the person keeping those records back then apparently didn't think these events were significant enough to be noteworthy. the only other option is to go through EVERY roll in the span from 1974-1979. not an easy undertaking!
even today, if there were 2 shootings, next door from each other, less than 2 years apart, that would make big news so i'm very confused as to why there is no mention in those cards. i know these incidents happened, i lived in the neighborhood at the time.
i also tried the Columbus Police Dept, but it seems all the Detectives and Patrol Officers on duty at these incidents are now retired or deceased.
thank you for letting me post and for responding to my request.
Jason Hatton
Post by Jason Hatton on Jan 5, 2010 9:37:52 GMT -5
Jan 3, 2010 1:36:18 GMT -5 johnw said:
I am sorry that you felt that we at the library were not any help. I checked our card index to The Republic and we do have a crime heading. However, it does not begin until Nov. 30, 1977. I did not see any headlines that appeared to match your inquiries. You are more than welcome to check again (there are 9 cards covering all crime stories from 11-30-1977 until Dec. 31, 1980- apparently there was a crime wave). There are many of what I would call smaller stories listed, so I am sure that if they would have taken place during this time period it would have been listed. So, at least your search can be narrowed down to between 1974 and Nov. 30, 1977.
Unfortunately, you have discovered a black hole in terms of available information. Our indexing of The Republic does not start until 1976-1977. However, we have been indexing it faithfully since that point. As you say we started out indexing on 3 x 5 cards and somewhere 1996-1997 we started inputting the information into our computerized card catalog. We do have a part-time employee who is busily working to transfer all of the information contained on the 3 x 5 cards into our catalog. However, the pre-1976 information (while contained/preserved on the microfilm) remains almost impossible to access without an exact date. The Republic has made several strides in making the newspaper accessible online and now can be searched back to 1998. We continue to hope that they will go back further and make more of it searchable.
Unfortunately, as you can imagine, it is a large undertaking to start indexing the newspaper pre-1976. We simply do not have the time or manpower to take on such a large project at this point in time. We would welcome it if someone or ones wanted to volunteer to take this project on.
Until that happens, we are indeed stuck with the information that we have and yes that means searching through all of the reels from 1974-1977. Sorry!
Please do let me know if I can be of further assitance.
Library Services Manager
Bartholomew County Public Library
536 Fifth St.
jhatton@barth.lib.in.us
Jails/Horrendous Crimes In Columbus Indiana Jan 7, 2010 12:16:50 GMT -5
Post by David Sechrest on Jan 7, 2010 12:16:50 GMT -5
johnw, believe me, I wish there was a way you could just go do a quick reference search on specific info, but even though our technological advances have changed the way in which we live, it still remains a difficult task to try and pinpoint certain information, such as your search.
The only advice I may offer is to go to the library and go through the papers. I would think this would have been front page news, but having said that, it could very well be that it was "second page" news. Columbus was a much different city in those days, as well as newspaper reporting. What sells newspapers today (I'm speaking of front page headlines here) isn't necessarily the same as it was back then. But having said that, if you really want to find that information, at this point, the reader at the Library is one of the best possibilities.
I asked a friend of mine who's lived in Columbus ever since the 1940's and he doesn't remember those events.
As Jason Hatton stated, the library is trying to index the newspaper articles. That is such a time consuming project. After I finished my index to the 2nd Bartholomew County book that I posted online, I met with Harry and Joe Harmon(sp?), and we discussed the possibility of indexing back issues of newspapers. It is a very tedious, time consuming project, with a great deal of your concentration attributed to detail oriented work. I think that, one day, it will happen, but we're just not there yet. Until then, we have to make due with the best possible way of researching that we can.
I wish you luck in your endeavor...
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Comal County Democratic Party
Platform & Issues
Vote by Mail in Texas
Author: Gloria Meehan
AM I ELIGIBLE TO VOTE BY MAIL?
Seniors (65+), disabled and others can avoid long lines at the polls, and vote conveniently at home. Click this LINK to learn more about eligibility and if you’re eligible, fill-out your application, print, sign and mail it in to the Comal County Elections Office TODAY. October 23, 2020 is the deadline (received, not postmarked) to submit your application to cast a vote by mail for November 3, 2020 General Election. DON’T WAIT! For more information about Comal County Elections, such as when and where to vote, click this LINK.
2020 Primary runoff election notices
To the Registered Voters of the County of Comal, Texas.
NOTICE OF RUNOFF PRIMARY ELECTION, DEMOCRATIC PARTY
NOTICE OF CONSOLIDATED PRECINCTS, DEMOCRATIC PARTY
NOTICE OF DELIVERY OF BALLOTS
NOTICE OF CANVASS
A los votantes registrados del Condado de Comal, Texas.
AVISO DE ELECCION PRIMARIA DECISIVA, PARTIDO DEMOCRATICO
AVISO DE PRECINTO CONSOLIDADO, PARTIDO DEMOCRATICO
ADVISO DE ENTREGA DE MATERIALES UTILIZADOS PARA votación ADELANTADA
AVISO DE CANVASS
Posted on July 17, 2020 September 24, 2020
VOTE-BY-MAIL LAWSUIT
The Texas Democratic Party (TDP) is fighting for all Texans’ right to vote and filed two lawsuits in April to get a judgment that all eligible voters in Texas who believe their health is in danger under the threat of COVID-19 (coronavirus) are eligible to cast their ballot by mail if they so choose.
Here is the timeline of recent actions
April 15, 2020. Judge Tim Sulak hears the case in Travis County District Court (i.e., state court).
Judge Sulak issued a temporary injunction on April 17, 2020, expanding who can qualify for an absentee ballot for the upcoming elections. Voters in Travis County can claim COVID-19 health concerns as a disability and may therefore send in an application to vote by mail.
May 14, 2020. Texas State appeals court upholds the temporary order from Judge Sulak…
...that could greatly expand the number of voters who qualify for mail-in ballots during the coronavirus pandemic, rebuffing Attorney General Ken Paxton’s effort to have the ruling put on hold while he appeals it.
May 15, 2020. Texas Supreme Court sides with AG Paxton.
The Texas Supreme Court temporarily put a hold on expansion of voting by mail during the coronavirus pandemic. Siding with Texas AG Ken Paxton, the Supreme Court blocked the May 14th state appeals court decision that allowed voters who lack immunity to the virus to qualify for absentee ballots by citing a disability. The state’s Supreme Court has not weighed the merits of the case.
May 19, 2020. Judge Fred Biery grants preliminary injunction, allowing all registered voters in Texas to apply to vote by mail.
A Federal judge says all Texas voters can apply to vote by mail during pandemic. District Judge Fred Biery granted a preliminary injunction that allows all registered voters to apply to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic after finding the state’s existing election rules violate the Equal Protection Clause. As news of the ruling broke, Gov. Greg Abbott indicated he expected the ongoing cases to wind up at the U.S. Supreme Court.
May 20, 2020. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals stays the federal vote-by-mail lawsuit filed by Texas Democratic Party.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay in the federal vote-by-mail lawsuit filed by the Texas Democratic Party. This temporarily puts the expansion of vote-by-mail on hold, again, while the case proceeds. Although the court sided with AG Paxton’s interpretation of what constitutes a disability, The Court indicated that it is up to voters to assess their own health and determine if they meet the state’s definition.
May 24, 2020. The Texas Supreme Court blocks a push to expand Vote-by-Mail…
…to registered voters in the state, saying the lack of immunity to the coronavirus does not count as a disability for which a voter can apply for a mail-in ballot.
June 4, 2020. U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals extends order to block lower court ruling.
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously extended its order blocking a lower court’s ruling that would have allowed all Texas voters to qualify to vote by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The TDP fired back at the Fifth Circuit Court saying the decision splits up the rights handed down by the Constitution along age lines.
June 27, 2020. U.S. Supreme Court hears the case.
The U.S. Supreme Courtheard the case that would have allowed all Texas voters to qualify to vote by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The justices, without comment, turned down a request from the Texas Democratic Party to reinstate a district judge’s order that would affect the upcoming primary election in July and the general election in November” and for reasons of disability, would have given all Texans the opportunity to vote-by-mail during the pandemic. Texas is the outlier in this respect as 14 other States have modified their policies to allow voting-by-mail as it’s the right thing to do during this pandemic to protect the health and safety of their voters. This case is now currently back before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeal has been fully briefed, and there will be oral argument before the Fifth Circuit on August 31.
While this latest news is disappointing as this case (Vote-by-Mail due to coronavirus health concerns) is now back before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals; there is still the case involving the 26th Amendment. TDP attorneys had previously indicated that if the SCOTUS refused to lift the stay imposed by the 5th Circuit Court, the TDP would then petition the SCOTUS to take up the case in an expedited time frame. The goal being to get a ruling by the SCOTUS with enough time to allow for vote-by-mail for the November election. This particular case will be interesting, as it will test the 26th Amendment to the Constitution.
In the meantime, the Texas Democratic Party’s recommendation is to continue to observe the Secretary of State’s guidelines for Vote-by-Mail. Therefore, if you are eligible to Vote-By-Mail, please apply to vote by mail. Vote by Mail applications must be received (not postmarked) at the County Elections Administration office by October 23, 2020 to vote in the November General Election.
If you’ve already applied and are receiving your Ballot-By-Mail, please remember to mail in your ballot when you receive your ballot for the General Election in November.
Early voting for the General Election is slated to starts October 13th through October 30th. We will update Early Voting dates if they change. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2020.
The Texas Democratic Party (TDP) continues to challenge Republican voter suppression efforts and has been working to protect voting rights. The Vote-by-Mail lawsuit is only one of several cases the TDP has filed for such Voter Suppression issues as Straight-Ticket Voting, Voter Registration Complaints at DPS, Electronic Signature Ban, Ballot Positioning, and Mobile Polling Locations, GO HERE TO LEARN MORE>>> about how the Texas Democratic Party is working hard to protect ALL citizens’ right to vote.
VOTING IN COMAL COUNTY DURING COVID-19
VOTING IN-PERSON? HERE’S WHAT TO EXPECT
VOTE EARLY! Primary Runoff begins OCTOBER 13 – 30.
Election Day is NOVEMBER 3RD.
Click on THIS LINK for locations, dates & times for Early Voting
Click on THIS LINK for Election Day locations
YES! You can Curbside Vote. If you do not feel safe going inside a polling location to vote, you can drive to any Comal County polling location, park where noted for Curbside voting, and call the Curbside voting number. You CANNOT be turned away for any reason to exercise your right to vote!
Remember: As a registered voter in Comal County, you can vote at any polling location in Comal County during Early Voting and on Election Day.
Health and safety of Election Workers and Voters
Please wear a face mask.
It is highly recommended that election workers wear face masks, as election workers will have access to face masks, face shields, gloves, and hand sanitizer.
For each polling location, the Elections office has installed plexi-glass shields on the qualifying/check in table as an additional barrier
Poll Pads will be sanitized after each voter is qualified
ALL polling sites will have physical distancing floor markers
No more than 5 voters in the actual voting area at any time
Voters will be provided with hand sanitizer + instruments for no-contact voting, such as finger cots and/or disposable stylus to sign in and to use on voting machine to cast your vote.
Voting equipment will be sanitized after each voter has cast their ballot in order to prepare the equipment for the next voter.
Please be patient! Please try to make your candidate choices BEFORE you go to a polling place. You’ll be in and out in no time.
Let’s make this a successful and SAFE voting experience for everyone.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF STONEWALL
June 28 – July 3rd, 1969 marks a point in time where everything changed. Now, 51 years later, and while June has become known as Pride Month, typically marked with parades and events celebrating the LGBTQ+ community as a whole, it’s important to remember that Pride started off as a protest. The parallels to the events following the murder of George Floyd is inescapable, especially amid the ongoing Black Lives Matter rallies and demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality all across the country.
1969 was a summer of upheaval, of change. While some of us were in Berkeley out in the Bay Area and still reeling from the after effects of People’s Park just a few weeks before, the Stonewall riots – no revolution! – began as a result of ongoing police raids at New York City’s Stonewall Inn, one of the only safe spaces where LGBTQ+ people could gather in community.
As George M. Johns writes in them. “Pride is and always was about rebellion, and this year more than ever, this year, Pride is different. It’s not a corporate parade or a party. It’s an uprising, and it’s up to white queer people to protect the Black community as they demand justice.” The intersectionality of Stonewall’s uprising was “Led by Black and Brown trans and queer folks” who were tired of the policing, the raids on their lives and the surveillance. We must recognize the courage of Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Stormé DeLarverie, and others there that night who fought back — and fought for their lives, igniting the change for LGBTQ+ people, that this charge was largely led by people of color, poor folk who lived on the street. Johnson and Rivera literally put themselves out there, in front of the police in a monumental moment of self-sacrifice, putting their bodies and their well-being on the line for the collective good, creating a model for activism across all movements. One of the great things about these leaders being re-centered as part of the narrative is that it has created this intersectional approach to how we should do activism.
Fast forward, and the LGBTQ+ community as well as people of all races, genders and sexualities are protesting and calling out the names of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, as well as Tony McDade, a black transgender man killed by the police. By refocusing on those most marginalized, this is an enormous moment in time to see real substantial systematic progress.
GLAAD’s President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis says that the “LGBTQ movement really caught fire [with] allies coming on. We need black voices leading this, and we need the activists who have been leading this for years and years and years to point us in the right direction.”
While there’s still a long way to go, much of the Movement’s groundwork for a blueprint of how we should move forward was laid by such activists as Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and others.
And our conversations have changed as a result. Now we’re talking more about why we should center black lives in this conversation because everyday people are taking to challenging these conversations at their own dinner tables. Those changes could lead to a larger cultural and political shift that leads to redirecting millions of dollars put into police departments to other, much-needed programs, like education and healthcare in elevating this consciousness-raising to a mainstream level.
Stonewall helped ignite this intersectional movement, one in which Black Lives Matter is intertwined. We must all think about the narrative of where we’ve come from and to realize that starting exactly where we are, at our kitchen tables with our families, our communities, our chosen loved ones, this is where those conversations start. And from there, we can build on being activists or to be a co-conspirator to the Movement. But we must act; we must be consistent, and we must do the uncomfortable work of checking and challenging conversations.
Personally, I hold great hope for the leaders who are even now organizing and creating new paradigms of engagement, building a community greater than its parts. Yet, reflecting about the many insurrections against authority that arose in the 1960s, People’s Park in Berkeley – the one I had great hope for at the time – is probably the only one that came to no discernible conclusion. Nobody won, and after more than 50 years the rallying cry of “People’s Park” lives on because the plot of land is still undeveloped and continues to be in dispute.
LIVING WHILE BLACK: THE NARRATIVE OF RACIAL DIFFERENCES
In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen the good in our community, across the country, and even the world, take a stand for social and racial justice. It’s time. No, It’s waaaaayyyyy past time for us to not only examine ourselves in this process, but the systems of inequities that brought us to this moment. Yet, these false and racist narratives we must face didn’t spring up overnight – or even in the past few years.
As National Book Award Winner, Ibram X. Kendi points out in Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas “Some Americans cling desperately to the myth that we are living in a post-racial society, that the election of the first Black president spelled the doom of racism. In fact, racist thought is alive and well in America – more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. Contrary to popular conceptions, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. Instead, they were devised and honed by some of the most brilliant minds of each era. These intellectuals used their brilliance to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation’s racial disparities in everything from wealth to health. And while racist ideas are easily produced and easily consumed, they can also be discredited.”
How can white people begin to deconstruct racism? We can start with the language of white supremacy. And what I mean by this as Baratunde Thurston explores in his May 2019 TED talk, is “the system of structural advantage that favor white people in social, political, and economic arenas” this “narrative of racial difference” where we’ve accepted “the phenomenon of white Americans calling the police on black Americans who have committed the crimes of “living while black” where mere “existence” is interpreted as “crime”. Thurston’s profound, thought-provoking, and often hilarious talk reveals the power of language to change stories of trauma into stories of healing — while challenging us all to level up. Please give this a look/listen, give it some thought, and act. We can build a more inclusive world and write a better (hi)story.
Post Script: May, 2020 – Living While Black: One Year Later…
IMPLICIT BIAS: How do We Change?
Implicit: implied though not plainly expressed. Bias: prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.
ANYONE who reads this has attitudes towards people or associates stereotypes with them without our conscious knowledge. Harsh? Uncomfortable? Ok, but no one arrives at a certain point in their lives without this common behavior we all share. It’s part of our social cognition that occurs because of the brain’s natural tendency to look for patterns and associations in the world. And before you go, “Whoa, wait a minute…not me”, NONE of us (including this writer) are free from implicit bias here or anywhere else in the world. It’s a pattern that has been created for millennia – and sadly, will continue.
Sounds hopeless, right? So, is there any possibility we can change? Recognizing that implicit bias is insidious yet entrenched in our society and language is only one small step. But nothing changes if we don’t find and take that path to change.
So, what can we do to change our implicit biases? We can start by examining the language we use, for example, describing something in absolute terms: literally, black, and white. Neither are absolute, yet this clouds our cognitive awareness when we use these nouns. What other words could we use? What else can we do?
We can elect people who recognize this change is necessary in not only how we personally act and react, but at every level of government. A race-informed city fosters a supportive environment for collective, community-wide racial healing and systemic, structural equity. Rooted in an understanding that government at all levels has played a role in creating and maintaining racial inequity, resulting in a lack of access and opportunity for people of color in everything from education and employment to housing and healthcare, race-informed cites seek to redress structural racism through an analysis of their own operations and make necessary changes in policy and practice.
Even though Texas ranks at the bottom in the country for healthcare and education, three of Texas’s cities have ranked highest in investing in and building the many things that make communities good places for people to not only live and work, but to thrive in an inclusive environment: Dallas, El Paso, and San Antonio.
We must continue to examine how these dynamically planned, designed, and managed city structures contribute to not only shape urban life and culture for the benefit of all, but also re-shape attitudes, behaviors, and communities for better outcomes.
What Defines A “Living” City on the Move?
Broadly Partnered: Partnering with allied parties — public, private and philanthropic — as demands for services, revitalization and social justice grow
Resident-Involved: Listening to diverse voices in the community to meaningfully engage residents in problem-solving conversations
Race-Informed: Bringing a racial equity lens to vital community discussions about solving problems and building preferred futures
Smartly Resourced: Prioritizing how resources are raised and allocated to support evidence-based investments in infrastructure, technology and people
Employee-Engaged: Doing the public’s work — from the front lines to the back office — in ways that tap employees’ creativity, expertise and spirit of service
Data-Driven: Seeing around corners and evaluating program performance and policy needs through analysis of the numbers
New Braunfels and Comal County communities can be a better equipped community to do what needs to be done for the public good; we must be resilient and band together. Yet, this all starts with electing those who will effect change and the kind of policies that will start to unravel archaic social structures and biases, and in equipping our city for whatever comes next.
It’s not due to a federal mandate or a foundation grant or some other financial windfall, but because the people of government — elected and appointed leaders, line of business managers and frontline workers — and the community they serve, understand it’s the right thing to do.
Keep Moving Forward in 2020 and Beyond
Like my papi says, “Todo Cambia” – everything changes.
This is truly reflective of our party and who we are as Democrats. As the oldest voter-based political party in the world and oldest existing party here in the United States, we can trace our party’s roots back to the late 18th Century. We are the party of the “common man” – and yes, woman. And although our party’s longevity is one we can truly be proud of, it has not come without controversy, tormented segues and serious disagreements.
Yet, here we are; a Democratic party that now stands for egalitarianism and social equality, and which supports voting rights and minority rights, including LGBTQ+ rights, multiculturalism, and religious secularism. And we’ve been able to get to this point because we care about ourselves and others and what happens in the many tomorrows we nurture for our and our children’s future. We are the culmination – and the emissaries – of a collective goal: to leave this world in better shape than when we arrived.
While we may not always agree as to how we’re going to get there, in everything we aspire to accomplish —no matter the “ask”, the complexity, or how uncomfortable it may be at times – one thing remains constant, people do the work. People devise innovations, they resolve issues, and they inspire each other every day to meet challenges, among many other important things.
2020 is a turning point and the year we’ll make a big difference in our county, state and across the country. We built impetus in 2018, but we’ve got a lot to do to get out the vote (GOTV) and elect more Democrats. We’ve been doing that since 1790.
Join us, and let’s keep moving forward in 2020 and beyond.
Gloria Meehan, Chair
We Stand with The GEAA to Protect Honey Creek
Categories Select CategoryCriminal Justice Reform (1)Democracy (8)Equality, Social Justice (2)Gun Sense Action (1)Healthcare (2)Jobs and Economy (1)Voting (2)
© 2020: Political advertising paid for by the Comal County Democratic Party. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Political donations are not tax exempt.
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How to Assess Learning in a Pandemic
As colleges ask faculty to prepare for a possible online, hybrid or altered in-person fall semester—or all three simultaneously—many instructors are wondering how to best measure student learning.
Even during the pandemic’s early days, some professors decided to toss out their grade books, figuring that high-stress assessments weren’t appropriate given the uncertain circumstances, which saw students sent away from campuses, sometimes without tech tools or internet access.
In the latest episode of EdSurge Live, we interviewed two professors who have long questioned traditional methods of grading about how to approach exams, essays and other assessments next semester:
Susan D. Blum, professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, is the author of “I Love Learning; I Hate School: An Anthropology of College,” and a contributor to the forthcoming book, “Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead).”
Tony Crider, professor of astrophysics at Elon University, offers his students “epic finales” instead of final exams.
Listen to the conversation, or read a partial transcript below, lightly edited for clarity.
EdSurge: I thought we could start out by asking both panelists to tell us what their approach to grading and assessment was when they first started teaching at the college level.
Susan D. Blum: I've been teaching over 30 years, so I've had a lot of time to evolve. And when I was first teaching, I was pretty much a stickler for control and for judgment. And I was very parsimonious in giving good grades. And I was suspicious of students who were cutting corners and possibly cheating. And I have been studying this subject anthropologically and pedagogically and theoretically for 15 years, and I've completely transformed my teaching, top to bottom.
I wrote a book about plagiarism in which I basically concluded that most of the time, the problem is an educational problem and a motivation problem rather than an enforcement problem. The goal is to create meaningful work that students are engaged in so that they have the tools to achieve what we've asked them to do. And that if they don't do that, then it's an educational problem that we have to solve. Clearly, there are exceptions here and there.
Since then, I have written more and learned more about what students are doing in higher education [broadly, and about] what the purpose is. And I no longer think that having a kind of uniformity of content delivery is really a goal. And I aim really to understand what each needs to get out of the class, and work with them as much as possible to develop their own goals. And then assessment is really a way of figuring out how well they've learned, which is really the only thing I care about. And if people learn in different ways, then that's appropriate because they're all different kinds of people. So the approach that has emerged from that is something that I and others call “ungrading.” We basically don't grade until we're required to at the end of the semester, but there is a lot of feedback.
Tony Crider: I came at it from the perspective of the physics education research, and looking at it as a way to say, How do we give tests at the beginning and test at the end to try to gauge what they learn over time? And it was very focused on treating each student like a data point—that they were all representing some measure of the effectiveness of the class as a whole. And I probably spent like five to seven years focused very much on that, trying to turn it into a science and optimize that so that it would happen as quickly as possible, from scantrons to online, [with] very traditional exams.
I think that probably the reason I'm on this call is, about 10 years ago or so, I started to ramp up the concept of “epic finales,” where you would treat the end of a semester not so much like it's that final assessment, that time where you fill in the blanks and then quietly leave the room. But it was an experience that would give the instructor a chance to see who did his students or her students turn into over the semester? You don't know that if you're just giving a traditional assessment. So … [I] like to have that final epic finale at the end of the semester where I can sort of see what students are capable of in a new and different situation.
Susan, can you tell us more about this idea of ungrading, where it came from and how you put it into practice in your classroom?
Blum: I began to read the research on motivation, and that, of course, distinguishes intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And the goal was always to increase intrinsic motivation. But like a lot of others, I was influenced by behaviorism, which tells you that if you increase extrinsic motivation enough, if you give enough points, if you weight things enough, people will discover intrinsic motivation. But in fact, the research shows the opposite. The more extrinsic motivation you provide, the less students feel that it's up to them to really be enthusiastic and excited about things. So that was kind of a theoretical perspective. I wanted to diminish the extrinsic motivation focus as much as possible.
So I began by just telling students don't care about your grades, but I was still giving them, and I was still calculating the points. And how many points do you lose if you have absences above a certain number and how do you measure participation in how many blog posts do you have to have and how many responses to other people's blog posts? And it was very mechanistic and very much about students having a checklist to respond to. When I realized, when I started to read Alfie Kohn and even more Starr Sackstein, and some of the other people who really write a lot about grades, I realized that I needed to get rid of them—and that it was possible. I don't get rid of learning. We just don't focus on the grades. We focus a lot on learning and we have a lot of conversations about it.
I try every semester to have the students generate their own kind of baseline ... when they come in, what do they know? What do they think they're going to do? What do they want to do? What's hard? What's interesting? And I really encourage them to do a lot of honest reflection and self-assessment, so that they really see that, OK, this is an opportunity to learn something that matters to me, even if it's a requirement. Surely there's something about it that matters to each learner because I truly believe that all humans are wildly curious. You just have to figure out how to tap into that superpower of ours.
And [students] are appreciated by their classmates. If you do something well in the class and your classmates say, wow, that was interesting. That's a kind of assessment. They don't need me to be micromanaging.
How it works at the end of the semester [is that] we have a conference where the students suggest a grade. They say, I think what I've learned and produced this semester is worthy of a B-plus, or it's worthy of an A-minus, or an A. Every now and then there's a student who says, I've only really done C work. And that's really wonderful to me that they are honest like that because sometimes we don't care, and that's OK. It's certainly better than having everybody pretend that they've done their maximum for an A, when we know in real life outside school, we aren't always functioning at the maximum. So it fosters reflection, it fosters honesty, it fosters interaction and it leaves open the possibility for more learning. And the class is just a beginning, in my experience, of their engagement with the subject.
Tony, you were recently on the EdSurge Podcast, talking a bit about your unusual and awesome approach to final exams. And I wondered if you could, for people who missed that episode, just briefly tell us what the concept is and give one example of what it means.
Crider: I came up from a different perspective on motivation theory, looking through gamer motivations and research on why people are motivated intrinsically to play video games, and then [I’ve] have taken those into the class. People tend to want to master something to win, or they want to have some social experience or they want to be immersed in some world. And so I want to provide something for them to think about for the rest of their lives.
[The final exam is] the last time you're gonna spend three hours with them. In fact, it might be the only time that you spend three consecutive hours with them, depending on your university. … Even if you're still doing a multiple choice test, it doesn't have to be the last three hours that you spend with them.
I craft experiences for the students. The most recent one, in ... a class where we looked at the scientific revolution and then the Industrial Revolution, and then the revolution that we're living in right now, and compared and contrasted those.
And then for their epic finale, I told them, show up to this building. I actually had to tell him, bring four sets of clothes. You'll need some Elon University gear. You'll need some business attire. You'll need some black clothes. And you'll need some sweaters. And then when they walked in the room, I sort of played a character [and said,] alright, here we go, kids, I've invented time travel, and we're going to have you go into the future. And they'd sort of take a pill, like in the Matrix, although they were Mike and Ikes. And then [they’d] go into the room and they'd have to pretend they were five years, 10 years, 25 years and 50 years in the future. And they would each draw cards telling them what their possible life might be like. Maybe they're living at home. Maybe they lost their job. Maybe their job was taken by a robot. And then they'd record themselves on their phones for most of this time. And my goal for this was to get them to see the connections between the sort of possible futures that I've mapped out.
Some students, they would just play it out as written, but others would say, wait, this is what we talked about in the Industrial Revolution. I didn't just lose my job. I lost my job because AI became powerful enough to take my job.
That's what I was looking for in terms of an assessment, but [it’s] also ridiculously memorable. The goal is to make an exam that they will talk about for the rest of their lives because that's your last three hours with them. And so I've been doing that for years.
And I'll tell you what, grading these epic finales is the most fun that you ever have. I have grading parties where I sometimes have other professors come in, and we sit and we watch hours of this play out and go through the rubric and say, How did this student do and how did it play out?
I'm curious what your thoughts are about assessments are for this time of pandemic and the upcoming semester. What approach are you taking? What do you recommend?
Blum: Now is a great time to try something new. You know, we are in a really weird moment right now. This is nothing like any of us have ever lived through. Personally, I'm going to be fully online this semester for the first time in my teaching career, aside from, you know, those seven weeks in March and April.
One of the things that a lot of us have really been thinking hard about is equity, and equity when people are in uneven circumstances doesn't mean sameness. And so I think ungrading makes a lot of sense in these particular circumstances. Most of my students have Wi-Fi, and most of them have the tools they need at least on campus. But when they went home in March, there were people who were very crammed into housing, and they were sharing Wi-Fi, [or had] no Wi-Fi. They didn't have good computers with them. And so if I had been a stickler for uniformity and precision—grading and points and attendance and participation in synchronous meetings—it would basically have measured people's economic comfort. And that doesn't seem to me what we're after.
So I think these are the perfect moments in which to really figure out what is possible for each student and what will help them learn given the reality of their life right now. And it seems to me that if we're not just preparing our students for school, but if we're preparing them for life after school, this is a very, very real life lesson to really figure out, what can you do? What's possible?
Crider: I'm at an institution where there's a lot of technology that's the same. Economically, they're very similar. There are 95 percent of them that have an iPhone. Which makes it such that I can design for that. And I know that's not the case at other universities where you've got a wider range of tech or maybe poor connection when they get out of there. And if they're not able to come to campus, that's going to have to be on a case-by-case basis with instructors and the students, sort of trying to figure out what the minimum technology is in that class and how to do that.
The tech, it's causing us problems, but it provides opportunities. I tend to look at the pandemic we're in in terms of technology and education. We've all suddenly been thrust forward 10 years into the future. … We'll adapt to it.
Districts Pivot Their Strategies to Reduce Chronic Absenteeism During Distance Learning
Schools Navigate How to Provide Experiential Learning in a Socially Distanced World
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American Holly
Museum Store Artist Spotlight: A Conversation with Basket Maker Leon Niehues
The Artists’ Eye: Georgia O’Keeffe and the Alfred Stieglitz Collection Debuts at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
November 9, 2013 – February 3, 2014
A temporary exhibition featuring 101 art works by American and European Modernists, as well as African art, opens Nov. 9 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The exhibition, titled The Artists’ Eye: Georgia O’Keeffe and the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, includes works from the collection of photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, and features the artists Stieglitz most favored, including O’Keeffe, Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin, alongside some of the early European Modernists who inspired them, including Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The Artists’ Eye is on view at Crystal Bridges through Feb. 3, 2014.
This exhibition showcases the rise of American Modernism, a cause Stieglitz championed throughout his career as a fine-arts photographer, gallery owner and impresario. He began his career as one of the first gallery owners in the United States to exhibit European Modernists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and Cézanne. Over time, however, Stieglitz became completely committed to supporting and encouraging artists he felt were creating a uniquely American style of Modernism. He supported artists by showing their work, purchasing artworks from them, and even occasionally providing money for food or supplies, or studio space in which they could produce their work.
Six artists comprised Stieglitz’s core circle: Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Demuth, plus the photographer Paul Strand. Most of these artists, each with his or her own particular trademark style, are well represented in The Artists’ Eye with works that trace their artistic development over their careers. The exhibition also features several of Stieglitz’s own photographs, many of them familiar and iconic images demonstrating Stieglitz’s passion for a modern approach to fine-art photography.
In addition to works by artists of Stieglitz’s circle, there are several works by influential European artists Stieglitz exhibited in his galleries, as well as other American artists, including Wanda Gâg, Alfred Henry Maurer, Charles Sheeler, and Abraham Walkowitz. The exhibition also includes four works by 19th-century African artists. European modern art was highly influenced by the stylized forms and geometrical shapes of African art. Recognizing this, Stieglitz was among the first in the U.S. to mount an exhibition of African works as fine art, rather than as ethnographic objects.
“Visitors to this exhibition will have an opportunity to experience a critical time in the history of American art,” said Crystal Bridges Executive Director Rod Bigelow. “Each of these artists was making their own unique statement, and each helped to shape the course of American art for the future.”
This collection of 101 artworks was donated to Fisk University by Stieglitz’s wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, after his death in 1946. She divided the collection and donated works to six different institutions: Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.; The Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, Ill.; the National Gallery of Art, and the Library of Congress, Washington DC. The works in this collection are now co-owned by Crystal Bridges and Fisk University. The collection will travel between the two institutions every two years.
“By sharing this collection, Crystal Bridges and Fisk University are making these works accessible to a wide audience,” said Bigelow. “We are excited to be partnering on several educational programs in conjunction with the exhibition, including public lectures by Fisk University professionals and Stieglitz scholars. In January, Crystal Bridges is holding a special Scholars Symposium, offering the top scholars in the field of American modern art the opportunity to view the collection in its entirety and to share ideas and research into Stieglitz and his circle. We are excited about opening up this avenue for increased scholarship into the collection, and are looking forward to continuing to work with Fisk University to preserve and exhibit these works.”
The Artists’ Eye is sponsored at Crystal Bridges by Morgan Stanley; Blakeman’s Fine Jewelry; The William M. Fuller Foundation; Greenwood Gearhart Inc.; Mitchell, Williams, Selig, Gates & Woodyard, P.L.L.C.; NWA Media/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; Queen Anne Mansion Preservation Trust; and Demara Titzer.
Tickets to The Artists’ Eye are $5 for adults. Admission is sponsored for youth ages 18 and under. Museum members receive complimentary admission to all temporary exhibitions. In addition, admission is sponsored for Fisk University students, staff and alumni. Tickets may be purchased on line at crystalbridges.org, by telephone at 479-418-5700, or at the museum’s Guest Services desk.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is located in Bentonville, Ark. For more information, including a full listing of upcoming public programs associated with The Artists’ Eye, visit the museum’s website: crystalbridges.org.
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MediaTek announced Board of Directors’ approval on the appointment of Dr. Lih Shyng Tsai as the Co-Chief Executive Officer and nomination to the Board of Directors
HSINCHU, Taiwan – March 22, 2017 –MediaTek (MediaTek, Inc.) today announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously approved to appoint Dr. Lih Shyng Tsai (Rick) as the Co-Chief Executive Officer of the Company effective July 1. Dr. Tsai will report directly to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ming-Kai Tsai and will also assume responsibility as Vice Chairman of the Mediatek Group. At the same time, Dr. Tsai is nominated to be on the Board of Directors.
In addition, a MediaTek Group Office will be established to reinforce responses to future operation and development needs of the group of companies. Ching-Jiang Hsieh, Vice Chairman and President of MediaTek, will assume the responsibility as the President of MediaTek Group Office and reports directly to Ming-Kai Tsai, Chairman of MediaTek Group. Under the joint leadership of Chairman Ming-Kai Tsai, Co-CEO Lih Shyng Tsai and Vice Chairman Ching-Jiang Hsieh, the MediaTek Group will capitalize its competitive advantages in wireless communication, digital multimedia IC design, power management products, Internet of Things and the automotive electronics to be a leading corporation in smart connected devices.
Chairman Ming-Kai Tsai emphasized that with the appointment of Dr. Tsai as the Co-Chief Executive Officer, both he and Dr. Tsai will be working on the mid to long-term strategic blueprint to expand on future breakthroughs and growth for MediaTek, while continuously elevating global management capabilities to become an excellent world-class company. The Chairman underscored Dr. Tsai’s expertise in semiconductor and communication, as well as his abundant professional management experience. Dr. Tsai’s abilities in global businesses will aid MediaTek’s efforts in growing and developing talents, expanding partnerships with customers and the industry chain, and collaborating with the existing management team to reach new heights.
Dr. Tsai has previously served on the Board of Directors of several international companies. His nomination to MediaTek’s Board of Directors, coupled with his extensive background and experience, will continue to improve the company’s overall corporate governance.
Dr. Tsai received a B.S. degree in Physics from National Taiwan University and a Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University. Prior to MediaTek, Dr. Tsai served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd., from 2014 to 2016. From 2011 to 2014, Dr. Tsai was concurrently the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of TSMC Solar Ltd., a provider of high-performance solar modules, and TSMC Solid State Lighting Ltd., a company providing integrated LED lighting solutions. Dr. Tsai was TSMC’s President of New Businesses from June 2009 to July 2011 and President and CEO of TSMC from July 2005 to June 2009. Dr. Tsai held many other key executive positions including COO, EVP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, and EVP of Operations since joining TSMC in 1989. Before TSMC, Dr. Tsai held various technical positions at Hewlett Packard, an international information technology company, from 1981 to 1989. Dr. Tsai has substantial and comprehensive leadership experience and is an exceptional international professional manager.
MediaTek Incorporated (TWSE: 2454) is a global fabless semiconductor company that enables 1.5 billion connected devices a year. We are a market leader in developing innovative systems-on-chip (SoC) for mobile device, home entertainment, connectivity and IoT products. Our dedication to innovation has positioned us as a driving market force in several key technology areas, including highly power-efficient mobile technologies and advanced multimedia solutions across a broad range of products such as smartphones, tablets, digital televisions, OTT boxes, wearables and automotive solutions. MediaTek empowers and inspires people to expand their horizons and more easily achieve their goals through smart technology. We call this idea Everyday Genius and it drives everything we do. Visit www.mediatek.com for more information.
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Country Perspective’s 2015 Female Artist of the Year
December 21, 2015 December 21, 2015 Josh
In 2015 one of the major topics of the year was the infamous Tomato Gate. It brought a lot of attention to the ongoing issue of female country artists not getting a fair shake on country radio. While there were a few tongue in cheek comments and a few angry tweets, the female artist of mainstream country music really didn’t do anything about it and that left me disappointed. This left the field wide open for Country Perspective’s 2015 Female Artist of the Year and gave more unknown names a shot at winning. For Derek and myself it ultimately came down to the music. We asked ourselves who pushed the boundaries the most and brought something new to the table we haven’t heard before. Two artists’ fans rallied behind them and flooded our nominees post with numerous votes of support, but we could only choose one to win. The winner of Country Perspective’s 2015 Female Artist of the Year is Whitney Rose.
As I said above it came down to the music for us and who pushed the boundaries the most with it. Whitney Rose’s album Heartbreaker of the Year clearly did this better than the other nominees’ albums. Teamed up with producer Raul Malo, Rose did something with this album I don’t say very much after hearing an album and that is “I didn’t expect this at all.” This album is clearly rooted in traditional country and even country and western. It’s palpable throughout the album. But then the influence of Raul Malo starts to shine through. There’s influences of retro pop, Motown, gospel, jazz and blues. Anyone who has ever heard an album from The Mavericks knows how much they love to blend genres. It doesn’t work for every artist, but for Rose it fits perfectly. And what’s brilliant about listening to Heartbreaker of the Year is not knowing what you’re going to hear next.
You start off with “Little Piece of You,” which undoubtedly has a Motown influence laced with traditional country. Then you have an upbeat, western-style song like “My First Rodeo” and a stirring love ballad like “The Last Party.” The Motown sound returns with “Only Just a Dream” and then this is followed by the album’s title track, which is arguably the best on the record. Mixing vintage pop with traditional country, it tells a gripping story about an intriguing man who has caught Rose’s eye. But what really makes this song shine is Rose’s voice, which is at it’s best on this song. Raul Malo joins Rose on multiple songs on this album, but it’s his duet with Rose on the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” where you really hear him. Their voices are like warm butter and together they’re a dream pairing. Malo is one of the best voices in country music and Rose is well on her way to joining him. If they made an entire album of duets, I would buy it in a heart beat.
Rose shows her fun side on the quirky “The Devil Borrowed My Boots,” “Ain’t It Wise” is another song that sounds like it was straight out of the 50s and “Lasso” is one of the most pure country songs on Heartbreaker of the Year. It’s the final song on this album though that shows how fearlessness of Rose. She covers the famous Hank Williams’ song “There’s a Tear in My Beer” and does it admirably. Covering Hank is daunting enough. Rose chooses to not only cover Hank, but close her album with it. The final song on an album is pretty important, as it’s the last thing the listener hears and is the final impression. This was a big risk by Rose and it ends up paying off beautifully.
This is only the second album Whitney Rose has ever released and already I can tell her future is bright. She has the potential to make stunning and memorable music for many years to come. I think I can speak for many in saying that I look forward to what comes next for this Canadian country artist. This is only just the start for her. The best is yet to come for Whitney Rose.
Opinion2015 Country Perspective Awards, 2015 Country Perspective Female Artist of the Year, Heartbreaker of the Year, Raul Malo, Whitney Rose
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3 thoughts on “Country Perspective’s 2015 Female Artist of the Year”
Nadia Lockheart December 21, 2015 / 2:50 pm
You caved into peer pressure, didn’t you? 😉
(Just kidding! ^__^ )
Whitney Rose’s album is fantastic and came second only to Tami among your nominees (although I still regard Gretchen Peters and Jamie Lin Wilson as two slight favorites among female artists for me this year) =)
Josh Schott December 21, 2015 / 2:56 pm
Haha! The support Rose and Lindi Ortega fans showed in voting for this award was amazing. So many comments!
I love all of those albums and it’s very hard to rank which is better than the other most days.
Topher December 31, 2015 / 8:28 pm
Good choice!
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Home > Performances > Pulcinella / La voix humaine – Pre-Opera Talk – Ian Derrer
Pulcinella / La voix humaine – Pre-Opera Talk – Ian Derrer
General Director, Ian Derrer, returned to The Dallas Opera from Kentucky Opera, where he spent two seasons as General Director. His love of opera began as a member of the children’s chorus in Tosca for Charlotte Opera, now Opera Carolina. Mr. Derrer received a Bachelor of Music in voice performance from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University. He worked as a freelance assistant director and stage manager for Santa Fe Opera, Atlanta Opera, Opera Carolina, Opera Pacific, and Washington Opera, learning opera production from the ground up.
Mr. Derrer completed master’s degrees in opera production, voice, and performing arts management from Northwestern University and Brooklyn College. During the summers of 2001-2003 he was the scheduling coordinator for the International Institute of Vocal Arts in Chiari, Italy and in 2004 he was orchestra manager for Sinfonia Orchestra at the Aspen Music Festival and School.
In 2004, Mr. Derrer joined the staff of New York City Opera as rehearsal and music coordinator. Two years later, he moved to Lyric Opera of Chicago, starting as rehearsal administrator and moving up to director of production and head of the rehearsal department. He spent eight seasons at Lyric Opera of Chicago, with one summer as rehearsal director for Santa Fe Opera, before becoming artistic administrator of The Dallas Opera in 2014.
Cast and Creative
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Experience The Opera
2020/2021 Opera Season
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Denton Jazz Chronicles
Jazz Standard history overview
KNTU: Jazz radio – alive and well
University of North Texas Jazz Studies
Denton Jazz Connection
Blues Connection
Denton Jazz Reviews
Denton Main Street Association
Jazz skeds & events
Jazz venues
Jazz Vibes
Jazz – Music Radio links
UNT Jazz
35 Denton, 35 Denton Creative Director, Banter Bistro, Baptist Generals, Barve Combo, Bone Doggie, Brian Lambert, Carol Short, Cherie Yurco, Chris Flemmons, City of Denton downtown development manager, Denton, Denton Arts & Jazz Festival, Denton Arts & Music Festival, Denton Mayor Mark Burroughs, Denton Texas, Denton’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, Dentonites, DentonRadio.com, Don Henley, Drew phelps, Ellen Ryfle, Grammy Award, Hickory Street Hellraisers, Historic Denton County Courthouse, independent music movement, Indie music scene, Jake Laughlin, Jennifer Seman, Julie Glover, Kim Phillips, Kyle LaValley, Making Music Magazine, Mike Seman, Norah Jones, Pat Boone, Pat York, Portland, Salt Lake City, Sara Hickman, Seattle, Shiny Around the Edges, South by Southwest, Stephen Johnson, Texas, the Dixie Chicks, The Quebe Sisters, The Simpsons
Reprint: Denton Music Scene
Story by Cherie Yurco
Denton, Texas, is a city that lives and breathes music. Stay here a few days, and you’ll see that it’s a community-wide phenomenon. Every other person you meet is a musician, and those that aren’t, have a love and respect for music that borders on obsession.
With 25 venues within walking distance of the town square, and a couple hundred more close by, you’re never far from live music. It is so much a part of the culture that many nontraditional places—donut shops, art studios, and even fast food joints, regularly host concerts.
One thing that makes Denton’s music scene unique is the variety of music you hear streaming from venues, outdoor concerts, and house parties. On any given night you can find musicians of all ages performing all types of music.
“What we are most known for is this whole independent music movement,” says Kim Phillips, vice president of Denton’s Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It’s not a genre, but it does have a personality. It encompasses folk, singer songwriter, R&B, rap, country, pop—it’s all over the board.”
“Many musical careers were birthed here, everybody from Pat Boone to Don Henley to Norah Jones,” she continues. “Those are some of the big names people know, but this is happening all the time.”
Festivals Galore
Each year the city hosts 17 to 20 large festivals, and more than 100 smaller ones. Among the biggest are 35 Denton, an indoor/outdoor indie festival held in early March, and the Denton Arts & Jazz Festival, a free festival held the end of April.
These gatherings could not be organized without strong community support for all things musical. More than 700 volunteers and various sponsors support the Arts & Jazz Festival. “We have to raise more than a half-million dollars every year to put this on,” says Carol Short, executive director of the festival held on seven stages, involving 2,700 performers.
“Arts & Jazz Festival represents the heart of Denton,” says Denton Mayor Mark Burroughs. “The heart of Denton is music, and this is a display of talent from the region and beyond. More than 200,000 people come annually to this event.”
The 35 Denton festival began in 2005 as an afternoon party at Austin’s annual South by Southwest, with the intention of bringing it back to Denton, explains musician, film producer, and festival founder Chris Flemmons. It was first held in Denton in 2009 and features about 50% local artists.
Flemmons says that Denton is the perfect city to hold festivals like this. “There’s a square and the night life kind of radiates around that,” he explains, adding that the music program at (University of) North Texas helped to initially feed the music culture in the town, which now exists independently.
“Musicians move here because they want to make music in a place that supports that kind of thing,” adds the 44-year-old singer songwriter with the group Baptist Generals, who first came to Denton to study film. “Everyone around me was playing music, so I did too.”
35 Denton Creative Director Kyle LaValley, 26, explains the culture of Denton like this: “I think there are so many musicians and “creatives” in Denton that it’s just the natural spirit of the city. There’s far less ego than in other communities I’ve experienced, which I think is symptomatic of how small the town is, and the fact that in some form or fashion people collaborate more frequently.”
DentonRadio.com Gives Voice to Musicians
One way people outside Denton can sample the city’s music scene is through DentonRadio.com, a new project that is itself a testament to community support for musicians. The exclusively Denton Internet station, established last year, is the brainchild of 20-something Jake Laughlin, who pitched the idea to his friend, musician and graphic designer, Bone Doggie, who’s in his 50s. Neither had the funds to launch the project, so they turned to the community.
“The response was insane,” says Laughlin, now CEO of DentonRadio.com. “Not only did the musicians rally, but the businesses and organizations as well. [Music venue] Banter Bistro put together DVDs of bands that performed in their place and sold them. Every dime of it went to us. They put buttons on their registers so you could donate.”
Jeffrey Barnes wails at 35 Denton, DentonRadio.com stage.
A recreational musician, Laughlin takes the stage every once in a while, sitting in on hand drums with various bands. Co-founder and vice president Bone Doggie’s band, the Hickory Street Hellraisers, has been a Denton tradition for about 10 years.
Venues like Banter are eager to help local music. Owners Stephen Johnson and Ellen Ryfle say the music is one of the best things about running the bistro, and one of the reasons they bought it two years ago. “I love all genres of music,” says Johnson, adding that Thursday night is open mic night at Banter and spots fill up quickly, attracting all ages and all types of music. “There’re 25 or more acts, from 8:00 p.m. till midnight.”
The rest of the week is dedicated to shows by some of Denton’s most talented musicians, including three shows per night on Friday and Saturday. “It’s rewarding to be involved with Banter, especially from the music standpoint,” adds Johnson.
At the beginning of the year, DentonRadio.com began a partnership with Denton’s Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We are the only city in Texas using an Internet radio station as a marketing tool,” says Kim Phillips. “It’s an awesome vehicle for us; it’s not just about promoting musicians and music, it’s about promoting Denton.”
Laughlin agrees, “Denton is full of some of the most creative, incredible talents and businesses. It really is the community’s radio station as much as it is ours.”
“DentonRadio.com is more than a platform for musicians,” says Bone Doggie, explaining how the station also sparks collaboration. “Musicians are exposed to each other. They network, form bands and production companies. It’s like a melting pot for local music.”
Having a Place to Play
As the indie music scene continues to grow and diversify in Denton, more musicians move in and more music venues open. Julie Glover, City of Denton downtown development manager, says that Denton’s venues have increased exponentially in the last four or five years. It’s something she and her husband, both musicians, pay close attention to.
“One of the things we did [20 years ago] was create a venue by turning the (Historic Denton County) courthouse lawn into a music place,” she says. “The first few years, if we had 20 people show up, it was a big success; now we average 1,200 to 1,500 people.”
“It’s always been a big music town, but we didn’t have the venues to promote it,” says Pat York, marketing director for DentonRadio.com. “Since we’ve had more places to play, there’s been more opportunity for musicians.” A former Denton high school teacher, York, now in his 60s, plays guitar, harmonica, and keyboard in three different area bands.
According to the many Denton musicians, both recreational and full-time professionals, there’s no place like home. “It’s a lot of people who love music, in a concentrated place,” says Mike Seman, who is a part-time musician and volunteer for 35 Denton. “It’s not like many other places I can think of.”
He should know. Seman, in his 30s, has spent years studying the effects of music and art on cities as an urban planning and public policy doctoral candidate. He and his wife, Jennifer Seman, became Dentonites about eight years ago, after shopping around for just the right city.
“We were looking for a place that had a great music scene and was community based,” he explains. “We took some time and visited places like Portland, Seattle, and Salt Lake.”
“You have the university here that attracts both talented musicians for the music program, but also talented musicians that attend programs in film, graphic design, photography, and visual arts,” he says. “So you have a lot of highly creative people in a very small city, who love music.”
Mike and Jennifer are both multi-instrumentalists and have played together for 11 years in the band Shiny Around the Edges.
Drew Phelps plays at Denton Arts & Music Festival
Bassist Drew Phelps, who’s collaborated with the likes of Sara Hickman, The Quebe Sisters, and the Dixie Chicks, can’t imagine living anywhere else. “I’ve been living here pretty much my whole life,” he says. “I went to New York City for a little bit, but I said I’m moving back to Denton. People love to play music here. Musicians in this town are treated very well. I feel like people are really supportive.”
The same is true for Jeffrey Barnes, woodwind player for the Grammy-winning group Brave Combo. The group, whose music has been immortalized on The Simpsons, has played all over the globe and could relocate to just about anywhere, but prefers to remain in Denton.
“There’s all kinds of great music here,” says Barnes. “It’s big enough that you have culture, but it’s small enough you can walk down the street and people say, ‘Hey Jeffrey, how are you doing?’”
Singer songwriter Brian Lambert, 36, who also works in a health food store, relocated his family to Denton about three years ago for the music. He likes the camaraderie among Denton musicians: “Everybody kind of knows everybody, and they play in multiple projects around town and come out and support each other. All of the musicians here are in a similar boat, where you’re working full time, and then all night you play music.”
Perhaps Bone Doggie sums up the music scene in Denton most precisely. “You have rock stars, then you have musicians, and you have people who just like to play music. And we have all three. A musician will play until they die,” he says. “We have incredible talents and we’ve done everything we can to help them, and they’ve done everything they can to help us.”
The music scene in Denton is always happening, but the best time to visit is during a festival. The Denton CVB organizes custom live music scene pub tours for groups. Check the website http://www.discoverdenton.com for more information.
From → Denton Jazz Connection
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Sweet Frog Premium Yogurt Breaks Opening Day Record with New Palmdale, CA Location
Palmdale, California is one of the first Southern California locations for Sweet Frog Premium Yogurt. The store celebrated its Grand Opening at the 47th Street Pavilion on 47th Street East in the city on Sunday, March 24th. Their opening day broke all previous opening day records for the national chain and was followed by second day sales that surpassed overall sales nationwide.
Based in Richmond, Virginia, Sweet Frog is the brainchild of entrepreneur Derek Cha. Cha opened the first Sweet Frog location in Richmond in June, 2009, and has grown the company from one store to nearly 250 franchised locations nationwide. Sweet Frog is one of the fastest growing franchises in any category in the country. The company prides itself on developing neighborhood partnerships through fundraisers and other community events. Sweet Frog has become an established brand predominantly in the Mid-Atlantic region and is planning to rapidly expand its West Coast presence. Sweet Frog specializes in formulating secret recipes of premium soft-serve frozen yogurt with a toppings bar stocked fresh daily, available in a self-serve environment.
The Palmdale location is owned and operated by Dr. Dan Robinson and his wife, Darla. This is the third Sweet Frog location the couple have started, the first two in Maryland, and are at the forefront of Sweet Frog’s entry into Southern California, with plans for additional locations in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. The pilot store in Palmdale has signed a five-year lease for 1,561 square feet at the Power Center.
Both the Landlord and Tenants were represented by Blair Bess and Patti Kutschko of DAUM Commercial Real Estate’s Valencia Office, who continue representing Sweet Frog in its ongoing expansion in the Southland. 47th Street Pavilion is owned and operated by Merlone Geier Partners.
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David Daut
Additional Writing
Heroic Hollywood
Lewton Bus
Movie Review – Godzilla
Let’s have a conversation about tone.
In the most general sense, tone is the way that a movie feels. Is a movie scary? Is it funny? Is it serious, or is it silly? Tone is something that can vary wildly between movies, even within the same genre, and can even change within a movie from scene to scene. Most audiences are tuned into issues of tone and are affected by them even if they can’t find the words to describe it. I talked a little bit about this in my The Amazing Spider-Man 2 review, but this discussion is even more pertinent in regards to Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla.
If you remember, I stated that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a very bad movie that I assumed a lot of people would give a pass to. Godzilla, on the other hand, is a very good movie, but I’m afraid that there will be a lot of people who will have problems with its tonal qualities and not ‘get’ what Gareth Edwards is trying to do with it. It turns out I was wrong on the Spider-Man front given the HUGE box office drop off it’s had in subsequent weeks. I hope I end up being wrong about Godzilla as well, but if the audience I sat with is representative at all of the general public, this movie is not going to go over well.
The issue, ultimately, comes down to this: are we supposed to root for Godzilla?
By now, I’m sure you’re aware that Godzilla is not the only giant monster (or kaiju) in this movie. I actively avoided marketing material beyond the initial teaser trailer, and I still knew that the King of Monsters would be squaring off against at least one other kaiju in this film. It’s safe to assume that Godzilla is going to be the “hero monster” in this equation, and yet this movie takes on a tone that is more serious in nature than the unabashed silliness of many of the later entries in the Godzilla series. Godzilla is depicted here as a force of nature. His entrance into the film coincides with a tsunami and the destruction he eventually causes in San Francisco is monumental, and the film plays all of these things straight. There’s no coating of camp to downplay the loss of life that follows in the wake of Godzilla, so how are we supposed to feel? Are we allowed to root for Godzilla or are we supposed to be afraid of him?
The answer to that question is yes, and this is where I fear the film will lose some people. While many of the later entries in the series embraced silliness, the original Gojira is actually quite grim. Less than ten year’s after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, they make a movie about a monster that destroys Tokyo with atomic fire. Godzilla is definitely the antagonist of that picture – one brought on by the hubris of man, but an antagonist all the same. Even in the rightly despised 1998 film by Roland Emmerich, Godzilla is “the bad guy.” This new film, however, abandons the silliness of the later entries for a more grounded take, but it retains the idea of Godzilla being the “hero monster” unlike the other two “serious” entries (yes, I just called Godzilla ’98 a “serious” movie; something is clearly wrong with me). I can see how this could potentially confuse a lot of movie goers. The film never goes out of its way to give the audience permission to have fun with it, it just expects the audience to know as much. Unfortunately, because the film has a more grounded tone, I think a lot of people will mistake it for being serious or gritty.
In some ways, “kaiju 101” is kind of a prerequisite for this film, and I would recommend to anyone reading this review to watch Pacific Rim and Gojira before going out to see this. Both movies will give you a better understanding of what Gareth Edwards is trying to pull off here, but failing that I’m going to try to use a movie you’re likely already familiar with to help set the stage for Godzilla. That movie is Jurassic Park.
There is A LOT of Jurassic Park in Godzilla, and in many ways Spielberg’s film can help to unlock the tone of this one. As Dr. Alan Grant, Lex, and Tim are getting ready to spend the night in the upper branches of a tree, a group of Brachiosaurus shows up, and Grant assures the frightened Lex that “they’re not monsters, they’re just animals.” This happens shortly after the group narrowly escaped being eaten by a T-Rex. Godzilla functions in much the same way. Though we may refer to kaiju as giant monsters, Gareth Edwards treats them as being nothing more than very large animals. They’re motivated by instinct rather than a sense of good vs. evil, and because they dwarf us so completely in scale, we’re almost of no consideration. We’re scared of the T-Rex early on in the film, and yet we can still understand when it comes back later and saves our heroes from the Velociraptors. In this new film, Godzilla is the T-Rex.
Godzilla is a very Spielbergian film, but while Spielberg – THE master of tone – was able to move the audience back and forth between scary and fun without them even noticing the seams, Edwards doesn’t quite have that same level of mastery. The tone of the movie is almost perfect, but the way it communicates that tone to an audience is not always the most clear.
If you can understand that point, and understand that it’s okay to be scared of and cheer for Godzilla, you should be able to have a great time with this movie. Gareth Edwards’ previous film Monsters is another kaiju movie that is far more concerned with how humans deal with these giant monsters than it is with the monsters themselves, and Edwards’ brings a lot of that same sensibility here. The kaiju are much more in the spotlight in this one, but it’s all filtered through the lens of people. Considering that so much of the action here is made in a computer, it’d be really easy to do what many blockbuster spectacles do and position the virtual camera in completely implausible places in order to better capture the action. However, Edwards avoids the temptation to fill his movie with a bunch of “money shots” and instead films the action almost exclusively from ground level with a few select helicopter shots to punctuate it. I can see this being a turn off for some people who will likely complain that it’s “boring or pretentious,” but this is absolutely the right choice for the film. It helps to reinforce not only the scale of the kaiju, but also the way this is fundamentally a human story.
Edwards also achieves this by investing a lot in his characters. Bryan Cranston is as reliably great as ever, and Ken Wantanabe gets some decent work in his unfortunately small role, but the lead in this one is Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Johnson is serviceable here – neither great nor terrible – but the character he’s playing is one that’s worth investing in despite not being as strong a performer as Cranston or Wantanabe. Most importantly, the plot evolves naturally out of character motivations rather than just being a series of strung-together coincidences. There are a handful of times when the film employs questionable, or even downright poor logic (why is a monster that eats radiation traveling to San Francisco when it woke up in literally the most irradiated spot of land in North America?), and while these issues are sure to give the awful folks at CinemaSins something to gleefully rip to shreds, none of it hurts the movie. At its heart, the film is concerned with character, and any lapses in logic are in service of keeping the plot centered around its characters rather than having the characters merely react to the plot.
I’ve spent a lot of time in this review talking about caveats and how I can understand why some people aren’t getting into this film, but here at the end I want to make it very clear that I genuinely loved this movie. Gareth Edwards proves that he was the perfect person to helm this by both honoring the source while refusing to be conventional. Despite any problems the film may have, I enjoyed it immensely, and that’s coming from someone who is new to this whole kaiju sub-genre. I expect that lifelong fans will adore it even more so than I did. My only concern is general audiences who may not know what they’re getting into. I’m hoping this review helps give you the proper context to enjoy this movie, because if you can get on board with what Edwards is trying to do here, you’ll see that Godzilla is something really special.
When not haunting repertory theaters and insisting that 35mm is somehow 'better,' David spends his time arguing that the FAST & FURIOUS films are the greatest artistic achievement of the modern era. View all posts by David Daut
Categories Movies, ReviewsTags Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Gareth Edwards, Godzilla, Legendary Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures6 Comments
6 thoughts on “Movie Review – Godzilla”
clothedwithjoy says:
I really liked it too, I just wished for more action.
illusion0flife says:
I think the gradual build up towards the final confrontation is what made this movie work. If they had shown their hand too early, the final battle might have felt redundant. Glad you liked it, though.
The Telltale Mind says:
Good review. Am going to see it on Monday and cannot wait.
I’m planning to see it again on Monday as well. I hope you enjoy it!
Great review. I felt the tone was perfect as well. My only complaint is the side plot with the nuclear weapons was not realistic and we were teased not once but twice before we finally got the smack-down between Godzilla and the M.U.T.O.s, but the payoff is there in the end. Be patient and stay with it.
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' Well, you’re not gonna get very far if ...' Collins' iconic track ' In the Air Tonight' was long believed to be about a man watching someone drown -- but the tune is about something different entirely.
Other widely misunderstood songs You may not realize it, but you're way more likely to be affected by a robbery or burglary, including a stolen vehicle, depending on where you live in the U. California city claiming the top spot A little-known California company went public -- and it’s already made some insiders rich -- including its 40-year-old visionary leader who's raked in millions.
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Dossier.org
Market Dossier
Unisys Closes Sale of U.S. Federal Business to SAIC for $1.2 Billion
$1.2 billion transaction significantly strengthens company’s balance sheet and cash flow profile, increases operational flexibility; company expects to use net proceeds largely to pay down debt and reduce pension obligations
Company promotes Eric Hutto to president and chief operating officer
Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) today announced the close of the sale of the company’s U.S. Federal business to Science Applications International Corp. (NYSE: SAIC).
Net proceeds from the transaction, which the company announced on February 6, are largely expected to be used to pay down debt and reduce pension obligations, thereby significantly improving Unisys’ balance sheet and cash flow profile, U.S. pension funded status and overall financial flexibility. Related to this, the company also announced that it has issued a notice of redemption to redeem all $440 million in aggregate principal amount of its outstanding 10.750% Senior Secured Notes due 2022. Pro forma for the transaction, the company’s net leverage (inclusive of pension deficit) has been reduced from 4.3x 2019 Adj. EBITDA(1) pre-transaction to 2.4x on a pro forma basis.
“The transaction ushers in a more agile Unisys,” said Unisys Chairman and CEO Peter Altabef. “The improved capital structure that comes from the sale of U.S. Federal positions Unisys with improved operational flexibility to better serve our clients and provides the potential for delivering increased value to shareholders.”
Company Promotes Eric Hutto
In conjunction with the announcement of the transaction’s close, Unisys also today announced the appointment of Eric Hutto, senior vice president and president of the Enterprise Solutions business, as the company’s president and chief operating officer. Enterprise Solutions and U.S. Federal were the company’s two business units prior to the sale of U.S. Federal.
“Eric’s business acumen, hard work and visionary leadership have all been on display since he joined the company in 2015,” Altabef said. “Eric brings passion and a competitive will to win that is contagious among our associates, and he will help drive Unisys to continued success. I look forward to working closely with him in taking our company forward.”
Source: Unisys
Filed Under: Briefing Tagged With: SAIC, U.S. Federal Business, Unisys
Copyright © 2013 Dossier.org
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This is Trump’s America: American Nazis, Evangelical Christians, and the Mystery of Lawlessness
On August 14, 2020 August 16, 2020 By The WreckerIn 2018, 2020, August, July
This is Trump’s America
This is Trump’s America: 80 years after Hitler, simmering hate erupts, by Mike Lupica
“The pictures out of Charlottesville this weekend are like black and white pictures out of the past, from German American Bund rallies, at Madison Square Garden in the 1930s… There were much clearer images out of Charlottesville this weekend than we once got in this city in the ’30s, with more modern video. The torches the white nationalists carried on Friday night helped tremendously with the visibility, in much the same way you get a better look at cockroaches on a kitchen floor when somebody turns on a light…
Go back and read about the rallies at the Garden in the late 1930s, organized by a tinhorn former Bavarian soldier named Fritz Julius Kuhn. Go back and look at the pictures. In February of 1939, there were 22,000 at the old Garden for the largest rally the Bund had ever held in this country. There was a huge portrait of George Washington in the middle of it all that night, and swastikas, and American flags. There was just no state of emergency like the one declared in Charlottesville, Va., on an August weekend before the start of classes at the University of Virginia.
That night in 1939 Kuhn called President Franklin Roosevelt ‘Frank D. Rosenfeld.’ He referred to Roosevelt’s New Deal as the ‘Jew Deal.’ Nearly 80 years later, at a storied American university, white protesters yelled, ‘Jews will not replace us.’
What happened in Charlottesville isn’t merely about angry white people in our country at this time, or scared white people. This was about a growing army of mean racists coming into the light with impunity, using the First Amendment as a shield. Or just swinging it like the baseball bats and clubs you saw on the streets of Charlottesville on Saturday afternoon…
The chuckleheads in Charlottesville aren’t soldiers of free speech, or American values, or the preservation of their white history, whatever that even means. They are lousy domestic terrorists. They aren’t trying to ‘unite the right.’ They are slow-thinking and disenfranchised whites looking for a cause with almost flop-sweat desperation, punks with torches, famous now in the easiest possible way in America. For being stupid.
‘Free America, free America, free America!’ is what Fritz Kuhn yelled at his last great Bund rally at the Garden in 1939. He would have fit right in this weekend in Virginia. He would have been at the front of the line. Maybe even first torch.”
-Excerpt courtesy of the New York Daily News, “This is Trump’s America: 80 years after Hitler, simmering hate erupts,” by Mike Lupica, August 13, 2017
The America of Trump’s Father
The America of Trump’s Father: an Aspirational Fascism Reigned in New York, by Wayne Madsen
“One might have been confused about America’s actual loyalties during the brewing years of World War II if they happened to live in the greater New York City region. New York and its suburbs in Long Island and New Jersey had a vibrant community of first- and second-generation German Americans, the latter having included Fred Trump, Sr., a rising star in real estate and retailing.
Also active in the New York-New Jersey region was the German American Bund or ‘Amerikadeutscher Bund,’ an organization that supported Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party and the goals and aspirations of the ‘New Germany.’ The Bund had been created in May 1933 on the orders of German Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess. The first Bund leader was German immigrant Heinrich ‘Heinz’ Spanknöbel, who initially called his group the ‘Friends of New Germany.’ In fact, the ‘Bund’ was nothing more than an overseas extension of the German Nazi Party and it took its orders directly from Berlin.
The Bund only accepted as members Americans of German descent. In 1936, the Friends of New Germany morphed into the German American Bund in Buffalo, New York. The group’s leader or Bundesführer was Fritz Julius Kuhn, a German immigrant and Nazi Party member, who received US citizenship in 1934. The general belief is that Kuhn was one of many Nazi members dispatched abroad in the 1930s by the nascent German Nazi Party to act as Nazi ‘eyes and ears’ in the United States, Canada, and other countries. These recent immigrants, who would become Bund leaders across America, were later involved in espionage for the German Gestapo and military intelligence Abwehr before and during World War II.
The Bund established its national headquarters at 178 East 85th Street in the heavily German neighborhood of Yorkville in Manhattan. It mirrored the Hitler Youth in Germany by establishing several Nazi youth camps, most notably Camp Nordland, Camp Will and Might, Camp Bergwald in New Jersey, Camp Siegfried in Sussex County on Long Island in New York, and Camp Highland in upstate New York, outside of the town of Windham.
The height of the Bund’s activities was a February 20, 1939 rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. It drew some 20,000 Bund members and Nazi supporters. One German American who did not hide his far-right views was Fred Trump, Sr., the father of Donald Trump. On May 31, 1927, Fred Trump was arrested by police while participating in a Ku Klux Klan march in his home borough of Queens in New York. The elder Trump was publicly known to be a racist and he refused to rent his apartments in Queens and Brooklyn to African Americans. In 1927, there were few organizations for far-right extremists like Fred Trump to join. One was the KKK, which had its roots in the post-Civil War Reconstruction South. Another was Italian leader Benito Mussolini’s overseas ‘Fascisti,’ which was primarily composed of Italian immigrants to the United States. By the early 1930s, far-right wingers in the American North were fast to embrace the Nazis and Kuhn’s Bund was able and ready to answer the call and begin recruiting to its ranks. Fred Trump’s FBI file – which includes the 1927 arrest at the KKK march – appears to be missing his pre-war and immediate post-war year activities. The file does not resume until the 1960s, when the FBI began monitoring the elder Trump’s association with Mafia syndicates in New York.
It is known that ‘Old Man Trump,’ the appellation given him by folk singer Woody Guthrie in a 1950 song by the same title, continued his racist ways after the war. Guthrie, who had the misfortune of renting a unit in the Trump-owned Beach Haven Apartments in Brooklyn, penned the following lyric: ‘Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower. Where no black folks come to roam. No, no, Old Man Trump! Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!’ It is also interesting that after the war, Trump insisted that he was of Swedish descent. In fact, Old Man Trump’s father, Frederick Trump, was an immigrant from Kallstadt, Bavaria. It was famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, a Nazi sympathizer, who stressed his Swedish descent to defend against charges that he was a supporter of Hitler. However, in both cases – Old Man Trump and Lindbergh – there was no question of their sympathies to the racial policies of Hitler and the ‘New Germany.’
Old Man Trump’s home and businesses sat in the midst of Bund activities and businesses that supported the Bund. One of the most popular newspapers among the German American community in New York and New Jersey was the Bund’s ‘The Free American and Deutscher Weckruf,’ published from 1935 to 1941 in both English and German.
The newspaper served to rally the Nazi cause in New York and New Jersey. The paper advertised New York theaters like the Tobis, 86th Casino, 79th Street, and Bijou that screened propaganda films fresh from the studios of Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Nazi Germany’s cultural inundation of the United States was a personal project of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
In 1933, Trump opened the Trump Super Market in Queens at the corner of 78th Street and Jamaica Avenue. Since it was the first store of its type in Queens, it was an immediate success. Considering Old Man Trump’s political viewpoints, it is very likely that he purchased wholesale products, including meats from Bund butchers and German baked goods from Bund bakers, of which there were several in New York City for his store. Several German American-owned area businesses, including Maier’s Pork Store and Ehmer’s Pork Store, both on ‘Dritte Avenue’ (Third Avenue) in Manhattan, and dairies like Karsten’s Milch of The Bronx and Astoria in Queens and Erb’s German Sweet Shop in Manhattan, kept the advertising-dependent ‘The Free American and Deutscher Weckruf’ flush with ad revenue. Even large corporations like Philco, a manufacturer of radios, Texaco, Olympia Typewriter, and Simmons Mattress Company advertised in the Nazi newspaper. Nazi propaganda in German was broadcast on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from the studios of WBNX, first located in The Bronx and then moved to New Jersey.
Old Man Trump rented thousands of his apartment units in Jamaica Estates in Queens and Brooklyn to white Americans only. Bund supporters cheered Hitler for refusing to shake the hand of black American Olympian Jesse Owens after he won four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Considering Old Man Trump’s previous membership in the KKK, he was undoubtedly cheering Hitler’s snub of Owens, along with the Bund in New York. Old Man Trump also suspiciously volunteered, after dodging the World War II draft, to construct Navy barracks and garden apartments in at least three highly sensitive Navy ports in Chester, Pennsylvania; and Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia. All three ports saw thousands of American and Canadian troops embarked for combat in North Africa and Europe. Some of these troop ships fell prey to German U-boats, which received intelligence on the Allied ship movements from Nazi agents in the very same port areas where Old Man Trump so ‘generously’ bid on construction contracts with the Navy.
Today, Donald Trump, who has championed concentration camps for asylum seekers and homeless people, torn babies from their parents, and praised neo-Nazi marchers in Virginia, echoes the political vitriol of his father’s era Bund. Today, Trump is fond of demonizing Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. In Trump’s father’s era such venom was directed by the Bund against New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, the late President Woodrow Wilson, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who was sometimes referred to as ‘Frank Rosenfeld’)… all of whom were labeled as pro-Bolshevik ‘internationalists’…”
-Excerpt courtesy of New Zealand News, “The America of Trump’s Father: an Aspirational Fascism Reigned in New York,” by Wayne Madsen, October 2, 2019. Source: https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1910/S00036/the-america-of-trump-s-father.htm
The Mystery of Lawlessness
Make Antichrist Great Again
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” — Thomas Jefferson
“When fascism comes to America, said Huey Long, it will be called by some other name. That wolf will come dressed as a sheep. All our fascists come disguised.
The pro-Hitler movement began as the ‘German-American Bund.’ That was the wolf in wolf’s clothing. It could get nowhere. It failed.
Hitler then put his agents, native Americans, to boring within such movements as ‘America First.’ Nazi fascism put on the garment of indigenous Americanism, of patriotism rampant.
The Christian is admonished: Be humble, be full of charity; love your neighbor as yourself.
The fascist is admonished: Be haughty; be hard; despise your neighbor as you love yourself. He is anti-Christian.
The anti-Christian fascist then takes on such names as ‘Christian Mobilizers.’ That is his disguise.
UnAmericanism flying the red, white and blue!
Traitors to America denouncing as traitors men who are loyal to America!
Enemies of free speech and press using freedom of speech and press to destroy freedom of speech and press!
To detect this trickery one must see deeper than the outward appearance. The Germans did not see through Hitler’s trickery. Now look at them!
Fascism is slavery where America is freedom. Fascism is hate where America is friendliness. Fascism would kill where America would heal. Fascism is violence, America is order. Fascism leads back into savagery. America leads forward to civilization.
Fascism is a mental disease. Frustrated, impoverished, beaten, confused and desperate people were the easy prey for Hitler.
A healthy America can never be a fascist America.
We clean up the swamps where breed the mosquitos from which malaria and yellow fever come. We inoculate against smallpox and diphtheria. We are beating back with careful brain the plagues which imperil us. We begin to head off the river floods. Have we no wit to shrink the sources of the sufferings and confusions from which our American followers of our little Hitlers spring?”
-Except courtesy of Newspapers.com, The Dayton Daily News, January 28, 1945
-Images are courtesy of Newspapers.com
American FascismAmerican HitlerAmerican nazi partyAnniversary of CharlottesvilleantichristAugust 14 2018August 14 2020baptist churchCharlottesvilleCharlottesville VirginiadeathDonald J. TrumpEvangelical Christiansevangelical churchEvangelical support for TrumpFascismFascistFred C. TrumpFred Trumpgerman bundGOPhatredmurderNazi terroristNeo NazisRepublican Partyright wing extremistthe beastthe mystery of Lawlessnessvehicular manslaughterviolence
The End of Democracy in Belarus, by Alexander Lukashenko
They delivered for America: Now it’s our turn to deliver for the United States Postal Service.
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Last edited by Gumi
Tuesday, May 19, 2020 | History
5 edition of The 1994 Midsummer Classic Three Rivers Stadium Pittsburgh found in the catalog.
The 1994 Midsummer Classic Three Rivers Stadium Pittsburgh
Published 1994 by Major League Baseball Properties .
The All-Star Game was played at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh and was held under the threatening clouds of a work stoppage which would eventually see the season come to an early end with. Race for the Record by Lee R. Schreiber and a great selection of related books, art and collectibles available now at
Three Rivers Stadium's name referred to where it sat, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio sat almost precisely on the site of Exposition Park, which housed the Pirates for 19 years from It also sat on a Delaware Indian burial ground, and the location was the site of many battles fought by General George Washington over possession of nearby Fort. Get the The Rolling Stones Setlist of the concert at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA, USA on Septem from the Voodoo Lounge Tour and other The Rolling Stones Setlists for free on !
Three Rivers Stadium got its name because it is situated where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers merge to form the Ohio. It may be the quintessential "cookie-cutter stadium" - it was symmetrical in shape, used artificial surface, and was a multipurpose sports facility designed so that the Pittsburgh Steelers could play there as well. The battle lines were being drawn the trenches were built, as the midsummer classic came to Pittsburgh for the first time since The owners were steadfast in their demand for a salary cap, claiming the loss of television revenue due to the poorly negotiated “Baseball Network”.Author: Frankthetank.
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The 1994 Midsummer Classic Three Rivers Stadium Pittsburgh Download PDF EPUB FB2
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The Midsummer Classic Three Rivers Stadium Pittsburgh book. Read reviews from world’s largest community for readers. The game was held on Jat Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League—tying the Indians for the all-time record of most All-Star Games hosted by one franchise, as the Pirates had also hosted in Seller Rating: % positive.
Online shopping from a great selection at Books Store. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for The Midsummer Classic Three Rivers Stadium Sealed Official Publication MLB at the best online prices at. Baseball Almanac is pleased to present the box score to the Midsummer Classic which was played on J at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
"He (Lee Smith) made a good pitch, but I got it (for a ninth inning home run). See the article in its original context from JSection C, Page 7 Buy Reprints View on timesmachine TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
Find great deals on eBay for midsummer classic. Shop with confidence. Find great deals on eBay for three river. Shop with confidence. The game was held on Jat Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League—tying the Indians for the all-time record of most All-Star Games hosted by one franchise, as the Pirates had also hosted in, and (and would again in ).
The game resulted in the National League defeating the American League 8–7 in 10 City: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 20 years ago today, on Jthe 65th Major League Baseball All Star Game was held at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.
While it had all the bells and whistles of any modern day Midsummer Classic, it also had one of the best finishes in any All Star Game over the last two decades.
The National League won the sixty-fifth midsummer classic at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, PA on Tuesday, J by a score of 8 to 7 in 10 innings. The league's manager was Jim Fregosi.
Postseason. The Postseason was cancelled due to a player's strike. Award winners. Yes, the All-Star Game at Three Rivers Stadium was an instant-classic Midsummer PITTSBURGH -- Lineups loaded with Hall of Famers. The All-Star Game was held on Tuesday, J The National League won the sixty-fifth midsummer classic by a score of 8 to 7 in 10 innings.
The game was held at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, PA in front of 59, fans. The MVP was Fred McGriff of the Atlanta Braves. BR page.
The Toronto Blue Jays season was the franchise's 18th season of Major League resulted in the Blue Jays finishing third in the American League East with a record of 55 wins and 60 losses. Cito Gaston was the manager for the American League squad at the All-Star Game.
The Mid-Summer classic was played on July 12 at Three Rivers Stadium in l manager(s): Pat Gillick. Read this book on Questia. The Midsummer Classic: The Complete History of Baseball's All-Star Game.
By David Vincent, Lyle Spatz, David W. Smith Tuesday, J Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh National League 8, American League 7 (10 Innings) Series Results: Nl Buy Major League Baseball All-Star Game by Ronald Cohn Jesse Russell (ISBN:) from Amazon's Book Store.
Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible : Ronald Cohn Jesse Russell. Rare Vtg Nba All Star Weekend Gym Bag Minnesota T-shirt Tnt Towel Mug Pin $ Huge Vinyl Banner Mlb All Star Game Pittsburgh Pa Three Rivers Stadium. Three Rivers Stadium; if it wasn’t the most picturesque coliseum in American sports history, it was perhaps one of the most perfectly named.
In southwestern Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, the county seat of Allegheny County, lies partly in a hilly region known as the Golden Triangle, the location of the city’s business district. MLB ALL-STAR GAME HISTORY Major League Baseball All-Star Game History by Baseball Almanac.
Baseball has always been more than just a game. As John S. Bowman and Joel Zoss stated in The Pictorial History of Baseball "As part of the fabric of American culture, baseball is the common social ground between strangers, a world of possibilities and of chance, where 'it's never over till it's over.'".
Pittsburgh hosted the MLB All-Star Game, becoming the second city to welcome Major League Baseball All-Stars and fans for a fourth time, joining Cleveland, on J at Three Rivers Stadium.
The opening ceremony was highlighted by one of the great National Anthem renditions from rock singer Meatloaf.Lee R. Schreiber is the author of Race for the Record ( avg rating, 2 ratings, 0 reviews, published ), Unexplained Places ( avg rating, 1 rat 3/5.The Major League Baseball All-Star Game was the 65th playing of the midsummer classic between the all-stars of the American League (AL) and National League (NL), the two leagues comprising Major League game was held on Jat Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League—tying the Indians for the all.
lphsbands.com - The 1994 Midsummer Classic Three Rivers Stadium Pittsburgh book © 2020
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Dave Elliott: The long awaited, much delayed, White Paper on Energy did not emerge as expected in mid November, but UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson did launch a ten-point energy plan to set the UK on a path to ‘net zero carbon’ by 2050. As had been indicated in previous announcements, renewables are strongly featured in the proposed ‘Green Industrial Revolution’. Offshore was wind expected to be producing enough power ‘for every home, quadrupling how much we produce to 40GW by 2030, supporting up to 60,000 jobs’. In particular, 1 GW of floating offshore wind capacity was expected to be in place by then. On hydrogen, much talked up of late, there is a target to generate 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030 for industry, transport, power and homes. There will be a programme of almost £500m, ‘including for trialling homes using hydrogen for heating and cooking, starting with a Hydrogen Neighbourhood in 2023, moving to a Hydrogen Village by 2025, with an aim for a Hydrogen Town, equivalent to tens of thousands of homes, before the end of the decade’. Homes will also benefit from a £1bn programme for making new and existing homes and public buildings more energy efficient – somewhat less than the £9.2 billion promised in the 2019 election manifesto. The nearest thing to a major new commitment in the plan was the provision of an an extra £200 million to create two ‘carbon capture’ clusters by the mid-2020s, with another two to be created by 2030, all this being destined to create jobs ‘for areas such as the Humber, Teesside, Merseyside, Grangemouth & Port Talbot’. The 10-point plan is to be followed up by not just the delayed Energy White Paper, which may still yet emerge later this year, but also by a whole series of other reports including an update of the National Infrastructure Strategy (now out), a Net Zero Strategy, an Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy and a Hydrogen Strategy.
Renew Extra 28th Nov 2020 read more »
Energy Policy | News | News 2020 | News November 2020
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Great Composer Quiz – May 7, 2020
Never mind, Verdi or Wagner. Forget about Offenbach and Strauss. Where it came to musical productions for the stage, this Great Composer had more performances of his works and was more popular than all others in the 19th century. He grew up in Germany, learned his craft in Italy and plied it in France. What’s his name, this Great Composer?
Time’s up, pencils down. The Great Composer whose box office out-shined Verdi and Wagner, and anyone else you could measure him against in the 19th century. The answer is Giacomo Meyerbeer. Alas, Meyerbeer fell out of favor. What happened? Wagner happened. The younger man was 27 when he met the master. Meyerbeer helped Wagner immensely. He gave him money. He secured first performances for Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman. Speaking of Rienzi, produced two years after the two men met, Wagner had drawn so much from Meyerbeer Rienzi was called “Meyerbeer’s best opera” by Hans von Bulow.
Inevitably, Wagner grew jealous of Meyerbeer’s popular success, and after Meyerbeer declined to give Wagner yet another loan, the future musical voice of Nazi Germany mounted a viscous, unrelenting campaign against the composer of Le prophète, Les Huguenots, Robert le diable and many other French opera fan favorites. (Under a pseudonym, Wagner published an essay called “Jewishness in Music.”) Wagner’s attacks were taken up by his followers and as he gained notoriety his iniquitous antagonism deepened so that not only did it drive Meyerbeer for cover before his death in 1864, but Wagner’s hatred of Meyerbeer is seen by scholars as laying the foundation for the antisemitism that sprang from the Third Reich.
Next Quiz – May 8, 2020 | Previous Quiz – May 5, 2020
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THE WILDCATS
Wildcats Roster
Wildcat Skaters Stats
Wildcat Goalies Stats
OFFICIAL SITE OF THE ELLIOT LAKE WILDCATS JUNIOR A HOCKEY CLUB
NOJHL commitment list grows
SUDBURY, Ont. – As the off-season rolls along, players from the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League continue to make commitments to compete at the next level.
The defending NOJHL champion Hearst Lumberjacks have seen three of its players commit to collegiate programs in the U.S., starting in the fall.
League regular season and playoff Most Valuable Player, in Hearst goaltender Nicholas Tallarico, will be off to Adrian College in Michigan while standout forward Bradley Golant will attend the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn.
Both schools are members of the NCAA’s D-III Northern Collegiate Hockey Association.
The 21-year-old Tallarico, who hails from Vancouver, B.C., went 24-10-6 in regular season play backstopping the Lumberjacks to the NOJHL’s East Division title.
He followed that with a 12-6 record in the playoffs leading Hearst to their first-ever league championship.
Tallarico then concluded his Jr. A career by being named MVP of the Dudley-Hewitt Cup as he led the Lumberjacks to the title game.
As for Golant, the 20-year-old from Lakeville, Minn., was a over a point-per-game man for his side in 2018-19, registering 50 in 42 outings on 19 goals and 31 assists.
He then tacked on another 23 in 18 playoffs games by nothing nine markers and dishing out a league-leading 14 helpers.
In 114 combined NOJHL contests, Golant totalled 107 points, including 49 tallies.
Meanwhile, forward Daniel Fisher will attend the University of Nevada Las Vegas and skate with the Rebels program, who compete in the American Collegiate Hockey Association.
The 21-year-old Calgary, Alta., native saw action in 50 games with Hearst where he scored 11 times and dished out 21 assists for 32 points.
Fisher then chipped in with 11 more points in Hearst’s run to the championship when he had three goals and helped set-up eight more.
You also have the 2017-18 NOJHL champion Cochrane Crunch continuing to add to their list of players that have earned the opportunity to attend school and compete collegiately.
Veteran defenceman Eli Hernandez will also be off to the NCHA where he will attend Trine University in Indiana.
The 20-year-old from Anchorage, Alaska, skated in 70 NOJHL games for the Crunch where he helped bolster the squad’s back-end and chipped in offensively with 33 points that saw him pick up seven goals and 26 assists.
Among his 13 career playoff games, 12 came in 2018 as part of Cochrane going on to win their first league crown.
You also have talented three-year Cochrane forward Nicolas Flanders set to head to UNLV in Las Vegas to attend school and skate with the Rebels.
One of the best-ever to don a Crunch jersey, Flanders produced 121 points in 161 NOJHL games.
In that time frame, the 21-year-old from Pembroke Pines, Fla., scored on 43 occasions and dished out 78 assists.
Flanders, was also part of Cochrane’s 2017-18 championship team.
The Elliot Lake Wildcats also have one of their own, in forward Carson Andreoli, committing to play for Niagara University’s ACHA squad in New York State.
The 20-year-old from Toronto, set personal single-season highs in goals, assists and points with Elliot Lake this past season with nine, 11 and 20 respectively.
In all, Andreoli appeared in 113 league games, picking up 16 goals and as many assists.
You also have a member of the Kirkland Lake Gold Miners, in Aiden Wagner, committing to Fredonia State, who are members of the State University of New York Athletic Conference.
From Langley, B.C., Wagner, 21, played the 2018-19 campaign with Kirkland Lake and dressed in a total of 29 outings where the forward collected 17 goals and seven assists along the way.
Elliot Lake City Council decides to repair Centennial Arena
NOJHL releases its 2019-20 regular season schedule
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Wildcats Take Leave of Absence for 2020/21 Season
HOCKEY CANADA STATEMENT ON RETURN TO HOCKEY IN CANADA
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(-) Remove Ethics filter Ethics
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Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942)
In 1942, the United States Supreme Court Case of Skinner v. Oklahoma ruled that states could not legally sterilize those inmates of prisons deemed habitual criminals. Skinner v. Oklahoma was about the case of Jack Skinner, an inmate of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, who was subject to sterilization under the Oklahoma Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act of 1935. The case, decided on 1 June 1942, determined that state laws were unconstitutional if those laws enabled states to forcibly sterilize inmates deemed to be habitual criminals.
Subject: Ethics, Legal
Test-Tube Baby
A test-tube baby is the product of a successful human reproduction that results from methods beyond sexual intercourse between a man and a woman and instead utilizes medical intervention that manipulates both the egg and sperm cells for successful fertilization. The term was originally used to refer to the babies born from the earliest applications of artificial insemination and has now been expanded to refer to children born through the use of in vitro fertilization, the practice of fertilizing an embryo outside of a woman's body.
Subject: Processes, Ethics, Reproduction
US Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program
In 1996, the US Congress mandated that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) create and regulate the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program. The program tests industrial and agricultural chemicals for hormonal impacts in humans and in wildlife that may disrupt organisms' endocrine systems. The endocrine system regulates the release of small amounts of chemical substances called hormones to keep the body functioning normally.
Subject: Disorders, Legal, Ethics
In re Agent Orange Product Liability Litigation (1979-1984)
In the legal case In re Agent Orange Product Liability Litigation of the early 1980s, US military veterans of the Vietnam War sued the US chemical companies that had produced the herbicide Agent Orange, and those companies settled with US veterans out of court. Agent Orange contains dioxin, a chemical later shown to disrupt the hormone system of the body and to cause cancer. As veterans returned to the US from Vietnam, scientists further confirmed that exposure to Agent Orange caused a variety of cancers in veterans and developmental problems in the veterans' children.
Subject: Legal, Ethics
The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering (2007), by Michael J. Sandel
The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, hereafter referred to as The Case against Perfection, written by Michael J. Sandel, builds on a short essay featured in The Atlantic Monthly magazine in 2004. Three years later, Sandel transformed his article into a book, keeping the same title but expanding upon his personal critique of genetic engineering. The purpose of Sandel's book is to articulate the sources of what he considers to be widespread public unease related to genetic engineering that changes the course of natural development.
Subject: Publications, Ethics
Free Hospital for Women Scrapbook by Harvard University Library
This scrapbook is part of the Harvard University Library's collection on "Working Women, 1800-1930," which is itself part of the Open Collections Program. The print version is located at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine. It contains information about the hospital, including articles from newspapers, magazines, and other publications; photographs of the hospital, employees, and special events; lecture announcements; letters and other forms of correspondence; ration cards; tickets; forms; certificates; posters; programs; and playbills.
Subject: Organizations, Ethics, Reproduction
Katharine McCormick (1876-1967)
Katharine Dexter McCormick, who contributed the majority of funding for the development of the oral contraceptive pill, was born to Josephine and Wirt Dexter on 27 August 1875 in Dexter, Michigan. After growing up in Chicago, Illinois, she attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she graduated in 1904 with a BS in biology. That same year, she married Stanley McCormick, the son of Cyrus McCormick, inventor and manufacturer of the mechanized reaper.
Subject: People, Ethics, Reproduction
Abortion is the removal of the embryo or fetus from the womb, before birth can occur-either naturally or by induced labor. Prenatal development occurs in three stages: the zygote, or fertilized egg; the embryo, from post-conception to eight weeks; and the fetus, from eight weeks after conception until the baby is born. After abortion, the infant does not and cannot live. Spontaneous abortion is the loss of the infant naturally or accidentally, without the will of the mother. It is more commonly referred to as miscarriage.
Quickening
Quickening, the point at which a pregnant woman can first feel the movements of the growing embryo or fetus, has long been considered a pivotal moment in pregnancy. Over time, this experience has been used in a variety of contexts, ranging from representing the point of ensoulment to determining whether an abortion was legal to indicating the gender of the unborn baby; philosophy, theology, and law all address the idea of quickening in detail. Beginning with Aristotle, quickening divided the developmental stages of embryo and fetus.
Ethics and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
The recent development of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and related technologies has caught the attention of scientists, activists, politicians, and ethicists alike. IPSCs gained immediate international attention for their apparent similarity to embryonic stem cells after their successful creation in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka and in 2007 by James Thompson and others.
Subject: Technologies, Ethics
China's One-Child Policy
In September 1979, China's Fifth National People's Congress passed a policy that encouraged one-child families. Following this decision from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), campaigns were initiated to implement the One-Child Policy nationwide. This initiative constituted the most massive governmental attempt to control human fertility and reproduction in human history. These campaigns prioritized reproductive technologies for contraception, abortion, and sterilization in gynecological and obstetric medicine, while downplaying technologies related to fertility treatment.
Subject: Ethics, Legal, Reproduction
Ethics of Designer Babies
A designer baby is a baby genetically engineered in vitro for specially selected traits, which can vary from lowered disease-risk to gender selection. Before the advent of genetic engineering and in vitro fertilization (IVF), designer babies were primarily a science fiction concept. However, the rapid advancement of technology before and after the turn of the twenty-first century makes designer babies an increasingly real possibility.
Subject: Ethics, Reproduction
Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (1880-1958)
Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 15 October 1880 to Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, a suffragist, and Henry Stopes, an archaeologist and anthropologist. A paleobotanist best known for her social activism in the area of sexuality, Stopes was a pioneer in the fight to gain sexual equality for women. Her activism took many forms including writing books and pamphlets, giving public appearances, serving on panels, and, most famously, co-founding the first birth control clinic in the United Kingdom.
Sergio Cereceda Stone (1942- )
Sergio Cereceda Stone was born 16 April 1942 in the coastal city of Valparaiso, Chile. Stone's mother Luz was a housewife and caretaker for Sergio and his younger brother Lionel; his father Sergio served among the country's twenty appellate court judges. In the early 1950s Stone's father relocated the family to Santiago to further his law career.
Stem Cell Tourism
When James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin announced in 1998 that he had derived and cultured human embryonic stem cells(hESCs), Americans widely believed-and accepted-that stem cells would one day be the basis of a multitude of regenerative medical techniques. Researchers promised that they would soon be able to cure a variety of diseases and injuries such as cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, severe burns, and many others. But it wasn't until January 2009 that the Food and Drug Administration approved the first human clinical trials using hESCs.
Subject: Theories, Ethics
Leon Richard Kass (1939- )
A PhD and medical doctor turned ethicist, Leon Kass calls himself an unlicensed humanist. Throughout his unique career he has sought to impact others and engage important cultural issues. This he has accomplished over the course of many years by studying biochemistry, teaching humanities, writing articles and books on ethics, and serving as chair of the President's Council on Bioethics.
"Alternative Sources of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells" (2005), by Leon Kass and the President’s Council on Bioethics
Human pluripotent stem cells are valued for their potential to form numerous specialized cells and for their longevity. In the US, where a portion of the population is opposed to destruction of human embryos to obtain stem cells, what avenues are open to scientists for obtaining pluripotent cells that do not offend the moral sensibilities of a significant number of citizens?
Ricardo Hector Asch (1947- )
Ricardo Hector Asch was born 26 October 1947 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a lawyer and French professor, Bertha, and a doctor and professor of surgery, Miguel. Asch's middle-class family lived among the largest Jewish community in Latin America, where a majority of males were professionals. After his graduation from National College No. 3 Mariano Moreno in Buenos Aires, Asch worked as a teaching assistant in human reproduction and embryology at the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine where he received his medical degree in 1971.
South Korea's Bioethics and Biosafety Act (2005)
The South Korean government passed the Bioethics and Biosafety Act, known henceforth as the Bioethics Act, in 2003 and it took effect in 2005. South Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare proposed the law to the South Korean National Assembly to allow the progress of biotechnology and life sciences research in South Korea while protecting human research subjects with practices such as informed consent. The Bioethics Act establishes a National Bioethics Committee in Seoul, South Korea.
Fetal surgeries are a range of medical interventions performed in utero on the developing fetus of a pregnant woman to treat a number of congenital abnormalities. The first documented fetal surgical procedure occurred in 1963 in Auckland, New Zealand when A. William Liley treated fetal hemolytic anemia, or Rh disease, with a blood transfusion.
Subject: Disorders, Ethics, Reproduction
The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology (1984), by Mary Warnock and the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology
The Report of the Committee of Inquiry
into Human Fertilisation and Embryology, commonly called the Warnock
Report after the chair of the committee Mary Warnock, is the 1984
publication of a UK governmental inquiry into the social impacts of
infertility treatment and embryological research. The birth of Louise
Brown in 1978 in Oldham, UK, sparked debate about reproductive and
embryological technologies. Brown was conceived through in vitro
fertilization (IVF), a process of fertilization that occurs outside of
Subject: Publications, Legal, Ethics
Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (1922), by Harry H. Laughlin
Eugenical Sterilization in the United States is a 1922 book in which author Harry H. Laughlin argues for the necessity of compulsory sterilization in the United States based on the principles of eugenics. The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century in the US focused on altering the genetic makeup of the US population by regulating immigration and sterilization, and by discouraging interracial procreation, then called miscegenation.
Subject: Outreach, Legal, Ethics, Publications
Assisted Human Reproduction Act (2004)
The Assisted Human Reproduction Act (AHR Act) is a piece of federal legislation passed by the Parliament of Canada. The Act came into force on 29 March 2004. Many sections of the Act were struck down following a 2010 Supreme Court of Canada ruling on its constitutionality. The AHR Act sets a legislative and regulatory framework for the use of reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization and related services including surrogacy and gamete donation. The Act also regulates research in Canada involving in vitro embryos.
Subject: Legal, Reproduction, Ethics
Hwang Woo-suk's Use of Human Eggs for Research 2002-2005
Hwang Woo-suk, a geneticist in South Korea, claimed in Science magazine in 2004 and 2005 that he and a team of researchers had for the first time cloned a human embryo and that they had derived eleven stem cell lines from it. Hwang was a professor at Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea. In the Science articles, Hwang stated that all of the women who donated eggs to his laboratory were volunteers who donated their eggs (oocytes) without receiving any compensation in return. In 2006, Hwang admitted that many of the results were fabricated.
Subject: Legal, Ethics, Reproduction
David Wildt's Evolving Ethics Concerning the Roles of Wildlife Reproductive Sciences in Species Conservation
David Wildt is an animal reproductive biologist who directs the Conservation Biology Institute in Fort Royal, Virginia. In 1986, Wildt argued that artificial reproductive technologies should only be used for species conservation efforts if standard techniques to aid natural reproduction are not effective. Between 1986 and 2001, Wildt revised his views and values primarily in relation to two things: which methods captive breeding programs ought to use, and how reproductive scientists ought to contribute to the larger work of conservation.
Subject: Ethics
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Thomas Hunt Morgan's Definition of Regeneration: Morphallaxis and Epimorphosis
For Thomas Hunt Morgan clarity was of utmost importance. He was therefore frustrated with the many disparate, disconnected terms that were used to refer to similar, if not the same, regenerative processes within organisms. When Morgan wrote Regeneration in 1901 there had been many different terms developed and adopted by various investigators to describe their observations. As a result there were many inconsistencies making it difficult to discuss results comparatively and also making it more challenging to generalize. Defining terms was a priority for Morgan.
Subject: Theories
"Generation of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells without Myc from Mouse and Human Fibroblasts" (2007), by Masato Nakagawa et al.
In November 2007, Masato Nakagawa, along with a number of other researchers including Kazutoshi Takahashi, Keisuke Okita, and Shinya Yamanaka, published "Generation of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells without Myc from Mouse and Human Fibroblasts" (abbreviated "Generation") in Nature. In "Generation," the authors point to dedifferentiation of somatic cells as an avenue for generating pluripotent stem cells useful for treating specific patients and diseases.
"Genetic Programming: Artificial Nervous Systems, Artificial Embryos and Embryological Electronics" (1991), by Hugo de Garis
In 1991, Hugo de Garis' article "Genetic Programming: Artificial Nervous Systems, Artificial Embryos and Embryological Electronics" was published in the book Parallel Problem Solving from Nature. With this article de Garis hoped to create what he envisioned as a new branch of artificial embryology called embryonics (short term for "embryological electronics"). Embryonics is based on the idea of adapting the processes found in embryonic development to build artificial systems.
Amniocentesis is a test used for prenatal diagnosis of inherited diseases, Rh incompatibility, neural tube defects, and lung maturity. Normally performed during the second trimester of a pregnancy, this invasive procedure allows the detection of health problems in the fetus as early as fifteen weeks gestation. Although amniocentesis does carry some significant risks, the medical community commonly accepts it as a safe and useful procedure.
Subject: Technologies, Reproduction
Bowen v. American Hospital Association (1986)
The 1986 US Supreme Court decision Bowen v. American Hospital Association rejected the federal government's use of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to intervene in a hospital's treatment for neonates born with severe congenital defects. This case set a precedent for the role of government involvement in cases where parents refused consent for care of disabled newborns.
Subject: Legal, Reproduction
Jeter v. Mayo Clinic Arizona [Brief] (2005)
In Arizona, statutes that protect persons, such as the wrongful death statute, will not be interpreted by the courts to grant personhood status to frozen embryos. The legislature may grant such protection in the statute if it chooses to do so by explicitly defining the word person to include frozen embryos.
Kass v. Kass [Brief] (1998)
In a case of first impression in the state of New York, the highest state court decided that a priori written agreement between progenitors of frozen embryos regarding the disposition of their "pre-zygotes" in the event of divorce is binding. By copying the general result arrived at by the Tennessee Supreme Court in Davis v. Davis in 1992, the New York court magnified the weight of authority in favor of upholding prior written agreements for in vitro fertilization practices.
"Selective Growth Stimulating Effects of Mouse Sarcoma on the Sensory and Sympathetic Nervous System of the Chick Embryo" (1951), by Rita Levi-Montalcini and Viktor Hamburger
In "Selective Growth Stimulating Effects of Mouse Sarcoma on the Sensory and Sympathetic Nervous System of the Chick Embryo," Rita Levi-Montalcini and Viktor Hamburger explored the effects of two nerve growth stimulating tumors; mouse sarcomas 180 and 37. This experiment led to the discovery that nerve growth factor was a diffusible chemical and later to discoveries that the compound was a protein. Although this paper was an important step in the discovery of nerve growth factor, the term "nerve growth factor" was not used in this paper.
"Interspecific Chimeras in Mammals: Successful Production of Live Chimeras Between Mus musculus and Mus caroli" (1980), by Janet Rossant and William I. Frels
In 1980 Janet Rossant and William I. Frels published their paper, "Interspecific Chimeras in Mammals: Successful Production of Live Chimeras Between Mus musculus and Mus caroli," in Science. Their experiment involved the first successful creation of interspecific mammalian chimeras. Mammalian chimeras are valuable for studying early embryonic development. However, in earlier studies, clonal analysis was restricted by the lack of a cell marker, present at all times, that makes a distinction between the two parental cell types in situ.
"A Series of Normal Stages in the Development of the Chick Embryo" (1951), by Viktor Hamburger and Howard L. Hamilton
The developmental stages of the chick embryo were examined by Viktor Hamburger and Howard L. Hamilton in "A Series of Normal Stages in the Development of the Chick Embryo," published in the Journal of Morphology in 1951. These stages were published to standardize the development of the chick based on varying laboratory conditions and genetic differences. The stages Hamburger and Hamilton assigned were determined by the visible features of the chick embryo.
Pope Innocent XI (1611-1689)
Pope Innocent XI, born Benedetto Odescalchi, made considerable contributions to the Roman Catholic approach to embryology by condemning several propositions on liberal moral theology in 1679, including two related to abortion and ensoulment. His rejection of these principles strengthened the Church's stance against abortion and for the idea of "hominization," meaning the presence of human qualities before birth.
Subject: People, Religion, Reproduction
St. Augustine (354-430)
St. Augustine of Hippo, born Aurelius Augustinus to a respectable family in the year 354 CE, is now considered one of the foremost theologians in the history of the Catholic Church. His writings, including his philosophy regarding life in the womb and the moral worth of embryos, influenced many other great thinkers of his time and throughout history.
Subject: People, Religion
The term homunculus is Latin for "little man." It is used in neurology today to describe the map in the brain of sensory neurons in each part of the body (the somatosensory homunculus). An early use of the word was in the 1572 work by Paracelsus regarding forays into alchemy, De Natura Rerum, in which he gave instructions in how to create an infant human without fertilization or gestation in the womb. In the history of embryology, the homunculus was part of the Enlightenment-era theory of generation called preformationism.
Subject: Processes
Spermism
Spermism was one of two models of preformationism, a theory of embryo generation prevalent in the late seventeenth through the end of the eighteenth century. Spermist preformationism was the belief that offspring develop from a tiny fully-formed fetus contained within the head of a sperm cell. This model developed slightly later than the opposing ovist model because sperm cells were not seen under the microscope until about 1677.
"Experimental Chimeras' Removal of Reproductive Barrier Between Sheep and Goat" (1984), by Sabine Meinecke-Tillmann and Burkhard Meinecke
In 1984 Sabine Meinecke-Tillmann and Burkhard Meinecke published their article "Experimental Chimeras - Removal of Reproductive Barrier Between Sheep and Goat" in Nature. Their study conquered the reproductive barrier between sheep and goats through embryo manipulation. Their article appeared in Nature on the same day that a similar experiment, conducted by Carole Fehilly, Steen Willadsen, and Elizabeth Tucker was published regarding reproductive barriers between sheep and goats.
Laparoscopy, a subfield of endoscopy, is a minimally invasive surgical procedure used to examine and operate on the internal organs of the abdomen through a small incision in the abdominal wall. The term "laparoscopy" is derived from two Greek words: laparo, meaning the soft space between hips and ribs, and skopie, meaning to examine. Today laparoscopy has broad clinical applications including for diagnosis, fertility procedures, visual representation, and surgery.
Humanae Vitae (1968), by Pope Paul VI
The "Humanae Vitae," meaning "Of Human Life" and subtitled "On the Regulation of Birth," was an encyclical promulgated in Rome, Italy, on 25 July 1968 by Pope Paul VI. This encyclical defended and reiterated the Roman Catholic Church's stance on family planning and reproductive issues such as abortion, sterilization, and contraception. The document continues to have a controversial reputation today, as its statements regarding birth control strike many Catholics as unreasonable.
Subject: Religion, Reproduction
Samuel Randall Detwiler (1890-1957)
Samuel Randall Detwiler was an embryologist who studied neural development in embryos and vertebrate retinas. He discovered evidence for the relationship between somites and spinal ganglia, that transplanted limbs can be controlled by foreign ganglia, and the plasticity of ganglia in response to limb transplantations. He also extensively studied vertebrate retinas during and after embryonic development.
Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas
The principal work of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Summa Theologica is divided into three parts and is designed to instruct both beginners and experts in all matters of Christian Truth. It discusses topics central to Christian morality, ethics, law, and the life of Christ, providing philosophical and theological solutions to common arguments and questions surrounding the Christian faith. The views presented in this body of writing are currently upheld in large part by the modern doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.
Subject: Religion
Leonardo da Vinci's Embryological Annotations
Among his myriad scientific and artistic contributions, Leonardo da Vinci's work in embryology was groundbreaking. He observed and diagramed the previously undemonstrated position of the fetus in the womb with detailed accompanying annotations of his observations. Leonardo was highly paranoid of plagiarism and wrote all of his notes in mirror-like handwriting laden with his own codes, making his writing difficult to discern and delaying its impact.
Caspar Friedrich Wolff (1734-1794)
Caspar Friedrich Wolff is most famous for his 1759 doctoral dissertation, Theoria Generationis, in which he described embryonic development in both plants and animals as a process involving layers of cells, thereby refuting the accepted theory of preformation: the idea that organisms develop as a result of the unfolding of form that is somehow present from the outset, as in a homunculus. This work generated a great deal of controversy and discussion at the time of its publication but was an integral move in the reemergence and acceptance of the theory of epigenesis.
Smith v. Cote (1986)
The case of Smith v. Cote (1986) answered two important questions concerning law and childbirth: does the State of New Hampshire recognize a cause of action for what is defined as wrongful birth, and does the State recognize a cause of action for what is classified as wrongful life? In the case of Smith v. Cote, damages were permitted for wrongful birth, but not for the action of wrongful life.
Subject: Legal, Disorders
Dietrich v. Inhabitants of Northampton [Brief] (1884)
This influential opinion by famed jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was copied by courts throughout the United States. For over sixty years, courts refused to recognize a cause of action on behalf of a child who died before or after birth as a result of injuries suffered in the womb because the fetus was considered legally a part of its mother and thus did not possess personhood. This policy changed after the decision in Bonbrest v. Kotz in 1946.
Karl Wilhelm Theodor Richard von Hertwig (1850-1937)
Karl Wilhelm Theodor Richard von Hertwig is an important figure in the history of embryology for his contributions of artificial hybridization of sea urchin eggs and the formulation of his coelom theory. He was born 23 September 1850 in Friedelberg, Germany, to Elise Trapp and Carl Hertwig. Richard and his older brother Oscar began their studies at Jena under the direction of Ernst Haeckel from 1868 to 1871. In 1872 Hertwig became a lecturer in zoology at Jena while Oscar lectured in anatomy and embryology.
United States v. University Hospital (1984)
The US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals' 1984 decision United States v. University Hospital, State University Hospital of New York at Stony Brook set a significant precedent for affirming parental privilege to make medical decisions for handicapped newborns, while limiting the ability of the federal government to intervene. The ruling stemmed from the 1983 case involving an infant born with severe physical and mental congenital defects; the infant was only identified as Baby Jane Doe.
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Go to main content [shortcut key S] : Brexit and VAT: Consequences of the UK Leaving the European Union
Brexit and VAT: Consequences of the UK Leaving the European Union
News of theme "Monaco Worldwide"
©DR
Due to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, as of 1 January 2021, the terms for intra-Community transactions carried out between Monaco and the United Kingdom are from now on replaced by the terms for import and export from or to a third country.
Unlike intra-Community transactions, import and export transactions require specific declarations to be submitted to the Customs and Excise Department when the transactions in question are carried out.
On export, exemption from Value Added Tax must be justified in accordance with the provisions of Article A-52 of the appendix to the tax code relating to turnover. On importation, the Value Added Tax must be calculated in accordance with the provisions of Article 83 of the aforementioned code.
Consequently, transactions carried out with the United Kingdom as from 1 January 2021 will no longer give rise to the submission of European declarations for services and/or trade in goods.
Furthermore, Monegasque companies that do not carry out taxable transactions in the United Kingdom may apply for a refund of VAT incurred for the acquisition of goods or services in the United Kingdom for the year 2020 via the e-RMB-EU service until 31 March 2021, in accordance, as before, with the special refund rules set out in Council Directive 2008/9/EC of 12 February 2008.
However, this procedure, which is reserved for persons subject to tax in the EU, is no longer applicable to requests for refunds of VAT incurred in the United Kingdom from 1 January 2021. These applications will have to be addressed directly to the UK Tax Authorities in accordance with the legal procedure provided for by the United Kingdom.
For any further information, please contact Mr. Olivier Bigard on 98.98.81.43.
RESULTS OF THE 2020 PHOTO COMPETITION “RAMOGE – Man and the Sea” - Under the auspices of the International Federation of Photographic Art (FIAP)
Monaco participates in resumed 73rd World Health Assembly, held virtually by the World Health Organization
Les représentants de 90 pays à l'Assemblée de l'OHI
Monaco reiterates full support for international humanitarian law
Department of Legal Affairs
Find a place or contact details
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The Jazz Cafe
5 Parkway, London NW1 7PG
This event was previously scheduled for the 3rd of June 2020, but will now take place on the 13th March 2021.
Chicago hip-hop brass band Hypnotic Brass Ensemble bring their incendiary live show to the Jazz Cafe off the back of an outstanding new album.
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, are an eight-strong cohort of horn-playing brothers (plus one unrelated drummer), the youngest of some 23 children - the offspring of different mothers, but all sons of jazz trumpeter and composer Kelan Phil Cohran (a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra).
Together, they have formed a formidable reputation as one of the best live bands around and releasing three acclaimed albums on UK label Honest Jon's Records. With a sound that calls to mind traditional New Orleans big-band jazz and nods to the avant-garde angularity of their father and his contemporaries, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble are equally informed by rap, funk and hip-hop.
They have worked alongside Mos Def, Prince, Ghostface Killah, Childish Gambino, Gorillaz (including 3 tracks on Plastic Beach), Damon Albarn, Erykah Badu, Robert Glasper, Chris Dave, Tony Allen and many more.
Presented by The Jazz Cafe.
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Giovanni Fattori
Giovanni Fattori (September 6, 1825 – August 30, 1908) was an Italian artist, one of the leaders of the group known as the Macchiaioli. He was initially a painter of historical themes and military subjects. In his middle years, inspired by the Barbizon school, he became one of the leading Italian plein-airists, painting landscapes, rural scenes, and scenes of military life. After 1884, he devoted much energy to etching.
Youth and training
Fattori was born in modest circumstances in Livorno. His early education was rudimentary and his family initially planned for him to study for a qualification in commerce, but his skill in drawing persuaded them to apprentice him in 1845 to Giuseppe Baldini (born 1807- ?), a local painter of religious themes and genre subjects. The following year he moved to Florence where he first studied under Giuseppe Bezzuoli and, later in the year, at the Accadèmia di Belli Arti. At that time, however, his energies were directed less toward the study of art than to reading the historical novels (especially those with medieval themes) of such authors as Ugo Foscolo, Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi and Walter Scott.
In 1848 he interrupted his studies and participated as a courier, distributing leaflets for the Partito d'Azione, in the democratic anti-Austrian movement during the revolutionary years of 1848-1849. However, his family prevented him from joining the army. In 1850 he resumed his studies at the "Accademia" in Florence. He made it a habit to note all his observations in small notebooks that he always kept with him, illustrating with innumerable sketches. Some of his later etchings were based on these observations.
Early paintings (to 1860)
Fattori's development to maturity as a painter was unusually slow. His first paintings, few of which survive, date from the early 1850s. [Broude 1987, pp. 198–200.] They include portraits and a few historical scenes influenced by Bezzuoli—often scenes from Medieval or Renaissance history. In 1851 he participated in the "Promotrice fiorentina" with the painting "Ildegonda", inspired by the short novel by Tommaso Grossi.In 1853–54 he studied realism, together with the Turin artist Andrea Gastaldi (1826-1889). He probably painted his first landscapes in Gastaldi's company. Around 1857 Enrico Pollastrini, another pupil of Giuseppe Bezzuoli, introduced him to the style of Ingres. This had some impact on Fattori's historical paintings. One of his best historical themes was "Maria Stuarda", (Mary Stuart at the battlefield of Langside) painted between 1858 and 1860, based on his reading of Walter Scott.
In the early 1850s Fattori began frequenting the Caffè Michelangiolo on via Larga, a popular gathering place for Florentine artists who carried on lively discussions of politics and new trends in art. Several of these artists would discover the work of the painters of the Barbizon school while visiting Paris for the Exposition of 1855, and would bring back to Italy an enthusiasm for the then-novel practice of painting outdoors, directly from nature. In 1859 Fattori met Roman landscape painter Giovanni Costa, whose example influenced him to join his colleagues and take up painting realistic landscapes and scenes of contemporary life en plein air. This marked a turning point in Fattori's development: he became a member of the Macchiaoli, a group of Tuscan painters whose methods and aims are somewhat similar to those of the Impressionists, of which they are considered forerunners. Like their French counterparts, they were criticized for their paintings' lack of decorative qualities and conventional finish, although the Macchiaioli did not go as far as the Impressionists did in dissolving form in light.
In 1859 he won the competition for a patriotic battle scene, organized by the "Concorso Ricasoli" (national competition organized by the government of Bettino Ricasoli) with his painting "Dopo la battaglia di Magenta" (After the battle of Magenta) (completed in 1860-1861). The financial reward allowed him to marry Settimia Vannucci in July 1859 and to settle in Florence.
Paintings in the middle period (1861-1883)
Fattori's mature works represent a synthesis between the natural light of painting en plein air—painting with vivid but composed spots ("macchia")—and the traditional method of composing large paintings in the studio, from sketches.
During the period 1861–1867 he stayed mainly at Livorno, to nurse his wife who had contracted tuberculosis. During this period he painted peasantry, themes from rural life and also some portraits, such as the portrait of "Argia" , his sister-in-law. In these works he demonstrated his mastery of "macchia" technique, natural light and shade with their contrasting areas of broad colour, showing the formative influence of Giovanni Costa. In 1864 he submitted four more works to the "Promotrice fiorentina". In his landscape painting "La Rotonda di Palmieri" (Palmieri's round terrace) (1866), geometrical simplicity and colour have become a structural part of the painting.
Late in 1866 he moved to a new and larger studio in Florence, to accommodate his larger historical canvases, as he still received commissions for epic battle scenes from the Italian unification ("Risorgimento"). A famous painting from this period is the "Storming of the Madonna della Scoperta", an episode of the Battle of San Martino (1859).
Following the death of his wife in March 1867, he spent the summer of 1867 in Castiglioncello with the critic Diego Martelli, the theoretician of the Macchiaoli. Working together with the painter Giuseppe Abbati on the same themes, he painted a number of landscapes "en plein air" and studies of rustic life and peasants working in market gardens. In these paintings he put particular emphasis on a bold design within a geometrical simplicity, and on an intense luminosity. One of his paintings from this period is "Pause in the Maremma with Farmers and Ox-cart" (1873–75).
Fattori received an award at the Parma exhibition of 1870 for his battle scene "Prince Amadeo Feritio at Custoza". On a trip to Rome in 1872 he made studies for "Horse Market at Terracina" ("painting destroyed") for which he received a bronze medal at the World Exhibition of Vienna in 1873 and again at the Philadelphia World's Fair in 1876.
In 1875 Fattori, together with Francesco Gioli, Egisto Ferroni and Niccolò Cannicci, visited Paris, where he was exhibiting his work "Repose" at the Salon. Via Diego Martelli, who was now living in Paris, he came into contact with many French artists, among them Camille Pissarro and the expatriate Federico Zandomeneghi. But he reacted unenthusiastically to Impressionist works, expressing his preference for the artists of the Barbizon school [Steingräber & Matteucci 1984, p. 112.] and his deep admiration for Édouard Manet and Corot. [ [http://www.intoscana.it/intoscana/informarsi/rubrica.jsp?id_categoria=1222&id_sottocategoria=1233&id=159013&language=it Renzo Cassigoli : Un anno per Giovanni Fattori; Piazza delle lettere, 06.03.2008] ]
He started giving private painting lessons and, from 1869, he taught twice weekly at the Florentine Academy (where one of his late students was Amedeo Modigliani). However, he experienced financial difficulties, as his battle scenes found few purchasers. When he was unable to pay his taxes, his property in Florence was confiscated; this and a broken kneecap further depressed him. In 1878 he sent two paintings to the "Exposition Universelle" of Paris, but was too impoverished to attend. His disillusionment is revealed in the harsher realism of his works from the late 1870s.
In the 1880s he painted mainly rural themes, such as horses and cattle. His visits to the estate of the Princes Corsini in Maremma in 1881 and 1882 culminated in a series of paintings of cowherds, some of which were exhibited at the "Esposizione Nazionale" in Venice in 1887.
Later paintings and etchings (1884-1908)
From 1875 on, he began producing many graphics and, from 1884, a significant number of etchings. These met approval at the exhibition "Promotrice" in Florence (1886) and at the "Esposizione Nazionale" in Bologna (1888). In the same year, these last etchings were acquired by the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. His etchings were innovative through their technique and composition.
In 1884 he produced an album with 20 phototype reproductions: "20 Ricordi del veto". In 1888 he was promoted to Resident Professor of Drawing in the Accademia of Florence and was also named Professor of Figure Study at the School of Architecture.
His painted sketches made outdoors are typically painted on small wood panels. These were used as reference material in painting larger compositions of rural subjects, such as his "Branding of the Colts in the Maremma" (1887) or "Cowboys and Herds in the Maremma" (1894). These large-scale canvases provide a visual drama and a spaciousness, lacking in most contemporary traditional formats.
Fattori participated in the exhibitions at Cologne (award, 1889), Bologna, Milan ("Accademia di Brera", 1891), Turin (Accademia Albertina, 1900) and Florence, He was also present with one painting, the "Brush Gatherers", at the Italian Exhibition in London. At exhibitions in Paris, he received an honourable mention in 1889 and the gold medal at the "Exposition Universelle" in 1900.
In 1891 Giovanni Fattori married for the second time, this time with his companion Marianna Bigozzi Martinelli. Despite the modest income his work provided, he lived in poverty. Financial trouble and rising debt forced him again to give private tuition. Lack of money to buy frames prevented him from participating in the exhibition in Dresden in 1896.
He also started drawing illustrations, first for "I priomessi sposi", a historical novel by Alessandro Manzoni (1895) and in 1896 illustrations for the satirical newspaper "Fiammetta" (founded by his friend Diego Martelli).
In 1900 he became a member of the "Accadèmia Albertina" of "Turin". After the death of his second wife in 1903, Fattori married again in 1906, this time with Fanny Marinelli.
His old age was marked by a bitter disillusionment with the social and political order that had emerged in postunification Italy. [Broude 1987, pp. 238-241.] He continued teaching at the Accademia, but preferred clinging to tradition instead of adopting new ideas. Known for his honesty and candor, [Broude 1987, p. 189.] Fattori also deplored the direction he saw some of his students were taking in the 1890s, as a group of them, led by his favourite pupil Plinio Nomellini, adopted a Neo-impressionist style, the "Divisionismo" (Chromoluminarism). [Steingräber & Matteucci 1984, p. 113.] In 1891 he engaged in a polemic against pointillism.
Around 1903 he wrote: "Do you know which is the worst animal? Man. Why? Egotistical, false, and a betrayer ... I believe in nothing: I hold nothing sacred but my wife and my stepdaughter. I am an atheist because I do not believe that there must be a God upon whom good and evil depend ... I have spent my years hoping and I will end discouraged." [Broude 1987, p. 242.] Among his late works are several images expressive of his profound disappointment, notably "The Dead Horse—What Now?"
He died in Florence on August 30, 1908. He was buried, with other illustrious people from Livorno, in the loggia next to the church "Santuario della Madonna di Montenoro" in the village Montenero.
Giovanni Fattori is considered the most prominent member of the Macchiaioli. His work is dominated by military subjects, which are rarely battle scenes but rather soldiers in encampments, soldiers mustering, or infantry units at rest. He also painted sensitive portraits, landscapes, rural scenes and horses. But at the end of his life he was out of touch with the new currents in painting, which led to his decline. His works didn't attract the interest of the public anymore, causing his financial troubles. Giovanni Fattori was respected by his colleagues but, due to his aloofness, he didn't get the recognition of the public at large.
Examples of his work are at Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome; Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, in Turin, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Galleria d'Arte Moderna di Palazzo Pitti, Firenze; and in North America at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.
He is honoured in his home town by the Giovanni Fattori Museum in Livorno.
*Macchiaioli
*Broude, Norma (1987). "The Macchiaioli: Italian Painters of the Nineteenth Century". New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03547-0
*Steingräber, E., & Matteucci, G. (1984). "The Macchiaioli: Tuscan Painters of the Sunlight : March 14-April 20, 1984". New York: Stair Sainty Matthiesen in association with Matthiesen, London. OCLC|70337478
*Giovanni Fattori, Andrea Baboni - "Giovanni Fattori: il sentimento della figura"; Catalogue of an exhibition held at Villa La Versiliana, Marina di Pietrasanta, July 5-Aug. 31, 2003.
*Giovanni Fattori / James Putnam, Lara Vinca Masini, Maria Cristina Bonagura (Text) - "Giovanni Fattori Acqueforti. Un Segno Dei Tempi" - Imprintings; Firenze: Art'Eventi Editore, 2002.
*Benezit E. - "Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs" - Librairie Gründ, Paris, 1976; ISBN 2-7000-0156-7 (in French)
*Turner, J. - Grove Dictionary of Art - Oxford University Press, USA; new edition (January 2, 1996); ISBN 0-19-517068-7
*it [http://museofattori.comune.livorno.it/index/ Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori] (official website)
* [http://www.tuscany-charming.it/en/culture/fattorimuseum.asp Giovanni Fattori Museum]
* [http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=451 Fattori Gallery at MuseumSyndicate]
Life After Death and Taxes (Failure II)
The Cribs (album)
Giovanni Fattori — Giovanni Fattori, autorretrato, 1854. Giovanni Fattori, pintor italiano, considerado el mayor exponente de los Macchiaioli. Fattori nació en Livorno el 6 de septiembre de 1825, y murió en Florencia el 30 de agosto de 1908. Se sabe poco de su vida … Wikipedia Español
Giovanni Fattori — Giovanni Fattori, pintor italiano, considerado el mayor exponente de los Macchiaioli. Fattori nació en Livorno el 6 de septiembre de 1825, y murió en Florencia el 30 de agosto de 1908. Se sabe poco de su vida de joven salvo el hecho que nació… … Enciclopedia Universal
Giovanni Fattori — Autoportrait de Giovanni Fattori Plaque commémorative à Florence Giovanni Fattori (Livourne … Wikipédia en Français
Giovanni Fattori — Selbstportrait von Giovanni Fattori (1854) Giovanni Fattori (* 6. September 1825 in Livorno; † 30. August 1908 in Florenz) war ein italienischer Maler. Er war ein Vertreter der Künstlergruppe Macchiaioli. Eines seiner Hauptwerke ist das Bild… … Deutsch Wikipedia
Fattori — ist der Familienname folgender Personen: Alessandro Fattori (* 1973), italienischer Skirennläufer Giovanni Fattori (1825–1908), italienischer Maler Diese Seite ist eine Begriffsklärung zur Unterscheidung mehrerer mit demselbe … Deutsch Wikipedia
Giovanni Boldini — en 1910. Giovanni Boldini (Ferrara, 31 de diciembre de 1842 París, 11 de enero de 1931), fue un pintor italiano. Contenido 1 Biografía … Wikipedia Español
Giovanni — Cette page d’homonymie répertorie les différents sujets et articles partageant un même nom. Sommaire 1 Patronyme 2 Prénom 3 Variant … Wikipédia en Français
Fattōri — Fattōri, Giovanni, ital. Maler, geb. 28. Sept. 1825 in Livorno, bildete sich auf der Akademie in Florenz und machte sich zuerst durch Schlachtenbilder aus dem italienischen Feldzug von 1859 (Schlacht bei Magenta, Gefecht bei Montebello) bekannt,… … Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon
Fattori — Fattori, Giovanni, italienischer Maler und Grafiker, * Livorno 25. 10. 1825, ✝ Florenz 30. 8. 1908; malte anfangs Historien und Schlachtenbilder, später, angeregt von den französischen Realisten und Frühimpressionisten, Landschaften, Tier und… … Universal-Lexikon
Don Giovanni Tenorio — Operas by Giuseppe Gazzaniga Il barone di Trocchia (1768) Don Giovanni Tenorio (1787) Martino Carbonaro (1801) … Wikipedia
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Dierks Forests, Inc.
Arkansas-based Dierks Forests, Inc.—which amassed holdings of 1.75 million acres of timberland—was one of the largest family-owned landholding entities in the United States until its sale to Weyerhaeuser Company in 1969. Hot Springs Village (Garland and Saline counties) was created in 1970 on landholdings from the Dierks company.
After arriving in the United States, German immigrant Peter Henry Dierks (1824–1908) became a successful farmer and businessman in eastern Iowa, just north of Clinton. He and his wife, Margaretha Tauk Dierks, were the parents of Hans (1850–1929), John (1852–1924), Henry (1860–1895), Herman (1863–1946), and Peter (1867–1906), as well as three daughters.
In 1880, Hans Dierks joined his brother John and another partner to develop a successful retail lumber business in seven western Iowa locations. This business, headquartered in Walnut, was sold in 1885. Hans, with his younger brother Herman, then moved to central Nebraska and opened lumberyards in Broken Bow (managed by Hans) and Litchfield (managed by Herman). This business was named Dierks Brothers. In 1895, with two more brothers, Henry and Peter, they incorporated as Dierks Lumber and Coal Company. They were headquartered in Broken Bow but soon moved to Lincoln, Nebraska.
They continued to expand to some twenty-five lumberyards. In 1896, the company moved its headquarters to Kansas City, Missouri, due to that city’s position as a new railway hub, bringing lumber from Arkansas and Texas. In February 1900, the Dierks company purchased the Williamson Brothers mill in De Queen (Sevier County). Moving to De Queen to manage that operation, Herman Dierks became closely associated with Arkansas, going on to purchase large tracts of timberland in the southwestern part of the state.
The area around the town of Dierks was covered by dense forests of tall, straight pine trees. The land had been settled beginning in 1848 when a wagon trail connected the Hardscrabble community to Center Point (Howard County), ten miles south. Other Dierks family members joined the business, which included managing company ventures in Arkansas and Oklahoma. When the Dierks family established a logging camp along the De Queen and Eastern Railroad in the early 1900s, the name of Hardscrabble was changed to Dierks (Howard County). The mill at De Queen burned in 1909 and was replaced in 1918 by operations in the company town of Dierks.
With a rail system to carry outbound lumber as well as to bring in supplies and settlers, the town of Dierks grew rapidly as workers were attracted to the mill operation. The town had a hotel, a school, and two churches. The Dierks company also operated a business called the Big Store. The 1930 census showed the town’s population at about 1,500 residents, with the 2010 census showing about 1,100 residents.
In 1925, the Dierks company bought 88,000 acres of timberland in the Ouachita Mountains. Timber from that acquisition supplied a large mill, which opened in 1928 at Mountain Pine (Garland County). A 1925 issue of the De Queen Bee newspaper quoted the company’s 1919 public statement that it would maintain the timberland for a second crop. This would ensure a continuous supply of logs for the operation of the lumber mill for decades to come. By 1930, most of the company’s retail lumber yards in Nebraska were closed, but in Arkansas and Oklahoma, the company was operating five lumber mills, and two rail systems. The company had purchased more than 1,250,000 acres of land, and in the 1920s implemented some of the first forestry conservation policies in the South.
In 1954, the Dierks Lumber and Coal Company changed its name to Dierks Forests, Inc. The company diversified, opening box factories and a paper mill, and producing pressure-treated wood products, fiberboard, grocery bags, window frames, and gypsum wallboard. By that time, the firm’s holdings included 1.75 million acres of timberland, half in Arkansas and half in Oklahoma. A full engineering staff handled the various company projects at Dierks facilities. The company developed the largest pressure treating plant in the U.S., treating 3 million fence posts and 150,000 telephone poles along with railroad ties and lumber.
The family-owned company became one of the biggest producers of pine lumber in the South. Reflecting the firm’s significant presence in Arkansas, Dierks Forests, Inc., moved its headquarters in 1956 from Kansas City to a building at 810 Whittington Avenue in Hot Springs (Garland County), the site of the former People’s Ice Manufacturing Co.
In 1969, John Cooper of Cooper Communities sought to create a gated retirement community in central Arkansas. He approached the Dierks company and found a site about sixteen miles north of downtown Hot Springs. Today’s Hot Springs Village, covering 26,000 acres, sits on more than 20,000 acres that were originally owned by Dierks Forests, Inc.
In 1969, Weyerhaeuser purchased the company. The $317 million sale secured properties including Dierks Forests’ 1.75 million acres of land, the paper mill, three sawmills, a treating plant, a wood-fiber business, a gypsum-wallboard plant, two paper converting plants, and two railroads. Weyerhaeuser also began using the Dierks building in Hot Springs for offices.
Dierks, Don. Full Circle, 1957–2002: A Historical Narrative on the Timberlands of Dierks Forests Inc. Which Became Hot Springs Village. Hot Springs, AR: Cedar Mountain Books, 2010.
Dierks Lumber and Coal Company Records. Archives and Special Collections, Riley-Hickingbotham Library, Ouachita Baptist University, Arkadelphia, Arkansas.
Nelson, Rex. “The Dierks Family and South Arkansas Timber.” Rex Nelson’s Southern Fried, July 23, 2014. http://www.rexnelsonsouthernfried.com/?p=5868 (accessed September 10, 2020).
Nancy Hendricks
Garland County Historical Society
Early Twentieth Century (1901 - 1940)
Arkansas Soft Pine Bureau (ASPB)
Blakely (Garland County)
Dierks Lumber Mill
Railroad Development
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Patient Experience Maturity Evaluation (PXme)
Pandemic Management Response Tool (PMme)
Self Leadership Experience Program
Data Analytics & Advisory
Workshops and Skills Development
Patient Experience Channel
Six Stages of Measuring Your Patient Experience
In our mission to serve the lives of millions in healthcare, I am often asked to speak at conferences, share my ideas, interview hospital CEOs as well as connect and collaborate with healthcare experts and Patient Experience (PX) champions.
A key lesson I’ve learnt is the need for healthcare providers to understand how to measure their patients’ experiences, based on their stage of Patient Experience maturity. Measurement is crucial – you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
We therefore developed our 6E framework, a step-by-step guide to understand and holistically improve patient experience. It touches first on Experience – measuring it and verifying it, through a range of research activities.
If you’re just starting out in PX, mapping the patient journey is your first step. Ensure you talk to clinicians, non-clinicians and patients to map the journey. Consider using researchers posing as patients (like a mystery shopper) to understand key steps and challenges. Then develop a survey to measure current patient satisfaction for each stage of the patient journey you’ve mapped out.
If you have a patient satisfaction survey, but not getting information you need, review the patient journey (or ‘shadow’ a patient) and determine what factors influence satisfaction at each stage of that journey. You may need to tweak your questions, or consider the timing of the survey.
Dell Children’s Medical Centre found survey responses were neither timely nor representative. They shortened their survey and gathered information real-time (at the completion of patient consultation). Their response rate increased from 30% to 50%, they identified the need for a more child-friendly atmosphere and an information brochure for patients, and rectified a patient/staff safety issue. They formed a PX committee aimed at completing one new improvement project every month. (Beryl Institute)
If you’ve been surveying PX for a while and now require more context, consider holding small discussion groups of 6 to 8 consumers (focus groups) to get further insight into their sentiments, attitudes and perceptions.
If you feel you are getting the insights you need, consider asking the ‘quiet’ consumer (who may have low literacy, or are reluctant to share views in a survey) via small focus groups or one-on-one conversations, which are less intimidating.
If the challenge is linking PX outcomes to business outcomes, are you mapping and measuring the right element of the journey? For instance, a healthcare provider seeking to drive growth of their maternity services, will need to ensure they understand which elements of care during pregnancy, childbirth and follow up, have the strongest impact on new mother’s satisfaction level. (http://healthcare.mckinsey.com/measuring-patient-experience-lessons-other-industries)
If you’re looking to integrate continuous improvement into your PX management, consider use of PX technology providing real-time feedback, granular outcomes and data integration, to collate survey outcomes, for view and use by all staff in your setting. One of the technologies that does that well is called MES Experience.
Wherever you are in your PX development, we would love to hear your story, so drop us a line and you could be featured in our next blog.
patient experience survey patient feedback survey patient feedback technology Patient satisfaction system patient survey data
A step-by-step guide to improving patient experience for PX champions
Are you interested to hear from patient experience champions on best practice strategies to improve the levels of patient satisfaction?
Improving Patient Experience and Choice held in Sydney on 10 – 11 October 2016, is a premier two-day forum bringing together key stakeholders from Government, Health Districts, Hospitals and Health Care Providers.
My company Energesse is happy to be the Knowledge Partner at this event. In line with this, will be chairing Day 1 of the conference and will also be leading the workshop:
The 6 E Framework
This workshop presents the 6 E Framework, a step by step guide on how to holistically improve patient experience, adaptable for any healthcare setting. This workshop will provide you with tools and techniques that you can use immediately.
With the UK’s NHS Head of Experience of Care, David McNally, and other C-Suite Executives, Directors and Leaders in Patient Experience speaking at this event. This two-day forum is a timely event for you to develop strategies and share expertise on improving patient experience and choice in Australia.
Here’s a sneak peek at other program highlights…
International keynote:
David McNally, Head of Experience of Care, NHS England
Patient-centered culture and care
Carrie Marr, Chief Executive, Clinical Excellence Commission
Robin Whyte, Chief Executive Officer, Eastern Melbourne PHN
Rene Pennock, Chief Executive Officer, South Western Sydney PHN
The final early-bird ends this month, 30th September 2016 (Friday). You may also avail of group discounts, call 02 9368 3915.
Hope you will join me, David McNally, Jean-Frederic and other leading patient experience professionals from Australia in October – for an unrivalled networking opportunity and unprecedented access to Australia’s leading patient experience champions.
If you wish to have a chat before the workshop, I’d be happy to get on a call. Drop me a note at avnesh@energesse.com or call 02 8091 0918.
patient experience survey patient feedback survey patient feedback system Patient satisfaction system patient survey patient survey data
‘E-Framing the Patient Journey’
Based on a True journey.
A friend, on holiday in Christchurch, broke her toe. Luckily, it was her fourth toe. Unluckily, her companions were one high-maintenance 4 year old and two suitcases. It was, bluntly, crap timing. Hobbling about, she headed to a clinic.
After a long wait, the nurse was brisk. Her toe was examined and it was explained to her that she would only get an x-ray if the doctor deemed it necessary. It was also explained that the reason for this is that the treatment would be the same whether or not the toe was fractured.
Waiting room number 2.
The doctor greeted her but faltered at her name. No, she didn’t have one of those long unpronounceable Indian names; it was just misspelled on the system.
The doctor laughed and shook his head, apologizing for his frontline team. ‘Sorry. Kiwis can’t spell. My wife is a Kiwi, she’s terrible at it.’
‘I know!’ my friend agreed, quipping, ‘Spelling is the only time I feel like I don’t fit in as a Kiwi!’ Laughter and chatter ensued.
He got down to business, examined her toe, and ordered an x-ray. He reiterated what the nurse said about the treatment being the same either way.
It took 3 tries before the radiographer could locate the injury, and identified as being on the distal end (top part) of the fourth toe.
Fracture confirmed, the doctor asked about her activities over the next few days, whether she wanted her toe braced or strapped up for more comfort, and offered her crutches. Instructed to raise her feet while sitting and take painkillers when necessary, she thanked the doctor and left the clinic.
Let’s look at this patient journey through the lens of our 6E Framework:
This was a simple journey, yet one that could be measured.
There were parts of the Experience that were long and potentially frustrating (waiting times) and parts that had alignment and clarity e.g. the initial nurse assessment, the first consultation and differential diagnosis by the doctor, the confirmatory radiological investigation and then the final diagnosis and management plan by the doctor.
There would have been Emotions associated with waiting times and administrative mistakes (data entry errors), but there was humour and there was reassurance. The doctor displayed Energy in his engagement – he conveyed empathy with the patient, and communicated the treatment plan well, he knew his purpose and seemed personally satisfied with his work.
There was sufficient time spent in Execution (radiographer’s persistence with protocol and multi-disciplinary assessment (alignment of nurse’s communication with the doctor’s treatment).
My friend walked away from the clinic, satisfied. She felt like an individual. She connected, in a human way, with the doctor. She could see the team (nurse, doctor, radiographer) all working toward her diagnosis. As a result of their excellence, she wasn’t very frustrated with the four (!) waiting times, her misspelled name nor the pain she came in with.
In this case, as in many others, Excellence was defined by the patient, not simply by the providers.
In fact, I don’t think she cared to remember any lack in the clinic’s systems.
To her, the patient experience trumped the patient process. Herein lies the potential for Evolution in the patient journey.
To find out more about the 6 E framework for improving the Patient Experience, feel free to drop me a line.
patient experience survey patient feedback technology Patient satisfaction system patient survey patient survey data Patient survey system
It’s Not What You Think About Them. It’s How They Feel About You.
Walk into a healthcare boardroom and you’ll find C-suite managers poring over hard data reports, analytics that tell them that, mostly, all patients are happy with them, all KPIs have been achieved. Shimmy up to the nurse manager on duty, and you’ll find out that she’s weary but yay, three patients have been discharged (including the one with the demanding hubby), so it’s all good. Take the lift down to reception, and they’ll tell you different tales of woe and wonder. Why don’t these stories always align? After all, there is a myriad of measurement taking place – statistical data, patient surveys, focus groups, patient emails, improved processes and tools….
Creating a true, holistic picture of the patient experience is challenging. The disparate pieces of research that take place in a healthcare setting don’t always fit together or come together. Staff are listening to differing views, reading contradictory reports and acting on different outcomes and priorities. Indeed, in a 2015 patient experience survey of 1561 respondents from healthcare settings in over 21 countries, less than half had actually formally defined patient experience for their organisation (Beryl Institute).
Our 6E Framework aims to improve patient experience by offering healthcare settings a step-by-step guide on how to produce this true holistic picture. It not only gets you thinking about mapping the patient journey and uniting the disparate pieces of data that is collected throughout your setting on this ‘journey’ (EXPERIENCE), but it ensures the encapsulation of ‘patient stories’ and patient feelings (EMOTIONS) to build one clear purpose for all staff to follow (ENERGY) in improving the patient journey. It helps you develop an accurate strategic plan and implement solutions (EXECUTION) and ensures you measure and repeat your successes (EXCELLENCE). Ultimately, the framework develops your organisational capability in patient experience (EVOLUTION).
The Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust and Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust are examples of healthcare organisations that benefited from sound advice with improving their patient experience:
Response rates quadrupled, covering more age, gender and ethnicity groups.
Solid mapping and measurement of patient journey elements allowed for immediate implementable strategies – many as simple as the need to disseminate more information or provide further explanation to patients – to address concerns and issues.
When the patient experience measurement was repeated within the same year, the level of patient satisfaction had significantly increased – doubled and tripled in some cases!
In the Hertfordshire case, in some wards, 100% respondents felt listened to (up from 54%).
Patient Journeys. Emotions. A Team Living Its Purpose.
For some, these are soft, soppy, intangible metrics to measure. But for those in the industry of caring, there’s no denying its culture-changing results at the front-line.
patient experience survey patient feedback survey patient feedback technology Patient satisfaction system patient survey patient survey data Patient survey system
The Process Manager, Efficiency Manager or the PX Champion – Which Type Are You?
A lady walks into a hospital. She winces, rubbing her arm then kneading it gently. She approaches reception. She sighs and scribbles what she needs to on a form and is then motioned into the waiting room. She scurries up when she hears her name and disappears into a consultation room. Two days later, she walks out to a waiting car outside the hospital. She’s not rubbing her arm anymore.
If you ask a hospital manager what they think about the above scenario, and their focus is process rather than patient experience, they would probably measure success as a patient’s condition resolved, her details recorded on the right forms and the availability of a hospital bed (length of stay) as a result of that problem resolution.
Turn now to the healthcare center whose focus is patient management and efficiency; they would ensure that the effectiveness of every step of the healthcare process – from the patient arriving at reception to patient discharge – is measured and efficient from a time and activity perspective.
Now question the healthcare center whose focus is the patient journey. They would do all of the above, and more. They’ll wager their time to understand and measure the ‘winces’, the ‘sighs’, the ‘scurry’, the manner in which the patient ‘walks out to the waiting car outside of the hospital.’ They ensure the right questions are asked of the right people at the right time. They would also very likely follow-up with her after discharge to ensure her safety and service satisfaction. For these healthcare centers – the Patient Experience (PX) champions – the patient is at the very center of the care they receive.
The focus would be:
Did the patient require help filling out the form (was there a physical pain or language barrier) VS. did the patient fill in the form we need them to fill in?
Did the patient understand what the doctor was saying VS. did the doctor explain everything to the patient?
Did the patient experience compassion and empathy during treatment VS. were staff able to treat the patient in a professional and timely manner?
Were the family members reassured about the patient’s situation VS. were the family members informed about the patient’s situation?
Is the patient able to perform well at work and at home in the days and weeks after discharge VS. was the patient followed-up with the day after discharge?
Taking a holistic view, the PX champions would also ask staff, if they were making a difference, if they felt resourced, supported, celebrated and if they felt like they had meaning in their work i.e. ‘living their purpose’ ?
Understanding the various elements that comprise the patient’s journey and then measuring each element of that journey, is what separates the wheat from the chaff, the top performing healthcare centers from the average ones.
Many are now riding the wave of PX trends. A 2013 survey of management committees in more than 1000 hospitals conducted by Catalyst Healthcare Research and the Beryl Institute, found that 70% of respondents ranked ‘patient experience and satisfaction’ as one of their top three priorities over the next few years – it exceeded cost management, capital improvements, HR and healthcare processes. The survey also found that more and more healthcare centers were delegating this very important area to dedicated experience leaders.
What kind of healthcare leader would be more meaningful to you?
efficiency manager patient experience patient experience survey patient feedback technology patient satisfaction Patient satisfaction system process manager px manager
Election Policies Need to Put Patients First
The Australian Federal Elections are drawing near. The Conservatives and the Labour Party are once again pitching their wares – fighting it out on who has the best health policy. Amongst the spouted sales spiel and all its nation-centric statistical data, the patient’s (what the policies are/should be ultimately all about) voice is lost.
A recently released book on ‘Patient-Provider Communication’ (Blackstone, Beukelman and Yorkston, April 2015), noted ‘that patients, health care providers, policy makers, and researchers live in nearly parallel universes with differing incentives, access to data and information, accountability expectations, and time frames for action’. What this alludes to is the potential for differing visions in patient healthcare, experiences and communications – resulting in a potentially disparate state of affairs.
What if patient experiences were given a larger focus in the formation of national health policies? How much more refined would policies be? Undoubtedly, communication between patients and their clinicians/hospital management will have more prominence in local and national policies. And from high-level policy to on-the-ground realities, issues like how to better communicate with the patient over things like a treatment or healthcare plan would get the attention it so rightfully deserves.
In my recent trip to the Beryl Institute Conference in Dallas, I had the good fortune of meeting with Dr. Tom Scaletta and Julie Danker – who lead patient experience initiatives at the Edward-Elmhurst Hospital – and found out how they manage patient communications. Regarded as one of the leaders in this space with their G.R.E.A.T. coaching techniques, they imparted practical insight into communication and engagement techniques that can help patients and clinicians.
Here are some key takeaways from them:
Contact patients the day after ED discharge – it keeps them safe and satisfied
Engage patients digitally – it reduces cost and increases reach
Automate work processes – it allows charge nurses and case managers to efficiently intervene at the right points in the workflow process
Build in an automated response mechanism/module into your systems – it allows for the acknowledgement of compliments and resolution of complaints by ED leaders
Measure, measure, measure – use statistically-valid metrics and patient comments to drive provider performance. We can always keep improving.
If you want to know more, watch the video below from our Patient Experience Channel (or check out www.eehealth.org/great)
engagement techniques healthcare patient communication patient experience patient feedback system patient feedback technology Patient satisfaction system patient survey patient survey data
How will the Patient Experience evolve in Australia?
Australia is embarking on a major journey to put patients at the center of decision-making in the healthcare system. In order for us to understand how the patient experience landscape in Australia will change over the coming decade, we can observe the trends in the US as an example.
The pioneering hospitals in the US that invested in measuring and improving the Patient Experience did so because they believed was the ‘right thing to do’. This first phase was driven by the investment of ‘early adopters’. Their leadership had a belief that patients should be involved in various committees in the hospital’s administration to influence service delivery.
The next big phase that brought greater change to the system was the public reporting of quality measures by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, the primary funder in the US. This reporting of Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey on hospital websites drove senior leaders to take a greater focus on metrics that were important to patients.
Note that there is a difference between active reporting and passive reporting. As more active reporting occurs on various websites, and those findings communicated broadly, the greater the pressure on hospitals to be accountable to their results.
Transparency breeds trust, and greater public reporting should bring greater trust and engagement with the patient community.
The subsequent phase took approximately four years from the initiation of public reporting in the US for funding to be specifically tied to Patient-Reported Outcome Measures and Patient Reported Experience Measures (Satisfaction Scores). These value-based payments will increase from 1% in 2015 of the hospital’s funding to higher percentages over the coming years. It demonstrates a great commitment from the US health system to align its payment incentives to what patients really need and want from their healthcare.
I would expect similar trends to play out in Australia. Though, I expect we may be quicker in our adoption of patient-centred measures to drive change.
On another note, while in Dallas for the Beryl Institute Patient Experience Conference 2016, I connected with Jeff Kauffman a CEO from the aged-care (assisted living) sector in the US, who had a couple of secrets on aligning staff incentives with the resident experience in such facilities.
Enjoy this episode and let me know your feedback!
aged care australian px patient engagement patient experience patient experience channel patient feedback system Patient satisfaction system patient survey px channel
Do you know the common misconceptions in patient satisfaction?
The pulse of healthcare is now moving into a swing that smells like an Evolution, rather than a revolution. Everyone I speak to is starting to grasp the idea of ‘people power’ and frame it in the context of the healthcare system.
I hear words like patient satisfaction, patient experience, consumer engagement, patient-centred care and an evolutionary term – ‘Patient and Family Centred Care’. The latter is very appropriate as we often forget that children and critically ill patients have no voice for them, and it is the families that act as their voices. I can relate as this happened when my late father passed away in a hospital only 4 months ago.
Nevertheless, I am encouraged by these trends. Whilst many of these terms effectively mean the same thing, it is great to see these metrics embedded in the very fabric and Key Performance Indicators of many of our hospitals and primary care networks.
Watch the video of Australian 1st Real-Time Patient Feedback technology with Emotion analytics
However, not everyone feels this way. I hear objections from Chief Executives, Chief Financial Officers and other financially oriented personnel who do not believe in investing time or money in such initiatives as they perceive them to cost more money and don’t result in any savings or efficiencies.
I also hear objections from some clinicians and healthcare professionals who feel that this is the ‘soft, wishy-washy’ stuff that has no bearing on clinical outcomes for patients.
Both these sentiments are actually unfounded and incorrect.
It is in fact these sentiments and thought patterns that drive increased costs and poorer outcomes as these leaders cannot see the big picture of how change and improvement in healthcare really happens.
As a passionate advocate on innovation and patient-centred improvements, I searched globally for a proven solution that can help hospital and community health organisations in Australia (and now Asia) better engage with their patients, clients and consumers and solve many of the challenges they currently experience.
To learn more about this innovation, click here for the video of the MES Experience Debut at Australian Healthcare Week. Hope you enjoy it enough to share with your like-minded colleagues.
The day “patient-centred care” became a reality in Australia
Energesse, one of Australia’s leading healthcare IT consultancies, will be unveiling the first patient feedback technology to measure patient emotions. The MES Experience platform has transformed the NHS, and Energesse is bringing the technology to the exhibition after trialling it with one of Australia’s largest hospital districts for the past 18 months.
Dr Avnesh Ratnanesan from Energesse, together with the director of MES from London, Nick Goodman, will be showcasing the technology on stage in the Healthcare Innovation Zone at 3.40pm on 15th March.
The MES Experience technology is a multichannel platform for collecting patient experience and satisfaction data at point-of-care, and reports meaningful analytics for managers. This technology has the potential to truly enable patient-centred care in Australia by producing quantitative data on the emotional aspects of patient opinion in real-time. For the first time, health services will be able to monitor and adjust patient care according to the current situation.
If you are attending the conference, please do come and witness the debut of MES Experience software platform on stage in the Exhibition Centre. Free passes to the Expo can be obtained here, if you have not registered on any events yet. Thanks and we look forward to seeing you on the 15th!
austhealthweek australian health week consumer engagement patient engagement patient experience patient experience survey patient feedback system patient feedback technology Patient satisfaction system patient survey data patient surveys
A Conversation on Patient Experience – Lessons and Case Studies
Patient Centered Care and Patient Engagement are fast becoming buzzwords in healthcare, particularly as the belts continue to tighten and health institutions choose to invest in things that really matter.
As a leading firm that specialises in the field of patient experience and health innovation, we at Energesse decided to launch a Patient Experience Channel, to complement the Patient Experience Australia LinkedIn Group that launched in 2015.
Both initiatives were driven by the need for Australian healthcare professionals to connect, communicate and educate each other on how to diagnose, improve and monitor patient experience. They also provide very practical tips based on learnings and strategies implemented by practitioners around Australia and overseas.
For this first episode of the Patient Experience Channel, I had a conversation with Bernadette Brady, consultant and trainer with PartneringwithPatients. Bernadette and I are highly passionate about helping hospital and healthcare implement simple measures to transform healthcare to the way it should be – thinking about patients first.
In summary, some of the key learnings we highlighted are:
1. Enable patients to take control of their care and be in charge – ask them how they would like to be treated e.g. times they would want to be seen in hospital.
2. Clinicians should change from a ‘to’ mentality, to a ‘with’ mentality, when it comes to treatment program
3. Committees with patient representatives should have at least two of them on it, to ensure voices are heard
4. Learn to manage risk with patient choices – e.g. allowing early discharge from hospital even if there is a risk to patient staying at home – manage that.
5. The most effective solutions to transform care are simple – Every clinician should introduce themselves first. And always SMILE (when appropriate).
6. Celebrate success in Safety and Quality (rather than just focusing on negative events).
7. Consider the SECOND VICTIM ie. clinicians may need care and some protection too, especially when a bad experience occurs.
8. Know the difference between treating the disease and treating the person, the latter should come first.
9. Walk through the wards as if you were a patient one day – how does it feel and what observations about your environment have you made?
I’d love to hear your feedback on Episode 1 – content, length, quality, etc – what other topics around Patient Care would you like to hear about? Are there any experts in this field you’d like to hear from? Let me know and we’ll see what we can do to serve you…
Australian healthcare customer experience healthcare patient care patient experience survey patient feedback technology Patient satisfaction system patient survey data
Experience PXme
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Araya Pictures Pty Ltd (ACN 138 046 563) trading as “Energesse” (the “Provider” or “us” or “we” or “our”) is a provider of technology services under the “Energesse” brand name. All services provided by the Provider shall hereinafter be referred to as the “Services”, including services provided via the Provider’s website https://www.energesse.com or https://pxme.com.au (the “Energesse Platform”).
These General Terms and Conditions (“General Terms”) and any other terms and conditions notified by the Provider shall apply in respect of the use of the Services, including the Energesse Platform, by any customers, subscribers or users of the Provider (“Subscribers” or “you”).
Where you have been authorised and/or invited to use the Energesse Platform because of authorisation by a Subscriber to which you are affiliated and/or associated (for example, you are an employee or staff member of a Subscriber who has authorised you to access the Energesse Platform as part of the Subscriber’s use of the Services), these General Terms will apply to your use of the Energesse Platform to the maximum extent which they are applicable, including paragraphs 2 (Definitions and interpretation), 3 (Nature of the Services) (other than paragraphs 3.4 to 3.6), 4 (Subscription), 6 (Warranties and Limitations), 7 (Termination) (other than any requirements that you pay any fees, charges and/or expenses), 8 (Intellectual Property) and 9 (Confidentiality). Finally, and in this respect, all references to “Subscriber” in these General Terms shall be read as a reference to you.
Effect of Terms
1.1 These General Terms together with:
any other principal terms and conditions notified by the Provider in writing to the Subscriber as being applicable to the Services (“Principal Terms”), such as principal terms and conditions set out in any proposal document or letter of agreement issued by the Provider; and
our “Privacy Policy” at https://www.energesse.com/privacy-policy/,
(together referred to as the “Terms”) create a binding, legal agreement between the Provider and each Subscriber.
1.2 The Subscriber acknowledges that the Provider provides the Services solely in accordance with the Terms and that the Subscriber has read and understood the Terms as forming a binding legal agreement between the Provider and the Subscriber in relation to the access and use of the Services, including the Energesse Platform.
1.3 The Subscriber acknowledges that the scope, details and specifications of the Services which are provided by the Provider to the Subscriber, and the Fees which the Provider charges in relation to the provision of those Services, are set out in the Principal Terms.
1.4 The Subscriber acknowledges that if:
there is any conflict between the content of these Terms and the content of the Website or any information provided to the Subscriber by the Provider, these Terms shall prevail (unless expressly provided otherwise by the Provider); and
there is any conflict between the Principal Terms and these General Terms, the Principal Terms shall prevail.
1.5 The Subscriber acknowledges that the Provider may, from time to time, revise these Terms. The Provider will post a notice on the Website and/or email Subscribers whenever it revises these Terms (“Notice of Change”), such revisions being effective seven (7) days after the date of posting and/or emailing of the Notice of Change. The Subscriber agrees that by continuing to use the Services following such period, the Subscriber shall be deemed to have accepted any such revisions. It is the Subscriber’s responsibility to review these Terms periodically and if at any time the Subscriber finds any revision to these Terms to be unacceptable, the Subscriber should notify the Provider and cease using the Energesse Platform.
2.1 In these Terms, unless the context otherwise requires or permits:
“Business Day” means any day that is not a Saturday, Sunday, gazetted public holiday or bank holiday in New South Wales, Australia;
“Confidential Information” means all information of a confidential nature relating to the relevant person (whether such information is disclosed in writing, orally, by visual presentation or by means of providing access to such information), including, without limitation, computer programs, code, algorithms, know-how, methodology, trade secrets, formulas, processes, ideas, inventions (whether patentable or not), schematics and other technical, business, pricing and fee schedules, financial and product development plans, customer lists, information regarding distribution channels, forecasts, strategies and any other information marked ‘confidential’ or that is expressed to be confidential by the party providing such information;
“Content” means all information, data, materials, articles, images, videos, sound recordings and any other content, regardless of the manner or context in which such content or other features are conveyed, embodied or delivered;
“Fees” means the fees, charges and expenses that may be payable by the Subscriber to the Provider pursuant to these Terms, including those fees, charges and expenses payable in respect of any Services as set out in the Principal Terms;
“GST” means the Goods and Services Tax as defined in the A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999 (Cth) (as amended);
“Intellectual Property Rights” means any and all intellectual and industrial property rights subsisting in any part of the universe in any and all media (whether now known or created in the future) including, without limitation, rights in the nature of copyright, registered design or other design right, trade mark, patent rights, trade secrets and any corresponding proprietary rights (whether registered or common law) under the laws of any jurisdiction;
“Provider Content” means all Content accessible to the Subscriber via the Services (including the Energesse Platform), including educational and training materials created by the Provider which form the substance of the Services, such as instruction guides and videos, training modules, manuals, pamphlets, reference materials, newsletters, educational articles, tutorials, courses, seminars, webinars, interactive content, questionnaires, quizzes, workbooks and any content displayed, downloaded, accessed or conveyed via the Energesse Platform or via any means as part of any Services (including via electronic messages or any interactive medium such as telephone or Skype calls);
“Subscriber Content” means all Content provided by, or sourced from, the Subscriber, including the Subscriber’s directors, officers, agents, representatives, staff members, employees, contractors and/or other personnel, for use in connection with the provision of the Services;
“Subscription” means the status achieved by a Subscriber by accepting these Terms with respect to the provision of the Services;
“Subscription Term” means the period during which a Subscriber may access and use the Services (including the Energesse Platform) as set out in the Principal Terms and as further provided for in paragraph 4.2 below; and
“Third Party Content” means any Content accessible or available directly via the Services which has been sourced from or provided by third parties, including content on websites that may be linked to or from the Energesse Platform or the Website, and that is not Provider Content or Subscriber Content.
In these General Terms, unless the context otherwise requires or permits:
where any word or phrase is given a defined meaning, then other parts of speech and grammatical forms of that word or phrase will have a corresponding meaning;
references to the singular includes the plural and vice versa;
reference to parties means the parties to these Terms and to a party means a party to these Terms;
references to a party will include as the context requires that party’s respective agents, representatives, advisors, subcontractors, executors, administrators and successors;
references to a successor to a party includes its successors, assigns and licensees and all further successors, assigns and licensee of the relevant party or such successors, assigns or licensees;
references to these Terms includes any annexures, appendices and schedules to these Terms and any other document expressly incorporated as part of these Terms;
references to these Terms include references to these Terms as varied from time to time in accordance with these Terms;
references to any legislation or legislative provision will include modifying, consolidating, or replacing legislation or legislative provisions;
references to a “breach of warranty” includes that warranty not being complete, true or accurate;
references to “$”, “AUD$”, “A$”, “Australian Dollars” or “dollars” is a reference to the lawful tender for the time being and from time to time of the Commonwealth of Australia;
the words “including” and “includes” and similar words are not words of limitation;
every covenant, provision, representation, warranty, obligation or an agreement applying to, binding or given by more than one person will bind them jointly and each of them severally;
a requirement to do any thing includes a requirement to cause that thing to be done and a requirement not to do any thing includes a requirement to prevent that thing being done;
a provision of these Terms is not to be construed adversely against a party solely on the ground that the party or its solicitors were responsible for the preparation of these Terms or of a particular provision of these Terms; and
if the day on which any act, matter or thing is to be done under or pursuant to these Terms is not a Business Day, that act, matter or thing may be done on the next Business Day.
Nature of the Services
3.1 The parties acknowledge and agree that, subject to the Subscriber complying with the terms and conditions of these Terms, the Subscriber shall be entitled, for the duration of the Subscription Term, to have access to and use of the Services as permitted from time to time by the Provider, subject to the payment of any Fees payable by the Subscriber to the Provider.
3.2 The Subscriber acknowledges and agrees that:
(a) any Services which the Provider provides to the Subscriber are provided strictly in accordance with these Terms;
(b) the Subscriber will sign any additional documentation reasonably required by the Provider to be signed in respect of the provision of the Services;
(c) the Services are provided by the Provider in the form as set out in the Terms;
(d) the Services may be provided in any manner which the Provider deems appropriate;
(e) the Provider does not provide legal, accounting, taxation, financial, medical, health or other professional advice and the Subscriber is responsible for seeking their own advice in relation to any Content or other aspects of any Services;
(f) the Provider does not guarantee any positive outcomes in respect of the provision of any Services or any Content and the Subscriber must exercise their own judgment and take any appropriate advice before seeking to implement any elements of the Services or any Content;
(g) the Services may not be tailored to the specific circumstances of the Subscriber and/or any particular person, thus Subscribers are urged to apply their own judgment as to whether the Services are suitable for their purposes;
(h) the Provider does not provide any warranty, representation or guarantee that the Subscriber will be able to receive any particular benefits as a result of the use of the Services as any benefits which may be obtained are highly dependent on the circumstances of the Subscriber and matters outside the Provider’s control;
(i) the Services may or may not provide any benefits, outcomes, improvements or other changes to the Subscriber as any effects may not be readily perceptible, quantifiable or measurable or may not be perceptible, quantifiable or measurable within a certain timeframe;
(j) the Services are not intended to be used as a substitute or supplement to seeking appropriate medical, health or other professional advice or treatment;
(k) the Services, including the Provider Content, may include or involve the provision of opinions, suggestions, recommendations, proposals and/or guidance by the Provider, it is the Subscriber’s responsibility to determine and assess whether or not it should use or rely on such opinions, suggestions, recommendations, proposals and/or guidance and the Subscriber’s accepts all risks arising from such use or reliance;
(l) the quality, reliability, accuracy and completeness of the Services, including Provider Content, may depend on factors outside the Provider’s control (for example Provider Content may have been created or adapted from Subscriber Content and/or Third Party Content), and it is the Subscriber’s responsibility to determine and assess whether or not it should use or rely on the Services and the Subscriber’s accepts all risks arising from such use or reliance; and
(m) the Services, including the Provider Content, may include or involve the analysis and interpretation of data to which there may be no correct or definitive answer.
3.3 In using the Services, the Subscriber irrevocably and unconditionally acknowledges and accepts the following:
(a) that the Provider provides the Services on a purely ‘as is’ basis without warranty of any kind and, to the maximum extent permitted by law, the Provider expressly disclaims any and all liability and any warranties or guarantees, express or implied, regarding the Services, including, but not limited to, any implied warranties or guarantees of acceptable quality or fitness for a particular purpose not otherwise disclosed in these Terms;
(b) that the Subscriber is only entitled to use the Provider Content and any Third Party Content directly in connection with the use of the Services in respect of which such Content or Third Party Content was provided;
(c) that to the maximum extent permitted by law, the Provider is not responsible for any inability or delay in providing the Services for any reason which is outside the Provider’s immediate control (including to the extent such inability or delay is attributable solely to the acts or omissions of the Subscriber);
(d) that use of the Services may require the Subscriber to comply with various requirements, including the use of computer hardware or software, having an active Internet connection, having appropriate telephony services and attending various venues, and it is the Subscriber’s responsibility to ensure that it complies with any and all such requirements, and the Provider shall not be liable in any way for any losses or damages suffered by the Subscriber as a result of the Subscriber failing to comply with any such requirements;
(e) that the Subscriber will not use or attempt to use or abuse the Services for any activity that violates local, state or federal law in any jurisdiction, or engage in any conduct which the Provider finds to be offensive or harmful, and the Subscriber hereby indemnifies the Provider to the full extent for any losses or damages suffered by the Provider as a result of such acts or omissions;
(f) that the Subscriber will respond to queries from the Provider in a timely manner and to provide any comments or feedback to the Provider if reasonably appropriate;
(g) that the Subscriber will provide reasonable assistance to the Provider in a timely manner with respect to the provision of the Services when required by the Provider;
(h) that the Subscriber will comply with the reasonable directions and instructions of the Provider in relation to the use of the Services; and
(i) that the Subscriber will make available to the Provider on reasonable notice for consultation and guidance staff who are familiar with the Subscriber’s organisation, operations and business practices to assist with the provision of the Services.
3.4 At any time prior to the completion of Services and the termination of the Subscription, either party may request a modification to such Services (each a “Modification”). Modifications must be requested by written or electronic mail notice, which must include a description, in reasonable detail, of the Modification. Within ten (10) business days after such notice is given, the Provider may provide the Subscriber with a written notice listing the changes that the proposed Modification will have on the Fees, the Services and these Terms (“Change Order”). Services requested by the Subscriber that are outside the scope of the Terms or that are caused by material delays or cancellations caused by the Subscriber will be charged at AUD$2,000 + GST per day unless otherwise notified in writing by the Provider in the Change Order. Unless a Change Order is agreed to and signed by the parties, the Provider is not obliged to implement the Modification.
3.5 The Change Orders may be initiated under the following conditions (not exhaustive):
a requirement included in these Terms that is more complex than what was originally assessed through early discussions between the Provider and the Subscriber with respect to the Services to be provided by the Provider;
a new requirement outside the scope of these Terms;
an assumption stated in these Terms is incorrect or untrue; or
An unforeseen risk to project delivery timeline/cost arises (e.g. unavailable Customer resource issues, unforeseen project delays, delay in receiving data, change in critical Customer resources).
3.6 For the avoidance of doubt, despite paragraphs 3.4 and 3.5 above, the Provider is not obliged to issue a Change Order with respect to a Modification that is requested by the Subscriber. Furthermore, the Provider is not obliged to agree to any amendments requested by the Subscriber with respect to a Change Order.
4.1 The Subscriber agrees and undertakes that it will provide all information as required by the Provider to enable the Provider to provide the Services to the Subscriber. The Subscriber must notify the Provider which of the Subscriber’s personnel, including the Subscriber’s directors, officers, agents, representatives, staff members, employees, contractors and/or other personnel, are authorised to use the Services and must supply the Provider with any and all information that is required by the Provider to approve such use. For the avoidance of doubt, the number of the Subscriber’s personnel which may be authorised to use the Services is set out in the Principal Terms or (if not set out in the Principal Terms) is to be determined by the Provider in consultation with the Subscriber.
4.2 The Subscription Term is as set out in the Principal Terms or (if not set out in the Principal Terms) is the period from when a Subscriber accepts these Terms and ending on the earlier of the completion of the Services or the termination of the Subscription in accordance with these Terms.
4.3 The Subscriber will be entitled to use the Services subject to suspension or termination in accordance with these Terms. The right to the benefit of any Services will be subject to the Subscriber paying for the applicable Services and complying with these Terms and any additional terms that apply to the relevant Services.
4.4 The Provider may suspend the Services (or so much of it), thereby preventing the Subscriber from continuing to use the Services (or so much of it), or suspend the provision of any Services to a Subscriber, if the Provider reasonably believes that the Subscriber has breached these Terms (including, for example, if the Subscriber has failed to make any payments due to the Provider).
4.5 The Subscriber acknowledges that, notwithstanding any other provision of these Terms, the Provider may alter the nature of, and/or suspend or cease providing, the Energesse Platform at any time.
4.6 In establishing a Subscription and/or using the Services, the Subscriber irrevocably and unconditionally warrants, represents and undertakes that:
(a) to the extent the Subscriber is a company, the Subscriber (or the person acting on behalf of the Subscriber) is authorised to accept these Terms;
(b) the Subscriber must use their own lawful name and personal details in establishing the Subscription and in using the Energesse Platform;
(c) to the extent the Subscriber is a person, the Subscriber is at least 18 years of age (or such age as is required to enter into legal contracts in their own capacity;
(d) the Subscriber will not allow any other person to use the Services for any reason other than those authorised in accordance with these Terms and duly notified to the Provider, and will actively takes steps to prevent any unauthorised person to do such and will keep secure any information (including usernames and passwords) used to access the Energesse Platform (such information shall constitute Confidential Information of the Provider for the purposes of paragraph 9 below);
(e) the Subscriber will notify the Provider immediately if it becomes aware of any unauthorised use of the Services, including the Energesse Platform and the Provider Content;
(f) the Subscriber will not cause or allow the Services to be leased, sold, transferred to or operated by another person, whether for money or other valuable consideration or gratuitously;
(g) the Subscriber assumes full responsibility for maintaining the confidentiality of the Services, including any details required to access or operate the Energesse Platform;
(h) the Provider is not responsible for any losses the Subscriber incurs due to informational or technical errors when using the Services, including the Energesse Platform, and will not be liable for any loss or damage the Subscriber incurs as a result of an unauthorised person using the Services;
(i) the Provider reserves the right to edit or delete any information associated with the Subscriber without notice and liability to the Subscriber in the event that the Provider determines, in its sole discretion, that any such information violates these Terms; and
(j) the Provider reserves the right to suspend or terminate the Subscription and/or the Services, without notice and liability to the Subscriber, in the event that the Subscriber has violated these Terms in any respect, as determined by the Provider, at its sole and absolute discretion, or if the Provider deems it appropriate pending investigation of any such violation.
5.1 The Subscriber must pay to the Provider any Fees that are stated to be payable for the provision of the Services and must pay such Fees within the time as set out in the Principal Terms, these General Terms or as otherwise notified in writing by the Provider, time being of the essence.
5.2 If no time is set out in the Principal Terms or notified by the Provider in respect of when a payment must be paid (including a payment in relation to the Fees and/or the Expenses (see paragraph 5.3 below), such payment must be paid within thirty (30) days from the date of an invoice issued by the Provider.
5.3 The Subscriber will reimburse expenses to the Provider all reasonable out of pocket expenses (the “Expenses”) incurred by the Provider in the course of providing the Services to the Subscriber. Expenses may include air travel, lodging, meals, printing, incidental expenses and industry research (Subscriber will be consulted in advance for any third-party research required above AU$1,000). The Provider may issue an invoice for the Expenses at any time it deems appropriate. The Provider shall not be required to provide receipts for the Expenses, but they can be requested by the Subscriber on an as-needed basis. Receipts for items under $30.00 will not be required.
(a) the Fees and Expenses are, to the maximum extent permitted by law, not refundable upon the cancellation or termination of the Subscription or Services by the Subscriber for whatever reason;
(b) the Provider may charge the Subscriber any administrative fees, such as credit card surcharges, associated with processing any payment made to the Provider;
(c) the Provider is authorised to retain any credit card or direct debit banking details which the Subscriber provides to the Provider for the purpose of paying any Fees and/or Expenses and that the Provider may, without obtaining the consent of the Subscriber, deduct any Fees and/or Expenses payable to the Provider under these Terms using the Subscriber’s credit card or direct debit banking details when such Fees and/or Expenses fall due;
(d) all Fees and Expenses must be paid in full without any deduction, withholding, set-off, counterclaim and/or cross-claim by the Subscriber;
(e) if any GST, tax or other duty is imposed on any supply made under these Terms, the supplying party, the Provider, may recover from the recipient party, the Subscriber, in addition to any consideration payable for the supply, the GST, tax and duty amount provided that the supplying party has provided to the recipient party an Invoice; and
(f) if the recipient party is required to pay any GST, tax or other duty amount in in connection with any goods, services or any other things under these Terms, the recipient party will pay the GST, tax and duty amount at the same time as the consideration is due for the supply of goods, service or any other thing under these Terms.
5.5 If the Subscriber disputes any invoice (or part thereof) issued by the Provider, it must provide written notice thereof to the Provider within 14 days of receipt of the relevant invoice, including an explanation of the dispute, and the parties shall, in good faith, attempt to resolve such dispute as soon as reasonably practicable. Nothing in this clause exempts the Subscriber from paying any undisputed portion of such invoice during the period of such dispute.
Warranties and Limitations
6.1 In respect of the Services, the Subscriber warrants, represents and undertakes that:
(a) any information, including Subscriber Content, the Subscriber provides to the Provider in connection with the provision of the Services will be accurate, true and complete and the Subscriber will ensure that all such information remains up-to-date at all times during the Subscription;
(b) the Subscriber must ensure that any of the Subscriber’s personnel who have been properly authorised to use the Services in accordance with these Terms, including the Subscriber’s directors, officers, agents, representatives, staff members, employees, contractors and/or other personnel, will not use the Services other than in accordance with these Terms and a breach of these Terms by such person shall be deemed to be a breach of these Terms by the Subscriber;
(c) the Subscriber hereby indemnifies the Provider to the full extent for any losses or damages suffered by the Provider as a result of any acts or omissions of the Subscriber’s personnel, including the Subscriber’s directors, officers, agents, representatives, staff members, employees, contractors and/or other personnel; and
(d) the Subscriber will not publish, distribute, sell, license, reproduce or communicate to the public any Provider Content, Third Party Content or any Confidential Information in any form and through any medium without the prior written permission of the Provider.
6.2 Notwithstanding any other provision of these Terms, to the maximum extent permitted by law, the maximum liability of the Provider for any loss or damage incurred by the Subscriber arising out of, in connection with or relating to the use of the Services or a breach or termination of these Terms by the Provider, regardless of the type of action the Subscriber may bring against the Provider for such loss or damage, is limited to the total Fees paid by the Subscriber to the Provider at the time any such claim is notified to the Provider.
6.3 Notwithstanding any other provision of these Terms, the Subscriber agrees that in no circumstances shall the Provider be liable for any indirect or consequential loss or damage suffered by the Subscriber in connection with or relating to the use of the Services, including the Provider Content or Third Party Content, or a breach or termination of these Terms by the Provider. Each party agrees that loss of profits, loss of business opportunities, loss of reputation, loss of anticipated savings, loss of revenue, loss of goodwill and loss of contracts however occurring, will constitute indirect or consequential loss or damage.
6.4 Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies any condition, warranty, statutory guarantee, right or remedy implied or imposed by common law, statute or regulation which cannot be lawfully excluded, restricted or modified, which may include Australian Consumer Law (Cth) and corresponding provisions of State or Territory legislation containing implied terms and/or statutory guarantees which operate to protect the purchasers of goods and services in various circumstances. If any condition, warranty or statutory guarantee is implied into these Terms or applies by operation of law and cannot be excluded but the Provider is able to limit its liability for a breach of such condition, warranty or statutory guarantee, the liability of the Provider for breach of that condition, warranty or statutory guarantee is limited, to the extent permitted by law, at the Provider’s discretion, to the supply of the services again or the payment of the cost of having the services supplied again.
6.5 Subject to paragraph 6.4 above, all express or implied representations, conditions, statutory guarantees, warranties and provisions (whether based on statute, common law or otherwise), relating to these Terms and/or the Services, that are not contained in it, are excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law.
6.6 To the maximum extent permitted by law, the aggregate liability of the Provider to the Subscriber for all actions, demands and claims arising from, or in relation to, these Terms, the Services and/or the act or omission of the Provider, shall be limited to the amount of the Fees paid by the Subscriber to the Provider.
6.7 To the maximum extent permitted by law, no action, demand or claim, regardless of form, arising out of the transactions contemplated by these Terms, including a Change Order, may be brought by either party against the other more than one year after the cause of action, demand or claim first arose, except that any action, demand or claim for non-payment of any fees, charges and expenses may be brought by the Provider within two years after the date of the last invoice issued by the Provider or the date of the last payment paid by the Subscriber to the Provider under these Terms, whichever occurred later. This paragraph 6.6 does not apply if the party who may bring the action, demand or claim was not reasonably capable of being aware of the facts giving rise to such action, demand or claim as a result of the other party’s intentional conduct to prevent or suppress the disclosure of such facts.
7.1 The Subscriber acknowledges and accepts that the Provider may terminate or suspend the Subscription or access to the Services to the Subscriber if:
(a) the Subscriber breaches any of these Terms and fails to remedy such breach (other than a breach relating to the non-payment of Fees or Expenses by the Subscriber or a breach that is not capable of remedy) within thirty (30) days following written notice of such breach from the Provider; or
(b) the Subscriber persistently behaves in a manner which prevents or impedes the Provider from complying with these Terms or providing the Services, and such an occasion has occurred at least three (3) times in the past three (3) months and on each occasion the prevention or impediment has last for more than seven (7) days after a written notice is issued by the Provider demanding the Subscriber to remedy its behaviour; or
(c) the Subscriber has not made a payment due under these Terms, including the Fees and/or Expenses, by the relevant due date or time for payment, except to the extent that the Client has disputed the relevant invoice pursuant to paragraph clause 5.5 above.
7.2 If the Provider terminates or suspends the Subscription or the Subscriber’s entitlement to use the Services by the Provider’s exercise of any rights in these Terms or at law, the Provider shall not be liable for any loss or damage suffered by the Subscriber as a result of such termination or suspension, nor is the Subscriber entitled to recover from the Provider any compensation (including the refund of any Fees or Expenses paid).
7.3 The Subscriber acknowledges and accepts that should its Subscription be terminated or suspended in accordance with these Terms, it must not subscribe for another Subscription.
7.4 In the event of termination of the Subscription by either party for any reason, the Subscriber shall remain liable for the payment of any fees, charges and/or expenses, including the Fees and/or Expenses (including Expenses that have been incurred or committed to by the Provider), in respect of Services provided by the Provider up to the date of termination, and the Provider shall remain liable to provide the Services up to the date of termination.
Upon termination (including expiration) of the Subscription for whatever reason:
the Subscriber must pay the Provider any fees, charges and expenses, including the Fees and Expenses (including Expenses that have been incurred or committed to by the Provider), due and payable to the Provider under these Terms promptly; and
the Subscriber must do all things reasonably necessary, and as reasonably directed by the Provider, to stop using the Services; and
certain rights, obligations and warranties in these Terms which are expressly stated or otherwise intended to apply after the termination or expiry of these Terms shall survive such termination or expiry, including 6 (Warranties and Limitations), 8 (Intellectual Property), 9 (Confidentiality) and 10 (Dispute Resolution).
(a) the Provider owns the Intellectual Property Rights to the Services, including the “PMme” trade mark and brand name, the Energesse Platform and the Provider Content (other than insofar as the Provider Content incorporates the Subscriber Content), and in the software and systems the Provider uses to Provide the Services;
(b) the Provider does not make any claim to own any Intellectual Property Rights in Subscriber Content and/or any data uploaded to our systems or provided by the Subscriber;
(c) the Subscriber grants the Provider an irrevocable and unconditional, royalty-free, licence to store, reproduce, analyse, adapt, manipulate, transmit, communicate and to deal with the Subscriber Content for the following purposes:
providing the Services to the Subscriber, including provision of the Subscriber Content to any person or contractor that assists the Provider with the provision of the Services;
to maintain, improve and/or rectify any issues with the Services (including to assess whether there has been a breach of these Terms);
benchmarking against other Subscribers, in a de-identified manner and
for any other purpose as set out in the Terms;
(d) the Subscriber must ensure that it complies with Australian information privacy law (where applicable) in respect of the Subscriber Content that it provides to and/or procures for the Provider to use;
(e) Uploaded data may be provided to the Provider’s subcontractors and service providers (eg, our cloud hosting service provider, development partners) for the purposes of assisting the Provider to provide the Services. Any such provision will be in accordance with the Provider’s privacy policy and/or these Terms;
(f) all Provider Content is made available to the Subscriber by means of a limited and non-exclusive licence from the Provider to allow the Subscriber to use and enjoy the Services during the Subscription Term in accordance with these Terms;
(g) the Subscriber is only entitled to use any Third Party Content in connection with the relevant Services ordered by the Subscriber and subject always to these Terms and any other terms and conditions that may apply to the Third Party Content;
(h) the Provider (in respect of the Provider Content) and the applicable third party (in respect of Third Party Content) retains full and complete title and interest (including Intellectual Property Rights) to such Provider Content or Third Party Content, as applicable;
(i) the Subscriber must not:
copy, license, sell, distribute, publish, communicate to the public, store or reproduce, decompile, reverse-engineer, disassemble, or otherwise convert the Provider Content (excluding any Subscriber Content incorporated in the Provider Content) or any Third Party Content by any means; or
transmit or upload any harmful effects to the Energesse Platform, including, without limitation, by means of submitting a virus, overloading, “flooding,” “spamming,” “mail bombing,” “hacking,” “hijack” or “crashing”, or test (or attempt to test) the security or vulnerability of the Energesse Platform or the software and systems used by the Provider to provide the Services; and
(j) the Subscriber must remove or destroy all Provider Content (excluding any Subscriber Content incorporated in the Provider Content) or Third Party Content that is in the Subscriber’s control or possession after the Services are terminated and/or at the end of the Subscription Term and cease any and all use of the Provider Content (excluding any Subscriber Content incorporated in the Provider Content) and Third Party Content.
8.2 In respect of all Third Party Content accessible via the Services, the Subscriber acknowledges and agrees that the Provider does not purport to confer on the Subscriber any right, title or interest in any such Third Party Content greater than that which is required for the use of the Services in accordance with these Terms. The Subscriber acknowledges and agrees that the mere access or availability of the Third Party Content to the Subscriber in connection with the Services shall not be an inference that the Provider has any relationship, affiliation or association with the author of the Third Party Content.
9.1 The Subscriber undertakes to keep confidential any Confidential Information relating respectively to the Provider which it obtains under or in connection with these Terms and/or otherwise in relation to the use of the Services and not to use such information or disclose it to any other person, other than as permitted under these Terms or this paragraph 9.
9.2 The Provider undertakes to keep confidential any Confidential Information provided to it by the Subscriber and not to use such information or disclose it to any other person, other than as permitted under these Terms or this paragraph 9.
9.3 In using the Services, the Subscriber undertakes to keep confidential any Third Party Content (and any such Third Party Content shall be deemed to be Confidential Information).
9.4 If required by the Provider, the Subscriber undertakes to enter into any form of non-disclosure agreement as reasonably required by the Provider in relation to the Subscriber’s participation in any event, meeting, conference call, session or other activity pursuant to any particular Services, to the extent that the Provider requires all participants in such activities to enter into the same form of non-disclosure agreement.
9.5 In addition to the above matters in this paragraph 9, each party agrees that with respect to any Confidential Information that is disclosed by one party (“Discloser”) to the other party (“Recipient”), except as expressly specified in these Terms, the Recipient shall (i) maintain in confidence such Confidential Information, using the same degree of care as it uses to protect its own confidential information of like nature, but not less than a reasonable degree of care; (ii) not disclose any such Confidential Information to any person outside the Recipient’s business organization, including, without limitation, to any business competitor of the Discloser; and (iii) return such Confidential Information to the Discloser after the termination of the Subscription or the completion of the Services (or to destroy the same as requested by the Discloser).
9.6 The obligations of confidentiality under this paragraph 9 shall not apply to any Confidential Information of the Discloser that is received by the Recipient and which: (i) was previously known to Recipient; (ii) is or becomes publicly available, other than by reason of a breach of these Terms by the Recipient; (iii) is independently developed by the Recipient; or (iv) is required to be disclosed as a matter of law.
10.1 In the event that the Subscriber believes that a dispute, controversy or claim (“Dispute”), arising out of or in connection with the Services or these Terms has arisen, the Subscriber must comply with the following complaint procedure before commencing any legal proceedings or seeking any other remedy against the Provider or any other person:
(a) the Subscriber must first provide full details of the Dispute to the Provider by email at avnesh@energesse.com;;
(b) the Subscriber shall assist and cooperate with the Provider during the period when the Provider investigates and assesses the nature of the Dispute; and
(c) the Subscriber shall give the Provider thirty days from the date on which full details of the Dispute was notified to the Provider so that the Provider can investigate the Dispute before providing a written response to the Subscriber.
10.2 Nothing in this paragraph 10 prejudices the right of either party to seek urgent injunctive, interlocutory or declaratory relief from a court in connection with the Dispute without first having to attempt to resolve the Dispute in accordance with paragraph 10.1 above.
11.1 If a Force Majeure Event occurs which prevents a party (“Affected Party”) from performing any of its obligations to the other (“Other Party”), or causes a delay in performance, the Affected Party shall not be liable to the Other Party and shall be released from its obligation to perform its obligations to the extent that its ability to perform has been affected by the Force Majeure Event, and:
the Affected Party notifies the Other Party in writing as soon as reasonably practical of the occurrence of the Force Majeure Event and the nature and likely duration of its impact upon the Other Party;
the Affected Party where practicable takes all reasonable steps to mitigate the impact of the Force Majeure Event on the Other Party and in particular continues to perform those obligations affected by the Force Majeure Event but whose performance has not been rendered impossible to the highest standard reasonably practicable in the circumstances; and
the Affected Party resumes normal performance of all affected obligations as soon as the impact of the Force Majeure Event ceases, and notifies the Other Party in writing of such resumption.
11.2 If the impact of the Force Majeure Event upon the Affected Party continues for a period of no less than two (2) consecutive months and such delay or stoppage prevents the Affected Party from performing a substantial part of its obligations under these Terms (excluding an obligation to make payment), either party may, by written notice, terminate the Services either in whole or in part (in respect of all or some of those Services which have been affected by the Force Majeure Event) with immediate effect and without liability to the other party.
11.3 In this paragraph 11, “Force Majeure Event” means an event the occurrence of which is beyond the reasonable control of either party, including (without limitation) the following: Act of God, war, explosions, fires, floods, tempests, earthquake, insurrection, riot, civil, disturbance, rebellion, strike, lock-out or labour dispute but not a strike, lock-out or labour dispute involving the party relying on this clause, failures in public supply of electrical power or public telecommunications equipment.
12.1 All notices or other communications required or permitted to be given under these Terms must be given via any means permitted by these Terms. In the case of the Subscriber, the Provider may provide all notices or communications to the Subscriber using any email addresses supplied by the Subscriber to the Provider for such purpose and/or as set out in the Principal Terms.
12.2 If, for whatever reason, a court of competent jurisdiction finds any term or condition in these Terms to be unenforceable, all other terms and conditions will remain unaffected and in full force and effect.
12.3 These Terms constitute the entire agreement between the parties in relation to its subject matter.
12.4 For the avoidance of doubt, a reference to the Provider in these Terms shall include a reference to any employees and contractors engaged by the Provider to provide the relevant Services (the “Provider’s Personnel”), however, these Terms shall only apply in respect of any services provided by the Provider’s Personnel where those services are provided directly as part of the Services offered by the Provider.
12.5 These Terms shall be construed in accordance with and governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia, the Courts of which shall have jurisdiction in respect of disputes arising out of or related to the use of the Energesse Platform, the provision of any Services or otherwise in relation to these Terms.
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How to fill out the employment contract
The employment agreement is a document regulating the legal relations between the employee and the employer according to the Labour Code of the Russian Federation. It is important that when hiring a labor agreement was correct and well-designed. Currently there is no normative document that contains a single sample labour contract. Therefore, in order to properly fill out the employment contract must strictly adhere to the rules described in the Labour Code of the Russian Federation.
As to number contracts
How to apply for an hourly fee
What to pay attention to when signing the employment contract
– passport;
– work book, unless it's a first job or part time job;
– insurance certificate of state pension insurance;
– military ID;
– the document on education.
The employment contract is drawn up in 2 copies, one of which is handed to the employee, and the second remains in the organization and kept in his personal file. When you receive a second copy of the employment contractand the employee must put his signature at the instance of the employer.
According to the legislation of the Russian Federation the labour contract must be signed within 3 days from the time the employee will be allowed to work.
Before the employment contract will be signed by the employee, the employer is obliged to acquaint him under the signature with all the local documents, internal regulations and collective agreementom (if available) of the organization.
Upon signing the employment agreementand the employment issued by order, the contents of which shall correspond to the concluded labor agreement. Familiarization with the order confirmed by the personal signature of the employee. At the request of the employee, the employer shall issue to him a duly attested copy of the order on employment.
Basic data that should be specified in the employment contractwith the employer:
-name of organization or name of individual entrepreneur;
-the Charter, INN and OGRN of the organization;
-passport data and data on registration in the tax office of the individual entrepreneur;
-the document confirming powers of the employer on the signing of the employment contract (for example, the order on appointment of the Director General or the attorney).
Basic data that should be specified in the employment contractwith the employee:
-date of birth, passport details and registration address of the employee;
-place and date of signing labor contract;
-full name of the organization;
-duties with reference to staffing and work rules;
-the date on which the employee is obliged to commence their official duties. If this point is not included in the employment contractω, the employee should commence work on the day following the date of signing the employment contract;
-salary and premiums;
mode of the working day, rest time and conditions for the provision of annual leave;
-other working conditions, worsening the position of workers.
The employment contract may be concluded either indefinitely or for a specified period, that too should be spelled out in the contractE.
Legal regulation of the employment relationship between employer and employee about Labour code of the Russian Federation. Currently, all forms of realization of citizens ' right to work, the employment contract should acknowledge the main form, as it best meets the needs of the labour market relations based on wage nature of work.
The employment contract must be drawn up in two copies, one of which is stored in the Affairs of the employer, the other is handed to the employee. Be sure to remember that in obtaining his instance, he must sign on the copy of the employer on receipt, otherwise it shall be deemed that the contract has not been issued to the hands of the employee. The sample employment contract.
How to register in employment agreement award
How to avoid the scams when applying for a job
Searching the Internet, you can easily run into scams. About jobs, virtual employers, and the...
Initiative at work is punishable?
What can be said about the former employer when applying for a job
Useful tips for graduates: how to become competitive in the labour market
So do a lot of business etiquette?
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Home / IELTS Listening Practice Tests / IELTS Listening Practice Test 19 / Page 6
IELTS Listening Practice Test 19
Tapescripts
The part of the text containing the answer is underlined with the question number given in square brackets []. If you still struggle with IELTS Listening tests, please refer to IELTS Listening tips.
IELTS Listening Section 1
Advisor: Good afternoon, Waddow Insurance, this is Janet speaking. How may I help you?
Mr. Fischer: Yes, hello, I would like to make a claim on my car insurance please.
Advisor: Certainly Sir. First of all I’d like to inform you that all of our calls are recorded for monitoring and training purposes. Is that okay?
Mr. Fischer: That’s okay
Advisor: Could you please tell me your full name?
Mr. Fischer: Sure. It’s Mr Bennett Fischer.
Advisor: Okay. Sorry, how do you spell your surname?
Mr. Fischer: It’s spelled F-I-S-C-H-E-R. [1]
Advisor: Great, thank you. I see that you have taken out a third party fire and theft premium with us on a 2013 light blue Volkswagen Passat, is that correct?
Mr. Fischer: Yes, well, almost.The colour is not light blue it’s light green. [2]
Advisor: Okay, thank you for updating your information with us. What is the nature of your claim with us today?
Mr. Fischer: Last weekend I had driven up to York on business and left my car in a monitored car park. However it was only monitored until 8 pm, and I did not return to collect it until 9:30 pm after which no car park staff were present. [3] When I arrived at the car park, my car wasn’t there. It must have been stolen.
Advisor: I see.Were there any valuable items left in your car, which could have been seen from outside?
Mr. Fischer: Well, I had recently bought quite an expensive radio for my car, but the front panel is detachable, and I always stow it in my glove compartment. [4] So no, there wouldn’t have been anything valuable on display.
Advisor: Okay Mr Fischer, thank you for that information. I’m going to send you some forms through the mail for you to fill in. [5] Before I can do that, I need to ask you a couple more questions, is that okay?
Mr. Fischer: Of course.
Advisor: Thanks, Mr Fischer. First of all, could you let me know your policy number, please?
Mr. Fischer: Of course, I have it right here. It’s G34C245. [6]
Advisor: G34C245… thanks.And the type of claim? Shall we say stolen car?
Mr. Fischer: Yes, the car was definitely stolen. [7] I reported it to the police immediately, I actually have the report number here if that is of any use?
Advisor: Not right now, but keep hold of that as we will need to see a copy of the police report eventually.Which police station did you report the offence at?
Mr. Fischer: York Police Station. [8]
Advisor: Was it your first time in York?
Mr. Fischer: No, but it was the first time I had driven there. I usually take the train.
Advisor: Were you aware that the car park was only manned until 8pm?
Mr. Fischer: No, I was not aware of that.
Advisor: Were there any signs put up on the premises that informed car owners of the risks of leaving their cars after normal operating hours?
Mr. Fischer: Yes, but they said the car park was going to be guarded until 10pm, at which point the entrance is barred so no cars can come in or out.
Advisor: Was any reason given for that sudden change?
Mr. Fischer: The police informed me that the staff on duty that night had left on an urgent call. I believe it was something about a family member being admitted to hospital.
Advisor: Were there any personal items left in your car?
Mr. Fischer: Yes, first of all, there was the car radio I mentioned before.
Advisor: Ah yes, of course. Anything else?
Mr. Fischer: Just some CDs and an old jacket. [9]
Advisor: Right. Thank you. Mr Fischer, I have everything I need for now, and will send these forms out to you shortly. When you get them please fill them with as much information as you can and, where possible, include copies of any relevant documents to support you claim, such as police reports and registration details. [10] Once you have returned that to us we can then start to assess whether you will be eligible to receive compensation. Do you have any further questions for me today?
Mr. Fischer: No, that is all. Thanks for your help.
Peter: Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Peter Myers and on behalf of everybody here at Stevensbridge Dungeons I would like to welcome you all to our entertainment team. This year the hiring process was especially competitive and it might interest you all to know that for every position there were almost 30 applicants, so you really are the best of the best. In a moment I will take you on a tour of the museum so you can get an idea of what the space is like. But first of all I would like to show you around the staffroom.
Our staffroom is located at the back of the building over here. You will notice that there are two entrances to the staffroom. [11] One leads to the room we are in now, which is the main, and oldest, dungeon here at Stevensbridge, which we have turned into the museum. This is where you will greet the new visitors, and also where the tour throughout the dungeons will begin. [12] I should mention now that we only ever send visitors through as part of a group [13], so even on the busy days you will still get roughly ten minutes of free time between each group, make sure you use that time wisely because you’ll need to get straight back into character as soon as it’s over.
Right, follow me and I’ll show you the layout of the museum. From the museum, we can pass through this door near the Interactive display into the staffroom. [14] From here, you can see the steps at the far side, in the opposite corner, that lead outside onto Berwick Street. When you arrive for a shift it will be much easier for you all to come in the Berwick Street entrance directly down the steps to the staffroom. [15] If you come in through the main visitor entrance it will take you longer to get past security.
As you can all see, there are lockers on your right hand side. They should be big enough for you to put your bags and coats in. You will get given keys later that work with any of the lockers in here. Over on the other side, past the lockers is our most exciting area. This is where our wardrobe and makeup will take place. Every shift you will be transformed from normal people into grotesque medieval prisoners. If you’re lucky you get to be the gaoler, but even they rarely bathed in those days.
Of course some of you might consider yourselves method actors, but please do try to shower before your shift. We don’t want to give visitors an experience that is too authentic.
Now we do have a staff shower here if you really need it. It is located next to the staff toilets which are unisex [16]. I hope nobody has too much of a problem with that. Unfortunately dungeons were not really designed with comfort in mind. You can find the bathroom at the other end of the room from the makeup area. There is also another toilet for the public concealed just to the right of the door into this room.
Let’s move back into the museum. We have three main sections down here. The first one you pass into when you leave the staffroom is the museum. [17] This is where all the useful information can be found such as dates, number of prisoners and the kinds of torture that were used. I know it is a lot of information to take in on your first day, but try to learn as much of it as you can. Even though you will mostly be in character, visitors might want to ask you some questions and it would be great if you could tell them more about the dungeons. I think it would be more interesting if visitors could learn directly from you rather than having to read about it.
As you can see, on the left we have an interactive display for children, and on the right we have a photo booth. [18] This was the original dungeon, first built in 1435. Now let’s pass through into the main dungeon that was added during the Tudor period in around 1570.
You might be able to feel that the air is a lot damper and cooler here. That is because we are now beneath the River Stevens. This is primarily the room in which most of you will be working. This is where many high profile religious figures were held, sometimes for years on end. Depending on the roles you will be playing, you can be either chained up, free to roam, or if you are a gaoler, wandering between prisoners to keep an eye on them.
Now we will pass into our third and final section: The prison cells. Over here you can see there are some wooden stocks and a fake gibbet. Don’t worry, I can see a couple of you looking concerned, you don’t need to re-enact any of the torture scenes for visitors. One person each shift will play the gaoler in here, where you will give a speech to the group about some of the more notable prisoners to stay here in the past. This is usually the end of the tour, but some visitors will certainly want to ask you more questions at this point, so please try your best to make yourselves available. Help them by answering any questions they have. Also feel free to guide the visitors through the museum if you see that they are going the wrong way. [19, 20]
This concludes our introduction to your new workplace. If you please follow me I will get you all issued with keys and some information about the dungeons that you can take home with you to study. I will also introduce you to our shift supervisor Alice Stiles, and you can ask her any questions you may have about your roles.
Olga: Hi Jacob, thank you so much for coming along today.
Jacob: It’s my pleasure. I am very intrigued about what a tea meditation entails exactly.
Olga: Well it’s very simple really. I think the first thing you need to keep in mind is that it is mostly about leaving everything that you have been thinking or worrying about today to one side. Really focus on the present moment.
Jacob: Sounds great, I certainly don’t know very much about tea, and I’m keen to get started. But, before you go into more detail, can I ask you what your favourite kind of tea is?
Olga: Well I think the kind of tea we are going to have today is my favourite. It is a pu-erh tea from Yunnan province in southern China. [21-24]
Jacob: What makes this tea special?
Olga: Pu-erh is a dark tea [21-24]. The regions of Yunnan, the north of Vietnam and Laos, have one of the best climates for growing tea in the world. Pu-erh is a post-fermented tea.
Jacob: What is a post-fermented tea exactly?
Olga: It is a tea that has undergone a period of aging in the open air [21-24]. They age the tea for days, even years. The exposure to humidity and oxygen helps to oxidise the tea leaves and encourage fermentation. This changes the smell of the tea and also removes a lot of the bitterness from the taste.
Jacob: It sounds similar to the process of aging wine.
Olga: The process is different but the effect of aging on the taste is certainly similar.
Jacob: Does this mean the tea can be quite expensive?
Olga: Absolutely. [21-24] It can be very expensive. The tea is usually pressed into balls or ‘cakes’ and sold. At one time only tea enthusiasts cared about buying these cakes, but now many people have realised that they are an investment and so buy them like they would buy gold because the price goes up a lot over time. So now, I want you to focus on clearing your mind of anything other than this present moment. Let go of any concerns.
Jacob: Okay, one slight problem, I will need to record our conversation. And I will need to take notes for the article. I plan to write about this for my newspaper. Is that is okay? [25]
Olga: Oh yes, of course, whatever you need.
Jacob: Thank you. I’ll try to keep my notes to a minimum.
Olga: Good. So where was I? Oh yes, I think very few people really appreciate the complexity and variety of tea that exists in the world.
Jacob: Right, most people are maybe like me and just use teabags.
Olga: Exactly, and with a teabag, the tea is trapped inside and cannot move around freely. You can really taste the difference drinking a brewed tea that was free to move around through all the water.
Jacob: So do you ever use teabags?
Olga: Never. [26] There are many kinds of tea: white, yellow, black, green, oolong, matcha, herbal and many others. Each one has its own unique properties. To fully experience what each tea has to offer you must first brew it in the correct way. [27] I also believe in only drinking tea that is picked and sorted by hand, rather than using mechanical processes. Although it takes more time, the tea made by hand is so much better, that it leads to an increase in the tea’s sales.
Jacob: But in that case, surely if there is more interest in the tea, and with the time-intensive farming process, this means there could be shortages because the demand is higher than the ability to produce it.
Olga: There were shortages for a while, but then an artificial fermentation process was developed in the 1970s which helped to speed up the fermentation times. As I mentioned, this process has an aging effect on the taste of pu-erh tea that is very similar to the effect on the taste of wine that you get from that fermentation process, though for pu-erh tea today, we’re talking about that artificial process. [28]
Jacob: How can they do this artificially?
Olga: The farmers gather the tea leaves into a big pile then cover it with a large sheet or tarp. [29] They spray water on the tea every now and then and therefore fermentation happens faster. Usually the tea is left for 30, 45, 60 or even 90 days still. The farmer will check the tea every few days, and just by the feel of the tea he knows whether it is ready or if it needs more time.
Jacob: Wow… that sounds like a fascinating process. I never realised that there was such a science behind producing tea.
Olga: Well now you are ready for the best part, the tasting of it.
Jacob: That sounds like a very good idea to me.
Olga: So what I will do now is boil the water and we can begin our meditation.
Jacob: What does that entail?
Olga: We need to focus on only two things. The first is your mind and body. [30] Forget everything that you have been worrying about today. Forget about what you have to do later on, or what somebody said to you earlier. Focus on your breathing and on how your body feels. If you have aches and pains, acknowledge them. Pinpoint where there is tension in your body and try to release it.
Jacob: Oh yes, I can really feel tension in my shoulders.
Olga: Let it go. Close your eyes if that helps. Take deep breaths in and out. Soon we will drink the tea. When you drink it think about the taste and how it feels on your tongue. Is it easy to swallow the tea or do you need to gulp it?
Jacob: Can you brew the tea leaves more than once?
Olga: Oh yes, you can brew some teas more than ten times. Now we will shift to noble silence, focusing only on ourselves and the tea. Enjoy.
Lecturer: During today’s seminar we will be looking at English Gothic architecture and its origins with a specific case study of Wells Cathedral in England. The Gothic style was initially brought over to England from France. This was at a period of time in which England was ruled from France by the Normans, starting with William the Conqueror who first defeated the English army at the Battle of Hastings on October 14th, 1066. [31]
After 1072 when some smaller rebellions in northern England had been defeated, the Normans gained complete control of the English monarchy, which they controlled until 1154. The peace that ensued in England had a large impact on many aspects of daily life. Thousands of French words entered the English language for the first time such as beef, fruit, city and hour. [32] French ideas and styles, like Gothic, also began to flow across The Channel to England too, examples of which can still be seen in the architecture of many listed buildings. [33] A listed building is one that is protected from alteration or demolition because of its historical or stylistic importance. One such building is Wells Cathedral.
Construction on Wells Cathedral began in 1175 at a time when Gothic architecture as a style was in its infancy. [34] As a result it is one of the first entirely Gothic buildings ever constructed. From the first designs to the date it was completed in 1490, Gothic architecture flourished in England. [35] Therefore later additions to the building were still influenced by this Gothic style, rather than by later architectural styles such as Tudor architecture.
Older cathedrals in England would have initially been influenced by Romanesque architecture, alternatively known as Norman architecture in England. As the former name suggests, Romanesque was a building style based on the skills passed on to various areas of Europe by the Romans. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th Century, these methods were retained by Rome’s former colonies and developed further. One such Roman gift to the Romanesque architects was the round arch, also known as the true arch. The Romans perfected this style by using wedge-shaped stones called voussoirs, which created pressure that held the structure together at the top.
Cathedrals in England such as the ones in Ely and Canterbury were started before the arrival of Gothic architecture. Even though parts of those two cathedrals which were constructed later are in the Gothic style, other sections predating the arrival of Gothic architecture are Romanesque. The result is known as eclectic because the building is constructed using more than one style.
All of these cathedrals belong to a group known as the medieval cathedrals of England. [36] There are twenty-six different buildings that belong to this group in total; all of which were constructed or added to during a five hundred year period from 1040 to 1540. The transition from Romanesque to Gothic began in 1144 at the Abbey Church of St. Denis on the edge of Paris. It was here that a Benedictine abbot by the name of Suger had just completed his plan to rebuild the Basilica of St-Denis in a new style through which he believed “the dull mind rises to truth through that which is material.”
This refers to one architectural feature in particular: high, rib vault ceilings, which created much more space inside the cathedral and were designed to draw the attention of the people up towards heaven. This design feature also allowed whole walls of the cathedral to be transformed by colourful stained glass.
Work started on Wells Cathedral soon afterwards, greatly inspired by abbot Suger’s work. Planned in the crucifix style with the head pointing east and foot pointing west, the cathedral is 126 metres long and the nave is 20 metres high. [38] This is quite low compared to some of the bigger cathedrals elsewhere.
Use of tracery, lancet windows and mullions are all characteristic of English Gothic architecture. [37] Whilst examples of all three of these architectural elements can be found at Wells, the lancet windows have no tracery at all, which was more common in early English Gothic architecture before advances were made in the use of mullions and tracery with glass.
Lancet windows are tall, thin windows with a pointed arch at the top and are so named because they resemble the weapon often carried by a soldier called a lance. Examples of these lancet windows can be seen on the West front of the cathedral, which is the most celebrated for its life-sized sculptures and delicate floral carvings [39].
Inside the pinnacle-topped gable is a sculpture of ‘Christ the Judge’. Immediately below him, sculptures of the 12 Apostles peer out over the small city of Wells. Below the Apostles are nine archangels, which are half-sized sculptures. At one time all of these, along with the decorative carvings, would have been painted and gilded. [40] However today all the paint has worn away and the sculptures are the colour of the oolite sedimentary stone used to construct the cathedral.
It is remarkable to think that more than 800 years ago such magnificent buildings were created, without the use of large cranes and modem technology. It would have taken much longer, but it is possible to see the high level of craftsmanship and attention to detail that is less common in the modem day.
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Free shipping for UK orders over £50
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Home Gin Prints Martinez Cocktail Print
Martinez Cocktail Print
13x18 cm (5x7 in) / Millilitres (ml) - £10.00 13x18 cm (5x7 in) / U.S. Fluid Ounces (oz.) - £10.00 18x24 cm (7x9 in) / Millilitres (ml) - £12.00 18x24 cm (7x9 in) / U.S. Fluid Ounces (oz.) - £12.00 20x25 cm (8x10 in) / Millilitres (ml) - £13.00 20x25 cm (8x10 in) / U.S. Fluid Ounces (oz.) - £13.00 21x30 cm (8x12 in) / Millilitres (ml) - £15.00 21x30 cm (8x12 in) / U.S. Fluid Ounces (oz.) - £15.00 28x35 cm (11x14 in) / Millilitres (ml) - £18.00 28x35 cm (11x14 in) / U.S. Fluid Ounces (oz.) - £18.00 30x40 cm (12x16 in) / Millilitres (ml) - £21.00 30x40 cm (12x16 in) / U.S. Fluid Ounces (oz.) - £21.00 40x50 cm (16x20 in) / Millilitres (ml) - £35.00 40x50 cm (16x20 in) / U.S. Fluid Ounces (oz.) - £35.00 A3 (29.7x42 cm) / Millilitres (ml) - £21.00 A3 (29.7x42 cm) / U.S. Fluid Ounces (oz.) - £21.00
13x18 cm (5x7 in) 18x24 cm (7x9 in) 20x25 cm (8x10 in) 21x30 cm (8x12 in) 28x35 cm (11x14 in) 30x40 cm (12x16 in) 40x50 cm (16x20 in) A3 (29.7x42 cm) Size
Millilitres (ml) U.S. Fluid Ounces (oz.) Unit
Print only (unframed)
Available in a range of sizes
Choose millilitres (ml) or U.S. fluid ounces (oz.)
Printed on 250gsm white satin paper
Designed and made in England
A minimalist cocktail print showing the recipe and method for a Martinez cocktail. The cocktail print also functions as a cheat sheet for aspiring mixologists. This print is perfect wall art for your kitchen or living room and also makes a great gift for a cocktail lover.
The Martinez art print is part of our minimalist cocktail poster series. Mix and match your favourite cocktails to create a gallery wall.
Want your print framed so it’s delivered ready to hang or gift? No problem! We offer frames for 30x40cm (12x16").
Delivery prices are calculated at checkout.
All orders are wrapped with the greatest care and shipped worldwide in a rigid board-backed mailer or a super thick cardboard mailing tube.
We aim to dispatch orders within 1–2 working days, Monday to Friday.
All orders shipped via Royal Mail 24.
Delivery aim is 1-3 working days once your order has left our studio.
All orders shipped from the UK via Royal Mail International Tracked.
Delivery aim is 5-10 working days once your order has left our studio.
Please note that whilst we endeavour to ensure that you receive your order as fast as possible, occasionally items can be delayed during transit. Although delays are out of our control, we will do all we can to help.
If you do need to make a return you’re welcome to do so within 14 days of receipt.
Gin and Tonic Garnish Guide Print
Product Description A special edition Gin & Tonic Garnish Guide inspired by our minimalist cocktail prints series. The garnish guide features g...
Gin and Tonic Garnish Guide Print (Landscape)
Gin Cocktails Poster
Product Description A minimalist cocktail poster featuring classic and popular gin based cocktails. The poster also functions as a cheat sheet for ...
Gin Cocktails Poster (Landscape)
Aviation Cocktail Print
Size & Materials Print only (unframed) Available in a range of sizes Choose millilitres (ml) or U.S. fluid ounces (oz.) Printed on 250gsm whit...
Copyright © 2021 Everlong Print Co..
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West Brom (U23) Crystal Palace (U23)
West Brom (U23) vs Crystal Palace (U23) Summary
West Brom (U23) 10 14 11 20 20 375% 125% 218% 240% 360%
Crystal Palace (U23) 6 16 11 22 21 360% 240% 19% 120% 480%
West Brom (U23) vs Crystal Palace (U23) head 2 head
West Brom (U23)
Crystal Palace (U23)
PL2/2
Premier League 2 Division 2 league table
1 Leeds (U23) 7 6 1 0 21 7 19 5 2 0 3 12 13 6 12 8 1 3 33 20 25 13 2.80
2 Wolverhampton (U23) 5 3 0 2 11 9 9 6 3 1 2 13 9 10 11 6 1 4 24 18 19 6 2.20
3 Middlesbrough (U23) 4 2 0 2 7 4 6 7 3 2 2 17 9 11 11 5 2 4 24 13 17 11 2.20
4 Aston Villa (U23) 6 2 1 3 9 9 7 6 3 1 2 11 9 10 12 5 2 5 20 18 17 2 1.70
5 Norwich (U23) 6 3 1 2 10 6 10 5 2 0 3 5 8 6 11 5 1 5 15 14 16 1 1.40
6 Crystal Palace (U23) 5 3 1 1 14 5 10 6 2 0 4 8 16 6 11 5 1 5 22 21 16 1 2.00
7 Stoke City (U23) 6 4 0 2 13 7 12 5 1 0 4 5 11 3 11 5 0 6 18 18 15 0 1.60
8 Sunderland (U23) 6 3 0 3 14 18 9 4 2 0 2 9 6 6 10 5 0 5 23 24 15 -1 2.30
9 Fulham (U23) 4 2 0 2 9 7 6 8 3 0 5 15 22 9 12 5 0 7 24 29 15 -5 2.00
10 West Brom (U23) 6 3 1 2 11 9 10 5 1 1 3 9 11 4 11 4 2 5 20 20 14 0 1.80
11 Burnley (U23) 7 3 1 3 12 14 10 4 1 1 2 3 6 4 11 4 2 5 15 20 14 -5 1.40
12 Newcastle (U23) 7 3 1 3 11 17 10 4 1 0 3 5 8 3 11 4 1 6 16 25 13 -9 1.50
13 Reading (U23) 3 2 0 1 6 8 6 7 2 1 4 8 20 7 10 4 1 5 14 28 13 -14 1.40
West Brom (U23) Last Games
+ + - - + ? + + + 0 + + ? - + + + + + - + ? - + ? ? ? ? ? + 0 - 0 + + - + - - -
Aston Villa (U23)
Stoke City (U23)
Wolverhampton (U23)
Sunderland (U23) 1
Leeds (U23)
Middlesbrough (U23)
Newcastle (U23)
Reading (U23)
Fulham (U23)
Crystal Palace (U23) Last Games
- 0 - - - 0 0 - - + + - + + - - + ?
Sunderland (U23)
Burnley (U23) 1
West Brom (U23) Results
Crystal Palace (U23) Results
West Brom (U23) Goals
Crystal Palace (U23) Goals
West Brom (U23) Strength
Crystal Palace (U23) Strength
West Brom (U23) Goals (Last 30 games)
Crystal Palace (U23) Goals (Last 30 games)
West Brom (U23) Scorers (Last 15 games)
Cheikh Diaby 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 8
Finley Thorndike 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 4
Owen Windsor 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3
Kamil Grosicki 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 2
George Harmon 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Zak Brown 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Tomiwa Solanke 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Tom Fellows 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Tyrese Dyce 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Kyle Edwards 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
Rekeem Harper 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
Crystal Palace (U23) Scorers (Last 15 games)
Scott Banks 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 4
Rob Street 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 3
Kian Flanagan 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 3
Alfie Matthews 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 3
Robert Street 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 3
Brandon Pierrick 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2
Nya Kirby 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Christian Benteke 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Bobby Beaumont 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Jay Bagueloc'rich 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1
James Mccarthy 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
Sion Spence 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
West Brom (U23) Bad Boy (Last 30 games)
Crystal Palace (U23) Bad Boy (Last 30 games)
West Brom (U23) 2.17 2.00 2.10 1.66 1.75
Crystal Palace (U23) 1.50 2.67 1.72 3.41 2.63
West Brom (U23) vs Crystal Palace (U23)
The last meeting of these teams took place more than a month ago (21 September 2020) and ended with the draw with a score 3-3.
West Brom (U23) takes the 10th position in the league table with 14 points. This is the 11th of 24 team game in the tournament.
The difference with the nearest team on top is 1 point (West Brom (U23) can score 39 points). The distance from the bottom league record is 1 point. The nearest pursuer has the same number of points with West Brom (U23) and can score 39 points. The goal difference is 20:20.
Crystal Palace (U23) takes the 6th position in the league table with 16 points. This is the 11th of 24 team game in the tournament.
Crystal Palace (U23) has the same number of points with the nearest team on top and can score 39. In addition, the distance from the TOP-4 is 1 point (39 points are possible). The nearest pursuer is 1 point lower and has the opportunity to score 39 points additionally. The goal difference is 22:21.
West Brom (U23) Stats
The team scored 19 points оn its own field in 10 last matches, with the following results 6 wins, 1 draw and 3 losses. The difference between scored and conceded goals is 20-13. The average number of goals is 2. The average number of cards in 10 last matches is 2.7.
Leading players in the last 15 matches in all tournaments: Cheikh Diaby (8), Finley Thorndike (4), Owen Windsor (3), Kamil Grosicki (2), George Harmon (1), Zak Brown (1), Tomiwa Solanke (1).
Crystal Palace (U23) Stats
The team scored 8 points when playing away in 9 last matches, with the following results 2 wins, 2 draws и 5 losses. The difference between scored and conceded goals is 11-21. The average number of goals is 1.22. The average number of cards in 10 last matches is 2.7.
Leading players in the last 15 matches in all tournaments: Scott Banks (4), Rob Street (3), Kian Flanagan (3), Alfie Matthews (3), Robert Street (3), Brandon Pierrick (2), Nya Kirby (1).
29 July 2020, 05:47 goal.com
Thanks to his awe-inspiring performances in the 2019-20 season, the Anglo-Ghanaian has been decorated as the Eagles' U23 best player
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All the Companies Manufacturing Products to Help Prevent and Cope With the Spread of Covid-19 [Updated]
Fashion and beauty brands are using their factories to produce everything from hospital gowns to hand sanitizers.
Dara Prant
Photo: Alastair PIke/AFP/Getty Images
As Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc on communities across the world, fashion and beauty brands have announced plans to begin manufacturing products that will help prevent the infectious disease from spreading. LVMH joined the fight first when the luxury conglomerate announced Sunday that it would be turning its perfumes and cosmetics business into a hand sanitizer manufacturer and that it will distribute the sanitizers to French health authorities. The move was in response to shortages of the germ-fighting gel in France.
On Wednesday, L'Oréal leapt to humanity's aid by also offering up its factories to produce hand sanitizer. According to WWD, the beauty giant's brand La Roche-Posay will provide hydro-alcoholic gel to hospitals, nursing homes and main partnering pharmacies throughout Europe, while its other Garnier brand will dispense millions of units of the gel to all of its European clients in the food distribution channel.
"In this exceptional crisis situation it is our responsibility to contribute in every possible way to the collective effort," said Jean-Paul Agon, L'Oréal chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement to WWD. "Through these gestures, L'Oréal wishes to express its appreciation, support and solidarity with all those who mobilize with extraordinary courage and abnegation to fight against this pandemic."
Outside of the beauty realm, both small and large apparel brands have begun producing masks as the Coronavirus outbreak worsens. American Apparel's Dov Charney, offered up the workforce and management team behind his four-year-old label Los Angeles Apparel to manufacture masks or other medical products for "any government agency."
Later in the week and as the situation turned dire in Spain, Zara owner Inditex said it would produce hospital gowns and masks for patients and medical workers alike. Per a statement made to Vogue, the fast-fashion behemoth explained that it "will make a delivery at least once a week of materials we purchase directly."
In addition, the company said it is looking into switching some of its textile-manufacturing capacity over to the production of health materials. As of now, Inditex is only providing these much-needed products to people in Spain.
Hopefully as the number of Covid-19 cases and death toll rise, more companies around the world will use their manufacturing capacities to help combat the virus. We'll keep updating this post as we here about more life-saving production initiatives.
See updates here for every fashion and beauty retailer temporarily closing to help mitigate the spread of the virus here.
UPDATE, Thursday, March 19: Several indie beauty brands have pivoted their production focus to hand sanitizer as well. The founder of Skin Probiotics had been making hand gel on the side for years, but has made it her main project now that Covid-19 has threatened the country's supply. Similarly, Hudson Valley Skincare announced via Instagram that its suspended normal production to churn out hand sanitizers for its community.
The buzzy CBD category has also begun making disinfecting hand gel. There's now a CBD hand sanitizer and moisturizing spray from the brand Pure Bloom.
UPDATE, Friday, March 20: Guerlain is the latest beauty brand to join the global effort to minimize the spread of Covid-19. On Friday, the company sent out an official release stating that it has converted its La Ruche fragrance, makeup and skin-care factory and Orphin fragrance factory into hand sanitizer production sites. According to the statement, the disinfecting gel will not be for sale, but "it is freely being shared with French healthcare workers and hospitals" in hopes to "protect the doctors, nurses and hospital staff caring for others on the front line of this pandemic."
Los Angeles-based Big Bud Press, a brand that specializes in size-inclusive and unisex apparel, announced Friday via Instagram that it's also begun making masks to donate. "We'll be funding the project, buying the materials, paying for the sewing to keep these folks in work, and donating every mask we make," the post reads. "We're hoping to make around 100 to 200 masks a day." The masks will donated around Los Angeles and Chicago area hospitals, homeless shelters and long-term care facilities.
On Twitter, Christian Siriano said he will dedicate his sewing team to New York's Covid-19 prevention efforts by having them make masks. Governor Andrew Cuomo confirmed they are working together.
Brandon Maxwell also announced in an Instagram post that he is focusing his eponymous label's creative efforts on making medical gowns. "We have spent the last week researching the appropriate medical textiles to create these gowns and are proud to provide these much needed items to the doctors and nurses on the front lines," the post reads. "As more information becomes available on how to manufacture medical grade masks and gloves, we will transition in to doing so."
Miami-based label Alexis posted on Instagram that it had bought 2,000 N95 masks and 3,000 gloves from local construction companies and donated them to the Baptist Health hospitals in the area.
Meanwhile, as an equipment shortage for medical workers continues to be a pressing issues in Italy, Ermanno Scervino is stepping up to produce surgical masks. According to WWD, the luxury label is making masks certified by the Florence University that will be distributed at Tuscan hospitals.
UPDATE, Monday, March 23: Over the weekend, luxury conglomerates took action to address the shortage of necessary medical equipment to fight the spread of Covid-19. LVMH secured 40 million face masks from a Chinese industrial supplier; CEO Bernard Arnault arranged for the company to finance the whole first week of deliveries in France. Then Kering announced that it would purchase 3 million surgical masks that it will import from China and provide to French health services. The luxury group also said that Balenciaga and Saint Laurent plan to manufacture masks, while Gucci will be donating over a million surgical masks and 55,000 medical overalls in Italy.
On Monday, Prada revealed that its factory in Perugia will produce masks and medical overalls. The label plans to start daily deliveries to Tuscan hospitals of 80,000 overalls and 110,000 masks on April 6.
Nomasei, a luxury shoe brand started by two Chloé alums, is using its small, family-owned factory in Italy to produce protective masks for the rest of the country. In addition to providing necessary medical equipment, this project allows the company to keep its workers employed.
Outside of the luxury fashion world, H&M said on Sunday it would help curb the spread of the coronavirus by sourcing personal protective equipment for hospitals in the European Union. The retailer is still trying to figure out what its supply chain can deliver, but plans on focusing on masks, which are currently a top priority.
In the U.S., designer Michael Costello of "Project Runway" fame has responded to the mask shortage by partnering with a Calabasas-based manufacturer to produce 20,000 protective face masks. Per an official press release, Costello plans to donate them to medical professionals, first responders and hospitals in Los Angeles County.
Meanwhile, Prabal Gurung and Cynthia Rowley are following in Christian Siriano's footsteps to produce personal protective equipment for medical workers and first responders. Gurung revealed the news via Twitter, writing: "As a brand that produces over 90% of our collections in NY, our goal is not only to fill the void of critical PPE, but to mobilize our domestic partners, revitalizing U.S. producers and suppliers." Rowley shared the news on Instagram, writing that her team will continue to make masks until they run out of supplies.
Gelareh Mizrahi joined the the fight to stop the spread of Covid-19, posting on the brand's Instagram that she found a CDC- and EU-verified, NIOSH-approved factory and is raising money to purchase personal protective equipment — including N95 masks, goggles, face shields and gloves — for hospitals around the country. You can donate to the cause here.
As of Monday, Alabama Chanin is now focusing all of its manufacturing efforts on producing reusable masks. The brand is also working with hospitals on making gowns for patients and is hoping that it will be able to produce those later this week.
UPDATE, Tuesday, March 24: Zero waste clothing company For Days is the latest apparel brand to produce hospital masks. The label has pivoted all of its sewing capacity in Hawthorne, California to make reusable masks out of a double layer of cotton jersey. These masks can be worn over surgical masks for extended use. For Days is working with the Los Angeles Mayor's office to direct masks to the most needed places.
Similarly, Grisel Lopez, the Puerto Rican, nonbinary designer behind Brooklyn-based brand Possessed, has set out to provide much-needed masks for hospital workers. According to Paper, the designer is using PVC to manufacture clear, BDSM-leaning face masks that they first introduced for Fall 2020. The designer also posted the news on Instagram, writing that the masks "can be sanitized and reused with soap and water or alcohol."
Also over the weekend, Lafayette 148 New York partnered with the Economic Development Corporation and The Brooklyn Navy Yard to respond to the urgent call for personal protective equipment. Per an email release, a patternmaker employed by the brand created patterns for surgical gowns, which were then digitized and sent off for prototyping. They have sample makers on standby waiting for instructions from the group to start production as soon as the prototype is approved.
Kes is working on initiatives to contribute to the aid of this pandemic as well. In collaboration with Dr. Galit Sacajiu MD MPH, the clothing brand is shifting operations to produce sustainable and washable protective face masks.The masks will be available for purchase online.
Elsewhere, the bridal industry has taken action: The team at Carine's Bridal is sewing and delivering face masks to help with the shortage, and is asking for donations of funds or fabric. The Dessy Group also plans to import protective masks and gowns for healthcare workers in New York City from its factory partners in Asia.
On the beauty front, Estée Lauder announced the reopening of its Melville, New York manufacturing facility in order to produce hand sanitizer. In a statement confirming the news to WWD, a company spokesperson said "compensated, employee volunteers will support this vital, meaningful effort."
UPDATE, Wednesday, March 25: Eddie Bauer announced Tuesday evening that it is shifting portions of its production capacity to make N95 and surgical masks to help meet the high demand for personal protective equipment. The outdoors brand will donate masks to the State of Washington through the Department of Enterprise Services as early as next week.
Elsewhere in the U.S., Neiman Marcus and Joann stores have joined forces to make nonsurgical masks, gowns and scrubs starting Wednesday. The Dallas Morning News reported that the work is happening at Neiman Marcus alterations facilities in California, New Jersey and Florida. Meanwhile, Nordstrom teamed up with Kaas Tailored to have employees help sew masks that will be distributed by Providence Health in Seattle.
Gap Inc. revealed Wednesday that it is pivoting resources so that factory partners can make masks, gowns and scrubs for healthcare workers and is connecting some of the largest hospitals in California with its vendors to deliver PPE supplies. In addition to making these connections, Gap Inc. is working with its manufacturing partners to quickly explore using its excess garment capacity to produce fabric masks and protective gear that the hospitals need urgently.
Eileen Fisher stepped up Wednesday as well by partnering with Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and the Economic Development Corporation to create gowns, masks and other personal protective equipment for healthcare workers.
Canada Goose is offering a helping hand to its community in Canada by opening two production units to make 10,000 scrubs and gowns to donate to hospitals.
In Spain, Mango has offered to distribute two million face masks among various Spanish hospitals using its own logistics system.
Over in France, Clarins is producing hand sanitizer at its industrial sites in Pontoise, Strasbourg and Amiens. Thus far, the beauty brand has delivered 14,500 bottles to hospitals. Similarly, L'Occitane has decided to reassign some of its facilities to manufacture 70,000 liters of hand sanitizer, which it will donate to health authorities in France. Along with the hand sanitizer, the beauty company is distributing 25,000 units of soap and hand cream to staff of the Paris university hospital trust.
Coty announced Wednesday that it is adjusting the production of some of its manufacturing sites to be able to provide free of charge, substantial quantities of hydro-alcoholic gel to medical and emergency services who are facing shortages due to the fast spreading virus. "As a responsible beauty company, we make our resources and facilities available to help the communities we are operating in during these exceptionally challenging time," said Coty CEO Pierre Laubies in an official press release."We are proud to support the brave professionals fighting on the frontlines against Covid-19 by providing hand sanitizer where it is needed."
UPDATE, Thursday, March 26: Several luxury labels, including Prada and Gucci, have joined the Covid-19 relief efforts abroad — and on Thursday Ralph Lauren did so in the U.S. The Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation pledged $10 million to help the company's teams and communities impacted by the pandemic. On top of the donation, WWD reports that the company is working to assess the needs and technical requirements for medical-grade materials like masks and isolation gowns. As of the announcement, it's working on making 25,000 isolation gowns and 250,000 masks with its U.S. manufacturing partners.
Sanctuary is also using its resources to produce over 5 million N95 masks. "It's part of Sanctuary's company values to give back, so naturally we are doing our share," said Deb Polanco, Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder in an official press statement. "We are happy to join this fight and do what we can to make a difference."
Following his large donations to hospitals in Italy earlier this month, Giorgio Armani announced on Thursday that all of the company's Italian production plants have switched to manufacturing single use medical overalls.
In the beauty world, Orly International is reconfiguring its Los Angeles-based nail polish factory operations to produce 75% alcohol-based hand sanitizer. According to an official press release from the brand, it will begin production by the end of March. The first batch of 10,000 units will be donated to the city of Los Angeles, while subsequent batches are expected to be available for sale by early April.
UPDATE, Friday, March 27: Theory and Uniqlo's parent company Fast Retailing has enlisted the help of its manufacturing partners in China to procure approximately 10 million protective masks. According to a press release from the company, it will donate 1.05 million masks to the U.S. starting early April through the New York State Government and it will donate 1 million masks to Italy beginning in late March via the Milan City Government. Another 1 million masks are to be donated to the Japanese government.
In the coming days, Under Armour plans to manufacture 500,000 face masks and thousands of hospital gowns at its innovation hub in Baltimore. The company's employee volunteers are also stuffing 50,000 fanny packs with vital supplies, which will be distributed at the University of Maryland and several other Maryland medical facilities.
Vera Bradley has converted its sewing operations at its distribution facility in Indiana to producing masks and scrubs, and is leveraging its supplier relationships to get distribution up and running as quickly as possible.
Much smaller fashion brands have also joined the Covid-19 relief effort. SVNR founder Christina Tung announced Friday that she has launched a Go Fund Me fundraising campaign to purchase PPE directly from her factory connections. Tung plans to place orders every Sunday based on needs.
Meanwhile, Farouk Systems, Inc., the makers of Chi and BioSilk, have begun manufacturing FDA approved hand sanitizers with 77% by volume natural denatured alcohol and organically grown aloe vera. For the official launch, Chi is donating $1 million worth of its hand sanitizer to the cities of Houston and Tomball, Texas.
Over in Italy, Calzedonia Group converted a number of its plants to the production of medical masks and gowns, which will then be donated to the hospital and the city of Verona. According to a press release from the company, the conversion was possible thanks to the purchase of special machinery. This new organization will be able to produce 10,000 masks a day in the early stages, but the company expects to increase production in the coming weeks.
UPDATE, Monday, March 30: Over the weekend, both Burberry and Chanel announced their efforts to bolster supplies to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in their respective countries.
Per an official press release from the brand, Burberry is working with its global supply chain network to fast-track the delivery of over 100,000 surgical masks to the U.K. National Health Service, as well as retooling its trench coat factory in Castleford, Yorkshire to make non-surgical gowns and masks for patients.
According to Reuters, Chanel is putting its employees to work by having them produce "protective face masks and blouses" in France. The production of these critical items will begin once the company receives approval from the French authorities.
In the U.S., several underwear and T-shirt factories, including HanesBrands Inc. and clothing manufacturer SanMar Corp, are working with the White House to supply cotton face masks for hospitals. Bloomberg reports that the Federal Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services helped configure the pattern used in the masks.
Additionally, Rails is donating 10,000 medical grade and FDA-approved KN95 masks to hospitals across Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Atlanta, Detroit and other U.S. cities. The brand will also halt garment production in order to shift focus to creating 100% cotton masks for personal use and protection.
Brooks Brothers also responded to the national call for protective medical equipment, revealing that it's in the process of converting its New York, North Carolina and Massachusetts factories into production hubs for up to 150,000 masks a day, Yahoo Finance reports. The brand is producing hospital gowns as well.
To help those affected by the Covid-19 crisis in Italy and Austria, Wolford has rearranged its production, pivoting from tights to face masks. Though the majority will be handed out for free to healthcare workers, a limited number will be sold through the brand's e-commerce (and those sales will only be used to cover production and logistic costs and for donations to healthcare-related efforts to fight the virus.)
With an increased demand for alcohol based disinfectant gels, Tata Harper has created a new hand sanitizer formula in compliance with the government guidelines set in place. The beauty brand will donate 500 bottles of the sanitizer, as well as its Reparative Moisturizer and Rebuilding Moisturizer, to the medical community in Los Angeles and is in search of a healthcare organization in New York City to donate an additional 500 bottles of the products for medical workers in need of a care package for facial reactions.
UPDATE, Tuesday, March 31: Net-a-Porter — which temporarily closed distribution centers and suspended services in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East on Friday — announced that it will use its same-day delivery vans to transport supplies to socially isolated people in London.
"During this critical time, these charities are working tirelessly to ensure that elderly and vulnerable groups have access to essential care packages, food and medical supplies, while they are required to stay at home," the company said in a statement to WWD. "Now, more than ever, the primary focus of our colleagues and customers is the well-being of relatives, friends and communities. Reflecting our core sustainability priorities, the group hopes that the redistribution of these resources will help to make a difference in London."
Following in the footsteps of major clothing companies and luxury conglomerates abroad, U.S.-based PVH Corp has starting shipping over 2 million units of PPE — including isolation gowns, masks and face shields — to the Montefiore Health System in New York.
Laws of Motion has pivoted core operations at its New Jersey-based factory to begin producing 50,000 face shields and 10,000 medical gowns each week for hospitals in New York. The first donation will be made this Thursday, and then the brand will introduce a buy-one-donate-one initiative on LawsofMotion.com.
In Italy, the La Perla Group has donated 10,000 masks to the municipality of Bologna. The Italian lingerie label sourced the masks from Hong Kong and then distributed them to elderly residential homes, home care workers and local authorities in Bologna.
The Kardashians have been keeping up with efforts to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Last week, Kylie Jenner donated $1 million to the cause; now, the makeup mogul and her mom, Kris Jenner, announced that they have partnered with Coty to produce hand sanitizers for hospitals in Southern California. Per a release from Kylie Cosmetics, the hand sanitizers will be donated to the emergency and healthcare workers caring for patients on the front lines of the public health crisis.
Elsewhere in the U.S., Jockey is manufacturing Tier 3 Isolation Gowns. The company plans to donate 250,000 gowns initially that will go to high-priority medical facilities and testing sites across the country. "It is in our DNA to roll up our sleeves and help our country in times of need," Jockey President Mark Fedyk said in an official press statement. "During WWII, we made parachutes for the U.S. military. And today, we are pleased to provide critically needed PPE for the health care workers on the front lines of this fight."
Tanya Taylor has also started producing masks. The designer posted an Instagram on Tuesday about how the brand is partnering with its domestic factories to put 5,000 non-medical grade masks into production. According to the caption, the "locally-sewn masks will be sent to New York City hospitals to help reduce the strain on supplies." The New York-based label is now asking for donations so it can make 5,000 more.
Posture-perfecting activewear label IFGfit has begun producing thousands of washable filter masks and donating them to local hospitals and clinics, as well as hundreds of apparel items from their line. These masks are being made in the brand's Southern California facilities by local workers.
Carhartt announced plans to produce 2.5 million protective masks and 50,000 medical gowns starting April 6. WWD reports that production will continue as long as these crucial items are needed for relief efforts. The brand will use its factories in Tennessee and Kentucky, and employees that have volunteered to produce the essential items will receive compensation.
UPDATE, Wednesday, April 1: In an email Wednesday morning, Warby Parker announced it is using its optical lab in Sloatsburg, New York as a distribution center to facilitate the donation of thousands of N95 protective masks. Thus far, the brand has facilitated donations to different organizations including AmeriCares, National Association for Free and Charitable Clinics, and its Pupils Project hospital partners, Johns Hopkins and Boston Medical Center.
Anomalie, a custom online wedding dress shop, is currently raising money to get masks to healthcare workers. The company is sourcing CDC-certified N95 respirator masks and FFP2 masks from its dedicated team in China, to deliver to people in need.
Los Angeles-based Onzie is also doing its part to get masks to workers on the front lines, using its recycled material to hand-make masks. It has already donated 3,000 of them to local hospitals and claims it has the capacity to make up to 20,000 masks.
UPDATE, Thursday, April 2: New York-based eyewear brand Moscot is working with wholesale optical laboratory Cherry Optical Labs in Wisconsin to provide healthcare professionals in need of PPE with protective glasses featuring scratch-proof lenses, both prescription and not, free of charge. Medical workers can apply through this request form.
New Balance made its first general-use face mask prototype less than a week ago, and is now aiming to manufacture up to 100,000 units weekly at its factories in Maine and Massachusetts by mid-April. The company is also in the process of advancing its current face mask design to meet FDA requirements and achieve a product that can be used by frontline medical staff. Simultaneously, the brand is working toward making prototypes of gowns and foot coverings and exploring collaborative opportunities that optimize its U.S.-based 3D printing capabilities.
Menswear brand Joseph Abboud has joined the fight against Covid-19 by reopening its factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts to help with the production of washable face masks. The reopening of the factory brought back employees to make more than 50,000 masks to help front-line healthcare professionals in need.
Additionally, the California-based clothing label Johnny Was has made 10,000 floral-printed face masks for donation. You can also purchase a mask from the brand here.
Meanwhile, the New York-Based jewelry brand Adornia worked with its box supplier in Guangdong Province in China to invest in technology to produce and manufacture N95 masks.
The Collected Group, the parent company to Current/Elliot, Joie and Equipment, announced plans to donate masks to the New York City medical community on Thursday.
UPDATE, Friday, April 3: Beiersdorf, the makers of Nivea, Eucerin, Aquaphor and Coppertone, converted its facility in Tennessee to produce half a million units of medical-grade hand sanitizer to donate to the medical community and to non-profit organizations servicing those most in need across the U.S. and Canada.
UPDATE, Monday, April 6: The jewelry brand Kendra Scott has joined the Covid-19 relief efforts by working with local female volunteer groups to sew masks for healthcare professionals in the Austin, New Orleans, New York and California communities. The masks will be made of 100% cotton Kendra Scott yellow bandanas.
Alice + Olivia has mobilized its design teams, production teams and factories to create and distribute protective masks to hospitals and communities in need. This week, the first round of 5,000 masks will be distributed to Lincoln Hospital and Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, Safe Horizon — a center in New York City for victims of abuse — and Vincere Cancer Center in Arizona. The masks, which are made out of jersey material for reuse, will also be available to the public for purchase. The masks retail for $10 on aliceandolivia.com, and for every mask sold, the brand will donate one to the medical community.
Kontoor Brands, the lifestyle apparel company that owns Lee and Wrangler, announced Monday that it has begun producing 50,000 Level 1 patient gowns and 10,000 disposable isolation gowns for clinicians to assist hospitals that are dealing with an influx of patients as a result of Covid-19. The gowns will be produced by Kontoor at its owned and operated manufacturing facilities and will then be donated to North Carolina-based hospitals.
The skin-care brand True Botanicals has pivoted its business strategy, shifting its manufacturing and retail strategies to support Covid-19 relief efforts. On April 15, the brand will launch a clean lavender-scented hand sanitizer that will be free to all customers; it will then donate 3,000 units to first responders and healthcare workers on the frontline, as well as to Baby2Baby.
UPDATE, Tuesday, April 7: Thursday Boot Co is working with its factory partners in Mexico to produce HK-19 polypropylene masks. The brand plans to donate at least 14,000 masks by the end of the week to people working at hospitals, fire departments, homeless shelters and other organizations.
UPDATE, Wednesday, April 8: Marina Moscone worked with medical professionals on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic to produce 400 Level 1 washable protective masks that were delivered to the ER unit at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. The designer plans on sending additional masks to other area hospitals, including Mount Sinai, Cornell and NYU Langone, according to a press release.
Burton Snowboards announced it would donate 500,000 KN95 respirator masks, sourced and produced by its supply chain in China, to healthcare workers across the northeast United States. Of those, 48,000 masks went to hospitals across Vermont (where the company is headquartered) and to New Hampshire's Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center; the remaining 452,000 will go to hospitals in Boston and New York City. In addition to masks, Burton is working to produce medical face shields for healthcare workers in Vermont at its Rapid Prototype Facility in Burlington; its helmet and goggle division is partnering with GogglesforDocs.com to get its snow goggles to medical professionals who need eye protection.
Louis Vuitton has re-purposed its French workshops to begin production on non-surgical protective masks. Michael Burke, the brand's Chairman and CEO, visited the facility in Sainte-Florence, where 22 artisans are voluntarily stationed and already making masks, which have been approved by the different governing bodies and are created in collaboration with Mode Grand Ouest (a regional network of the textile industry who are supplying one of the main materials), that will be distributed to frontline healthcare workers.
Concepts, a Boston-based streetwear and sneaker store, is partnering with its apparel vendor's factory to divert production of its clothing to produce CDC-approved KN95 masks. These will then distributed to New York City healthcare institutions and workers in need of resources on a rolling basis.
UPDATE, Thursday, April 9: In the U.K., Barbour is making PPE for NHS workers at its factories in northeast England. Specifically, it's started making disposable gowns, which will be delivered to the Royal Victoria Infirmary later this week. The brand also hopes to produce gowns and scrubs in the near future for healthcare professionals at Royal Victoria, as well as at other hospitals near its South Shields headquarters.
Meanwhile, across the pond, Stitch Fix announced that its textile and sewing factory in Pennsylvania shifted production to manufacture washable, reusable masks that will be sent to a local medical facility in Reading.
Similarly, Paradised made hundreds of non-medical masks to donate to New York Presbyterian and the University Medical Center in New Orleans. The brand is also now offering free non-medical masks to anyone who wants one in the U.S. while supply lasts. Customers can either message the brand directly on Instagram or send an email to hello@paradised.com.
The Saudi-Arabian brand Sita is currently fundraising to produce reusable masks for New York hospitals in need, fashioned out of a fabric specially designed to protect from virus, bacteria, smog, dust, allergies and other particles.
UPDATE, Friday, April 10: Good American has donated 30,000 FDA-approved N95 masks to 18 hospitals across the country and has produced 10,000 non-medical masks, which are available for purchase on GoodAmerican.com. For every mask purchased, Good American will be donating one mask to partners in the community and local businesses in need.
After already committing to making non-surgical protective masks, Louis Vuitton expanded its Covid-19 relief efforts by starting to produce hospital gowns in its ready-to-wear atelier in Paris. These gowns will be provided to frontline workers in six Parisian hospitals.
UPDATE, Monday, April 13: Denim brand Mother is partnering with the city of Los Angeles to produce non-medical masks for workers in essential sectors. Together, with other local manufacturers, Mother and the LA Protects project pledge to donate 5 million masks. It's also selling a set of two non-medical, reusable masks on motherdenim.com. For every mask set sold from April 10 to April 30, the brand will contribute $10 to No Kid Hungry.
UPDATE, Tuesday, April 14: The luxury menswear brand Ermenegildo Zegna has started manufacturing protective medical overalls, with the goal of producing 280,000 units. According to WWD, 250,000 pieces will be distributed to the Piedmont region in Italy and the remaining 30,000 units will be sent to the Canton Ticino area in Switzerland.
In the U.S., Clare V. is making non-medical masks made from deadstock fabric and distributing them according to suggestions from customers, who can direct the brand to organizations in their local communities that might need them. (Organizations can also email the company at info@clarev.com directly for masks.)
Lotuff, another bag brand, has also joined the Covid-19 relief efforts. The brand's in-house studio has spent the past few weeks repurposing its space to make face shields for medical professionals and handmade face covers for the general public. The former are FDA-approved and have already been shipped to thousands of labs and hospitals nationwide. While the latter, meet all the CDC suggestions for face cover composition and are made out of vintage bandanas.
The men's clothing label Ben Sherman has joined forces with the fabric company Gladson to support the Costume Designers Guild, Motion Picture Costumers and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees in the production and delivery of up to 50,000 protective masks, sourced from high-quality cotton fabrics, to healthcare workers on the frontline of the pandemic in the U.S.
UPDATE, Wednesday, April 15: Beyond Yoga is joining relief efforts by creating non-medical masks using fabric from its clothing line; for every two-pack of masks purchased on its site, the brand will donate two masks to essential works on the front lines of the Covid-19 outbreak.
On the beauty front, the natural skin-care brand This Works is producing hand sanitizer in its facility to be donated to first responders in the U.K.
UPDATE, Thursday, April 16: In partnership with its parent company VF Corporation, Dickies is converting plants in Mexico and Honduras to produce urgently needed, FDA-approved isolation gowns for hospitals and healthcare workers. Dickies and VF Corporation expect to produce and deliver 50,000 gowns in May, and intend to create production capacity to make up to 675,000 gowns by June and up to 3.4 million by September.
Kes NYC has also shifted its operations to manufacturing protective face masks for healthcare personnel and customers in need of masks to wear outside. The brand plans to donate 20,000 cotton and silk masks to hospitals and organizations in the New York area.
Louis Vuitton re-purposed its French workshops to begin production on non-surgical protective masks earlier this month, and on Thursday, the label announced it would be doing the same in its American workshops. According to a press release, the face masks in production are made of cotton cloth with the ability to be re-used, washed and adjusted to fit a variety of users. The masks will be donated and distributed in states that are currently heavily impacted by Covid-19.
UPDATE, Friday, April 17: Lacoste announced Friday that it has produced 100,000 masks in France in just a few weeks. According to a press release, the brand is committed to increasing production to make 200,000 masks in the near future.
UPDATE, Monday, April 20: WHP Global, owner of Anne Klein has joined forces with the namesake designer's granddaughter to meet the immediate need for Personal Protection Equipment. The company has obtained 100,000 face masks through its supply chain, which it will distribute to essential workers and community organizations providing relief across the U.S.
In the beauty realm, hair-care brand Function of Beauty is manufacturing hand sanitizer to donate to healthcare providers and emergency first responders in the U.S. The production of the units will take place at its factory in Catawissa, Pennsylvania, which is currently employing over 180 people.
Loewe is joining the Covid-19 relief efforts abroad by donating 100,000 surgical masks to the Spanish Red Cross. The luxury label is also producing non-surgical masks in its Getafe factory, which it will distribute to Loewe employees and their families, as well as to volunteer workers.
Athletic Propulsion Labs (APL) has launched a Personal Protection Shield, which it will donate to medical and essential workers across the state of California. In addition, customers will receive a complimentary shield with every shoe purchase through the brand's website, while supplies last.
UPDATE, Tuesday, April 21: Michael Stars has begun producing non-medical masks to donate to healthcare workers. The goal is to distribute at least 10,000 masks total to LA Protects and local health clinics and organizations who are in need. The brand will also sell some of these face coverings on MichaelStars.com.
Nuuly, the clothing rental subscription owned by Urban Outfitters Inc., is working to create over 10,000 sewn masks to donate to hospital workers, grocery store employees and public transportation workers. The entire Urban Outfitters company has also sourced 15,000 units of Personal Protective Equipment that will be donated to first responders.
UPDATE, Wednesday, April 22: Ética, a sustainable lifestyle brand, has shifted its production line to exclusively making FDA-approved medical-grade and non-medical masks and PPE. Its factory in Puebla, Mexico has been transformed into a sterile facility and deemed an essential business; thus far, it has produced over 4,000,000 units for various governmental and health agencies.
Meanwhile, the New York-based brand Malia Mills has partnered with the non-profit Course of Trade and the NYC Economic Development Corp. to manufacture thousands of patient isolation gowns.
UPDATE, Thursday, April 23: Prabal Gurung has teamed up with the Covid Foundation to donate 2,000 N95 respirator masks to hospitals and frontline medical workers in New York. According to a press release, this initial donation is the beginning of the brand's ongoing response effort to get critical, medical-grade protections into the hands of those who are fighting to protect the community from the virus. You can donate here to support.
UPDATE, Wednesday, April 29: Mercado Global, a Brooklyn-based accessory label, is working with its artisans in rural Guatemala to produce high-quality masks that will be donated to healthcare workers at the frontlines of the pandemic. In just the first two weeks of production, the artisans made 8,000 masks and the brand expects to scale efforts to more than 30,000 masks per month.
UPDATE, Tuesday, May 5: Outdoor Voices has started making non-medical masks that will begin shipping in mid-May. All of the proceeds from the masks will go to Direct Relief.
In response to the shortage of hand-sanitizing products, Garnier USA will produce 2 million units of hand sanitizers at its Franklin, New Jersey manufacturing facility, which the company will then distribute to frontline retail employees at its brick-and-mortar partners in the most affected areas of the country.
GarnierDov CharneyLa Roche-posayGap Eileen FisherGuerlainLorealMangoH&mWarby ParkerLVMHH&MKeringEddie BauerEstee LauderKendra ScottCoronavirusInditexCOVID-19PVH CorpNet-a-PorterZaraNeiman MarcusNetworkNordstromLa PerlaClarins
Balenciagasaint laurentPradaErmanno ScervinoburberryChristian SirianoPrabal GurungBrandon MaxwellLoewe
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This Week in Superhero TV 11/23 – 11/28 →
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) 2014
It’s a rare occasion that I get the chance to watch a movie that has Oscar buzz surrounding it. I missed out on my chance last year with Blue is the Warmest Color which lost it’s chance due to the release schedule making it ineligible to be France’s choice as a Best Foreign Film nominee. But when you look at movies that specifically take a look at superheroes, really the only other time that was in consideration was back in 2008 with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. And many people claim that film as being the reason why the Oscars changed their rules to allow up to ten films in the Best Picture category was strongly due to the fact that The Dark Knight didn’t make the cut, but probably would have if more films were allowed. I haven’t seen nearly enough potential Oscar nominees this year, and the only ones that even have a small chance at entering into the big categories are this one and possibly Snowpiercer which also has a similar struggle because of its release date. But as for Birdman itself, it has some strong performances from everyone in the cast, and there are some impressive storytelling decisions in the direction of this film. It’s one of those films that I can tell has a lot to dig into that a single viewing can only scratch the surface, but it’s one that I greatly enjoyed and can’t wait to watch again in the near future.
One of the first things that I had heard about and noticed is how the film is shot. It’s a single camera that follows different characters in a simulated single take following the production of a Broadway show. I say simulated because the two hour film doesn’t take place over the course of two hours of the characters’ time, but over the course of a few days through the play’s previews on to the opening night. There are jumps in time that occasionally take place via an establishing shot showing the setting or rising sun, or does so through a more invisible jump in time where the constantly moving camera rotates around a character and people appear in the scene. It helps to give it a sense of distorted reality which is augmented by several of the moments when the camera is following Riggan Thomson who often hears the voice of Birdman in his head when he is alone and is able to move things with his mind. Or not. It’s another one of those distorted reality moments which is never fully clear, especially when it comes to the final shot of the movie. There are times when his telekinesis is explained in a more logical sense, as when he is by himself he starts destroying his dressing room by merely flicking his hand and it will spontaneously destroy itself, but when Galifinakis’s Jake comes in he is seen physically picking things up and smashing them. It also comes into play later in the film when Thomson seems suicidal and appears to leap off the roof and flies across the New York streetscape before “landing” back in front of the theater, forgetting to pay the cab. But there are moments that aren’t quite explained as in an early scene where an actor that Thomson isn’t happy with has a light fall on his head, which Thomson takes credit for. The question is left open whether he thinks it was through his telepathy, or if he merely set up the accident through more traditional means.
There’s also a level of meta which further helps to distort some of the reality in this film. Riggan Thomson is an actor past his prime who was known for playing the role of a famous and iconic superhero named Birdman in a series of films twenty years ago, and of course Michael Keaton himself as an actor is well known for playing Batman in Tim Burton’s first two movies and has spent many of the past several years outside of the spotlight. Edward Norton also plays a self absorbed actor named Mike Shiner who comes into the play to replace the injured actor. Shiner quickly becomes difficult to work with because he feels the need to rewrite the dialogue, and wants to be more method in his acting such as using real alcohol because his character should be drinking real alcohol, or trying to have sex with his actress girlfriend for real on stage. Norton himself has a reputation for being difficult to work with and it has been cited as one of the reasons why he was replaced as Bruce Banner in the Marvel movies due to his rewrites on the Incredible Hulk during production. There’s also an interesting scene that takes on the aspect of film criticism itself, or more specifically theater criticism, in a similar way that Ratatouille did with food criticism. Here, the theater critic is presented as someone who has a preconceived notion of the experience she will have before she even steps foot into the theater due to what she thinks she knows about the actor Riggan Thomson, or as she calls him, the celebrity Riggan Thomson. It’s a view on criticism that I have no doubts exists, though I do think it’s diluted due to the sheer number of people contributing to film criticism out there.
There are also some amazing visuals presented throughout the film, despite using what could feel like a very limiting film technique using the simulated single-take, there is a lot of gorgeous moments and opportunities for symbolism. One of the most frequently used is the reflection. This is a cast of actors playing actors playing roles, and there’s always the transition of what face we see vs. what face we show others. When Riggan is by himself we see one aspect of him, but when he’s with his ex-wife we see a different aspect of him, just as we see something different when he is on stage playing the character in his play which has him wearing a couple different wigs to further change the look of himself. I also loved the score and how it would occasionally integrate into the movie universe. Throughout most of the film it’s a very jazzy, but basic drum beat, and at one point the characters walk outside the theater and we see the street musician playing the drumset. Thomson even tosses him some change. Later on we hear what seems like vocals to the soundtrack, and again Thomson walks outside to see a street person hanging onto some random scaffolding shouting out what seems like ravings of a lunatic. And yet a lunatic who is shown with a dozen fluorescent halos tangled up above his head, and he suddenly breaks character and asks Thomson if it was too much, as if he was being directed by Thomson in his ravings. There’s also a moment towards the end of the film where Thomson gives into the voice of Birdman in his head and imagines himself in the next Birdman sequel: Phoenix Rising. There’s explosions, helicopters, and a giant mechanical vulture-like creature that looks fantastic and unexpected in this film supposedly set in the real world.
Throughout the entire film, what really helps ground it is Keaton’s portrayal of Riggan Thomson. It’s such a complicated character and as an audience, we get to see many different sides of him. Whether he’s discussing the importance of the success of their production to his friend and lawyer Jake, or his suicidal tendencies to his ex-wife. I also really loved a moment very close to the end where he has bandages over his face that makes it look like he is wearing a superhero mask, the part over the nose especially makes it look beaklike, and that is an important moment where he sheds this mask which makes a nice statement towards how he feels like he finally is shedding this Birdman persona, even if what happens next muddles that slightly. There are so many turns to his character that it’s hard to tell exactly what is going to happen next. There were several times when I thought things were going to go one way only to have them go in a slightly different way. From the trailers and what is seen within the movie, there are many moment where you worry about Thomson’s sanity. But there’s always the question at the back of your mind that there is something else there, that there’s something real within his insanity, especially when it comes to the final scene which leaves on a confusing sense of hope and wonder. Enough cannot be said about how this film really grabs your attention and spins it around until you’re not entirely sure what’s reality and what isn’t, but the characters always feel real and it’s fascinating to see what is going to happen next. I can’t recommend this film enough and I can’t wait to get the chance to see it again. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Posted on November 29, 2014, in 10's movies and tagged film, movies, review, Superhero. Bookmark the permalink. 17 Comments.
Chicks with Accents | November 29, 2014 at 2:04 am
I can’t believe I missed this movie when it released! I just kept putting it off so I guess now I might as well wait for it to release in the 1 Dollar cinema. But still just as excited and I’m glad you’re getting a dash of Oscar buzz in your niche.
-Mette
Bubbawheat | November 29, 2014 at 11:40 am
It’s been one of those weird rollout releases. It’s very much worth checking out at the dollar cinema if it plays these types of movies. I really loved it.
CMrok93 | November 29, 2014 at 3:55 pm
A very fun piece that hardly ever slows up. But when it does, it’s still interesting and at least sheds more light on these characters and why they matter. Good review.
Bubbawheat | November 29, 2014 at 8:20 pm
Agreed, it was a real fun time at the theater.
Chris | November 29, 2014 at 3:56 pm
Heh, I dunno how I didn’t even think of that Norton real life comparison with his character, but there it is. Great stuff, just another reason for me to appreciate this movie. Nice review here. 🙂
It was one of those things that I had heard about before watching the movie, but I think I would have caught it right away from all the behind the scenes trivia with the Incredible Hulk and how his character immediately starts rewriting the script here. Really great stuff in it.
Jess | December 1, 2014 at 1:29 pm
Great review! This film is just fantastic. It’s so unique and exciting with such excellent filmmaking and acting. I loved all the meta levels as you described. There’s going to be a lot to pick up on my second watch, I’m sure of it.
Bubbawheat | December 1, 2014 at 11:00 pm
Yeah, there’s so much to take in with this movie. I have a feeling it will be a long time favorite of mine down the road.
Abbi | December 5, 2014 at 11:43 am
I keep hearing such good things about this one!
Bubbawheat | December 5, 2014 at 9:20 pm
That’s because there’s a lot of good things to say about it. Hope you get the chance to catch it soon. I always forget who comes from where, but you’re in the UK, right? Or am I just imagining things? If so, do you know when it shows up over there?
Abbi | December 6, 2014 at 2:45 am
I am in the UK 😊
scott s. | February 25, 2015 at 10:19 am
I was lucky to see this one in the theater. great movie
BlueMax | October 24, 2016 at 5:04 am
I absolutely loved this movie when it released and still watch it from time to time. What I love the most about this movie is how stunningly crazy and real it is at the same time.
Cast is incredible in this movie, but it needs to be added how good Emma Stone was as she wasn’t mentioned in the review. I loved the way she portrayed Thomson’s daughter and it’s not the first time she gets to play a daughter of a difficult father in a superhero movie, which is a nice treat too.
Bubbawheat | October 24, 2016 at 10:29 pm
I haven’t gotten around to re-watching it just yet – too much time spent watching movies I haven’t seen yet. I agree that Emma Stone was great, she had plenty of fantastic moments.
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UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES OF GOVERNMENT BUDGET CUTS TO PUBLIC LIBRARIES
By Amir Borges Ferreira Neto
Recent pressure to reduce public budgets have been affecting public libraries all across the US. Such government budget cuts make other components of a library’s revenue, namely, donations from private individuals and grants, relatively more important. In our study, we show that every dollar spent by local, state and federal governments is correlated with a significant increase in donations. Therefore, policy-makers should be cautious when cutting funds from public entities, especially from cultural-type entities such as public libraries.
Pressures to reduce public budgets had an influence on public libraries in the US. There are, for example, reports of budget cuts in libraries in New York, Florida, Nebraska, Georgia, Michigan and Oregon (Blau 2011; Warburton 2013; Wood 2015). A quick search on Google News can present the interested reader with other recent examples. These budget cuts may have a significant negative effect on public libraries, as over 90 percent of their revenues, which accounted for $11.5 billion dollars in 2012, come from governments (IMLS, 2013). Thus, such government budget cuts make other components of a library’s revenue, namely, donations from private individuals and grants, relatively more important.
The question asked then is: what is the role of government on private donation behavior? Governments funding can bring in extra dollars in private donations (crowding in effect), or else it can reduce the amount of private donation for every dollar spent (crowding out). Both of these results are found in the Economics literature. Bekkers and Wiepking (2011) provide a thorough review of charitable giving laying out some of the reasons (or mechanisms) that explain why people donate.
In this study, I use the Public Libraries Survey (PLS) dataset. The PLS has been collected annually since 1988 and covers all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and outlying territories. As the PLS has over a 98 percent response rate, it can be considered a census of public libraries in the country. According to the IMLS website, these data are not attached to any specific program, and it is not mandatory. Therefore, there are no incentives to over- or under-report the values in the survey, which makes this data less subject to biased reporting. The PLS survey provides data for each library system covering several features, such as: location, population serviced, and administrative data (number of staff, revenues by source, costs, collection expenditures, collection, circulation, attendance, among others).
Table 1: States with budgets cuts and increases in the US
Because there is no negative donation, I have what is called a left-truncation. Thus, I use Tobit estimation to have consistent and unbiased estimations. The results suggest that every dollar spent by local, state and federal governments is correlated with an increase by 1.1 cents, 18 cents and 1.06 dollars in donations, respectively. Moreover, the results hint at an inverted U shape curve feature at every level of government expenditure. Intuitively, every dollar spent by the government on public libraries increases the amount of private donation at a diminishing rate.
There are several implications from the results presented above. Firstly, these results corroborate the interpretation from Borgonovi (2006) to a crowding in effect, which is that donors use government funding as a signaling mechanism. Secondly, because every dollar spent by the government is correlated with more revenue in private donation, the cuts on government budgets to public libraries would imply that they are worse than anticipated by policy-makers. On the one hand, it is not certain that any level of government would balance the loss in revenues from other level of government. On the other hand, the results indicate that libraries whose revenues are cut would also lose money from donation, because donors would have a different perception in view of the signaling mechanism.
Therefore, policy-makers should be cautious when cutting funds from public entities, especially from cultural-type entities such as public libraries because: (i) there seems to be an indirect budget effect that could further decrease revenues due to the suggested crowd-in effect; (ii) there might not be a substitution allowed in donation, i.e., donors could not reallocate a donation to a library into another public provided service, which could place more pressure on local governments; (iii) the direct cuts may force public libraries to close, which can have negative externalities, for instance, less access to the Internet and to jobs (ALA 2010 and iPAC 2016), a negative impact on education (Bhatt, 2010), and less tax-revenue if people value living close to libraries (Sheppard, 2010), among others.
American Library Association – ALA (2010). http://www.ala.org/research/sites/ala.org.research/files/content/initiatives/plftas/issuesbriefs/brief_jobs_july.pdf. Accessed on June 10, 2015.
Bekkers, R. and Wiepking, P. (2011) A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy: Eight Mechanisms That Drive Charitable Giving. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 40(5): 924-973.
Bhatt, R. (2010) The impact of public library use on reading, television, and academic outcomes. Journal of Urban Economics, 68(2):148 – 166.
Blau, R. (2011). Funding cuts closing book on all 62 branches in queens library. http://www.nydailynews.com/newyork/queens/fundingcutsclosingbook62 branchesqueenslibraryarticle1.141568.
Borgonovi, F. (2006) Do public grants to American theatres crowd-out private donations? Public Choice, 126(3/4):429–451.
Information Policy & Access Center – iPAC (2016) http://www.plinternetsurvey.org/analysis/public-libraries-and-employment. Acessed on June 10, 2016.
Institute of Museums & Libraries Services (2013) http://wwww.imls.gov/sites/default/files/fast_facts_pls_fy2012.pdf. Accessed on September 20, 2015.
Warburton, B. (2013). Libraries around the country under budget pressure. http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/06/funding/librariesaroundthecountryunder budgetpressure/
Woods, D. (2015). Bridgeton proposes to close Cumberland county library. http://www.nj.com/cumberland/index.ssf/2015/12/bridgeton_proposes_to_close_cumberland_county_libr.html
The article is based on:
Ferreira Neto, A.B. Charity and public libraries: Does government funding crowd out donations? J Cult Econ (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-018-9318-4
Amir Borges Ferreira Neto is Graduate Research Assistant and PhD Candidate in Economics, West Virginia University, USA.
http://www.freeimages.com, Sara Haj-Hassan
Cultural Economics, Cultural Policy Research, Econometric Studies, Financing of the arts
Amir Borges Ferreira Neto, crowding-in effect, donations, government budgets, public libraries, Public Libraries Survey, taxes, Tobit model
NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT ARTS AND CULTURE?
CHANGING FUNDERS, CHANGING VALUES? EVIDENCE ON CROWDFUNDING IN THE NETHERLANDS
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By Leo Smith December 19, 2020 Entertainment, Featured
Illustration by Zeinab Ajasa.
Consider the network TV drama. Once a week, eight months a year, with a mid-season break, and a summer hiatus. This network model is dead in the age of streaming, and as of November, “Supernatural,” the last great cult show of the network era, has breathed its last. For a brief, shining moment, it seemed like the show’s finale was going to break its own formula — and then, in the most cowardly manner possible, it did the exact opposite, succumbed to the old format, and ended in a mind-bogglingly stupid way that negated 15 years of character growth.
The character growth, specifically, of gun-toting, hard-drinking midwestern prettyboy monster hunter Dean Winchester.
First, let me explain how Dean operated in the narrative format. No matter what madness the cliffhangers or the season arcs wreaked, “Supernatural” always had to return to the same basic formula — weekly monster, road-tripping Winchester brothers Sam (the hulking Jared Padalecki) and Dean (the long-lashed Jensen Ackles). Because the show and the network wanted to attract the same viewing crowd to the same timeslot every week, the status quo was always reestablished. And on “Supernatural,” that status quo character was Dean. But because of that, the show never learned how to properly challenge him.
Dean wants to keep living the same life he and his little brother have lived since they were kids: He wants to drive the same black Chevy Impala his dad gave him, listen to the same 10 cassettes of ’70s rock, hunt monsters. Same car, same music, same life; Sam there, but Dean in charge, Castiel there but just as a friend. No change, no confrontation. In fact, Dean balks at change of the smallest kind — he’s cagey with outsiders, won’t let anyone else pick the music in the car, even gives Sam a hard time when he grows a beard. (Sam eventually shaves it.) When Sam talks about settling down and living a normal life, Dean is the one who says they were made for the hunting life, and that they can never truly give it up.
And as long as the show was to continue, this had to be the case. But there was always hope at the end of the tunnel — hope of an ordinary life of some kind, of raising kids and maybe giving them a better childhood than the one they had. There are a lot of reasons the finale failed, and each could fill its own article — it dropped plot threads irresponsibly, erased characters in ways that were sexist, ableist, and homophobic, to say nothing of the atrocious wigs — but it failed its central character, Dean, worst of all. It snatched away his chance for change and growth by taking away the one character who drove his character development, and instead indulging the showrunners’ cheap, outdated, male wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Stuck in Stasis
So why is Dean trapped in childhood patterns? It’s not just habit — it’s a maladaptive trauma response. Sam and Dean were raised by an abusive father. John Winchester often abandoned them for days at a time, leaving Dean, the elder brother, in charge while he went on a hunt or a bender. When he was around, John berated Dean while also expecting him to follow his orders without question. Dean carries this baggage very openly for the first few seasons — “Daddy’s blunt little instrument,” he calls himself in a vindictive dream monologue. Much of Dean’s early conflict stems from grappling with his father’s legacy, the impossibility of living up to his expectations coupled with the violent person he made Dean into.
But besides a lack of processing, the other reason Dean never changes is a meta one: Because to the writers, Dean Winchester is a male power fantasy. He’s an action hero, attractive, and charming, who loves ’em and leaves ’em, sleeping with women but always getting back on the road, Bon Jovi style. (At least until season 7, after which the one-night stands mysteriously stop… perhaps because he has someone else in his life filling that emotional space?) He’s a lone rider on the road, with his ’70s music, his tough-guy jackets, silver gun, and his sleek, black Chevy Impala with the trunk full of obscure weapons. He’s a James Dean (get it?), a “Rebel Without a Cause” (a film noted for its queer subtext).
So the showrunners gives Dean enemies and conflicts, but they are so enamored of this midwestern fantasy Han Solo concept that they don’t meaningfully address his character flaws — his anger and how it affects his loved ones, or his fierce, blind adherence to his status quo — the real legacies of John Winchester, handed down with the car.
Meanwhile, in spite of the writing, the lone rider is being played with such sympathetic complexity by Ackles that Dean un-flattens from a “tough guy” to a “traumatized guy wearing the tough guy persona as armor.” And living in a queer subtext to make Sal Mineo proud. Because there’s one person who does challenge Dean — unlike Sam, unlike the writers. That’s Castiel, Dean’s fallen angel best friend who’s in love with him.
Castiel the Catalyst
Castiel (cult darling Misha Collins) is originally a footsoldier of Heaven, ordered to rescue Dean from Hell and manipulate him into triggering the Biblical apocalypse. Cas — a nickname he receives from the Winchesters — comes to see the good in humanity through Dean, and rebels against Heaven to join his cause. From Season 5 onward they are brothers-in-arms, of a sort. (Like everything else on “Supernatural,” it’s complicated.) Cas and Dean’s constantly changing relationship and onscreen chemistry make them the most dynamic relationship on the show, outstripping the relationship with Sam sometime around when the showrunners give up on writing him long-term plot arcs.
But despite Cas’s devotion to Dean, he does not think Dean is perfect, and continues to challenge Dean when Sam stops doing so. Nowhere is this better seen than in the final three seasons, when Dean gets a chance to process his family trauma by raising a child of his own. Cas adopts Jack, the antichrist*, and the two celestial beings move in with Sam and Dean. Sam is an affectionate stepdad, but Dean is not — at first, he’s openly cruel to Jack, replicating his father’s toxic behavior. With Cas’s influence, Dean begins to grow out of it.
(* There is a reason I’m not giving very much background on the actual plot arcs of “Supernatural” and that reason is that the plots are consistently and magnificently insane. To give you a small sample, Cas’s adopted son Jack (the babyfaced Alexander Calvert), a nice young nephilim with unfathomable powers, is actually the child of Lucifer and a human woman, conceived when Lucifer possessed the body of the United States President. Lucifer didn’t do much else as the president, besides sleeping with an aide. It was a minor mid-season arc in Season 12, never really mentioned again. Produced before the 2016 election, by the way.)
Then, in early season 15, Jack is killed, and Dean, ever the emotionally constipated, takes his anger out on Cas. But Cas, rather than let Dean treat him badly, walks out on him. This argument arc lasts several episodes, a virtually unheard-of interval of emotional processing in 15 years of “Supernatural.” Cas doesn’t relent until Dean apologizes. Finally, he does, and it’s one of his most emotional speeches in the whole show.
“I don’t know why I get so angry,” he says to Cas, in a prayer. “I just know that it’s always been there. And when things get bad, it comes out. And I can’t stop it. … I’m sorry, Cas,” he says, “I’m sorry it took me so long to say it.”
There is no other character who gets that kind of introspection out of Dean. Castiel is the person who pushes Dean’s character development. And Castiel is in love with Dean. But this does not fit with the lone hero story that the showrunners decided they wanted to tell. And an intimate relationship with another man certainly does not fit with their straight male fantasy.
So instead, the show fridged Cas, putting a depressing end bracket on his story, and spelling disaster for Dean’s ending.
In the third-to-last episode, Castiel confesses his love to Dean before being snatched away by a cosmic darkness entity called the Empty. This confession of love and subsequent death (besides causing an unprecedented stir on Twitter and Tumblr) doomed the final two episodes of the show. With Castiel gone, Dean’s character arc stops all forward motion.
In the next episode, the penultimate of the show, Sam, Dean, and Jack defeat the big bad. (God Himself. Again, I’m not going to get into it.) And then in the finale, Sam and Dean go back to hunting, like always. They fight some vampires in a barn, save a couple of kids, and then Dean is accidentally impaled on a spike of rebar. He tells Sam not to call an ambulance, succumbs willingly, and dies.
Sam grows old on Earth without his brother. Castiel’s love confession is never mentioned again. Dean ascends to heaven, gets into the car he inherited from his dad, and drives off, alone.
Heaven is a Place in Hell
For the last 30 minutes of the finale, I watched, horrified, as Dean got steamrollered back into a flattened version of his season 1 self, and I thought back on all kinds of failed endings I’d seen before. Most of all, I thought about Jamie Lannister in “Game of Thrones,” who after seven grueling seasons, finally chose his own path and partner — only to take a u-turn back to his toxic childhood dynamic to die, like Dean. As Laura Hudson wrote of the “Game of Thrones” ending: “Nobody grows. Nobody gets better or more interesting. The story of ‘Game of Thrones’ right now is a story of regression, of spectacle over humanity.”
The spectacle in this case? It’s that goddamn car. When Dean reaches heaven, he gets his “heart’s desire,” which, apparently, is to drink some of the cheap beer his dad used to drink, and then get in his Impala and drive forever. I think the showrunners’ failure can be completely summed up by their treatment of the car. The car represents all the things Dean never got to grow out of. But the writers don’t see it that way. For them, in their fantasy of American masculinity, there is nothing sexier than that sleek black classic car. So he gets to keep the car, because they want to keep the car.
At the end of a good, well-written story, that car would be destroyed, or at least altered. If the story was going to challenge Dean, force him to undergo radical change, kill the man he used to be and bring back someone new like a phoenix from the ashes — which is what we want from a story — that car would be destroyed, “The Search for Spock” style. It would hurt, but it would mean a new beginning.
Perhaps most infuriating is the knowledge that to the showrunners, they didn’t write a tragic ending — to them, it’s a bittersweet victory.
But is this what Dean would have wished for? To die young (41) and go to a regressive heaven like this? Certainly yes, in season 1. But in Season 15? After everything he went through? After becoming a dad? Did he change in all that time, or didn’t he? I literally don’t know. The narrative never commits. If it was a successful story, he would have changed. And that would have meant that his desires changed.
We never find out how Dean, with his tendency towards stasis, would have dealt with the possibility of a changed relationship with Cas, his closest friend and co-parent. Nor do we know whether his early-season preference for women — notably absent for the latter half of the show — was something that could have changed in this special case. Because the show, rather than engage with this question, swept Cas offscreen, and then before there was any time for processing, killed Dean.
The show never truly challenged Dean to grow, in failing to do so, it damned him to an eternal stasis where his lonely childhood plays on repeat for eternity. This isn’t heaven. It’s purgatory. Maybe even hell. And now they’ve trapped him there forever — removing all possibilities for future change. The curtain drops with all possible futures closed, and so dies TV’s last monster-of-the-week show, TV’s last great will-they-or-won’t-they, and the last great network cult show — in a final act of cruel, cowardly, proprietary storytelling.
castiel, cult tv, cw supernatural, dean winchester, destiel, misha collins, network tv, sam winchester, supernatural
Entertainment, Featured TV’s Last Great Will-They-or-Won’t-They
By Leo Smith
Leo Smith (BFA 2021) is a Managing Editor and former English student. Their vinyl collection consists of one (1) Tchaikovsky piano concerto.
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Home Misc
Injury Problems at Liverpool: How will Jurgen Klopp’s defence line up in upcoming matches?
by Archak Mukherjee
in Misc
The international break is almost on the verge of ending and footballers are about to return to usual club football in Europe. However, during these breaks it is being observed that there has been an increase of Covid-19 positive cases among the footballers from various countries, resulting in the players staying in quarantine and missing a number of games for their club and country. In addition to that, players have been suffering injuries due to fixture congestion and lack of rest. Injury problems at Liverpool are one of the serious issues at the EPL club due to this tight schedule, as many of their regular players are currently out of the squad due to injury or being positive from the virus, resulting in a tougher job in hand for their manager Jurgen Klopp. Currently, there are eight players from the Liverpool side who are out of playing football and are likely to miss the team’s next match after the international break. In addition to that, most of the injured players of Liverpool are not expected to return to the field before mid-December. Among the eight players that Liverpool is currently missing, they have four of their regular defenders injured – Virgil van Dijk, Joe Gomez, Andrew Robertson, and Trent Alexander-Arnold. Apart from that, midfielder Thiago Alcantara, Fabinho, and Alex-Oxlade-Chamberlain are also injured and their talisman Mohamed Salah is out being for COVID-19 positive. With so many of their regular players injured and important matches coming up in the next two weeks against Leicester City, Wolves, Ajax, or Atalanta, Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has to improvise a lot to field is starting XI in the upcoming matches.
Detailed insight into Injury Problems at Liverpool: When the players are expected to return?
The injury nightmare started when Virgil van Dijk, their leader in defense suffered an ACL injury against Everton at Goodison Park during an away fixture against their city rivals in Premier League this season in October. The defender suffered a ruptured cruciate ligament when he ran into Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, as a result, he was subbed out in the eleventh minute of the game and had to undergo knee surgery. A few days later, the club published the news of the surgery being completed successfully and the player has been recovering well, but there is no concrete news about his expected return. According to several sources, it may take for the player till April 2021 to fully recover, but he still might be out of playing football for the rest of the season and there is not much hope for him returning to the field before next season, given the severeness of his injury.
Injury Problems at Liverpool: Moment of Virgil van Dijk’s injury
If Virgil van Dijk’s injury was not enough for the Scousers, their second hit came when another defender Joe Gomez suffered a tendon injury on his left knee during a practice session with England national football team during the international break in the second week of November. The following day he had undergone surgery and the successful completion of the surgery was published by the club, but it was also informed to the fans by the club that he is not likely to return before June 2021. His condition is being currently monitored by the club’s medical team and he will soon join a rehabilitation program. After both of their regular centre backs’ being sidelined by such long term injury, the Reds’ are no doubt in very big trouble.
In addition to that, their right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold suffered a calf muscle injury during the team’s last match before the international break against Manchester City and is out for four weeks. The right-back’s injury is not as serious as his other two teammates and is expected to return during the second week of December. But he will still miss some of the clubs’ vital matches this season against Leicester City and Wolves in the Premier League and Ajax and Atalanta in the Champions League. The most recent addition to the list of the Reds’ injured defender is Andrew Robertson, who suffered an injury during the international break. Robertson was completely fit when he joined his national side Scotland for the international matches in November, but recently Scotland manager confirmed about his injury saying “Andy Robertson is the most doubtful out of the ones who have a wee question mark over them” and was left out of the squad for his country’s clash against Slovakia. Robertson is facing some hamstring difficulties, but the full extent of his injuries is still unknown and his recovery time is not officially announced yet by his club or his national team.
Apart from the injuries of the first-team defenders, Liverpool talisman Mohamed Salah has been tested positive for coronavirus a week ago which puts the player out of the time for at least two weeks or more. Their defensive midfielder Fabinho, who has also played as a part-time centre back this season for the club is out due to a hamstring injury and their newly signed midfielder Thiago Alcantara has been in and out of the squad due to injuries since joining the Scousers from Bayern Munich and hasn’t played since the away game against Everton due to another knee injury. Although Fabinho and Thiago are expected to return from their current injury during the third week of November, there was no sign of them in the club’s recent training session at their newly opened AXA Training Centre at Kirkby.
Problem in defense: How will Jurgen Klopp solve these Injury Problems at Liverpool?
Injury Problems at Liverpool: Jurgen Klopp has a lot of mess to clear
It is true that Liverpool won two major trophies in the last two seasons – the UEFA Champions League in 2019 and English Premier League in 2020, ending a drought of 29 years for the trophy under Jurgen Klopp, but it is also true that Jurgen Klopp had a pretty thin squad at his disposal during last three seasons and he doesn’t have many back-up options for every position in his squad, especially in the defensive area. During his most glorious time at the club in the last two years, his back four was almost unchanged in most of the matches where he fielded Virgil van Dijk, Andrew Robertson, and Trent Alexander-Arnold regularly. Joe Gomez took a little longer to ensure his starting XI spot, while Dejan Lovren and Joel Matip were chosen earlier to partner with Van Dijk but Gomez has established himself as the permanent starter along with Van Dijk, Robertson, and Alexander-Arnold since last season. However, Klopp was never forced to face such a situation where all the players of his regular back four were injured at once. However, Klopp’s side is currently sitting at the third position in the league table with just one point behind table leaders Leicester City who will also be their next opponent. The only thing in Jurgen Klopp’s mind right now is to field an efficient defensive setup to manage to win the next match or at least manage to pull out a draw. The manager obviously needs to shuffle his pack from the available first-team players or may bring some youth team players to play for the first team. He also might consider changing his formation from his favourite 4-3-3 to a more defensive 3-5-2 or 5-3-2. We’ll look into what are the current options available to play in defence for the Reds’ manager.
What are the Available first-team choices for Klopp amidst these Injury Problems at Liverpool?
Joel Matip – Centre Back
Joel Matip will definitely start for The Reds as he is the only experienced centre back currently fit to play. Jurgen Klopp will definitely expect him to lead the Reds’ defence with his experience and accuracy and it will be a huge task for the Cameroon defender. The fans will have more expectations from him in the absence of both Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez.
Nathaniel Phillips – Centre Back
If Fabinho doesn’t fully recover before the game against Leicester City, Nathaniel Phillips is the one who is expected to partner Joel Matip. He joined the club from VfB Stuttgart this summer and has played only one match for them. Jurgen Klopp had to give him more match time sooner or later, and the breakthrough might arrive for the player in such a moment of crisis. If Phillips can manage to impress the manager, he might become the second regular starter with Matip during the absence of Van Dijk and Gomez for the rest of the season.
James Milner – Left Back/ Right Back
Veteran Liverpool midfielder James Milner has previously played in the full-back position under Jurgen Klopp multiple times and under current circumstances, Klopp will definitely want to bring the 34 years old back in the starting XI. Given the full extent of Andrew Robertson’s injury which is not fully known, if the player misses the next match, Milner will be Klopp’s first preference to start at the left-back position. Given the players’ versatility, as he can also play on the right side, he will be definitely one of the members of the defensive quartet.
Neco Williams – Right Back
Injury Problems at Liverpool: Neco Williams can be a good option
19 years old Neco Williams is a right-back whom Jurgen Klopp might think of using in absence of Trent Alexander-Arnold, another high-profile loss due to injury problems at Liverpool. He is a player from Liverpool’s youth team and was considered as Trent’s back up for this season. This current injury problem might give him the much-desired breakthrough for the senior team. Although the Welshman was seen to be sitting on the bench during Wales’ 3-1 Nations League victory against Finland after their coach Rob Page revealed that Williams had taken a kick to the foot during the match against the Republic of Ireland on Sunday, it seems to be nothing serious as of now.
Konstantionos Tsimikas – Left Back
Konstantinos Tsimikas was signed by Liverpool during the last transfer window from Olympiacos to increase the bench strength of the Scousers. The left-back hasn’t seen any action since joining the club. But he is definitely an option for Jurgen Klopp to be considered amidst the injury problems at Liverpool.
Sepp van den Berg – Centre Back
18-year-old Sepp van den Berg is a promising centre back from Liverpool’s under-19 team who might get a first-team call during the current crisis. The Dutch player is a regular starter for Liverpool under-19 team and Jurgen Klopp has his eyes on him.
Injury Problems at Liverpool: What is the Long-Term Solution?
Dayot Upamecano : A potential transfer target in Winter amidst Injury Problems at Liverpool
Although there are a number of young players are available at Jurgen Klopp’s disposal, none of them except Matip is experienced enough to be an undisputed starter for his team amidst the injury problems at Liverpool. The manager and Liverpool management might be considering to sign a key player for the centre back position who can lead the backline during the absence of Virgil van Dijk. Given the long term injury of Van Dijk and Gomez, it is a more realistic choice to be considered and very much to be expected as Klopp’s highest priority. There are ongoing rumours about Dayot Upamecano and Kalidou Koulibaly being linked with the club, although there are players like Willi Orban and Ozan Kabak who are also under the clubs’ radar. Upamecano could be the perfect choice for them under current circumstances but the player won’t be a cheap buy in any possible way. For this reason, the club might go for a less expensive option Schalke’s Ozan Kabak or Upamecano’s teammate at RB Leipzig, Willi Orban.
Despite having a thin squad and few backup options, it is true that Jurgen Klopp managed to do very well during the last two seasons but at the same time he and his players were extremely lucky with injuries. The Gegenpressing style of gameplay Klopp implemented with his Liverpool squad, makes players take huge workload and physical pressure. Klopp didn’t have a strong bench and didn’t rotate his squad more often while his players managed to take this huge workload and still the key players maintained to remain fit to win two back-to-back major trophies in the last two seasons. However, right now the situation is completely different for Jurgen Klopp, and we’ll have to wait to see how he manages to set his squad or his strategy in order to cope with this crisis and still maintain the club’s high standard of performance which was delivered in the last few seasons.
What are your thoughts about the Injury Problems at Liverpool? Please let us know in the comments below.
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Tags: EPLLiverpool
Bengaluru FC Squad Preview 2020/21: Can the consistent Blues lift their second title this year?
UCL Fantasy Matchday 4 Guide : Players to have in your squad after International break
Archak Mukherjee
A Software Engineer, who is fascinated by the poetry of Football. Loves to explore the game as he believes there is always something new, something wonderful in this game. Always likes to put his thoughts into words and that's why he started writing article on Football.
Arsenal’s Winter Transfer Targets: Who can they sign to revamp their luck in Premier League?
England won the World Cup in 1966: Football came home in Bobby Moore’s hands
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Dan Brown To Speak In Hartford, CT
Dan Brown, who thrilled readers worldwide with "The Da Vinci Code" and whose latest novel, "Inferno," was Amazon.com's No. 1 seller for 2013, will appear at the The Bushnell in Hartford in conversation with WNPR radio personality John Dankosky on June 7, presented by The Mark Twain House & Museum.
Tickets are $25 to $75 and will go on sale Friday, Jan. 10 at 10 a.m. for the general public and on Tuesday, Jan. 7 at 10 a.m. for Twain House & Museum members. VIP tickets are $250 and include a pre-event reception with Brown, premium seating and a pre-signed copy of "Inferno." Brown's novels, which explore symbolism and conflicts between science and religion, have 200 million copies in print, in 52 languages.
Written by Christopher Hodapp at 12/31/2013 No comments:
St. Louis Feast of St. John Friday December 27th
I will be in St. Louis tomorrow for the Tuscan Lodge #360/Crestwood-Anchor Lodge # 443 Feast of St. John Festive Board at 6PM at the Missouri Athletic Club Friday evening. Cost is $65. For more information, see the Eventbrite page here. Looking forward to being there!
First Black Master in Kentucky
From the Messenger Inquirer in Kentucky, Searcy voted first black Masonic master in Kentucky:
A local lodge of the Free and Accepted Masons of Kentucky, known as Freemasons, will welcome a new leader.
Rick Searcy will become the first black master of a Freemason lodge in Kentucky and, possibly, in the Southeast, he said. He will be installed Saturday at Ensor Lodge No. 729. Seating will begin at 1 p.m., and the ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. The lodge, with 140 registered members, is at Kentucky 142 and Kentucky 144. The ceremony and dinner are free and open to the public.
Indiana Library & Museum
I had the honor of being elected as Associate Director of the Grand Lodge of Indiana Masonic Library and Museum today. Many thanks to the Board. I'm looking forward to greater involvement in the Library & Museum this year, and we have great plans in store. First on the agenda is to purchase $1000 worth of books to help get caught up in modernizing the Library. New exhibits are coming, and new video projects are on the agenda, as well. Many thanks to Mike Brumback, our Director, and our IUPUI intern Kelby Dolan, for their hard work over the past year.
Martha's Heart Pin from GL of Maryland
Safely tucked away in the Grand Lodge of Maryland’s museum is a true treasure—a special pin that Martha Washington gave to her husband as a token of her affection. The family tradition is that George wore this pin on the inside of his jacket for nearly 30 years while serving his beloved country.
Gifted to the museum in 1897 by a direct descendant of Martha Washington, it is there displayed as a striking memorial to Brother Washington.
Now YOU can own a unique piece of history! For the first time ever, the museum has issued an official reproduction—the “Martha’s Heart” pin. Crafted in the United States by master goldsmiths, and hand-enameled, these pins faithfully duplicate the priceless original. Offered in solid 14 karat gold or in sterling silver layered in 14 karat gold, the pin would become a valuable addition to your patriotic collection or as a meaningful symbol of your love and devotion. Approved by the curators of Mount Vernon for sale in their gift shop, the pin is being offered directly to Freemasons and their families at a substantial savings from the regular retail price.
Martha’s Heart Pin in sterling silver layered with 14k gold with hand enameling $98.50 + shipping & handling.
Wednesday at Illinois' Aurora Commandery
I'll be speaking tomorrow night at Aurora Commandery of Knights Templar in Aurora, Illinois, at Jerusalem Temple, 710 N. Highland Avenue. Doors open at 7:00PM. Hope to see you there.
CBS Sunday Morning to air segment on Freemasonry
From my friend Piers Vaughan in New York:
CBS Sunday Morning to air segment on Freemasonry this Sunday (December .
CBS have just confirmed that, barring major breaking news, the story on Freemasonry by Mo Rocca will be aired this Sunday between 9:00-10:30am EST. This was put together a few months ago, and will feature members of the Grand Lodge of New York, the House of the Temple and other contributors. The intention was to present a fair and accurate view of Freemasonry, rather than the 'shock horror' interpretations aired in recent years.
UPDATE: See the segment here.
Tuesday at Logan Lodge No. 575
I will be speaking Tuesday evening, December 3rd, at Logan Lodge No. 575 in downtown Indianapolis. They meet on the third floor in the beautiful Ionic Room of Freemasons Hall at 525 North Illinois Street. Lodge opens at 6:30PM. I will be speaking on the strange case of Egyptian influence on Freemasonry throughout our history. I'm looking forward to being there.
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Lipchitz, JaquesNicola Petek2020-11-19T10:56:45+02:00
LIPCHITZ
1891 Druskininkai, Lithuania – 1973 Capri
Jacques Lipchitz, one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century and a pioneer of Cubism, created cubist works inspired by Diego Rivera, Picasso and Juan Gris in Paris. Later, his baroque sculptures become more expansive and more organic. The themes of his figures and groups are often inspired by mythology and the Bible, but they are also a commentary on contemporary political developments.
Chaim Jakob Lipchitz, son of German-American parents, moved to Paris at the age of 18 to study at the École des beaux-arts and at the Académie Julian. From now on he called himself Jacques. He made the acquaintance with Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso among others and from 1912 regularly exhibited in the Salon d’Automne and in the Salon National des Beaux-Arts. In 1925, after receiving the French citizenship, he moved to Boulogne-sur-Seine. In 1941 the Jewish artist managed to escape to New York thanks to the Emergency Rescue Committee. In 1946 he returned to Paris for a few months. In 1948 he became an American citizen and moved to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York in 1949. From the 1950s, his work was honoured with numerous prizes and exhibitions. Lipchitz took part in the Venice Biennale in 1952 and twice in the documenta in Kassel (1959 and 1964). From 1962 he received numerous large public contracts. Lipchitz died in Capri in 1973 and was buried in Jerusalem.
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Home Analysis Brexit and the Ongoing Saga of the EU
Brexit and the Ongoing Saga of the EU
By George Friedman
British Prime Minister David Cameron has negotiated a new relationship with Brussels. The deal, reached with European leaders on Feb. 19, addresses some of Britain’s concerns over its membership in the EU. For instance, it allows Britain to impose a four-year emergency brake on in-work benefits for European migrants residing in Britain, a policy that would be in place for a period of seven years. Importantly for the British business community, Britain will be allowed to take measures to protect the City of London and ensure British businesses do not suffer disadvantages due to the country’s non-membership in the eurozone. When it comes to the overall direction of European integration, Cameron secured a concession that Britain would not be legally bound to seek an ever closer union.
As with any European Union agreement, the deal is complex. Simply understanding what it says is not easy. Understanding what it will mean is even harder. All treaties are subject to interpretation, and whether the British government’s interpretation will match that of the EU leadership — and, more important, the vast bureaucratic complex that will actually administer it — is another question. And of course, whether this agreement will compel the British public to vote to remain in the EU, now that a referendum has been called for June 23, is another question.
It is unclear how the referendum will go. But what the referendum will turn on is the degree to which Europe will shape life in Britain, and the degree to which the British will be drawn into Europe’s various misadventures, such as the immigrant crisis. But it goes deeper. The argument in Britain is whether paying the price — financial and emotional — of giving oversight powers to Brussels is worth the benefits. Cameron is trying to find a middle ground between those who are tired of Europe’s complexity and constant state of crisis, and those who see membership in Europe as an economic and political boon.
However, we must also ask: does the agreement really matter? Not in the sense of the endless debate it will generate in Brussels and London, but rather in the sense of whether the EU is something Britain has to pay attention to any longer. There is an agreement. But member states have grown used to ignoring agreements. France has long ignored agreements on deficits. The Hungarians have ignored rules on a range of topics. Now everyone is ignoring rules on open borders and immigration. What has emerged in the last two years is a European Union where member states pay attention to European regulations only when it suits them, and an EU leadership that does nothing about it.
The British government is more than aware of this process. It knew that it needed the EU to make some concessions if it were to have a chance to stay in the union. And the British, like others, see the benefit of being formal members of the EU, if it leaves them free to pursue their own interests their own way. That is what is emerging in Europe. The EU is not collapsing, nor is there a rush to the exits. The EU is simply being ignored when domestic politics dictate. Yes, the complex business of the EU is continuing, money is being transferred, rules are being promulgated, meetings are being held. And the members participate. Unless it doesn’t suit them.
Therefore, a vote to leave the EU seems gratuitous because the degree to which anything is actually binding in the EU is declining. If not Cameron’s government, then certainly future British governments will determine the direction Britain will take. The decline in relevance of the EU will approximate the ends of opponents of Europe. At the same time, among some Britons there is a deep loathing of the EU, that goes back to a loathing of the continent that shaped some parts of British culture. So, it will be a referendum on taste more than substance. And that means the vote will be that much less important, whichever way it goes.
There is another dimension to this deal. Our readers know the we have been predicting a financial crisis built around the Italian banking system. This weekend, Reuters indicated there is a “new storm on financial markets” emerging in the eurozone. One of the key contributors to this storm, it was argued, is Italy.
The central argument of the Reuters article was this:
Global market turmoil since the start of the year has helped set warning lights flashing in euro zone sovereign bond markets. In early February, the premium that investors charge to hold Portuguese, Spanish and Italian government debt rather than German bonds hit some of the highest levels since the euro zone crisis that peaked in 2011-2012.
European bank shares have been badly hit by concerns over their high stock of non-performing loans, new regulatory burdens and a squeeze on profits due to sub-zero official interest rates. New EU banking regulations that force shareholders and bondholders to take first losses if a bank needs rescuing are further spooking the market, notably in Italy.
Geopolitical Futures is not, for better or worse, the conventional wisdom, which is often represented by the media. However, it is significant that the severity of Italy’s financial problems has been picked up by the mainstream press because what the conventional wisdom says matters. It matters for three reasons. First, conventional wisdom can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Second, what used to be an obscure idea can be elevated to mainstream thinking. Third, it makes me feel good to have Reuters pick up a theme we have been addressing since our founding.
In terms of financial crisis, the first point is important. As I have argued, markets are not about reality but about perceptions of reality. When Reuters says that a new market storm may be coming, they have changed the definition of reality. What has been a preposterous marginal view becomes the mainstream view. And people act on the mainstream view, particularly funds investing other people’s money, whose primary goal is to not look abysmally stupid. Doing what everyone else does may be stupid but not abysmally. Therefore, a spate of articles by Reuters could trigger what we have thought is coming.
We have been focused on the non-performing loan (NPL) issue in Italy, and less on Spain or Portugal. But it followed that a banking crisis would hit sovereign debt markets. A reasonable case can be made that sometime at the end of one of the coming quarters, Italian (and maybe Spanish and Portuguese) NPLs could trigger a massive crisis in Europe.
If this happens before the referendum in June, and I suspect it will at least become an obviously rising tsunami by then, the entire vote turns away from the issues I have raised here, and away from the issues Cameron has negotiated. The referendum will be about how the British lifeboat stays afloat in the chaos of Europe.
Returning to the Beginning
George Friedman - January 16, 2020
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Duval County has put a mask requirement in place as a result of the increasing number of cases in the area. Even though members of the local government have been strongly recommending the use of face coverings for a long time, this is the first instance where masks were made compulsory. Individuals can choose to wear face coverings that are either cloth or of the medical type but are required to do so in both indoor and outdoor locations. The same rule also applies to any location where social distancing is not easy to maintain.
Enforcement is said to be a matter of personal responsibility, according to a senior official in the Mayor’s Office. In terms of exemptions, emergency professionals are not required to follow this order as their departments will determine the appropriate face coverings for them to use on the job. Also, children below the age of six are also not required to wear face coverings.
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EMERGENCY EXECUTIVE PROCLAMATION 2020-005
TO: All Elected Officials, Department Heads, Division Chiefs, Boards and Independent Agencies – Consolidated City of Jacksonville
FROM: Lenny Curry, Mayor
SUBJECT: Proclamation and Declaration of Emergency in Accordance with Chapter 674, Jacksonville Ordinance Code due to Emergency Conditions.
By virtue of the authority vested in me as Mayor by the Charter and as Chief Executive and Administrative Officer of the Consolidated Government, I hereby proclaim and declare a state of emergency exists associated with the Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).
WHEREAS, on March 1, 2020, in response to the World Health Organization’s declaration of COVID-19 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, Governor Ron DeSantis issued Executive Order Number 20-51, declaring a State of Florida Public Health Emergency associated with the threat to Florida residents associated with COVID-19 and invoking the State of Florida emergency response actions by the Florida Department of Health and the State Health Officer; and
WHEREAS, on March 9, 2020, in response to eight counties in Florida with positive COVID-19 cases, Governor Ron DeSantis issued Executive Order Number 20-52, directing the Director of the Division of Emergency Management, as the State Coordinating Officer, to execute State of Florida’s Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan and other response, recover, and mitigation plans necessary to cope with the emergency; and
WHEREAS, Governor DeSantis’ Executive Orders 20-51 and 20-52 are hereby incorporated and adopted into this Emergency Executive Proclamation to the extent Duval County is obligated to respond thereto; and
WHEREAS, on March 13, 2020, President Donald J. Trump declared a national emergency to combat COVID-19; and
WHEREAS, on March 13, 2020, I issued Emergency Executive Proclamation 2020-001 to declare a local state of emergency to invoke the emergency response authorities in Chapter 674, Ordinance Code; and
WHEREAS, in response to the issuance of several Executive Orders rendered by Governor Desantis associated with the gradual reopening of the state, my local Emergency Proclamations and Executive Orders were no longer required and were allowed to expire; and
WHEREAS, the CDC advises that, while a significant portion of individuals with COVID- 19 are asymptomatic, the virus can still spread between people interacting in close proximity—for example, speaking, coughing, or sneezing—even if those people are not exhibiting symptoms; and
WHEREAS, the CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain or are not being followed in order to slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others; and
WHEREAS, the CDC defines “social distancing” as limiting close contact (less than 6 feet of separation) with others outside your household in indoor and outdoor spaces; and
WHEREAS, the CDC does not recommend wearing cloth face covering for children under the age of 6, or anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance; and
WHEREAS, cloth face coverings are relatively inexpensive and readily available as the CDC states they can be made from household items and provides online guidance for making “do-it-yourself” coverings for people that cannot or do not want to buy one from the increasing sources producing and selling coverings; and
WHEREAS, an increasing number of state and local governments throughout the United States and Florida are requiring facial coverings to be worn in public; and
WHEREAS, the State of Florida has not preempted local governments from regulating in the field of minimum health requirements with respect to COVID19; and
WHEREAS, it is necessary to invoke the emergency response authorities in Chapter 674, Ordinance Code in order to enable the Consolidated City of Jacksonville to respond to its obligations under Governor DeSantis’ Executive Orders 20-51 and 20-52 and to appropriately respond to the needs of Duval County and its citizens.
NOW THEREFORE, it is declared and ordered as follows, to take immediate effect in the Consolidated City (including the Beaches and Baldwin):
(1) Every person over the age of six (6) who is in a public space shall wear a face mask or covering when not able to engage in social distancing.
(2) Every operator, employee, customer or patron of a business establishment must wear a face mask or covering at all times while at that business establishment unless he or she is able to engage in social distancing or unless wearing a face mask or covering significantly interferes with the provision or receipt of goods or services offered or received at that establishment (i.e. patrons at a restaurant, clients at a barber shop or hair salon, patients at a dentist’s office).
(3) The operator and employees of a business establishment shall ensure that every individual in that establishment complies with this Proclamation.
(4) Public safety, fire, law enforcement, and other life safety personnel are exempted from this requirement, as their personal protective equipment requirements will be governed by their respective agencies.
ADA ACCOMMODATION. When a customer of a business establishment asserts that he or she has a disability that prevents the individual from wearing a face mask or covering, the owner, manager, or employee of the business establishment may exclude the individual, even if they have a disability, as they pose a direct threat to the health and safety of employees and other customers, even if asymptomatic, and shall accommodate the disabled individual in a manner that does not fundamentally alter the operations of the business establishment nor jeopardize the health of that business’s employees and other customers, such as providing curb service or delivery or other reasonable accommodation.
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31 January 2019 About the project / News
Cases of contemporary populism
Our project has several points of focus on the interrelations between modern forms of populism with liberal democracy, authoritarianism, politics, and law, particularly constitutional law.
Involving an investigator team with extensive comparative insight into major politico-legal shifts of the 20th and 21st centuries, and a range of collaborators on national case studies, we will be looking hard at the ways that populism – in practice and in power – deploys law in anti-constitutionalist directions, discerning the types of law and legal institutions that are especially prone to such anti-constitutionalist and anti-democratic deployment, and those that are more resilient in this respect.
In particular, we are looking at:
countries at the forefront of the ‘third wave’ of democratic transformation, where several now appear to be backsliding into rather less democratic conditions for society; and
the USA, as something of a control comparison that exhibits several features of populism as extreme as those found in third wave states, but differs in the longevity of its constitutional traditions, practices and institutions.
The distinctively law-related ambitions, connections, and engagements of the new populists directs our emphasis to various uses of law and particularly constitutional law – which in the practices of contemporary populism can arise not just through express constitutional amendment but also through its creative reinterpretations.
Importantly, those who wield power in newly populist regimes have created distinctive relationships with pivotal elements of democracy. For example, they may pay lip service to liberal constitutional guarantees and institutions (such as constitutional courts, freedom of assembly), but in practice subvert their original meaning to serve the populist order.
Unlike earlier forms of populism, when in power the new populists display, even flaunt, close engagement with law, principles of the rule of law, and constitutionalism, yet such regimes appear relentlessly hostile to liberal values, practices, and institutional constraints.
Importantly, the particular role of law in sustaining and guiding the authority of illiberal, populist regimes is only beginning to be explored, and this will be central to our investigations.
About the projectTerminology
Concept Index from Dem-Dec
(global?) constitutional populism
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Gavin Newsom Says CA Will Begin Stage 2 Re-Openings Friday
The Governor announced that California is moving into Stage 2 of the re-opening process, and it will happen beginning this Friday (May8th).
According to the LA Times, Gavin Newsom said that some retail businesses will be allowed to open, to include retails stores, flower shops, bookstores and more. However, the openings would be allowed with certain guidelines to follow. Those guidelines have not yet been released, but the Governor said that information is coming.
In addition, he said that Stage 2 will begin on Friday because the "data says it can happen".
The state has been under stay-at-home orders since mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
San Diego Syndicated
Re-open
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A-Z Database List: A
Academic Search Complete is the world's most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.
Acland's Video Atlas of Human Anatomy
A comprehensive package of over 300 3D rotational gross anatomy videos produced and narrated by a leading anatomist—ideal for faculty and students in gross anatomy courses or in lab settings. Videos are 2-5 minutes long, with searchable indexes, and can be started, stopped and paused at any time. This online resource also offers material to support students and faculty learning and teaching structure identification including self-assessment/Q&A, PDF transcripts of the videos and more.
AHFS Consumer Medication Information
AHFS Consumer Medication Information is a trusted source and recognized standard for patient drug information, available in both English and Spanish. Published by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, AHFS includes more than a thousand drug information monographs written in lay language for consumers and has been a Top Ten Award Winner in the Department of Health and Human Services National Consumer Education Materials Contest. This content is updated monthly.
Alexander Street - Academic Video Online
Academic Video Online (AVON) from Alexander Street video includes documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels, field recordings, commercials, demonstrations, original and raw footage. Patrons will find many award-winning films, including Academy,® Emmy,® and Peabody® winners along with the most frequently used films for classroom instruction, plus newly released films and previously unavailable archival material. Subject areas include, nursing, health policy, rehabilitation therapy, sports medicine/exercise science and many more.
<< Previous: Databases by Platform
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A Letter to Foreigners in Jiaxing
Updated: Mar 12, 2020 zhejiang.chinadaily.com.cn/jiaxing Print
Dear foreign friends,
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the Jiaxing Municipal Government, under the leadership of the Central Government and Zhejiang Provincial Government, has been putting the lives and health of its people first. By following an "open, cooperative, coordinated, and win-win" model, Jiaxing has taken measures to prevent and control the epidemic and has managed to maintain stable social and economic development. We have also received close cooperation and support from foreign nationals. We would hereby like to sincerely thank you for your help.
At this critical time, as the epidemic remains severe, we care deeply about the health of you and your family and would like to strengthen our cooperation.
We suggest the following:
Follow official information
Although the overall situation of the epidemic is improving in China, the risk posed by COVID-19 has been updated to "very high" at a global level by the WHO. International flights are subject to change without prior notice and certain quarantine measures might be taken at borders. Please follow authorized information released by the official sites and official WeChat accounts of the Chinese and Jiaxing governments.
Inform others of your travel plans
If you have upcoming plans to travel to Jiaxing, please contact your company, community, or friends to get the latest information about the epidemic. Please tell them when you will enter China and when you will arrive in Jiaxing, and we will provide you with travel recommendations. If you are currently in a severely affected country or region, you are advised to postpone your visit.
Submit a health declaration
Because there is still a risk of infection, regardless of whether you are already in or planning to enter Jiaxing, please inform authorities in the development zone, town, or sub-district where your company is located of your health status and travel history over the past 14 days.
Take self-protection measures
Please remain vigilant and take self-protection precautions while traveling. Do not participate in public gatherings and avoid crowded places. Reduce outdoor activities as much as possible, and wear masks when going out. If symptoms such as fever, cough, headache, fatigue, or dyspnea occur, please notify your community or company and seek immediate medical treatment at designated hospitals.
Keep close contact
Should you have any questions or complaints, please contact the Foreign Affairs Office of the Jiaxing Municipal People's Government for help via our 24-hour service hotline at 0086-15988330595 (Chinese) or 0086-18268483571 (English).
We wish you and your family health and happiness!
Foreign Affairs Office of the Jiaxing Municipal People's Government
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Conflicting procurement judgments bring fresh new challenges to the market
In the recent case of Wylde v Waverely Borough Council [2017] EWHC 466 (Admin), five claimants attempted to challenge the variation of a development agreement using judicial review proceedings on the grounds that it was in breach of the Public Procurement Regulations 2006.
The claimants were:
two councillors of the defendant Council who were also members of the Farnham Town Council; and
three members of local civic societies
However, Mr Justice Dove ruled that the claimants didn't have sufficient interest or 'standing' to bring their application.
This ruling, relating to councillors, conflicts with an earlier decision from Mrs Justice Lang in the case of R (on the application of Gottlieb) v Winchester City Council [2015] EWHC 231 (Admin). This begs two questions: can the two decisions be reconciled and what lessons need to be learnt from this latest case?
Case Background
On 22 April 2003, the Council entered into a conditional development agreement with Crest Nicholson Regeneration Limited and Sainsbury's Supermarkets Limited. The agreement was for a project known as 'Brightwells' in the East Street area of Farnham, after a competitive process which did not follow the EU procurement regime for public works concessions.
Planning permission for a mixed-use development including retail, café, cinema, replacement day centre, car park and 239 residential units was granted on 7 August 2012
This planning permission replaced an earlier planning permission granted in August 2009
A compulsory purchase order for site assembly was confirmed in August 2013 and implemented before the court hearing
Funding for the scheme had been secured from Surrey County Council
Further variations to the scheme and the terms of the development agreement were necessary to satisfy the viability condition in the development agreement, including a reduction in the Council's minimum land value from £8.76m to £3.19m, being the premium for the grant of a 150 year lease. These were approved by the Council on the recommendation of its Executive on 24 May 2016. Permission to apply for judicial review was granted on 12 August and on 9 September, an order was made for the trial of the preliminary issue about standing.
Ex ante transparency notice
The Council published a voluntary ex ante transparency notice in the Official Journal, justifying the decision to enter into the variation without competition under the Concession Contracts Regulations 2016 "because it has been the subject of negotiations since before 18.4.2016, and it would not in any event amount to a substantial modification, and nor is it a material change applying the principles in Pressetext - Nachrichtenagentur C-454/06 (2008) ECR 1-4401". Detailed reasons for this view were set out in the notice.
The effect of the notice was to limit the time for starting proceedings for an ineffectiveness notice to 30 days after the date of publication. If proceedings for such a notice were successful the variation agreement would have been ineffective going forwards. Economic operators alone may bring such proceedings, that is persons or entities offering to undertake works or, in this case, rival developers to Crest Nicholson. No such proceedings were started.
Crest Nicholson's proposals had been opposed vigorously and consistently at various times and in various forums by the Farnham Society, the Farnham Building Preservation Trust and the Farnham Interest Group, as well as the two councillor claimants. The proposals were opposed for various reasons, including what was said to be their inappropriate scale and harmful and unnecessary impact upon the historic environment of the town.
Mr Justice Dove considered earlier decisions on standing in judicial review cases and, in particular, where the claim was based on an alleged breach of the EU procurement regime. Such applications had failed for lack of sufficient standing where the claimants were:
a community group challenging the award of a PFI contract to build an education facility (R (Kathro) v Rhondda Cynon Taff [2001] 4 PLR 83)
parents challenging the appointment of a sponsor of an academy school (R (on the application of Chandler) v Secretary of State [2009] EWCA Civ 1011)
a trade union challenging the decision to outsource some NHS medical services in (R (on the application of Unison) v NHS Wiltshire PCT and others [2012] EWHC 624).
On the other hand the Law Society was held to have sufficient standing to challenge the process for awarding legal services contracts as part of the reform of legal aid in R (on the application of The Law Society) v Legal Services Commission and others [2007] EWHC 1848 (Admin).
Similarities and differences with the Winchester case
In the Winchester case the Council did not argue the issue of standing and Mrs Justice Lang accepted that the claimant, "in his capacity as a resident, council tax payer, and City Councillor, has a legitimate interest in seeking to ensure that the elected authority of which he is a member complies with the law, spends public funds wisely, and secures through open competition the most appropriate development scheme for the City of Winchester."
In this case Mr Justice Dove followed the Court of Appeal decision in Chandler, where the Court held that:
"an individual who has a sufficient interest in compliance with the public procurement regime in the sense that he is affected in some identifiable way, but is not himself an economic operator who could pursue remedies under reg 47, can bring judicial review proceedings to prevent non-compliance with the regulations or the obligations derived from the Treaty, especially before any infringement takes place." A claimant may have a sufficient interest if following the procurement regime "might have led to a different outcome that would have had a direct impact on him"
The gravity of a departure from public law obligations may also justify the grant of a public law remedy in any event.
Mr Justice Dove identified the purpose of the EU procurement regime as being, "firstly, to provide for an open and transparent system for the competition for public contracts in the interests of securing a fair and efficient market for those contracts and secondly, to provide a bespoke system of remedies for those parties who are directly involved in competing for such contracts and participating in the market for them."
He therefore concluded that standing for the purposes of judicial review should be narrowly confined to a person who "can show that performance of the competitive tendering procedure… might have led to a different outcome that would have had a direct impact on him" following Chandler.
In this case, in his judgement, the claimants would have had difficulty in showing a different outcome to a procurement exercise within the regulations especially given the lack of response to the voluntary ex ante transparency notice. Furthermore, councillors, council tax payers or ratepayers do not have a status akin to or as proxy for an economic operator (as for example the Law Society in the legal aid contracts challenge).
Lessons for the future
The question of councillors standing for local authorities when bringing judicial review proceedings to procurement cases is ripe for consideration by the Court of Appeal, following the different outcomes in the Winchester and Waverley cases. In the Waverley case, the Council was also prepared to argue that judicial review is not available at all as a remedy to a person who is not an economic operator. Given earlier cases, where judicial review has been denied to economic operators on the grounds of their alternative remedies under the Procurement Regulations, the direction of such an argument is that judicial review will not be available at all in procurement cases except in the rarest case of the most flagrant breach. In this case the councillors had the problem that they could not argue that the Council was financially disadvantaged by the variation agreement, or there was a breach of fiduciary duty. The Council had been advised by its professional valuers that the revised minimum land value satisfied its best consideration duty under the Local Government Act 1972. No rival developer came forward to challenge the variation in response to the OJ notice.
Local authorities often have to grapple with changing circumstances after the appointment of a development partner. In this case, developers were appointed before the financial meltdown in 2008, leading to a reappraisal of schemes to deliver viability in the changed economic climate. Local authorities may be inclined to stay with a developer who has invested significantly in the project and area and may have built up land interests which will need compulsory purchase if the authority has the will and resource to undertake a procurement for a new development partner. Here, Waverley was able to publish a voluntary ex ante transparency notice to limit the time for bringing a claim for ineffectiveness which, if successful, would have nullified the varied development agreement. This is an important consideration. Can it be argued that the variations not sufficiently material as to amount to a new contract in the Pressetext sense, (if, as in this case the negotiations for the variation began before 18 April when the Concession Contracts Regulations 2016 came into force? (After that date regulation 43 of the Regulations dealing with permitted modifications applies.) If so, the voluntary notice is an important tool for the local authority and its developer partner especially if linked to a condition precedent preventing the varied agreement becoming operative until the 30 day period has expired without challenge.
The case recognised that the typical development agreement is a works concession because the risk associated with carrying out the development works and then letting the completed development sits with the developer. This followed the Winchester case although the point was not discussed in the case of Faraday (R (on the application of Faraday Development Ltd) v West Berkshire Council [2016] EWHC 2166). The public authorities who still procure development agreements under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 are taking on board unnecessary risk.
The decision to enter into the development agreement variation was made by the full Council, notwithstanding that the Council was exercising executive functions within the remit of the Executive. Some authorities like to take major decisions of this kind in relation to development proposals in full Council, but risk challenge based on s9DA(3)(a) of the Local Government Act 2000, which prevents the local authority in full Council exercising such functions. Jurisdiction returns to full Council if the proposed decision conflicts with the policy framework, the budget, capital or borrowing programme, unless permitted by standing orders or financial regulations. If Councils want to proceed in this way they should ensure that the Cabinet or Executive approves the matter before them, as well as recommending it to full Council so there is clear authority to act at Executive level notwithstanding the views expressed later by full Council. If full Council disagrees the issue can be looked at again by the Executive after appropriate political discussions.
Related Public Procurement
25 November 2019 The Greater London Authority creates standard agreements for mobile "not spots"
07 November 2018 The Two Towers: Land Transactions and Concessions - Public Procurement
01 August 2018 Is local oversight of a new generation of new towns a real way forward?
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Megan Columbus: Welcome to another edition of All About Grants. I’m Megan Columbus from the NIH Office of Extramural Research. NIH recently issued a new policy on appeals of the initial peer review, that’s the part of the review process that’s focused on evaluating the scientific and technical merit of the grant. Today we’re speaking with NIH’s Review Policy Officer, Dr. Sally Amero. Sally, it’s not unusual for an applicant who did not do well in the review process to disagree with their score. They’re putting together their best application, and they feel that it’s a strong application. Usually the score is justified and there’s no question. And usually the process happens the way it should, but there may be times when an appeal may be appropriate. When can or even should somebody appeal the review?
Sally Amero: Well that’s a really good question. The policy is written to cover those instances where something does go wrong in the peer review process. So it really is intended to address a flawed review, not a difference of scientific opinion, but truly when the process did not work.
Megan: Could you give an example of what a flawed review, something that may not have gone right?
Sally: Well actually there are four areas that the policy is intended to cover. One is evidence of bias on the part of one or more of the reviewers, note the emphasis on there of evidence of bias; conflict of interest as specified in regulations that apply to peer review; lack of appropriate expertise on the review panel; or factual errors made by one or more of the reviewers that could have affected the outcome substantially.
Megan: “That could have affected the outcome substantially” is probably the key part there.
Sally: Right. On that one that’s key.
Megan: I can imagine that the question about the expertise of the reviewers may be one that’s questioned.
Sally: That’s a frequent one that we hear a lot, and defining expertise is tricky. Sometimes we deliberately recruit reviewers who have a very broad perspective on the field at large. Other times we define expertise in terms of working in the exact same area, so that whole spectrum falls under the definition of expertise. It really is the responsibility of the applicant or the applicant organization to make the case that the expertise was not appropriate.
Megan: Could you provide maybe some examples of when it’s not appropriate to appeal?
Sally: Well, certainly differences of scientific opinion would be an example of a situation that is not appealable. So just disagreeing with the points that the reviewer makes is not an appropriate appeal. The appeal has to address a flaw in the process, not the opinion of the reviewer.
Megan: Well, and the application is being scored by many reviewers, so one opinion, unless they made an extremely cogent argument, shouldn’t be what makes or breaks your application, anyway.
Sally: Well that’s true. So, we typically assign three reviewers to read each application in detail and provide written comments, criterion scores, and so forth. But it is everyone on the panel who does not have a conflict of interest with that application who offers a final score.
Megan: So I’ve determined that I have a concern and it meets one of the four criteria that you’ve outlined for us. What should I do and who should I contact first about the fact that I’m considering an appeal?
Sally: Well, I think the way to visualize this is to think that at the end of the initial peer review process, the scientific review officer hands the baton for the application over to the program official in a funding institute or center. So after the summary statement is released, your point of contact should be your program official. That person’s name and contact information will appear in the top left hand corner on the first page of your summary statement. That’s the person you should contact.
Megan: And so should I be giving them a telephone call? Should it be sending them an official letter?
Sally: I would start out with a phone call just to talk about your concerns and see if the program official thinks that they fall into one of the appealable categories. The program official will also talk with the scientific review officer to gain a little bit more information about how the review was conducted.
Megan: And often times that program official was actually at the review and heard the review. So it’s often times the PI at this point who’s interfacing with the NIH on the issues related to their application, but technically the application comes from the institution. When an investigator wants to file an appeal, how does he or she deal with the institution?
Sally: Well, so let’s say that the investigator has had a conversation with the program official, they want to file a formal appeal letter, which has to be in writing – that could be email but it has to be in writing – and it has to show active concurrence from the authorized organization representative, the AOR. So the investigator would need to go to the AOR at their institution and get a signature or an email confirming that the AOR is aware that this is going forward.
Megan: Okay, so this concurrence would be more than just copy them on a message to NIH?
Sally: Right, there has to be active involvement of the AOR, or the AOR could submit the appeal letter on behalf of the PI.
Megan: What’s the right timing for an appeal to be filed? Is there a point in time when it’s just too late?
Sally: So let us just talk about what happens to an appeal once it comes in with the active concurrence of the AOR. At that point it has crossed the threshold into a formal appeal, and it must be made available to the funding council or the council in the funding IC where that application could be funded. So, it behooves the investigator to submit the appeal well in advance of council, but it does happen on occasion when that is not possible or the review might have happened very late in the round, the summary statement wasn’t issued much before council. So the official policy states that the investigator has up until thirty days after the relevant council has met.
Megan: And so wouldn’t it just go to the following council?
Sally: That would depend on the issues at hand and some of the funding considerations, but it could be handled electronically with that particular council.
Megan: But the real target is you really want to try and get to the council round for which you submitted.
Sally: Exactly. And so you want to get your appeal in very soon, not hastily – one wants to think about it carefully – but there is a lot of organization and preparation for a council meeting, so if one could get that in say, six weeks before council that would be ideal.
Megan: And if the council agrees with the appeal then what happens?
Sally: So the council really has two options: they could support the appeal, and in that case, the outcome would be a re-review of the same application that was reviewed the first time – no amendments, no updates, no changes whatsoever. Keep in mind, though, that the clock is ticking this whole time, so that re-review can’t really happen until the next review round, in most cases. So the outcome might be a more favorable score, but not necessarily, but it will definitely mean a delay in consideration of the application.
Megan: And if the council doesn’t agree with the appeal then..?
Sally: Then the review that is being contested stands, and that score and summary statement are permanent.
Megan: So is the council decision appealable?
Sally: No, that’s the end of the process. There are no further processes to appeal the outcome.
Megan: Is there anything else you want to add on this topic, Sally?
Sally: I encourage everyone to read the policy carefully and to think carefully about whether they want to appeal their review.
Megan: Thank you so much for joining us today. For NIH and OER, this is Megan Columbus.
Announcer: To learn more about the appeals process, go to the OER website at www.grants.nih.gov and click on “Peer Review Process” under the “About Grants” tab.
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August 1, 2020 NRL news No comments
The rugby league is a 13-man code that’s faster, smarter, and more exciting than its 15-man rugby cousin, and the biggest football competition on Earth takes place in Australia.
From bone struggles to gravity defying acrobatics, learn everything you need to know about the National Rugby League.
History clubs
The oldest clubs in the NRL – specifically the Sydney Roosters and South Sydney Rabbitohs – were founded in 1908, before international football giants like Borussia Dortmund (1909) and AS Roma (1927), as well as every single franchise in the NFL, NBA, and NHL. Now that’s some serious sport history for a relatively young country, federated only in 1901.
The northern states love it
The rugby tournament began in Sydney more than a century ago, and New South Wales remains the stronghold of the sport – 11 out of 16 NRL clubs are based in NSW and the ACT (including nine in the city). port town), plus three in footy-mad Queensland, one in Victoria, and one in New Zealand.
There is a Kiwi team
The competition could be called the National Rugby League, but it included an outfit from a completely different country. The Warriors of Auckland have been participating in the Aussie Tournament for years, and although there is a whole country to choose from, they have yet to break their top duck. Perhaps the local talent has their heart set on an All Blacks rugby player, instead.
The game has recovered from the civil war
The rugby tournament was split into two in the mid-1990s – there were even two contests devoted to forming the Australian Rugby League and the super rebellion played in 1997 – before the formation of the NRL. patched in 1998. The competition began life as an uncomfortable marriage between war tribes and killed many of the most beloved icons like the North Sydney Bears and Western Suburbs Magpies.
The center of the game is the state of origin
The NRLs refer to the 16-team club competition, but the culmination of the rugby tournament is the brutal interstate clash between NSW and Queensland. The State of Origin three-game series attracts huge media attention every winter – Regular Matches of Origin are the most watched Australian TV shows of the year – with fans suffering from captivated by the blood-crowded battle between bitter opponents.
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english history · european history · history
The Animals in the Tower: A Brief History of the Royal Menagerie
March 4, 2018 March 31, 2018 historynavigator
A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a documentary of the Tower of London while watching television and, of course, it immediately peaked my interest. I have always been interested in the Tower’s history because so much has happened there in over 900 years of history. This includes some of the most dramatic events in English history as the Tower was used not only as royal residence, but as a prison and site of execution. Yet, the documentary went over a part of the Tower’s that I was unfamiliar with. One of the experts interviewed discussed how, during excavations of the now dried up moat, bones were found from a variety of exotic creatures. They had found leopards, many dogs, and even multiple lion skulls. These lion skulls were from Barbary Lions, whose species is now extinct! This proves that these lions were kept in the Tower during the medieval era. That just blew my mind and I proceeded to learn more…
The first lions came to the tower in February of 1235, when Henry III’s brother in law (Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire) gave him three lions. This began the royal menagerie where the privileged few could view the monarch’s glorious collection of exotic animals. These were usually the royal favorites and the employees of the Tower. In 1252, the collection expanded when King Haakon IV of Norway sent Henry III a polar bear (and a keeper to go along with it)! Though the menagerie was still restricted, the citizens of London could sometimes get a glimpse of this great beast as the polar bear fished for his own food in the Thames River!
But, a new fan favorite animal was about to take away the polar bear popularity. In 1255 an elephant (a trophy from the crusades) came to reside in the Tower. I wonder how that journey from the Holy Land all the way back to England went with an elephant in tow, but somehow that poor creature made it. No one had seen anything like an elephant before and it drew many different people to come see, including Matthew Paris, a famous chronicler. Paris would go on to draw the elephant which provides us with the evidence that there truly was one in the Tower. Paris also describes the elephant stating, “the beast is about ten years old, possessing a rough hide rather than fur, has small eyes at the top of his head and eats and drinks with a trunk.”
Drawing by 13th c monk Matthew Paris
The keeping of these animals was a lot of work and was expensive as well. The sheriffs of London were not too pleased to increase the budget to accommodate a massive elephant! Yet, Henry III wanted the status that came with a menagerie and taxed the Londoners to create a large elephant house. Unfortunately, medieval animal keepers were quite ignorant of how to care for and feed these poor creatures. During this period, these animals were more for the spectacle and bragging rights than about studying them for science. This unfortunate elephant ended up having a very short life, which was not helped by the fact that the keepers thought that feeding him a galloon of wine everyday (to keep out the chill, of course) would be the most beneficial. The bones from this elephant were later used to create reliquaries to house religious relics.
Edward I moved the menagerie to be at the entrance of the tower in the 1270s so that all those entering or leaving the tower (usually a lot of prisoners!) had to walk past the roaring and hungry beasts. Intimidating, right?
Edward I brought even more animals to those tight cell quarters. This included another lion and a lynx. Edward I also appointed an official Keeper of the animals (one of the first zookeepers ever?) who would go on to live in the Tower. They were not paid great, though they kept the position for life.
In 1392, Richard II was given a camel and his wife was given a pelican to add to the menagerie. As you can see, most of these animals were gifts from foreign monarchs rather than the English monarchs expanding the zoo themselves. What do you give someone who has everything? Apparently exotic animals, which became status symbols for the English monarchs. They were fiercely proud of their animals. It was a disaster when in 1436 all the lions died, most likely from a possible sickness. The keeper at the time, William Kerby, was immediately fired.
As stated before, due to the ignorance of their keepers, the animals in the Tower were not given the best treatment. It became worse during James I reign as he was an avid fan of animals fighting. Bear-baiting was popular during this era and great crowds would gather to watch a tormented bear fight off his canine attackers. James was one of the biggest royal patrons of the menagerie, but he put the most resources into it for unfortunate reasons. In 1603-1605 James would go on to remodel the Lion Tower to accommodate more fighting. Instead of a bear, he would have the dogs (usually mastiffs) attack the lions and, most likely, get torn up in the process. In this case, the Tower menagerie was not only used for bragging purposes, but also as entertainment.
Superstition was connected to many of the animals in the Tower. The lions were often named after the reigning monarch and if that lion died it was believed that its namesake would soon follow. Today, there is still animal superstition. Though there is no longer a zoo on location, there are still six ravens kept. It is believed that if any of these ravens become lost or fly away then the monarchy (and Britain along with it) will fall.
By 1622 the menagerie included eleven lions, two leopards, three eagles, two pumas, a tiger and a jackal. And, luckily for these creatures, the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, ended put an end to animal fighting.
With a lack of knowledge about the animals there was bound to be accidents as well. In 1686 Mary Jenkinson, mistress of the current keeper (William Gill), wanted to show off in front of her friends at the lion’s den. She proceeded to pet one of the caged lion’s paws. It is described that the lion immediately caught the poor girls arm by the mouth and tore her arm. The doctors on hand had to perform an amputation, but she sadly died in the end.
During the late 1600s and early 1700s, the menagerie was quickly turning in to a hot tourist spot for the public. Not only were there animals to see, but amazing “curiosities”. This included a “real” unicorn horn and unicorn fur. The menagerie became a great way for the crown to make money. In 1741 there was even an illustrated children’s guide to the zoo, which showed what creatures they would see along with their names. By this time, the menagerie was starting to resemble a zoo that we would be familiar with today. Indeed, zoos did become more popular and others began to pop up in different parts of the country.
By the 18th century, scientists and other intellectuals became interested in the knowledge that the Tower zoo held. They would study the dead animals through dissection and learn more about the biology of living beings. One famous scientist, John Hunter, would help to eliminate the ignorance that once surrounded caring for these animals. He disproved (and I know it will sound ridiculous now) the rumor that ostriches were able to eat and digest iron (sadly, two birds had already died from being feed this).
In 1822 Alfred Cops, an actual professional zoologist, was appointed at the Keeper. He boosted the number of animals in the Tower zoo and provided the best care that these animals had ever had. Due to his scientific approach, he made better living conditions, improved their diets, and created more space for the animals. By 1828, the menagerie had about 300 animals from 60 different species (including wolves, bears, elephants, kangaroos, antelopes, zebra, a variety of birds and reptiles, and, of course the big cats). Even better was that many of these animals were born at the Tower, which shows their improved living conditions were making a difference.
Despite the success of Cops, the government was looking to shut down the zoo at the Tower (despite having existed for 600 years at that point). Accidents had happened which contributed to the decision. The animals had attacked other animals when their cages overlapped, and, in one instance, the timber wolves escaped their captivity. The wolves were pursuing a dog who ran into one of the employee’s apartments to escape. The wolves broke into the apartment and almost attacked an employee’s wife and her small children (they were able to escape in the end). In 1828, London Zoological Society opened a new zoo in Regent’s park and many of the animals at the Tower were moved there over time.
A monkey biting one of the guardsmen at the Tower was the last straw for the government, so August 28, 1835 was the last time the public was admitted to the Tower menagerie. The animals were transferred to other zoos and poor Alfred Cops still retained his position as Keeper at the Tower (as stated before, it was a position for life!), but lost all the gains he had made with the Tower menagerie.
This is a very brief history of the Tower menagerie which lasted six centuries and set precedent for other zoos that followed. Today, you can still see where these animals were housed, but only the ravens remain. I highly recommended that documentary for anyone who wants to learn more about the Tower’s history!
Poll Question: Would anyone be interested in a series where I post about famous prisoners of the Tower of London?
There are so many interesting cases and historical figures you may not expect who were imprisoned here. The Tower of London is a historical site that I have marked as must see on my bucket list!
Sources: Secrets of the Tower Documentary – I watched on PBS
Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London by Nigel Jones
animals elephant England english history Henry III historic sites history James I Menagerie polar bear Tower of London zoo zoology
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3 thoughts on “The Animals in the Tower: A Brief History of the Royal Menagerie”
HistorianRuby (Ruth) says:
The Tower’s history is fascinating. Did you know that there was a small menagerie at Kew Palace, too?
And I would love to see more of the Tower’s history – I’m writing a third post on Hampton Court Palace at the moment. 🙂
historynavigator says:
I did not know that there were other menageries! I will have to look up the Kew Palace one. I appreciate your input regarding more Tower posts and I look forward to reading your Hampton Court Series!
Nancy White says:
Information on other prisoners held in the tower would be very interesting!
This article on the menagerie was an eye opener.
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- HONEST HISTORY - https://honesthistory.net.au/wp -
Bell, Diane: Clare Wright’s You Daughters of Freedom is a Big Book about Big Ideas
Posted By admin On October 7, 2018 @ 4:33 pm In Reviews | No Comments
Diane Bell*
‘Clare Wright’s You Daughters of Freedom is a Big Book about Big Ideas’, Honest History, 7 October 2018
Diane Bell reviews You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World: Democracy Trilogy, Book Two, by Clare Wright
‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.’ (Frederick Douglass, 1857)
With this telling epigraph, Clare Wright announces she is embarking on an epic historical retelling of a key foundation story of the Australian nation. It will demand interrogating the stories we may like to tell ourselves about our origins; reinstating the women of courage, vision and determination who challenged established power structures at local, national and international levels; mapping the contours of the conflicts, collaborations, contradictory and contrary permutations of the diverse organisations that campaigned for the vote; laying bare the brutality of law enforcement licensed by the dogged sexism of their masters.
I like to imagine Clare Wright has Douglass’s epigraph embroidered on a bespoke banner hanging in her study. I conjure its provenance: born of meticulous scholarship; nurtured by a talented storyteller; enlivened by the suffragettes’ colours; confident in its reach. Perhaps the hanging recalls the flag of which Wright wrote in her Stella Prize-winning The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka (2013). The hanging most certainly celebrates artist Dora Meeson Coates’s banner, first held aloft in a ten thousand strong women’s march to the Albert Hall in 1908, as the enfranchised daughters of empire brought to the British campaigns their experience and expertise of achieving the Vote for Women. Three years later, the banner was carried in the 1911 Women’s Coronation Procession. By then its meaning had changed: no longer the innovative painting in oil on canvas in the classical style of the day, no longer a diplomatic missive (pp. 244-45), this banner was from a nation that had ‘reverse-colonised the landscape of ideas’ (p. 451).
Wright weaves the story of the ‘Women’s Suffrage Banner’ through her carefully crafted account of demands, concessions and ceding of power. Its multi-vocal symbolism informs each chapter in this account of the social laboratory of the newest democracy. Wright knows material objects matter. Banners hung from upstairs windows, banners carried for hours in mile-long processions. Powerful political moments: women’s work, women’s ideas. Dora’s remarkable banner required four people to carry it. Under the gold lettering of ‘Commonwealth of Australia’ stands the white-gowned Mother Britannia holding her sceptre, while Daughter Minerva, who holds the heraldry of the newly federated Australian states, counsels ‘Trust the Women Mother As I Have Done’.
Dora Meeson Coates (GJ Coates/Wikipedia)
Between the agenda-setting introductory chapter and the updating of the travels of the banner in the concluding chapter, in three substantial parts – Purity, Courage and Hope – Wright documents the demands on power wrought by her key five characters and does so by taking the reader on site. We are there as the brave, imaginative, defiant deeds and words of Vida Goldstein, Nellie Martel, Dora Montefiore, Muriel Matters, and Dora Meeson Coates are played out at home and on the world stage. We join in their anticipation, frustrations and achievements, cringe as the sexist mantra that their detractors and opponents utter echoes down the generations. Wright draws on a wide range of materials and her use of primary sources is noteworthy. Facts do matter, then and now.
Throughout, Wright is posing critical questions faced by the newly crafted Australian democracy, one that was the envy of the world, one where white women were constitutionally indistinguishable from men. But First Peoples? Wright is clear that the ‘New Dawn’ being proclaimed by the federating states was not ‘untainted by the history of bondage’. This was no ‘free birth’.
The metaphors of purity and danger, for a bright future emerging from a dark past, came thick and fast, communicating something that generally went unspoken, but which the Ovens and Murray Advertiser (5 January 1901) articulated in its coverage of the ‘Dawn of Australian Unity’: ‘Very few of the aboriginals are left to witness this our crowning day, to witness the triumph of the white race …’ It was, of course, demonstrably untrue that Australia’s First People had all ‘died out’. But why let the facts get in the way of a good origin story (p. 20)?
State by state, Wright follows the divergent and intersecting paths pursued by the daughters of freedom. First, the ‘Shrieking Sisterhood, Victoria, 1854-1900’. Vida Goldstein, educated at Presbyterian Ladies College and later through Charles Strong’s independent ministry at the Australian Church, where she saw at first hand the violence and misery of slum houses, she developed her ‘zeal for social reform’ (p. 31).
Vida Goldstein, c. 1914-18 (Wikipedia)
In ‘Sydney, 1891’ we meet Mrs Dora Montefiore, a widowed mother of two, luckier than most in having some resources, who, nonetheless, found her privilege did not protect her from laws that gave her no legal custody of her children. She met other women in similar situations. ‘We discussed, and rebelled, and longed to make things better for our children … An economic recipe for change (p. 43).’ Dora decided to form a suffrage society.
In South Australia, there was Catherine Helen Spence with her proposal for proportional representation that had found favour with John Stuart Mill. There was Mary Lee, a widowed mother of seven, favouring direct action; writing incendiary letters; earning a ‘reputation as a shrew’ (p. 52), who linked suffrage to improved working conditions for women. She established the Working Women’s Trades Union of South Australia. Pay particular attention to the confluence of factors (part strategic, part mischief) and the varied talents of the actors (inside and outside the ‘tent’) that delivered the franchise to all South Australian women – yes, Indigenous women were included (p. 57). It was a coup that had ramifications for the federal conventions that shaped the Australian Constitution and Wright’s in the moment account is enriched by her use of first-hand accounts, media reporting, and parliamentary debates.
On the international stage, at the First Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 12 February 1902, at the Georgetown Presbyterian Church in the United States, Vida Goldstein joined elder stateswoman Susan B. Anthony and delegates from Norway, Chile, Turkey, Russia, Canada, England and Sweden. She was hailed as ‘the most stunning example of the New Woman: single, independent and, like her country, self-governing, “civilised” and white (p. 103)’. Her lecture circuit was widely reported; her analysis of US democracy relevant today; her parting exchange with Anthony touching and to the point (p. 111).
Back in Australia the ‘purity and danger’ debate regarding the place of the ‘Aboriginal race’ was ‘passionate, fiery and breathtakingly candid’ (p. 121). I would add ‘prophetic’. The Commonwealth Franchise Act received royal assent on 12 June 1902: a victory for white women; an entrenching of 19th century racism for the new nation.
Dora Montefiore 1909 (Progressive Woman/Wikipedia)
The ‘Modern Eve’ could vote and stand for office. Would she? On Polling Day, women turned out in large numbers. They voted, more along class than gender lines (p. 156). It was the labour movement, rather than women candidates, that was the victor of the 1903 election (p. 158). Vida had put up her hand. Her platform was protectionist; opposed to capital punishment; advocated a proper water conservation system for the nation; and heartily supported the Immigration Restriction Act (pp. 142-43). Then Nellie Martel entered the fray with a focus on the age of consent – for her a question of class as well as sexual equality (p. 147). She was lampooned and embroiled in a side-bar controversy, even before her platform that included water conservation, equal pay, and good laws for women by women was announced. The Truth newspaper had a field day: low gossip and high politics as ever fuelled its reporting. Although no woman was elected, the 51 497 votes Vida Goldstein received could not be discounted. It was not until 1943 that the first women were elected to the Australian Parliament and, to Vida’s dismay, neither of the candidates had called herself a feminist (p. 475).
In ‘Part Two: Courage’ the action moves to London. We are there on a mild spring day in May 1905 for the third reading of the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill which, like the previous 17 attempts, was thwarted. The women there to hear the reading were exasperated. Seated behind a grille in the Ladies Gallery with only peep-hole sight lines to the speaker, they could be neither seen not heard. Enough. Led by Nellie Martel, they convened outside and drafted a declaration of no confidence in the government (p. 170).
‘The siege of Hammersmith’, June 1906, a play within a play, starred Dora Montefiore who refused to pay taxes if she could not vote. The tax collector came. The bailiff came. Furniture was seized and auctioned. She covered her tax bill. She made a fine speech. Her civil disobedience was a brilliant publicity stunt. Her hand-stitched banner on display at her residence read: ‘Women should vote for the taxes they pay and the laws they obey’ (p. 198).
‘Show us a general demand for suffrage amongst ordinary women’, the government had challenged. And show ‘demand’ they did. ‘Suffrage Saturday’ was a triumph but Prime Minister Asquith was not impressed. The WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union) upped the ante: revolution and militant action would be needed. The constitutionalists, the NUWSS (National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies), preferred politely sought reform (p. 259). Frustration was mounting: being disruptive and disobedient gets one just so far. It’s a dilemma that bedevils progressive social movements and Wright’s documentation and analysis of the fault lines, including the Pankhurst matri-line, of the early 20th century campaigns, is important case material.
Nellie Martel (Spartacus Educational)
And then there was Muriel Matters, ‘that daring Australian girl’, the first woman to speak in the British Parliament, who locked herself to the Ladies Gallery grille (p. 274ff). Still attached, she and Helen Fox had to be removed, bodily, so the chains could be filed off. Powerful symbolism: a casting off of chains. Rather than pay her fine, Muriel Matters joined the 30 other prisoners in Holloway – not for the grille stunt but for ‘wilfully resisting police’ (p. 277). Muriel’s next piece of theatre was her plan to drop from an air balloon 56 pounds of handbills on the state procession of the King to open the winter session of parliament (p. 291). What could go wrong? The British weather? The balloon was blown off course and the bills jettisoned. The media loved it: ‘A Lady Who Cannot be Kept Down’ (p. 294).
Back in Australia, election day, 13 April 1910, this time Vida Goldstein polled 54 000 votes. This was not enough to get her into the Senate but she had split the Liberal vote. The 49.97 per cent vote for Labor owed much to women electors. They had been instrumental in electing the ‘first Labour government in the world into office’ (p. 311) and they made good the shining hour in advocating female-friendly policies.
Muriel Matters was determined to get support for her British colleagues where battle lines were drawn. Black Friday, 18 November 1910, was the culmination. When Asquith advised the King to dissolve parliament, it was clear there would be no vote on the suffrage resolution. Emmeline Pankhurst called an end to the truce that had held since the King’s death (p. 345). The women marched in battalions to the Commons. Winston Churchill’s instruction to the police that there were to be no arrests was interpreted as licence to assault the hundreds of women trying to get to the steps and present their petition to Asquith. Wholesale brutality ensued (pp. 346-47).
In ‘Part Three: Hope’, Wright takes the reader to the ‘Greatest Procession Known in History’, the ‘Coronation Procession’ of London, 17 June 1911, Suffrage Day. Hope indeed. The year of the coronation of King George V would be the year of the ‘emancipation of the women at the heart and centre of the Empire’ (p. 439). The planning had been intense for 40 000 women, 1000 banners, 100 female marching bands, and 28 societies. Horses, floats. Costumes. And the colours, everywhere, the colours (pp. 439-40). The Australian and New Zealand delegates were given pole position. There were 700 women wearing white frocks as the prisoners’ pageant, one for each woman incarcerated in the struggle for the vote (p. 441), a historical pageant, representations of empire, the societies, and bringing up the rear, men’s groups.
Muriel Matters 1924 (Wikipedia)
There had been significant divisions, especially with respect to the role of militancy in achieving the vote, but the procession was a show of sisterly solidarity. There was no violence, no arrests. The media and public were enthusiastic. But how would Asquith respond (p. 445)? In November 1911, he announced a Manhood Suffrage Bill – and thus began the period of letterbox fires, smashed windows, torched hedges, stones not banners (p. 459). The Cat and Mouse Act – a revolving door of gaolings, hunger strikes and force-feedings, release when near death, re-arrest when recovered (p. 450). Emily Wilding Davison, who was arrested nine times, endured seven hunger strikes and was force-fed almost 50 times, became the first martyr of the movement when she threw herself in front of the King’s horse, 4 June 1913, at Epsom (p. 460). And the vote? It was women’s service in World War I, not suffrage activism, that was the official reason for the passage of the Representation of the People Act 1918 (p. 463).
And how is this complex international tale to be told? By whom? To what ends? Wright reminds us that Prime Minister Fisher, who had declared that Australia would follow Britain into war until the last man, had also told a captive London audience that a true democracy can only be maintained honestly and fairly by including woman as well as men in the electorate of the country (p. 466). Australia’s daughters led the world. The Gallipoli story, ‘with its militarist narrative of youthful sacrifice, not youthful optimism’, Wright opines ‘was not the birth of the nation. It was the death of the nation we were well on the way to becoming (p. 466).’
And so to the new Parliament House, Canberra, where Wright guides us through the corridors of power, past monumental artwork, past the prime ministers’ portraits, past the 1963 Yirrkala bark petitions, to the banner of artist Dora Meeson Coates. The banner was rediscovered in the mid-1980s in a large collection of suffragette memorabilia in a Fawcett Library storeroom, and the only clue to its provenance was the ‘Commonwealth of Australia’ lettering at the top. Dale Spender, an Australian feminist living in London at that time, Senators Susan Ryan and Margaret Reynolds each had a hand in its ‘return’ – a valuable item for the bicentennial year. Prime Minister Bob Hawke celebrated the handover at the Lodge on International Women’s Day, 8 March 1988. Dale Spender was commissioned to prepare an educational kit for schools which she duly did, and there it ended. Why? Too radical, too international? (pp. 471-72).
I still have some of my correspondence with Dale Spender from that fateful year and the reception of women’s contributions to the problematic ‘celebration’ of the nation. In 1988, I was Professor of Australian Studies at Deakin University and author of the Australian Bicentennial Landmark volume on women in Australia. In Generations: Grandmothers, Mothers and Daughters, I traced the transmission of objects (books, plants, sewing machines, jewellery, recipes) across generations of women; and wrote of the stories, values, skills and so on the objects carried. Banners were part of the year. I was delighted when invited to launch the ‘Textile banners and posters for the labour movement’ as part of ‘Art and the shared belief’ at the Exhibition Building, Melbourne, in March 1988 (p. 469). The banners were marvellous but how sad that the Women’s Suffrage Banner was not there.
Dora Meeson Coates’s banner (ABC/Parliament of Australia/NMA)
Rather than writing this review, I had considered cranking up my faithful Singer sewing machine and running up a banner to hang with Douglass’s epigraph: ‘Power erases that which it fears’, an appliqué of heritage fabrics from my maternal grandmother’s workroom. The accompanying note would read: ‘Lest our founding objects and the stories they carry fall into desuetude’.
You Daughters of Freedom is a Big Book about Big Ideas and I have only had the space to highlight a few in this review. There are many more protests, people, proclamations, resolutions, organisations and by-ways to be found in Clare Wright’s book. I urge you to read it; share it with your family, friends and colleagues; make sure your local library has multiple copies; ditto the local book store and newsagent; put it on the list for your reading group. Celebrate the artefact. Objects matter and this one is a handsome book resplendent with its gold lettering and its white, green and purple sash. Read it on public transport. Start a conversation. It’s one we, as a nation, need to be having. Again.
* Diane Bell is a feminist anthropologist, award-winning author, and social justice advocate who has published widely across a number of fields and genres. Her books include Daughters of the Dreaming (1983, 1993, 2002); Generations: Grandmothers, Mothers and Daughters (1987); Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A World That Is, Was and Will Be (1996, 2014); Evil: a Novel (2005); and Listen to Ngarrindjeri Women Speaking (2008). She has held senior positions in higher education in Australia and the United States, undertaken a range of consultancies for community-based entities and, after retiring as Professor Emerita of Anthropology, George Washington University, US, returned home to Australia. She currently lives, researches, writes and strategises in Canberra where she is a Distinguished Honorary Professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. She has contributed a number of pieces for Honest History: use our Search engine.
Article printed from HONEST HISTORY: https://honesthistory.net.au/wp
URL to article: https://honesthistory.net.au/wp/bell-diane-clare-wrights-you-daughters-of-freedom-is-a-big-book-about-big-ideas/
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by Joel Hruska — Monday, August 01, 2011, 03:11 PM EDT
Motorola Report Reveals Terrible Xoom Sales
Prior to its launch, Motorola's Xoom tablet was touted as the first of the iPad killers, with features and capabilities the iPad lacked as well as a brand-new version of Android codenamed Honeycomb. Once the tablet hit shelves, it was clear that Motorola had rushed production in a bid to beat the iPad 2 to market. At launch, the Xoom's Wi-Fi variant was nowhere in sight, Flash support (a much-touted feature) was absent, the advertised 4G upgrade capability wasn't scheduled to appear before September, and the microSD slot didn't actually work. Google later came out and admitted that it had rushed Android 3.0 specifically for the Xoom's launch and that as a result, Honeycomb's source code would be kept under wraps.
According to the company's Q2 results, it shipped just 440,000 Xoom tablets over the past three months. Actual sales numbers could be even worse; reporting devices shipped equates to the number of Xoom tablets Motorola sent retailers, not the number of tablets said retailers actually sold. The Xoom was widely panned for its whopping $799 initial price, a fact that company executives acknowledged as a mistake. "We now recognize where the price points are. For the fourth quarter we'll launch very good, new tablets and we'll have a good quarter," Motorola’s Chief Executive officer Sanjay Jha stated. The Wi-Fi version of the Xoom later launched at $499, but the initial $799 for the 3G-enabled version may have helped paint the tablet as overly expensive in the eyes of consumers.
Overall revenues grew significantly (up 28 percent from Q2 2010), and the company launched multiple new devices in regions around the world. The company's guidance focused heavily on mobile products like Droid X2, Droid 3, and the Motorola Photon, with Xoom relegated to a single statement that the tablet would be introduced (along with the Atrix) into Latin America. Motorola's phone business shipped some 10.5M mobile devices over Q2, but just 4.4M were smartphones. That's nearly half again as many as the company sold in Q2 2010, but Apple moved in excess of 20 million iPhones.
The Xoom, in the end, turned out to be its own worst enemy, and failed to grab much in the way of consumer demand even before the iPad 2 had hit the market. Motorola's decision to focus on smartphones has paid off where the Droid line of products is concerned, but after years of trying to own the 'dumbphone' industry, it may take time for the company to reestablish itself as a top-tier competitior.
Tags: Motorola, RAZR, Android, Apple, tablet, droid, ipad, xoom, Honeycomb
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Home/france/Françenn Hollande in Rennes warns of democratic despair
Françenn Hollande in Rennes warns of democratic despair
france November 2, 2018 france
Both of them stood in the center of power. This is it "Metamorphosis" the Ve Former President of State François Hollande and former President of the National Assembly, between 2002 and 2007, Jean-Louis Debré discussed the Thursday 1st In November, as part of the Politikos International Political Film Festival, which holds its first release in Rennes 1st until 4 November. The two "ex" options for analyzing the current political panorama, sixty years after the birth of the Ve Republic.
This article is reserved for our subscribers Read it When the film and the series break the background of political power
Francois Hollande expressed concern about the democracies that a "Very serious moment" from all over the world. Following the election of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil or Donald Trump in the United States, the former Socialist leader felt that "France is not without the phenomenon where actors who want to be clearly connected with people are in direct contact with the major tasks". "We need to know that our institutions do not immunize us against this type of people," he added, without giving a name.
Later, when he reported the incarnation of power, he directly targeted Jean-Luc Mélenchon. "No one can say that he alone is the only Republic he is. There are some people who have a little lost (ie, their mind) about what the concept of the people is to be elected", she says clearly to the comments of the head of La France, who did not look into his premises by mid-October – "The Republic I Am".
List of five-year period 2012-2017
In this landscape Jean-Louis Debré regretted this "Neither the left nor the Republican law today is hope", while "In order to prevent a guardian from arriving, political parties have something to say". While Emmanuel Macron seriously twists the vote, "Promotion is a cause for concern"– said Francois Hollande, because today a Republican party can not occupy the voter.
– The clock is ticking (…), there are new challenges » : climate and immigration, but the "Need" the "Humanization" relations with politics. "All these questions are the parties that need to deal with them and have to show them in a forward-looking manner and not just whether their record of the predecessor was good or bad.", He told.
Comments were made while the Socialist Party was prepared to open the 2012-2017. In the case of the former head of state, they hear the case: this is the autumn slingers. "After the debate has taken place, the voting must be unanimous in a political group. How can one convince voters if there are voices in their party that they say they disagree with the very importance of politics [menée] ? "
"What deeply upsets me is that the consequence is a failure: a small group can lose it, and at that moment we want totally disciplined majority, cummed, godillot"continued Francois Hollande, who did not ignore the power of his successor.
When will she become President of Jean-Louis Debré? With a smile, François Hollande said that a few days after leaving Elysee, when he heard the radio announce a presidential commitment, he told himself "But he did not make this decision to me!" An obsolete era. "I want to comfort my successor, I understand, and I'm very clear." He assured.
See our great format: François Hollande, in the last days of his presidency
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Home/Entertainment/As Mother Taylor Swift inspired a shouting goat in the movie "The Grinch"
As Mother Taylor Swift inspired a shouting goat in the movie "The Grinch"
malaysia November 10, 2018 Entertainment, malaysia
Warning: There are minor spoilers for "The Grinch".
The Universal Animated Remake of "The Grinch," makes some additions and updates to Dr. Seuss's classic story, but adds some new characters including a goat that should be enjoyed.
It seems that the little guy, who appears several times throughout the movie, was inspired by the popular goat mother Taylor Swift.
"We have already done the scene where we know that Grinch would go and try to find reindeer and find Fred [reindeer]. We have already begun to build that sequence and then we have been like, "This is missing something. There is a layer of fun to have while it goes to the forest," co-director Scott Mosier told INSIDER.
"I would like to say that it was a deep, artistic, creative core, but it was YouTube," Mosier continued inspiration for the little goat. "There is a Taylor Swift remix of one of her songs with a screaming goat and we all could not help but laugh. I think it's the funniest thing in the world."
Mosier refers to the YouTube remix of Swift's 2012 play, "I knew you were embarrassed." It became viral in 2013 after a screaming goat was added to a part of the choir.
You can follow it below:
Mosier said he became an idea they had for the film, and the Illumination team started building it for the film, but they were not sure if they would make it into the final cut.
"We are heading for the first test and I was like," How do we finish the movie? "And it was that goat that screamed and we were," Let's go for it, "Mosier said.
"Originally, it was like," Okay, well, here's the end of the movie button to go through the test and see how it's going to play, "said co-director Yarrow Cheney." Probably it was the biggest laughing and just gave such energy at the end of the movie, which at that time was like, "OK, something is working here. We have to keep this."
Quite interesting, "The Grinch" is not the only animated movie this month when you see a white goat. A similar event also appears in Disney's "Ralph Breaks the Internet," the sequel "Wreck-It Ralph." So wait a minute to see a lot of animals.
You can read more of our conversation with "The Grinch" directors here. The film is now in the theater.
Visit the INSIDER home page for more information.
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Insurers Adapt to the New Normal of COVID-19 and ‘Social Distancing’
Carriers around the world are reassuring their customers and implementing policies to protect their associates while providing a high level of service and advancing projects in flight.
Anthony R. O’Donnell // March 20, 2020
(Image source: AIG homepage.)
Insurers across the nation and across the world are prioritizing communication to help their customers in the variety of ways they may be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. They are also reassuring the public that they are conducting business as usual; to ensure that remains the case, insurers are undertaking a variety of measures, including changing travel policy, encouraging associates to work at home, instituting “social distancing” policies for associates who must work onsite, reinforcing applications and infrastructure to support remote work, and helping internal and external partner teams to remain productive while physically separated.
Charles F. Lowrey, CEO, Prudential Financial.
AIG’s (New York) website messaging exemplifies a common response to the pandemic. “As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve, AIG remains focused on protecting the health and safety of our colleagues and those around us, as well as continuing to serve clients, policyholders, business partners and other stakeholders,” says a message reached by a prominent COVID-19-themed illustration on its homepage. Having made the basic point, the statement stresses, “AIG is open for business.”
The message goes on to say, “The company has activated its Business Continuity Plans and colleagues across our General Insurance and Life & Retirement businesses remain available to help meet the needs of clients and other business partners with both in-force and new business. Our call centers also remain accessible to provide support and information.”
Other global insurers broadcast similar messages, often directly from the leadership. A message from Prudential Financial (Newark, N.J.) CEO Charles Lowrey that the company “stands strong and ready to serve its customers,” is followed by click-throughs to articles on relevant subjects, such as how to manage finances in uncertain times, the critical role that employers play in managing the effects of the coronavirus, and the importance of taking a long-term perspective as an investor.
Thomas Buberl CEO AXA Group.
A message from AXA Group (Paris) CEO Thomas Buberl addressed both basic response and the firm’s special resources in a post on LinkedIn: “As insurers, it is our role to care and act for our customers in difficult times,” he writes. “This is what we have been doing in our different markets ever since the beginning of the outbreak, thanks to our distribution network and agents, expertise and support provided by our medical and assistance network, as well as emergency measures such as specific coverage for caregivers or access to telemedicine services. As a long-standing philanthropic funder of scientific research, we have reinforced our partnership with the ‘Institut Pasteur,’ supporting the taskforce set up to accelerate the research on the diagnosis and treatment of the virus. And we will need to be present to help our SME and corporate clients get back on their feet, once the sanitary emergency is under control.”
Keeping the Back Office Working
Across the United States and many other countries, “social distancing” policies have been implemented to lessen the transmission of COVID-19 through the simple expedient of limiting contact between individuals. In many states, governors have forbidden the assembly of more than 50 people for any purpose, schools and universities have been closed, restaurants have been restricted to takeout, and taverns have been closed. Businesses have been encouraged to let their employees work remotely where possible.
Insurers are among businesses who are equipped for remote work and also more sophisticated in general with regard to business continuity measures. Insurers began implementing work-at-home for large numbers of associates without receiving a mandate from government.
For example, last week Nationwide introduced a 50 percent work-from-home staggered schedule for its associates, Todd Lukens, SVP, Chief Information Security Officer tells Insurance Innovation Reporter. “This allowed us to begin implementing social distancing and ensure operational readiness for a broader work-from-home approach,” he elaborates. “On March 18, we had more than 90 percent of our associates working from home.”
Todd Lukens, CISO, Nationwide.
Lukens describes Nationwide (Columbus, Ohio) as well-equipped technologically and operationally, and confident that we the company accomplish the transition to mass remote work without negatively impacting its business and or service to its members. “Our systems and infrastructure can manage the ups and downs of a volatile market or a surge in call volume and systems traffic when customers seek additional service,” he explains. “Because of prudent preparation, we’re ready to serve our members with extraordinary care—from the office and our homes.”
Encova, a Columbus, Ohio-based property/casualty insurer doing business in 28 states and the District of Columbia, has implemented a remote work policy across its entire geographical blueprint, including its five major offices. About 80 percent of the workforce is now working remotely, according to John Kessler, Executive VP and Chief Strategy Officer. “We’ve identified mission-critical roles and responsibilities that require some people to continue to report to their offices, though some locations have been shut down because enough associates could do their jobs remotely,” he reports.
Encova is practicing social distancing to the extent possible, Kessler relates. “We’re encouraging all meetings to be either virtual or conference call, eliminating face to face altogether where possible,” he explains. “Where face-to-face meetings unavoidable we ensure that there are only ever a limited number of people in a given location, and they are instructed to observe protocols of social distancing.”
John Kessler, EVP and Chief Strategy Officer, Encova.
In an illustration of the arbitrary disruptiveness of COVID-19, Kessler notes that Encova had recently completed the construction of a state-of-the-art cafeteria. “It was more than just a cafeteria, really—it was designed for people to not only dine but to meet and collaborate,” he says. “We tried to go takeout-only, but over the last two days we had to make the decision to close it completely.”
Encova has altered its travel policy to end international travel and strongly discourage non-essential domestic travel. “We’re also sending a strong message that if you’re among the associates who report to a location, if you’re sick, stay home,” he adds. “We’re also discouraging outside visitors for meetings or any other purpose.
In addition to work-at-home, Encova is exploring ways to maintain a high level of productivity in its development teams. “We have pretty significant projects in flight, and so we’re adapting internally and encouraging our strategic partners to implement similar policies,” Kessler relates. “No contractors are permitted onsite, so we’re working to sustain our partnerships through video and tele conferencing.”
As of Kessler’s conversation with Insurance Innovation Reporter, the insurer was only two days into its new policies. “We have high hopes to minimize impact, but the fact of matter is there’s going to be one,” he acknowledges. “If you don’t have people together in one location they can’t be as responsive as they usually are—they can’t walk across the floor as needed as they would normally do. Certainly, we have technology in place to help them to collaborate under the current constraints, but there will still be an impact.”
Ramping Up a Virtual Environment
Ramping up a virtual environment for Encova’s workers’ compensation operation in Charleston, W.Va. was simply a matter of scaling existing capabilities, according to Tony Laska, Executive VP and CIO. The company’s effort to enable its Columbus headquarters was in progress when the virus struck.
Encova is using the Okta (San Francisco) security framework to enable secure access to applications for remotely working associates. “For the majority of the people that don’t need transactional systems access, that works fine, and those who have it can connect through any browser,” Laska says. “We have about 40 percent of the organization connect through VPN or Citrix [Fort Lauderdale, Fla.].”
Laska estimates that 80 to 85 percent are now able to do their jobs, but there remain challenges for some associates owing to the constraints of legacy systems they use. “We’re accelerating providing solutions so that they can work from home,” he says. “Of course some associates, such as for mail and print, must work on site because they have to use equipment in our facilities. At our data center we’re keeping some staff to run nightly batch processing or in case we need to reboot a server.”
Tony Laska, EVP, CIO, Encova.
Last Friday about three-quarters of Encova’s workforce worked remotely without any significant infrastructure challenges. “We noticed a few spikes in the Charleston data center, but the duration was so brief, nobody seems to have had any issues,” Laska reports. “We had recognized that we would need additional capacity, and our local network provider increased our bandwidth.”
About half Encova’s employees use Cisco’s (San Jose, Calif.) Jabber to enable a virtual phone on their desktop, allowing them to maintain anonymity with their personal mobile phones. The insurer is working to increase the number of employees who have some kind of “soft” phone capability, according to Laska. Encova is also working to enable its offshore vendors to work on laptops remotely with appropriate security.
Overall, Laska describes Encova’s systems response as having been robust and effective, leaving some details to be ironed out for the longer term. “There are things such as accommodating individuals who need a password reset, and creating specific steps to get them functioning again within a reasonable timeframe.”
Laska participates in a cross-industry CIO forum with roughly 200 CIO participants in Central Ohio. “Everybody’s been communicating and their actions have been fairly consistent,” he says. “Everybody’s taking a measured approach to getting people up-and-running remotely, and dealing with issues such as phones, passwords, and security.”
COVID-19, the Economy, the P&C Industry, and Technology Spending
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Smart Mobility Expert
Tony Canavan: Lives local, thinks…
Tony Canavan was a theme speaker at iMOVE’s inaugural Transport of Tomorrow Symposium, held on 26 & 27 March 2019, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. His topic was Government and the new mobility ecosystem. Visit the event page for more information.
Tony, could you tell me a little bit about where you work and what you do?
I work at EY, Ernst & Young, which I think most people know is a global professional advisory firm. Its head office is in New York, but the firm is all over the world. I’m the global transport leader at EY, in the government sector, which means anything that governments around the world are doing in transport, then in theory, I oversee.
My job is to stay across all the big issues that are going on in the transport sector around the world and what governments are doing about those things. Then, making sure that my firm, EY, is bringing the best of all of our skills and all of our capabilities to helping our clients solve those problems and meet those challenges.
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And just as the offices of Ernst & Young are spread about the globe, are the transport staff and projects equally well spread?
Yes. I think we essentially have transport people everywhere, because in any office with a fair smattering of clients and invariably government clients, transport’s a big issue. Everywhere you go. In some way, shape, or form, there’ll be EY transport people pretty much in all of our offices, but they’re not necessarily all specialists. But they’ll be working in the transport sector and bringing their skillset to transport issues.
How many people are we talking about across the world, approximately?
I’ll just pull a number out of my head. There’s 260,000 people who work for EY. Not all of them work in transport. I would say we probably have 1,000, maybe a couple of thousand people who would spend a good part of their working day or working year working on transport issues. Because I know here in Australia, the number would be a couple of hundred. We’re one of the larger transport practices here.
Transport has most definitely become an area of high activity for us as a firm, because there’s just so much going on. If it’s not big infrastructure building programs, that seem to be going on in many, many parts of the world, both the developing world and the developed world, it’s also the new dynamism in the sector, associated with all the smart mobility initiatives that are coming on.
There’s all sorts of activity, reaching into all parts of our firm, from both of those things. Whether it’s risk management, things like cyber, or just getting your information technology right, down to more transport-specific things like how do I build a project? What is my transport strategy? What is my policy? Almost everywhere, people are involved in that work in EY.
How is it you came to be in the transport space? Did you start there? Did you study in an area that led you that way?
Pretty much by accident. I have a Bachelor of Commerce. I actually have a finance and economics background, but it just so happened that one of my very first jobs, not my first job, but one of my very first jobs was in the Public Transport Corporation here in Melbourne, Australia. I began a career in transport that went on for many years in the government, and just continued to build and grow in that sector.
A lot of my work then led into large infrastructure projects, I got involved in developing transport strategies for the city and for the state, as well as just getting involved in the usual issues of the day around project management, and issues management.
I guess over the years, you develop expertise, you develop a thorough knowledge of what’s going on in the sector, and all the players and you start to see problems that have arisen before and you get more proficient and more knowledgeable of the sector. I never studied transport. I’m not a supply chain and logistics expert or a town planner or anything like that, but just through 30 years of working in the sector, I’ve come to know it inside out and that brings me to where I am today.
And to take you away from where you are today, let’s enter the world of hypotheticals. This can be anywhere in the world, it can be any project you want, but if someone came to you with a bucket of money and said, “We want you to fix a problem and make a lasting impact with no budget limit and a reasonable timeframe,” what would you like to take on?
Well, I suppose what’s exciting right now is the revolution that’s hit this sector in the last few years. I mentioned earlier, I’ve been working in it for 30 years, not a lot changed to be perfectly honest in the first 20-25 years of that time. Even not a lot changed in the last 100 years when you think about how transport is done, but now it’s been completely flipped on its head.
Multiple players coming in, huge innovation, huge application of technology to this sector, and wonderful new opportunities. Getting back to your question, my answer to that is very much rooted in these new boundless opportunities. If I had an unlimited budget, wouldn’t it be fantastic to be able to take a whole city and develop its infrastructure and its network, and the way people move around on that network, in such a way that it just solves itself, every journey, every moment of every day?
So that every journey that you make and that I make is totally optimised. What do I mean by that? In a distant future of hyperconnectivity, where every vehicle is connected to each other, the vehicle’s connected to the network, and drivers are connected to each other as well, and people on public transport, it is plausible in some Star Trek future that a city brain works out minute-by-minute, second- by-second, the best way for all of us to move around in a way that gets us all there more efficiently and more safely.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to take a whole city and put that in place quickly, rather than wait I suspect the decades it’s going to take to reach that point? It’s the ultimate expression of using data to solve the daily mobility challenge on our behalf, but at a citywide level, where we’re all being moved around almost by the system in the most efficient way possible at an aggregated level.
There’s I suppose a bit of a project going on now in that respect, with AIMES, run by the University of Melbourne.
Yes, I know AIMES and that’s a good living lab example of trialling and testing what that future might actually look like, what’s actually possible in the real physical world. I’m a big fan of the living labs where you can sit in offices like this and postulate about what’s possible, but they fall over the moment you get out there and try it in the real world.
Yes, that is a good example, and you start to learn lessons quickly, don’t you? About what would need to be put in place for that world that I just mentioned, to actually happen. One of those things that jumps up straight away in projects like AIMES, and there’s been others, is the extraordinary amount of collaboration you need from multiple people. From the individuals trying to move around, from the government, and everyone in between, every business, every player in the system. Almost every member of society, for it to happen.
It’s a huge task and one that we’re not really set up to do the way we’re structured and governed and so on, but one that I still feel sure will happen because the promise is so great.
Do you think we’re in the situation where we have to almost re-attain the skill of thinking in the longer term?
That’s a good question. Being able to think longer term is getting harder because things seem to change more quickly. You’ve probably seen those graphs that show the rate of technological change and how they present an exponential rise … the rate of change is actually quickening, not linear.
And yet, the way most things are set up in society, government, regulations, laws, even human nature, are designed to handle change that happens on a linear path. For the things we’re talking about to be achieved, there needs to be a re-adaptation of those things, the way we do regulations, the way we make laws, the way we embrace change ourselves, to approach something that can meet that increasing rate of change.
Your question was can we recapture thinking in the long term? I think we have a big enough challenge just to be able to keep up with the pace of change, in order to be able to adapt at the same speed that change is actually happening.
It’s tricky, though, isn’t it? Because you would think that the regulation side of things has to be ahead of the curve to be able to do that.
Yes, that’s right. Take the way we do regulations. Regulations are usually done, “Okay, we have a problem and we need to fix it,” and it’s usually a reaction to something. Even when it’s better than that, even when we see a problem might be coming and we try to write a regulatory framework to do it, that regulatory framework is still static when it’s put in place.
It can quickly prove to be not well-suited to the change when it comes along. It’s almost as if we need something like adaptive regulation, regulatory regimes that are themselves adaptable to changing circumstances, for it to be suited to the type of world we’re talking about, where things are changing at an increasing rate.
It’s almost down to that level, where if you want to be able to think long-term and keep up with and take advantage of the rate of change, then things like the way we make laws and create regulations themselves have to change.
And to get over and around things like lobbyists and self-interest. It’s hard to purely base this work on what the community needs, rather than what do we need to do to be re-elected or what do we need to do to keep that lobby group happy?
You’re making a very good point, and that is when we’re thinking of regulation, we’re thinking of laws, and we’re thinking of policy settings, that we have to put people at the middle of them, at the centre of them. That is hard to do amongst the clamour, isn’t it? There’s a lot of people with their own perspectives about what’s good for us, and often what is actually good for us, and our ability to express it is forgotten.
To use current vernacular, to see outside the bubble …
Well, that’s right. And to remind ourselves that the only reason we’re here, the only reason cities exist, the only reason the transport system exists is to serve people and enable them to go about their lives. It might seem pretty basic, but you often scratch your head and wonder whether that’s being remembered. We’re often be told what’s good for us, aren’t we?
We need Occam’s razor to be ever-present.
(laughs) Something like that.
All right. Back to hypotheticals, part two. Limited budget, and limited timeframe. Something in transport that you need to fix quickly and again, with the aim of an appreciable impact. What would you like to take on?
I think there’s something that won’t cost any money, and it might even make money, that we need to do for many of these other things to fall into place. That’s to look at the way we pay for and fund mobility.
This is a well-worn argument really, I’m not saying anything that’s particularly new, but at the moment the way that transport and mobility is funded and paid for is through things like fuel excise, through our vehicle registration and driver licensing charges. Sometimes we pay tolls on roads. Parking fines, speeding fines.
But many of those things are going to disappear. Fuel excise is going to disappear, as electric vehicles, or zero emission vehicles take hold. As vehicles become more autonomous, perhaps vehicle registration or driver licensing changes, and then with car ownership models changing, maybe vehicle registration changes as well.
Parking …
Parking, yes, may become less a thing, as vehicle autonomy kicks in. So there’s a dwindling funding model that gives us a bit of a burning platform for something else. And that is an introduction of more usage-based charges for our mobility.
Whether we’re using the roads, or whether we’re making trips with public transport, universal usage-based charge, structured in a way not just to raise money. That’s something that helps to win the argument.
It’s more around helping to manage demand on our networks, and also encourage certain behaviours. By that, I mean using those pricing signals to make public transport as attractive as possible, non-essential peak hour travel to be not as attractive as off-peak travel, etc.
Usage-based charging is something that would help us get the most out of our transport network, but also puts in place something I think we will need in the future world of smart mobility. Because in the future world of smart mobility, with new mobility service providers, Uber and Lyft, GoGet and the rest of them, they will be the people that are organising a lot of our travel. There is no reason why those organisations, just like us, should not be making their contribution to the infrastructure that we need. I think this kind of mechanism is going to be an important element in the total piece that we will need, almost like a building block for that future world we were talking about, and it’s not something that requires obviously much budget.
Within those constraints you gave me, I think that’s something we could introduce as a policy reform.
In two words, better management.
Yes, better management. Because at the moment, we try to solve most problems in transport and mobility with supply-side solutions. We build more stuff, build more roads, more railway lines, we widen roads and so on. But we don’t do much about managing the demand side, and this will give us an important tool to do that.
All right. Back to the world of reality, of the work you’ve been …
I’m hoping that is a reality.
(laughs) Of course! What project or work have you been most proud of to date in your accidental trip into transport?
(laughs) Well, I’ve got a couple of answers for that I suppose. One of them predates my time at EY. Many years ago, I worked on a transport strategy for Melbourne with a gentleman named Sir Rod Eddington, who’s a well-known business person and public policy leader. He was engaged by the Victorian Government to do a transport strategy for Melbourne and I led Sir Rod’s team on his behalf.
It’s a good 10 years ago now, but I am very proud of it, because I think that strategy, that report we did, has become a bit of a blueprint, for a couple of things. One, the way that transport strategies get done, the evidence-based approach we took. But secondly, the recommendations we made have led to many infrastructure projects over the last decade.
I take some pride from looking at the window and seeing those projects come to fruition, and become the agenda for the city. We probably need a new one now in Melbourne, but that’s something of great pride.
What are some of those things see when you look out the window?
There was a large project in Victoria called the Regional Rail Link Project, which was first mooted in the Eddington report. The Melbourne Metro Project comes from the Eddington report. The Western Distributor Project that’s being built at the moment comes from the Eddington report. That’s some of the largest projects in the city that stem from that time.
Then, I think in my time in EY, on a slightly different note, has probably been work on the Western Sydney Airport, which is the second airport for Sydney. Where I’ve spent the last three or four years of my life advising the Commonwealth Government on that project and playing my role, along with many, many, many others to get that project through to its investment decision and a commitment by the Commonwealth to actually build and commit to that new airport that the country, not just Sydney, needs. Having been a project that’s taken decades probably.
Whilst I realise it hasn’t been built yet and it won’t open until 2026, the Government has committed $5 billion to that project and the contracts are out in the market, and everything’s actually going to happen. Just to play a part in getting to that point after many years of it going around, you take some pride from that sort of thing.
Last question. We’ve talked about a few things already, but of all the technology coming at us in the next three to five years, what most excites you?
Let me start by saying what it isn’t. I’m not as excited about vehicle autonomy as a lot of people are. It’s not to say that I’m uninterested in it, it’s just that I think there’s other stuff going on that I find more interesting, and they’re more immediate as well. Vehicle autonomy will play its role no doubt.
What’s excited me has been the explosion of new mobility service delivery options coming from startups, tech companies, re-transformed automotive companies, individuals from all over the world, using technology in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before. And all of this offers to the public, offers people, a range, a plethora of new services and systems in different cities and regions around the world.
What that is going to enable I think over time, is a convergence of what we think of as public transport and private transport, into something that is a form of shared mobility, but one where there’s a much wider range of choice than people have now. That’s here now for us to shape and mould and take advantage of, and that’s extraordinary for someone, as I said earlier, who worked in this sector where not much changed at all and suddenly that explosion is exciting.
I’m really, really interested in that and that’s why I’m involved in things like iMOVE, and so on, just to be part of that excitement. And then I think the other thing that’s exciting, and I’m hoping Australia gets a bit more into it, is the energy revolution in vehicles, to move towards – I hope – zero emission vehicles quickly, like the rest of the world’s starting to move toward. Something that’s not progressing as quickly here. It’s really exciting, and will make a big difference to the climate and air quality and ultimately, the planet.
Connectivity is key, isn’t it? Not just of vehicles, but with and between infrastructure, data, businesses .. and as you said, the openness, more people coming in with more ideas and sharing and connectivity is the thing that’s going to help fix all these problems.
Yes. It’s the sharing and connectivity of data, and it’s the sharing and connectivity of people, isn’t it? The collaboration, just watching this sector, the coming together of organisations, just the sheer dynamism of it to solve problems is fantastic. Ultimately, the sharing and the connectivity of data is going to be central to virtually everything we’ve talked about today at the individual level, at the vehicle level, at the citywide level, at the national level.
And I’m hoping also, something we haven’t talked about so far, is to take these concepts beyond the urban areas and into rural and regional areas, which is also a source of great excitement. It does seem to me like there’s an opportunity coming up here to transform the options that people have, and the flexibility and the accessibility that people can get in regional areas from some of these changes that we’re talking about, at a level far and above what they experience today. I’m really hoping that’s something we can achieve.
BONUS Q and A!
iMOVE asked Tony a few more questions, based around his topic at the Transport of Tomorrow Symposium, Government and the new mobility ecosystem
In the new mobility ecosystem, do you see Government as having to step up its role, or rather that it lets private enterprise pick up some ground/responsibility?
There is no doubt that government’s role will change. But they have decisions to make. Until now, there wasn’t a burgeoning private mobility sector to consider in their policies and regulations. But that’s changed.
The jury is still out on how different governments will respond, but my view is that governments should embrace what the private mobility sector can offer, and build that into their transport policies and strategies. Why wouldn’t you use this new weapon to solve our mobility challenges?
That doesn’t mean abandoning the field. Quite the opposite. There is too much at stake and too many things that could go wrong to adopt a pure laissez faire approach. But an approach that integrated conventional public transport with new private sector mobility delivery models could unlock capacity and expand mobility options in cities and in regions.
You speak of transport communities needing the focus, rather than transport businesses … how will the business aspects of transport cope with such a change? How can we bring all parties in this around to the ‘public good’?
It is easy for us to get excited by the many new players offering new services and products to the community. When I talk about the role government will play, a vital part of that is to ensure its strategies and policies are people-centred. What does that mean? It means playing a leadership role in balancing personal mobility with shared mobility, it means finding ways to keep mobility fair and accessible to all, and it also means thinking carefully about how data is used and who owns it. Policies and strategies from government ultimately set some parameters for transport businesses. My sense is that many of the new transport businesses would welcome clarity and certainty in some of these areas.
The concept of “public good” is obviously subjective. But it’s exactly the sort of thing we look to government to lead on. In the world of mobility, the “public good” means accessibility, fairness, good air quality, low emissions and managing demand to minimise congestion.
What would be the first thing to do in order to effect such a change of attitude in regards to transport communities?
I wouldn’t say we need a change in attitude as such. I think the points I’ve been making would not be contested by many people. I think it is ensuring that we don’t allow mobility to evolve in such a way that some of the community-wide issues I’ve mentioned don’t become secondary to other priorities.
I’d like to see governments and private providers experimenting in trials that integrate public transport journeys with private services. I think early successes in such trials would trigger big interest in how new shared mobility models can be used to improve on existing public transport services.
Should, or could, public transport be essentially free, a la Luxembourg, and Tallinn (Estonia)? Could this be a workable tactic in Australia?
No, I don’t think public transport should be free. I think public transport is something of immense value to all of us and that paying for such services reflects that.
But having said that, I do believe that public transport must be priced and presented in such a way as to make it the most highly attractive option for a large number of journey types.
The way I think about this, is that we will face and should embrace a blurring of what is public and private transport, to the stage where the truer distinction is between personalised and shared mobility. But we need shared mobility to be much more attractive than personalised, especially in peak period city journeys. And the more shared, the more attractive – that is, mass transit remains the quintessential, highest priority and most attractive by far option for peak period city trips.
I can see a pricing regime evolving where all of these mobility options on the spectrum between personalised and shared, are priced in a consolidated way. But with these inbuilt incentives to ensure what we call public transport today remains far more attractive than driving your car in periods of high demand.
What do you see as the Transport of Tomorrow in the short-term? (5 years out)
I see the big changes coming in electric vehicles, and in the new mobility service delivery models we have been discussing. I don’t see vehicle autonomy making big inroads within five years, but I expect investment in vehicle autonomy and connected infrastructure to continue and increase.
What do you see, if your crystal ball/wish list extends this far out, in the Transport of Tomorrow in the medium-term? (20 years out)
20 years is an eternity. Who knows? All of that investment in vehicle autonomy will have borne fruit by then, and we will have dedicated precincts and roads/lanes in some areas for autonomous operations. Within those areas, we will also have vehicle and network connectivity controlling movements to manage demand and eliminate congestion.
Far fewer people will own their vehicles, instead drawing on a burgeoning mobility ecosystem to make their daily trips. Our public transport system will have transformed to offer a vast array of new modes beyond train, tram and bus. There will be on-call public transport options in cities and regions that will have successfully increased the number of shared journeys over personalised during busy periods.
There will be no more vehicle registration and fuel excise fees. But we will all pay a usage-based fee for all journeys, with shared journeys costing far less than personalised journeys at busy times of the day.
And all of this with zero emissions!
By Scott Fitzgerald 5 March, 2019
Tags: connected and automated vehiclesgovernmentparkingpublic transport
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Author: Scott Fitzgerald
Scott looks after the iMOVE Australia and Transport of Tomorrow websites, including their content production, and social media accounts. He's looking forward to seeing all the innovation that will be driven by iMOVE. Favourite car he's ever owned? No question, a 1965 XP Ford Falcon Futura hardtop.
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News Local State mechanism fails to appoint director of Civil Aviation Department
State mechanism fails to appoint director of Civil Aviation Department
“The process of filling in the post of director of the Civil Aviation Department, which began on July 11, 2005, has, up until today, not yet finished.” The foreword of the decision of the Court of Appeal illustrates how the state mechanism has been unable, for several years, to make a legitimate appointment, even for the managerial position of sensitive services.
The Public Service Commission proceeded to disputed appointments on five occasions up until today, with three of them having been annulled in court decisions and two outstanding appeals.
The last decision was issued in December 2014 and resulted in the appointment being cancelled. An appeal was lodged by the person whose appointment was cancelled, which was appealed to by the administrators of his property after he died during the course of the proceedings.
As noted in the judgment of the Court of Appeal, in 2016, in compliance with the Court’s decision, and regardless of the appeal, the Public Service Commission carried out a review – the fourth in a row – and appointed the deceased to the post, retroactively from 3 October 2005 to 20 April 2014, the date he died. There is a pending appeal against this decision.
As follows, given that the appointment of the deceased was for a limited period of time, the matter was re-examined by the Public Service Commission who then issued a call for the filling of the post in question, and finally a third person was appointed in 2017. This has led to a new appeal, which is also pending.
By Melissa Hekkers
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Home › eBooks › A to Z of Computer Scientists, Updated Edition
A to Z of Computer Scientists, Updated Edition
Authored by: Harry Henderson
From the Series: Notable Scientists
Imprint: Facts On File
Dewey Number: 004.
Praise for the previous edition:
"Entries are written with enough clarity and simplicity to appeal to general audiences. The additional readings that end each profile give excellent pointers for more detailed information...Recommended."—Choice
"This well-written collection of biographies of the most important contributors to the computer world...is a valuable resource for those interested in the men and women who were instrumental in making the world we live in today. This is a recommended purchase for reference collections."—American Reference Books Annual
"...this one is recommended for high-school, public, and undergraduate libraries."—Booklist
The significant role that the computer plays in the business world, schools, and homes speaks to the impact it has on our daily lives. While many people are familiar with the Internet, online shopping, and basic computer technology, the scientists who pioneered this digital age are generally less well-known.
A to Z of Computer Scientists, Updated Edition features 136 computer pioneers and shows the ways in which these individuals developed their ideas, overcame technical and institutional challenges, collaborated with colleagues, and created products or institutions of lasting importance. The cutting-edge, contemporary entries explore a diverse group of inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries in the computer science field.
People covered include:
Grace Hopper (1906–1992)
Dennis Ritchie (1941–2011)
Brian Kernighan (1942–present)
Howard Rheingold (1947–present)
Bjarne Stroustrup (1950–present)
Esther Dyson (1951–present)
Silvio Micali (1954–present)
Jeff Bezos (1964–present)
Pierre Omidyar (1967–present)
Jerry Yang (1968–present)
A to Z of Biologists, Updated Edition
A to Z of Chemists, Updated Edition
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A to Z of Physicists, Updated Edition
A to Z of Scientists in Space and Astronomy, Updated Edition
A to Z of Scientists in Weather and Climate, Updated Edition
A to Z of STS Scientists, Updated Edition
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Battle Vests of the KVLT & TR00 3: My Pop Patch Vest
Are you looking for a custom designed battle vest, but don’t have access to a high quality print shop? Contact me HERE, and we can discuss possibly working on a unique, custom designed vest, featuring only the bands and patches you choose! Check out my other posts in this series for more examples of my work HERE.
Welcome back to Battle Vests of the KVLT and TR00! Today, in addition to losing my metal card, I will also lose my right to use the words KVLT and TR00 by constructing one of the most unholy abominations of a patch vest the world has ever seen! Or, maybe this vest is so abhorrent to all things KVLT and TR00, that it comes full circle and becomes the most KVLT and TR00 vest of all! Either way, I made a vest featuring all my favorite female pop artists, and I figured I may as well just go ahead and own that shit by writing today’s post about it.
The inspiration for this vest came when I made plans with my friend Shena to see Britney Spears in Vegas. See, this whole pop thing is fairly new for me. When I first heard that Madonna song I heard back in 2008? Shena was the one who burned me a copy of Hard Candy (that I later got caught listening to at a high volume in my car). When I mentioned I was Brit-curious, Shena was the one burned me a copy of Blackout. And when Britney took up a residency in Vegas, Shena was the one who convinced me that, no, it would not be ridiculous to fly across the country to see Britney Spears. And that was when I knew I needed a vest to wear to the show. Or maybe it was when I found the white corduroy vest at a local used clothing store. Either way, it ended up being battle vest time!
At this point, I’m no stranger to making battle jackets. I’ve got my sewing machine skillz down pat, I know the guys down at the Tshirt printing place where I make all my custom patches well enough that they have been coming over to play the Middle-earth Collectible Card Game with me, and I’ve got more vests, unfinished vests, and vest ideas than I know what to do with. So, for this vest, I thought I’d push my sewing skills a bit more than usual by accenting the vest with strategically placed bits of zebra fur trim. Punk vests have been experimenting with various animal fur trims for a while now, so I decided I’d continue the punk direction and stud out the vest as well. I also figured I’d add in some hot pink spikes for the shoulders but I stopped there–I didn’t want it to get tacky after all.
As for the patches, I decided to keep it simple and only go with my 7 or 8 favorites. It was a tough call, but I decided Madonna was going to have to be the centerpiece patch. In addition to being the reason I got into pop music (when I mistook one of her singles from Hard Candy that was playing on public radio for “underground pop”), she’s also responsible for some of the best dance music out there, especially (at least in epic eurotrash terms) towards the second half of her career. However, the first concert I would wear this vest to would be Britney Spears in Las Vegas, a singer that I like almost as much as Madonna. No, really, Brit-brit is AWESOME, and it was kind of annoying that everyone thought I was going to go see her live ironically. Anyway, I put the immortal Blackout‘s immortal introduction, “It’s Britney, BITCH” in big iron-on letters across the upper shoulders. Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Kylie [Minogue] (I constructed her logo out of iron on hem tape that I cut into letters), Ke$ha, and Selena Gomez (the last two in decorative pink embroidery thread stitching) rounded out my favorite artists for this vest.
I left off the following artists for the following reasons:
Katy Perry – She’s growing on me more and more, but really only has 2 songs I like (“E.T.” and “Dark Horse”–three if I grudgingly admit I listened to “I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It” and I liked it), and otherwise her stuff really betrays her Christian songwriting roots. Also, she wrote the second worst song on Britney’s new CD, which isn’t even faint praise considering how awful the worst song on Britney’s new CD is.
Christina Aguilera – Admittedly, “Genie in a Bottle” is aaaaaaamazing, but aside from a few other minor key gems, her catalog tends towards stuff like the wretched “Come on Over (Baby).”
Jennifer Lopez – Though I love her rom com work, the majority of her songs leave me a little cold. Still, I thought about including her anyway just because “On the Floor” is so goddamn good!
Shakira – Sure, she’s got some gems like “Whenever, Wherever,” but aside from Shewolf, most of her albums are not electropop, and only minimally dance, and thus, not really my thing. That new Rihanna track is pretty sweet, but that’s probably just because of Ri-ri.
P!nk – I always almost like her songs, but they always seem to come down on the wrong side of inspiring and uplifting. They are epic in the wrong sense of the word.
Robyn – Robyn is frickin awesome, but, something about her didn’t seem to quite fit with the rest of my vest. She’s just a little more Euro, a little classier, a bit more synthpop, a bit more underground, a bit more respectable. Still, that said, I’ll have to at least get a Robyn shirt to wear with this vest, because Robyn is the best.
Finally, apparently there are contraptions like the BEDAZZLER ™ that will automatically stud out your KVLT and TR00 vests. However, I didn’t know this at the time, so I just pushed the spikes of the stud through the fabric and into a couple stacked sheets of cardboard, flipped it over and used the dimple on the end of a permanent marker to bend each of the four spikes over (and then the marker itself was just the right size to finish pushing all the spikes into the hollow of the stud). I believe this is what punks refer to as DIY.
With the technical stuff out of the way…how did the vest fare at the Britney Spears show? I don’t know, YOU TELL ME:
Ok, enough of me talking about what a chick magnet a vest like this will make you. I know why everyone is here–it’s to listen to some of the all-time best electropop dance songs by female vocalists that you will ever hear!
Britney Spears – “Gimme More”
(Blackout, 2007)
https://isleyunruh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Britney-Spears-Gimme-More.mp3
A lot of people seem to think that Britney had one big song with “…Baby One More Time” and has been riding on the sexualized school girl success of that song ever since (though sometimes “Toxic” will get grudgingly acknowledged as “pretty good” too). And while In the Zone (and, to a lesser extent, Britney) was undoubtedly an important transitional album for Britney, Blackout was Britney’s first full-on electropop album and signaled a major turning point for her career.
“Gimme More,” while perhaps not her greatest song, is noteworthy as the song that opened her most important album with the immortal phrase “It’s Britney, bitch.” It’s a catchy, dark, minor key dance song that was just one part of what would be a string of very consistently brilliant pop albums from Britney. The releases from the second half of Britney’s career proved that she was far more than the bubblegum pop princess of her early work.
Not to take anything away from “…Baby One More Time,” that song is great too (even if most of the rest of that album blows).
Ke$ha – “Blow”
(Cannibal, 2010)
https://isleyunruh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Keha-Blow.mp3
A lot of poeple seem to make Ke$ha the poster child for everything that is wrong with pop music these days. However, you can hate on her “trashy” looks and her “brush my teeth with a bottle of jack” lyrics from the ubiquitous “Tik Tok” all you want, but you would be wrong. While I (obviously) don’t love her occasional forays into rock and country influences, Ke$ha really is quite a brilliant songwriter (yes, she actually does write her own songs) and her cannily cultivated image that the masses either love to hate, or hate to love doesn’t seem to have hurt her career at all either.
This song is Ke$ha at her electro best. Loud and in your face, it might be simple song, but that chorus (and the finale) is positively EPIC in the best sense of the word.
Kylie Minogue – “Like a Drug”
(X, 2007)
https://isleyunruh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Kylie-Minogue-Like-A-Drug.mp3
Kylie’s career goes way back to that “Do the locomotion with me” song. Of course, because I’ve become increasingly aware that my love of dance music is more directed towards the current (last 5-10 years) state of pop music than a more overarching embrace of stuff like Kylie’s disco-y roots, it is the latter years of Kylie’s career I most identify with. She might not have completely shed her disco roots, but she has proven herself as a bonafide electropop master in my eyes anyway.
X was the first Kylie CD I’d heard (thanks, once again, to a burned disc from Shena), and it’s still one of my favorites (as long as you skip a few of the major key songs towards the end). This song started a two album pattern of the best Kylie songs somehow not being released as singles. Also, it’s about a dance floor, so, of course I love it.
Lady Gaga – “Just Dance”
(The Fame, 2008)
https://isleyunruh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Lady-GaGa-Just-Dance.mp3
Sure, she can’t write a ballad to save her life, and sure, her last album blew even worse than her second to last middling album. However, Lady Gaga at her peak was responsible for one of the most remarkable strings of brilliant singles in the last decade. I like her good stuff so much that I gave her both the pocket flaps on the front of the vest.
This song is the first Gaga song I ever heard, and is still one of my favorites. Also, once again, it’s about a dance floor.
(Hard Candy, 2008)
https://isleyunruh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Madonna-Give-It-2-Me.mp3
With some exceptions (I challenge anyone to say they don’t like “Like a Prayer,” especially if they’ve seen Madonna bring down the house by playing it live), most of my love for Madonna is for the second half of her career.
Starting with Ray of Light (at least the second half of Ray of Light), she started using more and more electronic influences in her songs, to the point where I ended up mistaking this song for some kind of cool underground europop the first time I heard it. It wasn’t, it was Madonna, and it was the first song (aside from those Ace of Base songs they used to play on the school bus radio) that made me truly realize I might be a fan of pop music.
Anyway, “Give it 2 Me” is a great song, but really her last 3 albums have all been electropop masterpieces, especially Confessions on a Dance Floor, which contains a few of my favorite pop songs of all time!
Rihanna – “S&M”
(Loud, 2010)
https://isleyunruh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Rihanna-SM.mp3
If I had to admit it, Rihanna’s albums seem to have a bit more filler than most of the artists from this list, but maybe that’s just because she is a bit more prolific than most of the artists on this list. Still, her good songs (of which there are many!) are really really good–good enough to give her not one but TWO upper shoulder panels on the front of the vest.
This song, featuring none other than the Legendary Ms. Britney Spears, is quintessential Rihanna. Dirty, loud, twinged with darkness, and she really Rihannas the chorus. Classic.
Selena Gomez – “A Year Without Rain”
(A Year Without Rain, 2010)
https://isleyunruh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Selena-Gomez-A-Year-Without-Rain.mp3
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Selena’s music for the most part had nothing to do with her early Disney princess image. In fact, her stuff was so good that she made it into the KVLT and TR00 collection of patches honored on my vest. She’s got a few songs I’m not down with, but, really, who doesn’t? It’s not like Britney and Ke$ha haven’t put out a “Chillin With You,” and “Dinosaur” or two in their times.
While I love Selena’s more uptempo stuff like “Slow Down,” this older ballad might even be my favorite from her despite it seeming like something I’d hate at first. Just a ballad on the surface, but it’s backed up by a skeleton of total minor key eurotrash awesomeness. As soon as I heard that synth in the background I knew I was going to be down with Selena.
As always, you can listen to this patch vest in convenient playlist form here:
Britney Spears - Gimme More
Ke$ha - Blow
Kylie Minogue - Like A Drug
Rihanna - S&M
Selena Gomez - A Year Without Rain
Finally, because she got me into this music, here are Shena’s picks for representative/favorite/whatever songs for each singer:
SHENA’S PICKS: THE PLAYLIST.
Good choices even if I don’t love the Rihanna and Selena picks for the obvious reason. She did correctly identify what is probably the best song on Blackout at least.
Battle Vests of the KVLT & TR00 / Metal Music
I like “Gimme More” quite a bit, but I really can’t stand Britney’s voice. “Blow” is pretty solid, but Ke$ha is obnoxious as fuck. “Like a Drug” has a great chorus which saves it from mediocrity. “Just Dance” is quality all the way through, maybe the best on the list overall. “Give it 2 Me” has a cool, laid-back vibe. “S&M” is the other contender for best song on the list. “A Year Without Rain” is fucking awful.
Isley Unruh
Boy, between this post, and you listening to that Warlord album so many times, I suppose I’m going to owe it to you to listen to all the death metal albums from your forthcoming top 50 list…
You only wish it stopped at 50…
Yuri Tarded
fuck off you bloody little wanker. get that whack shit off of your body or imma smack you into next thursday you disgusting fuck. why the fuck would you put that shit on a jacket. youre a disgrace to earth and jews
isley.unruh on Middle-earth Monday 1 – Nen Hithoel
James Webber on Middle-earth Monday 1 – Nen Hithoel
Anonymous on The racist roots of the New Wave of Anti-Islamic Black Metal
Psicologo en Marbella on Brilliant Board Games 2 – Tichu
HHomes on Minor Key Music 82: Switchblade Symphony – Wallflower
My Top 5 Tichu Memories
Brilliant Board Games 2 – Tichu
Minor Key Music 82: Switchblade Symphony – Wallflower
Even More Signs That the Underground Metal Band You Are Listening to Might be Racist
Minor Key Music 81: C. K. Strong – Sweet Talkin’ Candy Man
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Pot Smuggler, Advocate Robert Platshorn Starts Kickstarter for Ganja Documentary
By Rich Abdill
West Palm Beach activist (and convicted drug-runner) Robert Platshorn wants to get marijuana legalized, and he says the key to doing it is simple: old people.
He’s been traveling extensively and giving talks to senior citizens as part of his “Silver Tour,” which he launched in 2010 to reach out to powerful senior voting blocs — particularly Florida’s — in an effort to target a demographic that isn’t used to thinking about weed. But the live shows he’s been giving to audiences of all ages aren’t enough, he says, and he wants to expand into — get ready — infomercials.
Platshorn has teamed up with Miami producer Walter J. Collins to make a half-hour special he hopes to air hundreds of times in slots that are likely to serve him up some elderly eyes. It’s called “Should Grandma Smoke Pot,” and he’s raising the money to finish it on Kickstarter.
Read complete article here:
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2012/07/pot_smuggler-advocate_robert_p.php
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From 7 Billion To 500 Million: This Is The Population Culling Agenda Of The Elite
dericiousknitty March 16, 2019 March 16, 2019 2030 Agenda, Depopulation, Eyes to See, New World Order
The United Nations has officially designated October 31st, 2011 as “7 Billion Day”. On that day, the United Nations estimates that the population of the Earth hit 7 billion for the very first time.
But instead of celebrating what a milestone 7 billion people represents, the UNPF focused instead on using October 31st to raise awareness about “sustainability” and “sustainable development”.
In other words, the United Nations once again declared that there are way too many people on the planet and that we need to take more direct measures to reduce fertility.
In recent years, the UN and other international organizations have become bolder about trying to push the sick population control agenda of the global elite. Most of the time organizations such as the UN will simply talk about “stabilizing” the global population, but as you will see in this article, there are many among the global elite that are not afraid to openly talk about a goal of reducing the population of the world to 500 million (or less).
To you and I it may seem like insanity to want to get rid of more than 90 percent of the global population, but there is a growing consensus among the global elite that this is absolutely necessary for the good of the planet.
As we approach October 31st, dozens of articles are appearing in newspapers all over the globe that are declaring what a horrible thing it is that we are up to 7 billion people.
In fact, it surely is no accident that the United Nations put 7 Billion Day on the exact same day as Halloween. Perhaps they want to highlight how “scary” it is that we have 7 billion people on the planet, or perhaps they are trying to send us a message by having 7 Billion Day occur on the same day as “the festival of death”.
In any event, it seems like way too much of a coincidence that 7 Billion Day just happens to fall on the same day as Halloween.
Today, “sustainable development” has become one of the key buzzwords that those in the radical environmental movement love to use, but most Americans have no idea that one of the key elements of “sustainable development” is population control.
So what precisely is considered to be an ideal population for the earth by those pushing “sustainable development”?
Well, of course there is much disagreement on this issue, but many are very open about the fact that they believe that the earth should only have 500 million people (or less) on it.
For example, the first of the “new 10 commandments” on the infamous Georgia Guidestones states the following:
“Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”
CNN Founder Ted Turner would go even farther:
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
Dave Foreman, the co-founder of Earth First, says that reducing our population down to 100 million is one of his three main goals:
“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
Sadly, this kind of garbage is even being taught at major U.S. universities. For example, Professor of Biology at the University of Texas at Austin Eric R. Pianka once wrote the following:
“I do not bear any ill will toward people. However, I am convinced that the world, including all humanity, WOULD clearly be much better off without so many of us.
Mikhail Gorbachev thinks that reducing the global population by 90 percent would be just about right:
“We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”
But most of the time, the way that the global elite speak of population control is much more “politically correct”. They tend to use terms such as “sustainable development” and “reduction of fertility rates” and “quality of life” when discussing the need to reduce our population.
As 7 Billion Day has approached, there have been articles popping up in major publications all over the globe that are advocating increased population control measures. Of course in the western world such measures are always framed as being “voluntary”, but that is the way that they always introduce things like this. Once enough people get on board with the “voluntary” population control measures they will become “mandatory”.
So now that you are aware of some of the buzzwords that are used, check out what has been written on some of the biggest news websites in the world recently….
Jeffrey D. Sachs, the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, recently said the following in an article for CNN:
“The arrival of the 7 billionth person is cause for profound global concern. It carries a challenge: What will it take to maintain a planet in which each person has a chance for a full, productive and prosperous life, and in which the planet’s resources are sustained for future generations?
“How, in short, can we enjoy ‘sustainable development’ on a very crowded planet?”
For Sachs, one of the “keys” to sustainable development is the “stabilization” of the global population….
“The second key to sustainable development is the stabilization of the global population. This is already occurring in high-income and even some middle-income countries, as families choose to have one or two children on average. The reduction of fertility rates should be encouraged in the poorer countries as well.”
In an article for the Guardian, Roger Martin stated that all of the problems that humanity is facing would be easier to solve if less people were running around the planet….
“…all environmental (and many economic and social) problems are easier to solve with fewer people, and ultimately impossible with ever more.”
He also says that if we reduce the population, it will mean better lives for all the rest of us….
“On a finite planet, the optimum population providing the best quality of life for all, is clearly much smaller than the maximum, permitting bare survival. The more we are, the less for each; fewer people mean better lives.”
But is that really the case?
There has been tremendous human suffering all throughout history. If we eliminated 90 percent of the global population it would not suddenly usher in some kind of “golden age”.
But many among the global elite are truly convinced that we are spoiling “their planet” and they don’t want so many of us around anymore. Thanks to technology, they only need a few hundred million people to run their system, and they view the rest of us as “useless eaters”.
This all may sound quite bizarre to many of you, but this is the kind of stuff that is being taught in colleges and universities across the western world.
In fact, you are starting to see an increasing number of people in the western world actually suggest that we adopt a “one-child policy” such as China has. For example, the following is from an opinion piece that appeared in the National Post:
“A planetary law, such as China’s one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.”
The author of the opinion piece believes that such a “one-child policy” would reduce the global population to 3.43 billion by 2075….
The intelligence behind this is the following:
-If only one child per female was born as of now, the world’s population would drop from its current 6.5 billion to 5.5 billion by 2050, according to a study done for scientific academy Vienna Institute of Demography.
-By 2075, there would be 3.43 billion humans on the planet. This would have immediate positive effects on the world’s forests, other species, the oceans, atmospheric quality and living standards.
This is the kind of stuff that a lot of these people sit around and think about all day long.
They are obsessed with death and with reducing the population as rapidly as possible. They see us as a “plague” that is ravaging the planet, and they believe that by getting rid of us they would actually be saving the earth.
Due to public opinion, population control advocates have to tread lightly in the western world. But where they can get away with it, they are not afraid to be very forceful.
I have already discussed the horrific one-child policy in China. As the Epoch Times noted, enforcement of this policy can be absolutely brutal:
“Pregnant women lacking birth permits are hunted down like criminals by population planning police in China and forcibly aborted.”
If you don’t believe something like this can ever happen in the western world, you might want to think again.
Limitations on child births are already showing up in popular television shows. For example, a new show on Fox called Terra Nova portrays the future of the earth as a living hell due to overpopulation. People in the future can hardly breathe the air due to overwhelming pollution and a strict “two-child policy” is rigidly enforced.
The family featured in Terra Nova is able to go through a portal to a prehistoric world that is 85 million years in the past. In this “new world”, humans have set up a wonderful new socialist society where everyone is provided for and where “green technology” is helping them to avoid making the “mistakes” of the past.
Unfortunately, socialist utopias such as the one portrayed on Terra Nova only exist in works of fiction.
Instead, what happens most of the time in real life is that the “good intentions” of social planners devolve into absolute tyranny when put into practice.
For example, just check out what a National Geographic article said happened when social planners in India tried to aggressively reduce birth rates in India in the 1970s….
“The Indian government tried once before to push vasectomies, in the 1970s, when anxiety about the population bomb was at its height. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay used state-of-emergency powers to force a dramatic increase in sterilizations.
“From 1976 to 1977 the number of operations tripled, to more than eight million. Over six million of those were vasectomies. Family planning workers were pressured to meet quotas; in a few states, sterilization became a condition for receiving new housing or other government benefits. In some cases the police simply rounded up poor people and hauled them to sterilization camps.”
How would you feel if you were rounded up and hauled off to a sterilization camp?
Sterilization programs (most of the time they are “voluntary”) are in full force all over the globe. Much of the time they are sponsored and funded by the United Nations. The global elite are absolutely obsessed with getting women to have less babies.
That is one reason why abortion is so very important to them.
Back in 2011, Al Gore made the following statement regarding population control:
“One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principle ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women. You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children have, the spacing of the children.
The elite love to use terms such as “fertility management” and “family planning”, but what they really intend is for there to be less pregnancies and more abortions so that the population will not grow as quickly.
They certainly do not intend to empower women to have more children.
This agenda was also very much reflected when the March 2009 U.N. Population Division policy brief asked this shocking question….
“What would it take to accelerate fertility decline in the least developed countries?”
Now who in the world gave the UN the right to be trying to “accelerate fertility decline” for women in poor countries?
But to many in the global elite, trying to get women to have less babies makes all the sense in the world. In a recent editorial for the New York Times entitled “The Earth Is Full“, Thomas L. Friedman made the following statement:
“You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?”
These people honestly and truly believe this stuff.
Unfortunately, this agenda is even represented in the highest levels of our own government.
Barack Obama’s top science advisor, John P. Holdren, once wrote the following:
“A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.
“The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.”
Holdren also believes that compulsory abortion would be perfectly legal under the U.S. Constitution….
“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.”
CLICK HERE for a List of 32 ‘Elites’ That Support and Promote Depopulation.
When you believe that the earth has way too many people, human life becomes cheap, and abortion becomes a way to get rid of undesirables.
According to an article in the Daily Mail, thousands of “abnormal” babies are now being selectively aborted in the UK each year….
“Thousands of pregnancies were aborted last year for ‘abnormalities’ including 500 for Down’s syndrome, new figures reveal.
“In total, there were 2,290 abortions for medical problems with the foetus, with 147 performed after 24 weeks.
In a world that is “overpopulated”, babies that are not “perfect” become more “disposable” than ever.
In fact, the truth is that the population control agenda and the “abortion rights movement” have been inseparably linked for decades. Those that are obsessed with “overpopulation” view abortion as a very necessary method of birth control, and one of their main goals is to expand access to “reproductive health care” to as many women around the globe as possible.
But in the end, our “voluntary” actions are not going to be nearly enough to reduce the population and most population control advocates realize that. Many of them are openly calling for a “benevolent” global authority to take charge to lead us through the “necessary” transition that is ahead.
In a previous article, I described the type of world that the radical population control advocates see for our future:
“Imagine going to sleep one night and waking up many years later in a totally different world. In this futuristic world, literally everything you do is tightly monitored and controlled by control freak bureaucrats in the name of “sustainable development” and with the goal of promoting “the green agenda”. An international ruling body has centralized global control over all human activity.
“What you eat, what you drink, where you live, how warm or cold your home can be and how much fuel you can use is determined by them. Anyone that dissents or that tries to rebel against the system is sent off for “re-education”. The human population is 90 percent lower than it is today in this futuristic society, and all remaining humans have been herded into tightly constricted cities which are run much like prisons.”
This is the endgame for the radical green agenda. In order to save the earth, they feel as though they must dramatically reduce our numbers and very tightly control our activities.
But is that the kind of a future that anyone would actually want to live in? Would anyone actually choose to live in a future where bureaucrats micromanage our lives for the good of the environment?
Personally, I think that the 7 billion people on earth would do just fine if they were given a lot more liberty and freedom to live their own lives as they see fit.
But letting people decide how to run their own lives is anathema to those that have bought into the population control agenda of the global elite.
They actually believe that they are smarter than all of the rest of us and that they need to tell us what to do for the good of humanity and for the good of the planet.
This patronizing approach should truly sicken all freedom-loving people.
Original Article:http://humansarefree.com/2019/03/from-7-billion-to-500-million-people.html
Read More:In September 2015, Agenda 21 Will Be Transformed To the 2030 Agenda
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Watch More:Georgia Guidestones: The Commandments Of The New Age
Read More:Secrets Of The Georgia Guidestones
Read More:It Has Always Been Part Of The Plan: The UN’s First Director-General Advocated Population Control
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Read More:Depopulation By Design: New ‘Vasectomy Zoning’ To Create Child-Less Cities
Read More:New World Order: Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation Announces $375 Million Donation To ‘Population Control’
2030 agenda, 90% of the global population destroyed, 95% population decline would be ideal, accelerate population decline, depopulation agenda, earth hits population of 7 billion, eric R pianka, euthanasia, fertility management, georgia guidestones, globalist agenda, indira gandhi, jeffrey d. sachs, john p holdren, october 31st 2011, one child policy, population control of the global elite, reduction of fertility rates, roger martin, sanjay ganhdi, sterilizations, sustainable development, the culling, UN population division policy, united nations
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153wordsofgod says:
Don’t miss this blog post about the Georgia Guidestones
https://153wordsofgod.wordpress.com/2019/09/04/sinister-sites-georgia-guidestones/
John de Nugent (@johndenugentESA) says:
Glad you found a good use for my image of the encircled first “commandment” atop the evil “Georgia Guidestones.”
Wes Penre Publications says:
pls center the text on the page, easier to read
INGAORAMA says:
Reblogged this on Ingaorama.
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Home ▶ Vol 91 (2020) ▶ Meuffels
Janine Meuffels
Department of Production Animal Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, Onderstepoort, South Africa
Ilse Luther-Binoir
GEOsperm – Wildlife Reproduction and Biotechnology Services, Brits, South Africa
Profetura – Alliance for Wildlife Conservation Breeding, Hamburg, Germany
Willem Daffue
Kroonstad Animal Hospital, Kroonstad, South Africa
Francois Deacon
Department of Animal, Wildlife and Grassland Sciences, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
Emily P. Mitchell
Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, Onderstepoort, South Africa
Meuffels, J., Luther-Binoir, I., Daffue, W., Deacon, F. & Mitchell, E.P., 2020, ‘Testicular disorder of sexual development with cryptorchidism, penile hypoplasia and hypospadias in a giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa)’, Journal of the South African Veterinary Association 91(0), a1971. https://doi.org/10.4102/jsava.v91i0.1971
Testicular disorder of sexual development with cryptorchidism, penile hypoplasia and hypospadias in a giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa)
Janine Meuffels, Ilse Luther-Binoir, Willem Daffue, Francois Deacon, Emily P. Mitchell
Received: 18 Mar. 2019; Accepted: 12 Feb. 2020; Published: 26 Mar. 2020
Disorders of sexual development (DSD) in wild mammals are rarely described. A male South African giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa) was identified with bilateral cryptorchidism. The testes were intra-abdominal, smaller and less ovoid than in normal male giraffes. The right testis was situated more cranially than the left and connected to a longer deferent duct with normal ampullae. One distended vesicular gland filled with mucoid material was identified. A short penis, situated in the perineal area, was directed caudally and presented hypospadias. Histologically, testicular hypoplasia was present; the epididymis tubules contained no spermatozoa and the deferent duct and vesicular gland were inflamed. The blood testosterone concentration was 16.27 nmol/L and oestrone sulphate concentration was 0.03 ng/mL. The aetiology of the abnormalities is unknown.
Keywords: cryptorchidism; disorder of sexual development; Giraffa camelopardalis; hypospadias; penile abnormality.
The reproductive system of the male giraffe is similar to that of other ruminants. The penis is situated in the ventral midline and opens cranially. It is fibro-elastic and has a sigmoid flexure and a rounded, laterally flattened head of the penis (glans penis) with an attached urethral process. The testes are ovoid (10 cm – 14 cm × 6 cm – 8 cm without the epididymis) and suspended into the scrotum with a vertical long axis. The accessory genital glands consist of prominent ampullae, paired non-lobulated vesicular glands (seminal vesicles), ovoid bulbo-urethral glands and the prostate, with a lobular disseminated part (pars disseminata), situated in the wall of the pelvic urethra (Hall-Martin, Skinner & Hopkins 1978).
Disorders of sexual development (DSD), formerly termed ‘intersex’, are congenital abnormalities in the development of chromosomal (abnormalities in XX or XY sex chromosome number or structure), gonadal (testicular, ovarian and ovotesticular DSD, previously termed true hermaphrodite, or dysgenesis) or phenotypic (male or female with abnormalities of tubular and external genitalia) sex. In gonadal sex abnormalities, the chromosomal and gonadal sex differ, although in phenotypic sex abnormalities, the chromosomal and gonadal sex are congruent, but the genitalia deviate (Hughes 2008; Lyle 2007).
In XY males, the activation of the sex-determining region Y chromosome gene (SRY) initiates testis development. Testis secretions promote the masculinisation of the internal and external male genitalia. Anti-Mullerian hormone (Mullerian inhibiting substance) causes regression of the paramesonephric duct (Mullerian duct, which forms the female internal genitalia in XX animals), although testosterone drives the development of the male tubular tract, accessory glands and external genitalia, and together with insulin-like factor 3 (INSL3) the descent of the testes. Possible XY, SRY+ testicular DSDs include hypospadias, cryptorchidism, testicular agenesis and hypoplasia, segmental aplasia of the epididymis, deferent ducts and penile hypoplasia (Lyle 2007).
Cryptorchidism is a condition whereby one or both testes and the associated structures are absent in the scrotum because of a failure of the testes to descend from the pre-natal abdominal position. The descent of testis includes three phases: abdominal testis translocation, transinguinal testis migration and inguinoscrotal testis migration. Abdominal testis translocation is dependent on INSL3 and only partially on testosterone, although the inguinoscrotal migration is androgen reliant (Amann & Veeramachaneni 2007). This type of DSD is more commonly reported in boars, stallions and dogs (1% – 12%) than in domestic ruminants (< 1%) and in most cases presumed to be inherited (Amann & Veeramachaneni 2007).
Only a few cases of cryptorchidism have been reported in non-domestic ungulates with undefined aetiology, including mule deer (Beauchamp & Jones 1957), Sitka black-tailed deer (Latch et al. 2008), springbok (Skinner 1971) and an Arabian oryx, which also had uterine tissue (Padilla et al. 2005). In goats, cryptorchidism, penis abnormalities and hypospadias are more commonly seen in XY DSD, previously termed male pseudohermaphrodites (King, Young & Fox 2002). Hypospadias is a malformation, in which the urethra opens on the ventral aspect of the penis, in contrast to epispadias, a rare abnormality, where the urethra opens at the dorsal surface of the penis (Lyle 2007; Stephens & Hutson 2005). This article reports a disorder of sexual development in a phenotypic male giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis), with unknown chromosomal type and testicular gonadal sex.
This article followed all ethical standards for research and handling of the animal, demonstrated best practice of veterinary care and occurred in compliance with animal welfare guidelines.
A 9- to 10-year-old giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis giraffa) in a private game reserve in South Africa was observed to have an abnormal structure ventral to the anus resembling a short penis. Phenotypically, the animal appeared male based on skull formation, horns, body shape and size; however, no external testes were visible.
On 12 March 2018, the animal was darted from a vehicle using 18 mg of thiafentanil (A-3080, Wildlife Pharmaceuticals, Inc., White River, South Africa) administered intramuscularly via a Dan-Inject dart gun. The giraffe was brought into right lateral recumbency by using ropes, blindfolded and its neck placed on a board to maintain the head above the rumen. To decrease the risk of severe hypoxaemia, the giraffe was immediately reversed with 200 mg of naltrexone (Trexonil, Wildlife Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 100 mg intravenously and 100 mg intramuscularly), and manually restrained. Breathing and physiological parameters were monitored until being released 32 min after darting.
External examination
During the external examination, no scrotum was visible or palpable. The structure ventral to the anus was identified as a malformed short penis with a length of 21 cm. The tip was bulbous, pointed caudo-ventrally and had a caudo-dorsal urethral opening, which would have been situated ventrally if the penis would have been situated in its normal position (Figure 1a–c). The mucosa on the distal 5.5 cm of the penis was exposed and showed mucosal ulceration (Figure 1b). No urethral process was present. The surrounding mucosal folds resembled a normal prepuce. Turbid urine dribbled from the urethra and dried urine was present along the caudal aspect of both legs. No spermatozoa were found on microscopic evaluation of the urine. On the ventral midline extending caudal to the umbilicus was a well-circumscribed skin depression (1 cm × 30 cm; Figure 1d).
FIGURE 1: Macroscopic appearance of external genitalia in a giraffe. See tail (T) for orientation of the penis (P) (a). Closer view (b), with structures identified as the prepuce (P) and head of the penis (glans penis, GP). Note the urethral opening (arrow) at the dorsal aspect of the distal penis (c) and the skin depression (arrow) on the ventral midline caudal to the umbilicus (d).
A transrectal sonographic examination was conducted by using a portable ultrasound device (mindray DP-50Vet, Shenzhen Mindray Bio-medical electronic Co., LTD., Shenzhen, China) with a linear probe. A circumscribed oval structure approximately 7 cm in height and consisting of irregular tissue was observed ventral to the rectum (Figure 2), but could not be positively identified.
FIGURE 2: Ultrasound images of a structure ventral to the anus, later identified as a distended vesicular gland (a and b).
A blood sample was collected in serum tubes from the left jugular vein for reproductive hormone measurement. Testosterone and oestrone sulphate concentrations were measured at the Reproduction Laboratory of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, Onderstepoort.
Because of a lack of reference data in giraffes, the concentrations were compared with data collected by the same team from adult wild male giraffes (testosterone: 0.16 nmol/L – 18.94 nmol/L; oestrone sulphate 0.26 n/mL – 0.52 n/mL; unpublished data) and analysed in the same lab. The testosterone concentration was 16.27 nmol/L and the oestrone sulphate concentration was 0.03 ng/mL.
The animal was hunter-harvested on 03 August 2018. A post-mortem examination was performed on site and the reproductive organs were transported to the pathology unit of the Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, Onderstepoort, for detailed examination.
The testes were situated intra-abdominally and cranio-dorsal to the bladder (Figure 3). The dimensions were 4.3 cm × 3.8 cm × 3 cm (left testicle) and 5.4 cm × 4.0 cm × 3.5 cm (right testicle), excluding the epididymis. The right testis was situated more cranially with a longer deferent duct (approximately 35 cm) than the left (approximately 12 cm). Histologically, both testes consisted of immature tubules lined only by Sertoli cells with small, variably mineralised foci of degenerated and/or necrotic cells in the lumen but no seminiferous epithelium (Figure 4a). The rete testes were normal. Moderate to large numbers of neutrophils diffusely infiltrated the superficial submucosa of the deferent duct (Figure 4c), mixed multifocally with moderate numbers of lymphocytes and plasma cells. Neutrophils also infiltrated the overlying epithelium. The ampullae and spermatic cord vasculature were histologically unremarkable.
FIGURE 3: Macroscopic appearance of the abnormal genital tract ex situ with the left testis (LT) and right testis (RT), right deferent duct (right vas deferens [RVD]), distended vesicular gland (VG), penis (P), bladder (B) and anus (A).
FIGURE 4: Photomicrographs of (a) the testes, (b) epididymis, (c) deferent duct and (d) vesicular gland. (a) Note small immature seminiferous tubules (arrows) lined by Sertoli cells and the absence of seminiferous epithelium. (b) Epididymis coils (arrows) are small, widely separated by fibrovascular connective tissue and contain no spermatozoa. (c) A layer of neutrophils, lymphocytes and plasma cells (arrows) occurs in the superficial submucosa of the deferent duct. (d) Note the branching tubular glands (arrows) of the deep portion of the vesicular gland.
The epididymis of both testes was large compared with the testes. Histologically, epididymal tubules were intact with small lumens, widely separated by fibrovascular connective tissue and contained no spermatozoa (Figure 4b).
A large cystic structure dorsal to the rectum measured approximately 12 cm × 12 cm × 25 cm was filled with pale tan mucoid material and identified as a greatly distended vesicular gland (Figure 4d) with mild multifocal acute necrotising neutrophilic inflammation. The other vesicular gland was not identified.
The giraffe was a phenotypic male and presented with a disorder of sexual development with cryptorchidism, hypospadias, penile hypoplasia and abnormal penis positioning.
The external and internal genitalia of this male giraffe showed multiple abnormalities, and the presence of multiple reproductive abnormalities in this giraffe is suggestive of single or multiple genetic defects. The new terminology for the classification of the DSD is followed and the abnormalities are categorised in association with the chromosomal, gonadal and phenotypic sex. This classification was developed in human medicine to replace the term ‘intersex’ (Hughes 2008), and the application, as well as the correlation with the old terminology, has been confusing and inconsistently used in the literature on DSD in animals.
The chromosomal sex of the animal is unknown, because karyotyping was not available. No evidence of a chromosomal DSD was present in this giraffe.
Gonadal sex of the animal was testicular. The testes were situated intra-abdominal, hypoplastic and less ovoid than in normal adult male giraffes (10 cm – 14 cm × 6 cm – 8 cm; Hall-Martin et al. 1978), most likely because of associated hypoplasia and possible secondary degeneration of the seminiferous epithelium as a result of the effect of body temperature on this epithelium (Kim, Park & Rhee 2012). Although testicular neoplasia is common in retained testes (Amann & Veeramachaneni 2007), no evidence of neoplasia was found in this giraffe.
The deferent duct, particularly the left one, was shorter than that described in normal adult male giraffes (approximately 60 cm; Hall-Martin et al. 1978). The inflammation of the deferent duct and vesicular gland was likely an ascending infection because of lack of normal anatomical protection (Cavalieri & Van Camp 1997). The distended vesicular gland may have occurred because of blockage by physical factors or inflammation or as a result of a mesonephric duct anomaly possibly resulting in fusion of the two vesicular glands as has been described for bulls (Bagshaw & Ladds 1974; Cavalieri & Van Camp 1997).
Phenotypically, the external genitalia more closely resembled male than female organs. The penis was shorter than in normal male giraffes (up to 77 cm when flaccid; Hall-Martin et al. 1978), situated in the perineal area and directed caudally. If the penis was in its normal position in the ventral midline, the urethra would have opened on the ventral surface (hypospadias). Malformations of the penis are rare in all species and include a short penis, lack of sigmoid flexure, hypospadias and epispadias in domestic ruminants (Saunders & Ladds 1978; Stephens & Hutson 2005), but have not been reported in wild ungulates.
The cause and identity of the DSD in this giraffe are undetermined. Cryptorchidism, penile hypoplasia and hypospadias without the presence of female genitalia in dogs may result from incomplete masculinisation of the internal and external genitalia (Lyle 2007). However, similar abnormalities have also been reported in XX dogs with gonadal DSD (XX sex reversal syndrome; Switonski et al. 2011) and in XY goats identified with phenotypic DSD (male pseudohermaphrodites; Eaton 1943). No uterine or ovarian tissue was present in this giraffe, and testosterone blood concentrations were within the range measured in sexually active males (0.5 nmol/L – 64.01 nmol/L, unpublished data). The normal testosterone concentrations but partial failure of masculinisation of the genitalia might indicate androgen receptor defects in this giraffe, as described for dogs and cats (Lyle 2007). Oestrone sulphate was considerably lower than detected in wild male giraffes (range 0.26 ng/mL – 0.52 ng/mL, unpublished data). Lower oestrone sulphate concentrations were also reported in cryptorchid horses compared with intact stallions (Carneiro et al. 1998).
In wildlife, DSD are likely to be underestimated because these species are not as closely monitored as domestic ones (Mastromonaco, Houck & Bergfelt 2012). Additionally, existing cases might not be examined because of cost involved and lack of necessity. Although DSD are likely to occur rarely in free-ranging animals because of natural selection, in-breeding is known to increase the risk for congenital defects (Brown et al. 2009). This giraffe was part of a small, isolated and possibly in-bred population, but random chromosomal mutations, environmental factors or exposure to endocrine disrupters cannot be excluded. The latter have been linked to outbreaks of cryptorchidism (Amann & Veeramachaneni 2007). The separation of the penis-like structure from the ventral abdominal wall and the bulbous tip to the penis with missing urethral process could indicate a traumatic origin or contribution to the penile lesion but does not account for the changes in the rest of the reproductive tract.
Disorders of sexual development have not been previously described in giraffes. Discovery and reporting of other cases in giraffe and other wild ruminants might help to identify the underlying causes and importance of these abnormalities for the reproductive potential of wildlife populations.
The authors thank the owners of Amanzi Private Game Reserve for permission to have access to the giraffe under study; Francesca Vitali and Isabel Callealta for the assistance with live sampling, measurements and pictures; Dr Alischa Henning, Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, for the histopathology sampling; and Prof. Henk Bertschinger, Department of Production Animal Sciences, University of Pretoria, for the hormone analysis.
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
J.M. was responsible for writing the manuscript, for ante- and post-mortem evaluation and measurements and contributed to the final diagnosis. E.P.M. provided the macroscopic and histological description, made the final diagnosis and edited the manuscript. I.L.-B. conducted the ultrasound and contributed to the ante-mortem evaluation and measurements. W.D. performed the anaesthesia and necropsy. F.D. was responsible for the planning of the capture and assisted with the ante-mortem evaluation and the necropsy.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Amann, R.P. & Veeramachaneni, D.N., 2007, ‘Cryptorchidism in common eutherian mammals’, Reproduction 133(3), 541–561. https://doi.org/10.1530/REP-06-0272
Bagshaw, P.A. & Ladds, P.W., 1974, ‘A study of the accessory sex glands of bulls in abattoirs in Northern Australia’, Australian Veterinary Journal 50(11), 489–495. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-0813.1974.tb14053.x
Beauchamp, D.E. & Jones F.L., 1957, ‘A cryptorchid Rocky Mountain mule deer’, Journal of Mammalogy 38(3), 423. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/38.3.423
Brown, A.R., Hosken, D.J., Balloux, F., Bickley, L.K., LePage, G., Owen, S.F. et al., 2009, ‘Genetic variation, inbreeding and chemical exposure – Combined effects in wildlife and critical considerations for ecotoxicology’, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 364(1534), 3377–3390. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0126
Carneiro, G.F., Liu, I.K.M., Illera, J.C. & Munro, C.J., 1998, ‘Enzyme immunoassay for the measurement of estrone sulfate in cryptorchids, stallions, and donkeys’, Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the AAEP 44, 3–4.
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Kim, B., Park, K. & Rhee, K., 2012, ‘Heat stress response of male germ cells’, Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 70(15), 2623–2636. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-012-1165-4
King, W.W., Young, M.E. & Fox, M.E., 2002, ‘Multiple congenital genitourinary anomalies in a polled goat’, Contemporary Topics of Laboratory Animal Science 41(5), 39–42.
Latch, E.K., Amann, R.P., Jacobson, J.P. & Rhodes, Jr. O.E., 2008, ‘Competing hypotheses for the etiology of cryptorchidism in Sitka black-tailed deer: An evaluation of evolutionary alternatives’, Animal Conservation 11(3), 234–246. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-1795.2008.00174.x
Lyle, S.K., 2007, ‘Disorders of sexual development in the dog and cat’, Theriogenology 68(3), 338–343. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.theriogenology.2007.04.015
Mastromonaco, G., Houck, M.L. & Bergfelt, D., 2012, ‘Disorders of sexual development in wild and captive exotic animals’, Sexual Development 6(1–3), 84–95. https://doi.org/10.1159/000332203
Padilla, L.R., Dutton, C.J., Bauman, J. & Duncan, M., 2005, ‘XY male pseudohermaphroditism in a captive Arabian oryx (Oryx leucoryx)’, Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine 36(3), 498–503. https://doi.org/10.1638/04-006.1
Saunders, P.J. & Ladds, P.W., 1978, ‘Congenital and developmental anomalies of the genitalia of slaughtered bulls’, Australian Veterinary Journal 54(1), 10–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-0813.1978.tb00261.x
Skinner, J.D., 1971, ‘A bilaterally cryptorchid springbok ram, Antidorcas marsupialis’, Journal of Reproduction and Fertility 26(3), 377–378. https://doi.org/10.1530/jrf.0.0260377
Stephens, F.D. & Hutson, J.M., 2005, ‘Differences in embryogenesis of epispadias, exstrophy–epispadias complex and hypospadias’, Journal of Pediatric Urology 1(4), 283–288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpurol.2005.01.008
Switonski, M., Payan-Carreira, R., Bartz, M., Nowacka-Woszuk, J., Szczerbal, I., Colaço, B. et al., 2011, Hypospadias in a male (78,XY; SRY-Positive) dog and sex reversal female (78,XX; SRY-Negative) dogs: Clinical, histological and genetic studies’, Sexual Development 6(1–3), 128–134. https://doi.org/10.1159/000330921
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UM UM President Seth Bodnar Sworn Into Montana National Guard
Anne James
UM President Seth Bodnar is sworn into the Montana Army National Guard by Maj. Gen. Matthew Quinn on Jan. 8 at Fort Harrison near Helena. (UM Photo)
MISSOULA – In addition to serving as the University of Montana’s 19th president, Seth Bodnar now also holds the title of major in the Montana Army National Guard.
Bodnar was sworn into the Montana Army National Guard by Maj. Gen. Matthew Quinn at Fort Harrison near Helena on Jan. 8.
UM President Seth Bodnar (UM Photo)
Bodnar is a current member in the United States Army Reserves and is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Quinn and Bodnar met in 2018 and discussed Bodnar joining the Montana National Guard.
“Over the course of several meetings, we discussed the possibility of him transferring to the Montana National Guard,” said Quinn. “Today I am proud to announce the Montana Guard’s newest officer, Maj. Seth Bodnar.”
Montana has one of the highest per-capita veteran populations in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Bodnar said he is proud to join the state’s long history of service in the nation’s military.
“Since I left active duty in the U.S. Army, I've been a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, and I'm honored today to continue my service by transferring into the Montana National Guard and joining the long line of Montanans who have so bravely and selflessly served both our great state and this nation,” Bodnar said
Bodnar has led a well-decorated military career. He has served in the 101st Airborne Division and the U.S. Army’s First Special Forces Group. He has also instructed at West Point and taught as an assistant professor in the school’s Department of Social Sciences.
In 2016, the national Military Friendly organization named UM to its list of Military Friendly Schools, noting UM’s efforts to support student veterans and their families through a number of academic and financial services.
- UM News Service -
Categories: North Central Montana News
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Doc. Dr. Blaž Kovačič Mlinar
Tea Mlinar Kovačič
Črt Šatej
Tajda Venko
Amendment to the Criminal Procedure Act, ZKP-N
At its session on 26 March 2019 the National Assembly went through the Act Amending the Criminal Procedure Act (ZKP-N). It is an important and comprehensive amendment. The amendment came into force on 20 April 2019 and will be applied six months after its entry into force, with the exception of the amended and new provisions of Article 149a, Article 149b, Article 149c, Article 149c, 149d Article 149d, Article 149 e, Article 150 a, Article 150 b, Article 152, Article 153, paragraphs 1 to 4 and 6 of article 154, article 156 and article 156 a will be used within three months of the date of entry into force. Pending the entry into force of the new provisions, the previous provisions shall apply.
The main goal of the amendment was the implementation of the European directive, t. i. The Victims Directive, but also contains other important solutions related to the transfer of decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia and the European Court of Human Rights, as well as other solutions.
The new regulation will greatly improve or strengthened the position of the victim in criminal proceedings due to the European Parliament and Council Directive no. 2012/29 EU of 25 October 2012. According to the new regulations, the competent authorities in the pre-trial or criminal proceedings will have to contact the injured party at the earliest contact with the victim, to provide precisely regulated information, on the first contact, they will have to assess the degree of victim’s vulnerability to determine the existence of special needs after the protection, the amendment extended the notion of the victim (in the procedural sense, it was extended to certain family members of a person whose death was a direct consequence of the crime and the definition of a victim with special needs), and some other changes and innovations were adopted in the direction of strengthening the position of the victim or injured party.
Another important novelty is the regulation of the seizure of objects, files and electronic devices by lawyers and other persons in the case of their material, which contains privileged communication. It is stipulated that the investigation of an electronic device seized by a lawyer, a lawyer candidate or a laweyer trainee may only be carried out on the basis of a court order. In the event that it will be necessary to carry out an investigation into an electronic device that has been seized and the data on it is insured and sealed, only on the premises of the court, and it will be carried out only by an expert who will be appointed by a special order by an out-of-court judge. In cases where it is likely that the objects, files or data contained in seized items or files are likely to be confined to the suspect or accused, and that the person to whom the objects or files were seized, their delivery or the transmission of data, may be violated the duty to protect the secrecy of the confession, the duty to protect professional secrecy, and also the duty to protect journalistic confidentiality, put them in a cover, sealed and placed in the custody of an out-of-court judge. A list and review of objects or documents can only be done at the hearing. In this way, it will be ensured that the police, the public prosecutor with confidential information will not be informed.
Much of the novelty is about modifying and supplementing the arrangement of covert investigative measures. A new regime for obtaining traffic and related data is regulated, and this will reduce interference with the right to the protection of personal data, a catalog of serious criminal offenses in reation to which the measure of secret surveillance can be applied will be amended, and the police will be allowed to use IMSI catcher.
A major change is the arrangement of the house investigation. It is stipulated that if the holder is not accessible, the court may ex officio be appointed by an authorized court of lawyer, and in such a way the house investigation may be carried out, even though the holder of the room will not be present. The amendment also brought changes to the scope of legal remedies. The deadline for the appeal and the response to the appeal will be extended, a round of rounds of persons will be complemented by a circle of persons who will be able to file a complaint against the judgment of the second instance court, then there are changes in an extraordinary legal remedy, the requirements for the protection of legality, it further abolishes the mandatory reading of the documents at the main hearing and specifies the conditions for a legitimate absence court orders and some other changes and novelties.
There are many changes and novelties, but how they will be reflected in practise will be seen in time.
The Act Amending the Criminal Procedure Code (ZKP-N) can be viewed on the link: https://www.uradni-list.si/glasilo-uradni-list-rs/vsebina/2019-01-0915/zakon-o-spremembah-in-dopolnitvah-zakona-o-kazenskem-postopku-zkp-n.
webstories2019-11-19T10:37:24+01:00
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Eight Ways To Look At Sir John A. Macdonald
January 11, 2015 January 13, 2015 / John Boyko / 1 Comment
January 11th was Sir John A. Macdonald’s 200th birthday. As Canada’s first prime minister and key founding father, he deserves to be remembered. Across the country there were cakes, candles, songs, and speeches. Many Canadians will enjoy celebrations of one sort or another all year. Others, however, will not celebrate but castigate. The attacks have begun and some have been viscous.
The spirited debates remind us of history’s importance and of its terrific habit of never shutting up. History is not a warm bath of nostalgia but a mean teacher that forces us to think of things we have not before and, even more importantly, consider things we thought we knew for sure. The conflicted commemoration of our first prime minister is as it should be for there are at least eight ways to see Sir John.
Creator: In the 1860s, Americans were butchering each other over whether to enslave each other and threatening an invasion of the British colonies on their northern border. The bitty Brits with their dysfunctional governments and a mother country more interested in abandoning than embracing them, needed to save themselves by creating themselves. Canada’s birth had many midwives, but the conferences and subsequent debates that brought it into the world would have failed without Sir John’s charm and political acumen. The Constitution creating the state to house the nation was written largely in his hand.
Saviour: With the Civil War’s end, the United States demanded astronomical reparations from Britain for its role in prolonging the conflict. The Americans offered to trade the cash for Canada. As part of the British delegation in Washington, to negotiate what was called the Alabama claims, Macdonald deftly controlled the agenda. He refused to be bribed by the Brits or bullied by the Americans. He left with generous concessions and the swap swept from the table.
Visionary: Macdonald knew Canada must grow or be gone and the only way was west on rails. Without the railway, British Columbia could join the United States and the United States could, as its Manifest Destiny decreed, take the prairies. The railway idea was ludicrous. It would be the world’s longest railway through the world’s most inhospitable land. The rocks and impenetrable forests of the Precambrian shield would be hard, the muskeg that could swallow men and machines would be harder, and the snow-peaked Rockies would be impossible. Macdonald told British Columbians they’d have the steel line to the Pacific in ten years and the money flowed and hammers rang. His will and conniving saw the impossible done and Canada linked from sea to sea.
Centralist: Macdonald put power in parliament. He saw the prime minister as the servant of the House and provinces like municipalities. Parliament could overturn provincial laws deemed to contradict the national interest and he disallowed many. He interpreted parliament’s purchase of what is now most of the west as its ownership of the land and resources. When premiers met to complain, he refused to attend.
Charlatan: He was not above political trickery to get or keep power. Globe editor and Reform Party leader George Brown learned the hard way when Macdonald tricked him into office and then two days later tricked him right back out again. He used patronage jobs to openly and unapologetically reward friends and punish enemies. He was once scandalized out of power when caught linking political donations to railway contracts.
Rogue: No one knew more stories and jokes than Sir John. No one remembered more names or slapped more backs. He never met a voter with whom he disagreed or an opponent he did not try to woo. He once entered his occupation in a hotel ledger as “cabinet maker”. A hard drinker, he once threw up during a campaign speech but then won the election. He told another audience that Canadians preferred him drunk to George Brown sober – he was right. He was a scoundrel but he was their scoundrel.
Racist: He imported Chinese workers for the worst and most dangerous railway construction jobs. With the task done, Macdonald acted to have them kicked out and the door barred. He did not want Canadians to become what he called a “mongrel race”. Native nations were in the way. Macdonald swept the plains by emptying bellies and filling schools in a slow-motioned cultural genocide.
Founding Father: To our American friends, consider this: Sir John was like your Thomas Jefferson in that he provided the philosophical foundation upon which the country was based; he was like your James Madison as he was primary among those who wrote the constitution; he was like your George Washington in that he was Canada’s first chief executive and fully cognizant that everything he said or did set a precedent that would affect the behaviour of every prime minister that followed – so Sir John was your Jefferson, Madison, and Washington rolled into one man.
Sir John’s humble grave site
Sir Christopher Wren, the man who designed St Paul’s Cathedral, one of the most spectacularly graceful and awe-inspiring buildings on the planet, once said that if you wished to see his monument you should look around. Canada is not as perfect as St. Paul’s but no country is. However, while flawed, it is safer, richer, and more democratic than most. Its long and fascinating history bursts with sources of pride and shame as well as progress and redemption. So as the key figure in creating, building, and saving the country, it is fitting and proper that we commemorate Sir John. Without him there would be no Canada. Perhaps we honour him best by acknowledging that he was as complex a man as is the country he left in our care. Perhaps we understand him as we understand Wren, by looking around.
An edited version of this column appeared as part of Globe and Mail debates in which I was asked to be one of four historians to consider whether Sir John was a “Visionary or Hateful Embarrassment”. You can see what the others wrote and vote for who you think should win at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/sir-john/article22362438/
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KITCHENS.EASYBOO.COM/FULHAM
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Fulham (pronounced "fullum") is an area of south-west London in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, (the successor to the Metropolitan Borough of Fulham) located 3.7 miles (6.0 km) south west of Charing Cross. It is situated in between Putney and Chelsea. Fulham was formerly the seat of the diocese of "Fulham and Gibraltar", and Fulham Palace the former official home of the Bishop of London, (now a museum), the grounds of which are now divided between public allotments and an elegant botanical garden. Having been through many transformations in its history, today it is a green London suburb within close reach of areas such as Chelsea and Kensington and this is reflected in the local house prices. It was included within Savills' 2007 list of "prime" London areas[1]. Two Premiership football clubs, Fulham and Chelsea, are situated in Fulham. The former Lillie Bridge Grounds (which hosted the second FA Cup final and the first ever amateur boxing matches) was also in Fulham. Contents [show] * 1 History * 2 Transport * 3 Politics * 4 Culture and entertainment * 5 Notable residents * 6 Nearest places * 7 Twin cities * 8 See also * 9 External links [edit] History Putney Bridge with Fulham on the left Putney Bridge with Fulham on the left Fulham, or in its earliest form "Fullanham", is uncertainly stated to signify "the place" either "of fowls" or "of mud" (which probably had a lot to do with the fact that the River Thames would flood it periodically), or alternatively, "land in the crook of a river bend belonging to a man named Fulla". The manor is said to have been given to Bishop Erkenwald about the year 691 for himself and his successors in the see of London, and Holinshed relates that the Bishop of London was lodging in his manor place in 1141 when Geoffrey de Mandeville, riding out from the Tower of London, took him prisoner. At the Commonwealth the manor was temporarily out of the bishops' hands, being sold to Colonel Edmund Harvey. There is no record of the first erection of a parish church, but the first known rector was appointed in 1242, and a church probably existed a century before this. The earliest part of the church demolished in 1881, however, did not date farther back than the 15th century. In 879 Danish invaders, sailing up the Thames, wintered at Fulham and Hammersmith. Near the former wooden Putney Bridge, built in 1729 and replaced in 1886, the earl of Essex threw a bridge of boats across the river in 1642 in order to march his army in pursuit of Charles I, who thereupon fell back on Oxford. Margravine Road recalls the existence of Bradenburg House, a riverside mansion built by Sir Nicholas Crispe in the time of Charles I, used as the headquarters of General Fairfax in 1647 during the civil wars, and occupied in 1792 by the margrave of Brandenburg-Anspach and Bayreuth and his wife, and in 1820 by Caroline, consort of George IV. The Johnny Haynes stand at Craven Cottage, home of Fulham Football Club. The Johnny Haynes stand at Craven Cottage, home of Fulham Football Club. Fulham during the 18th century had a reputation of debauchery, becoming a sort of "Las Vegas retreat" for the wealthy of London, where there was much gambling and prostitution. Fulham remained a working class area for the first half of the twentieth century, but was subject to extensive restoration between the Second World War and the 1980s. Today, Fulham is one of the most expensive parts of London, and hence the United Kingdom; average actual sale price of all property (both houses and flats) sold in the SW6 area in September 2007 was £639,973[2] However in parts of the area like the Moore Park Estate, located on the Fulham/Chelsea border opposite Stamford Bridge, houses average at over £900k.
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CISD Home
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Home / Collections Catalog / Anderson, James D.
The James D. Anderson Papers include his personal daily diary spanning the years 1959 to the present, with some gaps in the earlier years. The diary documents his life as a gay man who has been partnered since 1971. It also describes his career at Rutgers University and earlier universities and his active participation in the queer liberation movement within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The James D. Anderson Papers donated in 2004 include his files concerning his work with the Gay Lesbian Task Force of the American Library Association and similar groups at Rutgers University. They also include his personal correpsondence from the 1970s, 1976 essay on homosexuality and the Presbyterian Church written just before he came out. The collection also includes electronic files of correspondence, documents, annual reports, and newsletter articles for Presbyterians Lesbian and Gay Concerns (PLGC).
See his biography in the Profiles Gallery at the following web address.
http://lgbtran.org/Profile.aspx?ID=12
A finding aid is available from James D. Anderson, 1010 Central Avenue, #301, St. Petersburg, FL 33705, thyjim3@juno.com, 727-641-0391.
The records of James D. Anderson are located at Rutgers University Special Collections and University Archives.
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/scua
Presbyterian Church (USA) | Anderson, James D. | More Light Presbyterians (formerly Presbyterians for LGBT Concerns) | Activist (religious institutions) | Author/editor | New Jersey
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Home / We are an image from the future: the Greek revolt of December 2008 / 4. Obedience stopped, life is magical
December’s riots as mediated by the image of mass media
Leandros Kyriakopoulos from void network
“lt is the historical and structural definition of consumption that, by way of [a] ‘lived' level, it exalts signs on the basis of a denial of things and the real." This quote comes from the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard as he was meditating on the culture of mass media and the ways in which visual consciousness adjoins the image. In these few pages, the devastating thinking of this mediator will be the vehicle for a reflection on the events that followed Alexandros Grigoropoulos’s death, as mediated by the visual and printed screens of Greek and international mass media, Reading the sign of Baudrillard, one could say that "riots" is a micro-event in the contemporary news reports, permanently interlocked with others of its like, such as the war in Afghanistan, a typhoon in the Philippines, sports events,and the weather forecast. This technique of mass exporting (and producing) events, like a collage, is based on the pathetic exaltation of them. This is the denial of the real through the multiple repetition of a reactualised exemplar. If the impossibility of an ”outbreak"is proposed, then this “outbreak" is being ritually sacralised by the media through the consumption of its image in the “up-to-the-minute"news reports.
The Greek and the international media identified the riots that followed Grigoropoulos's death as an “insurrection," strongly referring and comparing them with other historical events, such as the Parisian May of ’68 and the riots at Columbia in the US during the same period. The headlines of known newspapers are very indicative of this: "The whole world is inspired by the insurrection of Athens" or "The dynamic of the youth’s insurrection has awaken the citizens" On the 13th of December - a week after the riots had begun - all the Greek media had comments on the foreign press' reports about the situation in Greece: "The revolt of the spoiled: European youth are rising up as they see the end of their privileges." Titles like this on the front pages of the German and French press are the result of a correlation between the events of Athens and those of Berlin and Paris. Social injustice, suffering, and anger are incarnated in the image and are being combined with the archetypical paradigms of the modern expression of opposition and political disobedience (such as the Parisian May of ’68). At the same time, the media’s images carry the terror of violence as it cataclysmically intrudes in everyday life and disrupts the State’s efforts for an "equitable modernisation of the civil society."
This essay is not concerned with the political management of December’s events by the mass media. It can be said though, that the range of comments extends throughout the political spectrum-inside and outside the political correctness of the parliament (1). Every attempt at assembling December’s events through the image - even the "friendliest" one - embraced by the media’s logic of consumption, becomes suspect as a result, since the sign at stake - named in a holistic way as "outbreak" - is manipulated with certain contents which were not previously subject to that logic. That happens because of the turning of the events into up-to-the-minute daily news that corresponds to the technical essence of the media, that is the disarticulation of the real into successive and equivalent signs, and their combined modulation with other ones. This is evidenced in daily news reports such as: “the economic policy of the Minister of Finance," “the problematic state of Exarchia," "the state of alert of the Ministry of Domestic Affairs," "the limits of police violence," "the change of political attitude," "the major issue of European integration," and "the common question of global democratic governance?"
What is shared then, between media’s portrayed images and the emotionally stressed eyes of the viewers, is a corpus of signs and references based upon the camera’s representation and the state, legal, and political reformulation of the embodied lived experience of the riot’s participants. In this corpus of signs, the intractable materiality of "youth," "anarchist," "masked face," "foreigner," "unscrupulous vandal," is shifted from the dark and imponderable body of the street, towards politically familiar, ideology-bound platforms from which the question of the “outbreak" and its virtual answers can be addressed. Thereby mass communication excludes the corporeal experience of the polyphonic event of the riot, while at the same time it creates a common ground from which a compromise can be made among all the eyes staring at the dramatic images, toward the same ambiguous demand of this "outbreak"; namely a change to a more humane social world. Therefore, the reading of the new contents by the virtual collective of all those driven by the same ambiguous exigency sacralise “outbreak" as something profane that needs purification through an eligible "answer."
This “answer" though is not articulated, yet is always at stake in every effort for defining, commenting, and situating December’s events by the mass media. This rephrasing of the "outbreak" with its presaged answer implicitly provides a reassuring social narrative (which at the same time ascribes blame): that “modernisation of the State" and “just democratic governance" entails the progressive withdrawal of violence from everyday life. What is really at stake then, in the mass media’s discourse about December’s events, is not Alexandros Grigoropoulos’s death by the armed hand of the police and the riots triggered off by this death, but the capability of the State to handle this domestic crisis.
A month of continuing reports and live broadcasts is encapsulated in three stances that, after a year, makes Greek political life conform to the universalised rational norm of its parliamentary spectrum. The first concerns the criticism by the main opposition party the Socialists, against the government that is "incapable of protecting the citizens", the second is the attack on the small party of the progressive Left (SYRISA) by the liberal,the Communist, and the right-wing parties, because of its "unwillingness to confine its political range within parliamentary legitimacy." As for the third one, it involves all the parties and it is the commitment to terminating domestic terrorist political movements. Mass media say that December’s “outbreak” changed a lot of things in the political life of this country. I believe that these stances are the legacy of the power of images in the collective thinking of the Greek citizen-viewers.
The Greeks' involvement in December via the image and discourse of the media indicates their consent in the deciphering of the media’s message. And if "the medium is the message,” then this deciphering is not about the “outbreak" but about the media themselves. That is, the viewer is being unconsciously called upon to decipher the deep discursivity of the media - the realist representation of the camera with its applied objectivism - before and beyond December’s events. Thus, mass media’s image incarnates December’s riots while evading their embodied character, and re-writes them through an evenly up-to-the-minute agenda for collective reception. And as these riots are sacralised by the viewers for being the “outbreak” of a social and economic privation that troubles Greek society for many years now, they are sacrificed all the same when one attempts to find an answer in their actualisation.
(1) The well-known national satiric comedian Lasopoulos, said during his most popular TV program: "I would recommend to these kids to destroy everything, do not sober up!"
‹ We want to occupy the media and use it for the movement up The new neighbourhood assemblies ›
Uncreative
Jan 28 2011 18:12
We are an image from the future: the Greek revolt of December 2008
The street has its own history
Solidarity is a flame
1. Prologues
2. And now one slogan that unites us all: cops, pigs, murders!
3. These days are for Alexis
4. Obedience stopped, life is magical
Alexis Grigoropoulos street
Koukouloforos
The spirit of December spread round the world
Konstantina was the first to join the union
We need to make it obvious that it is easy to attack
We finally understood that many people supported us
The myth of Sisyphus
When there is strong social conflict, you raise the tension of the attacks
We want to occupy the media and use it for the movement
The new neighbourhood assemblies
Kill the sexist in your head
The limitations of anti-sexism
Now there are more social centres in Thessaloniki
Many people were saying that they want Bulgarian society to be “like in Greece”
The next step is to create the places where all the people can meet
The rebellion, the workplaces, and the rank'n'file unions
More old people and leftists are coming closer to anarchist ideas
Now I really know what terrorism means
5. Breaking new ground
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← Nov. 20, 1947: Contralto Carol Brice to Perform in L.A.
Nov. 22, 1947: Wiretapping System Found in State Building →
Nov. 22, 1907: Son Beats Father With Baseball Bat to Protect Mother; Bleeding and Shot in the Head, She Vows Eternal Love
Posted on November 22, 2018 by lmharnisch
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
Weeping and heavily bandaged from where her drunk, enraged husband had shot her in the head, Ellen Larkin, 38, rose from her hospital bed, staggered to a nearby room and threw herself into the arms of her injured spouse. She covered him with kisses, vowing that she still loved him, and promised that he could come home as soon as he recovered from shooting himself and being nearly beaten to death with a baseball bat by their oldest son.
According to The Times, Jefferson B. Larkin, 45, a sometime teamster, horse player and “remittance man,” had returned to Los Angeles after spending four months in San Francisco while John, 16, the oldest of the Larkins’ four children, supported the family. As Larkin got thoroughly drunk, someone told him that his wife had been unfaithful, so he went to a pawnshop and bought a cheap revolver.
Larkin went in the backdoor of the home at 417 S. Colyton and found his wife in the kitchen with their four children: John, Isabelle, 10; Effie, 6; and Helen, 14 months. “He accused his wife of every vile thing he could lay his tongue to,” The Times said.
Larkin fired and missed, then shot his wife in the head as she leaped to grab the gun, with the bullet entering her scalp above the left ear and coming out the skin at the back of her head.Before he could fire again, John returned from taking his younger siblings to safety and struck his father in the head with a baseball bat with all his strength, then continued hitting him on the shoulders and in the chest.
Staggering to the door, Larkin walked to 7th Street, where he shot himself twice, then wandered to a rooming house, rented a room for $1 and called a doctor. He was expected to survive.
“I am not sorry that I hit him,” John said. “He intended to shoot mother again, but I hit him just in time to daze him. I hardly knew what I had done until after it was all over. I hope he don’t die now that mamma is not hurt.”
At the hospital, Larkin said: “I heard that she intended to get a divorce from me and I came to Los Angeles yesterday to settle matters. I decided to kill her and myself, too. I knew if I did this my mother and father who are in New York would take care of the children.”
Ellen left her husband’s hospital room after they vowed eternal love and affection, The Times said. Meanwhile, John went to the police station to swear out a complaint against his father. “I want to know when he leaves the hospital so that he won’t have a chance to get away from me,” he said. “I’ll put him where he belongs.”
There’s no further record of this case. However, The Times reported next year that a penniless youth named John Larkin had made the trip from Los Angeles to Patterson, N.J., to visit his grandparents. He started out riding on top of a passenger train, but was thrown off in San Bernardino, then sneaked a ride on a train to Salt Lake City, where he earned dinner by washing dishes in a restaurant.
Arrested in Ogden, Utah, he served a 10-day sentence as water boy for the chain gang, caught an express train to Cheyenne, Wyo., worked his way to Chicago and then Cleveland. He finally sneaked a ride on a train to New York, begged a ticket on the ferry and rode to Patterson on the trucks of the Erie Railroad’s dining car. He was 13.
Mark Twain defines “remittance man” in “Following the Equator.”
This entry was posted in 1907, Crime and Courts, LAPD and tagged 1907, crime and courts, domestic violence, homelessness, railroads. Bookmark the permalink.
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