pred_label
stringclasses 2
values | pred_label_prob
float64 0.5
1
| wiki_prob
float64 0.25
1
| text
stringlengths 72
1.03M
| source
stringlengths 37
43
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__wiki
| 0.853248
| 0.853248
|
« »August 2020
Eighty-Seven Years of Curtain Calls at the Bergen County Players
Robert Sean Leonard, Tony Award winner and star of Fox television’s hit drama “House.” Broadway actress Beth Fowler, of “Sweeney Todd” and “The Boy from Oz,” who also originated the role of Mrs. Potts in “Beauty and the Beast.” Robert Jess Roth, director of “Beauty and the Beast.” Allison Smith, star of Broadway’s “Annie” and television’s “Kate & Allie.” Robert McClure of "Something Rotten", "Noises Off", Chaplin the Musical" and “Avenue Q.” International bestselling suspense author Mary Higgins Clark.
Those are some of the now famous faces that earlier in their careers graced the stage and wings of the Bergen County Players (BCP) in its 87-year-history. Other faces include neighborhood doctors, lawyers, writers, telephone company workers, graphic artists, police officers, contractors and others you may run into at the bank, supermarket, school, coffee house, or mall.
From its roots as a small community theater, the Bergen County Players has grown into a little theater with a big reputation for quality productions. As the Players marks its 87th anniversary this 2019-20 season, the troupe celebrates its rich history, which includes musicals, comedy, drama and suspense.
The year was 1932, and President Herbert Hoover was having problems. The country was deep in the throes of the Great Depression, with breadlines a common sight. Those involved in the theater, however, knew they had a purpose too – to keep people entertained. And so it was that several groups of people who had been putting on amateur productions in different parts of Bergen County met in a back room at the Hackensack YMCA. They signed a charter and brought into being a community theater organization they called The Bergen County Players Inc. Helen Burke Travolta, mother of movie and television star John Travolta, was there that night, and this photograph of her (4th from the left) seated with the other original members still hangs in the lounge of the Little Firehouse Theatre, the Players’ current home. It was there long before anyone heard of her now-famous son.
The theater group drifted from high school auditorium stages to various barns and then settled into The Barn Theater, Howland Avenue, River Edge. It featured a pot-bellied stove and a family of skunks in residence under the foundation. One cold winter night in 1944, the structure burned to the ground. Nobody knows how the fire started, but the blaze left the Players homeless. In the best theatrical tradition, the next show opened on schedule at Bergen Junior College, which later became the Teaneck campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University.
In 1949, the town of Oradell built a new, modern building for its firefighters, leaving the old building on Kinderkamack Road vacant. It didn’t take long for the Bergen County Players to see the potential in the quaint historic firehouse (pictured right, during renovations in 1949). After negotiations with the town, they took over the space, built a stage on the back, put seats where the old fire trucks used to be and called their new space The Little Firehouse Theatre. The theater built an extension in 1969 for extra rehearsal space and storage; increased its seating capacity to 210; upgraded to an electronic light board in 1980; installed central air conditioning in 1982; computerized the box office in the 1990s and, recently added handicapped accessibility, among other improvements.
Over the years, the theater has worked to build on its artistic programs. In 1987, a series called “Conversations With An Artist” was initiated to provide members and the public with an opportunity to converse with professional artists. Past speakers have included actor Jonathan Silverman (“Broadway Bound,” “Weekend at Bernie’s”), Tony Award-winning actor Philip Bosco (“Lend Me A Tenor,” “Moon Over Buffalo”) and Tony Award-winning playwright Rupert Holmes (“The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” “Curtains.”) In 2001, Holmes even collaborated with the Bergen County Players to premier his new play at the Little Firehouse Theatre, a comic mystery called “Thumbs.”
Every year, the Bergen County Players features seven main-stage and at least two second-stage shows. The children’s show, a December tradition, continues to delight audiences of all ages.
Today, the Bergen County Players, a non-profit organization, counts more than 300 volunteer members as part of its family. A family in more ways than one, many married couples met here and multiple generations of families continue to share the theater experience. With typically three shows in rehearsal at one time, plus workshops and set construction, the theater makes use of this pool of talented people on and off the stage. It hopes to continue to grow and looks forward to providing audiences with quality entertainment for years to come.
Since that very first meeting in a back room 80-plus years ago, the Bergen County Players has welcomed hundreds of thousands of patrons through its doors to experience the joy of live theater, some for the very first time. Many return year after year, and bring new people with them. And hundreds of actors, directors, technical people and others have found an outlet, a home away from home, and a training ground for their interest in the magic of theater. Thanks to its many supporters, the Bergen County Players has become one of the premier little theater groups in the country.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line1
|
__label__wiki
| 0.679127
| 0.679127
|
Motociclismo/Motorcycle
DriveTime Tv
Home ⁄ Tag Archives: Peter Herzog dui
Lake Forest councilman gets 3 years probation for drunk driving
NEWPORT BEACH – Lake Forest City Councilman Peter Herzog pleaded no contest today to a misdemeanor drunken driving charge and was placed on three years informal probation.
Prosecutors dismissed another misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence against Herzog, who is also an attorney. As part of his sentence, he must complete a three-month first-offender alcohol program.
“It was a very common, standard first-offender deal,” Herzog’s attorney, Edward Stopyro, said. “It’s pretty much what everyone gets for a first-offense DUI.”
Herzog, 57, issued a statement saying he was taking responsibility for his actions.
“When you make a mistake, as I have done, you face up to it, without excuses, do what is necessary to address it, and move on in a positive fashion,” he said. “I would like to thank my friends, family, and all the poeple who have sent me kind words of support these past months. I have done everything possible to make amends for my error and, in moving forward, I will strive to be a force for good in this community and will continue to provide the people of Lake Forest the same dedication and thoughtful representation as I have for the past 18 years. I hope many learn from my mistake and to those I have disappointed, while I do not ask you to forgive me, I hope you can see how I have worked to take full responsibility and accountability for my actions.”
Herzog, who was charged Jan. 24, was arrested at home Nov. 17 after motorists called sheriff’s deputies to report he had been driving erratically, according to Farrah Emami of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
About 8:15 that night, Herzog made a left turn from Portola Parkway to Lake Forest Drive on the wrong side of the road, Emami said. He then swerved over the center median to get back onto the westbound lanes.
Herzog made a too-wide left turn from Lake Forest Drive to Regency Lane, hitting the right side of the curb in the process, according to the District Attorney’s Office. He veered into the opposite lane and weaved back and forth until he got home.
Investigators measured Herzog’s blood-alcohol level as .18 percent, more than twice the legal limit, as of 10:30 p.m. the night he was arrested, according to prosecutors.
amazon coffee canister
De nombre común a honorable; desde hoy se llama Honorary Dr. Samuel Joaquín Flores Drive
In Category : Noticias
Bereavision En KSDY 50.3
To protect our users from spam and other malicious activity, this account is temporarily locked. Please log in to https://twitter.com to unlock your account.
© 2010 - 2018 Bereavision All Rights Reserved.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line3
|
__label__wiki
| 0.5882
| 0.5882
|
I'm horrified
I'm horrified at the fate of Otto Warmbier, the American college student who traveled to North Korea with a group in early 2016, was arrested and imprisoned, and several weeks later was forced to give an obviously coerced statement that he had tried to steal a banner hanging on a wall in the hotel he had been staying in. The video of that statement is terrible to watch: Warmbier was crying hysterically. He was sentenced to 15 years hard labor. Several days ago, the North Koreans released him to the United States, but revealed that he had been in a coma for over a year. Upon his return, doctors determined that he had suffered massive brain damage from lack of blood flow to the brain. He died within days.
I'm amazed that so many people take it for granted that the alleged reason for his imprisonment is what really happened, especially since we know that the reason they've given for his coma is false. They said he came down with botulism and they gave him a sleeping pill which caused the coma. But the American doctors have said that there are none of the tell-tale signs that he had botulism, and at any rate, botulism-plus-sleeping-pills wouldn't cause a coma. Something prevented the blood from getting to his brain, and botulism wouldn't do it. He may have suffered a heart attack and didn't receive treatment quickly enough, but we don't know. What we do know is that the North Koreans are lying about one of the two basic facts of his case that they've told us. So why are so many people assuming that they're telling the truth about the other basic fact, the reason for his arrest and imprisonment? I mean, in his forced confession, he claimed to have tried to steal the banner on behalf of the American government. Does anyone really believe that?
I'm also horrified at the response of some Americans to this. They've basically said, "Well, he went there and broke their laws, that's what you get." They've mocked him, and they've mocked the terror he expressed in his forced confession. This could have happened to someone you love, who these mockers love. It's beyond disgusting. It is vaguely similar to the case of Michael Fay who confessed to committing vandalism and stealing signs in Singapore in 1993, and was sentenced to be caned -- that is, to be struck with a cane four times. The American public was divided on this: he committed a clear crime but corporal punishment bothered many people. Others said he was in their country, and that's how they punish those crimes there. But this is only vaguely similar: Fay confessed to more severe crimes than Warmbier, and Warmbier's punishment was much worse than Fay's. I think if they had sentenced Fay to 15 years hard labor, Americans would have been united to bring him back home. Moreover, Fay lived in Singapore, Warmbier merely traveled to North Korea for a few days. And there are numerous claims, alleged at least, that North Korea has kidnapped Americans and forced them to live in North Korea for whatever purposes they have for them. We know they've done that with South Koreans and Japanese before. So for people to treat Warmbier's case offhandedly is, again, beyond disgusting. And is it really so implausible that North Korea treated Warmbier as a representative of the United States that is currently rattling its saber in their direction? This is a horrific crime, and it wasn't just committed against Otto Warmbier and his family.
Labels: Culture and Ethics, War and Terrorism
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line5
|
__label__cc
| 0.694967
| 0.305033
|
Home
Staff
Undergraduate
Graduate
Calendar
Centers
CIIP
CAT+FD
Career Advancement Center
CMHHDR
CUR
Confucius Institute
Department Chairs
Faculty Info
Handbook
Opportunities
Forms and Guides
Professor Emeritus
Tuesday Meeting Schedule
Standing Committee
Deadlines
©Xavier University of Louisiana. All rights reserved.
Xavier University of Louisiana
University Catalog 2020-2021
Select a Catalog University Catalog 2020-2021 University Catalog 2019-2020 [ARCHIVED CATALOG] University Catalog 2018-2019 [ARCHIVED CATALOG] University Catalog 2017-2018 [ARCHIVED CATALOG] University Catalog 2016-2017 [ARCHIVED CATALOG] University Catalog 2014-2016 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
CAS Divisions and Departments
Undergraduate Degrees Offered
Graduate Degrees Offered
Requirements for the Degree
Change of Major or Minor
The Core Curriculum
Administration Building 110 - (504) 520-7652 - https://www.xula.edu/collegeofartsandsciences
The College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) consists of six Academic Divisions comprised of nineteen Academic Departments which together with the College Deans share responsibility for the quality and integrity of the academic programs of the College and fidelity to Xavier’s mission.
The CAS Dean’s Office provides service to faculty and students on matters pertaining to teaching and learning including curricula, academic progress, and degree requirements. The office staff is accountable for implementation of established policies and procedures found in this University Catalog.
Through the CAS Academic and Planning Councils, the Dean’s Office provides oversight of the College Core Curriculum as well as departmental/divisional and interdisciplinary curricula. This includes provision for assessment at all levels within the College as well as monitoring all programmatic and attitudinal university-wide assessment procedures.
An academic faculty member in the student’s major is appointed as an advisor to assist each student in registering for appropriate courses and in determining academic progress. Students who are uncertain about a major or who are not making satisfactory academic progress in their chosen major are temporarily assigned as “Deciding Majors.”
Biological and Applied Health Sciences
Fine Arts and Humanities
Art and Performance Studies
Physics and Computer Science
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) with majors in:
English/English Education
French Education
Music-Jazz Studies Concentration
Music Liberal Arts
Physics with Dual Degree in Civil Engineering, B.A.
Physics with Dual Degree in Electrical Engineering, B.A.
Physics with Dual Degree in Environmental Engineering, B.A.
Physics with Dual Degree in Mechanical Engineering, B.A.
Social Studies Education
Spanish Education
Bachelor of Music (B.M.) with majors in:
Music Performance Instrumental
Music Performance - Piano
Music Performance Voice
Bachelor of Science (B.S.) with majors in:
Biology Pre-Medical
Biology with Dual Degree in Biomedical Engineering
Chemistry A.C.S.
Chemistry with Dual Degree in Chemical Engineering
Chemistry with Dual Degree in Pharmacy
Chemistry Pre-Pharmacy
Chemistry Pre-Professional *
*Includes Pre-Medical, Pre-Dental, and Pre-Veterinary
Computer Science with Dual Degree in Computer Engineering
Physics with Dual Degree in Civil Engineering
Physics with Dual Degree in Electrical Engineering
Physics with Dual Degree in Environmental Engineering
Physics with Dual Degree in Mechanical Engineering
Pre-Medical Psychology
Statistics and Biostatistics Accelerated
Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.)
Master of Public Health in Health Equity (M.P.H.)
Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology (M.S.)
Doctorate in Educational Leadership (Ed. D.)
Certificates Offered
Entrepreneurship Certificate
Health Communication Certificate
Spanish for Health Professionals Certificate
Requirements for the Undergraduate Degree
In the College of Arts and Sciences, a candidate for the degree must complete a minimum of 120 semester hours of course work with at least a 2.0 cumulative average in an approved program. Each program must include the core curriculum, a major, and a minor (or a double concentration in place of the minor). The candidate must also pass a comprehensive/performance/capstone examination in his/her major field, usually in the senior year. A student who has not passed the Senior Comprehensive, or all parts of the Praxis Exam or GRE for the departments/divisions which allow these tests to be used as a substitute for the Senior Comprehensive, will not be allowed to participate in the commencement ceremony or to receive a diploma. Approved substitutions for the Senior Comprehensive are stated in the departmental sections.
Each candidate for a degree in the College must complete an approved major concentration of at least twenty-four, and no more than seventy-three, semester hours. Eighteen hours of these must be completed at Xavier. A minimum GPA of 2.0 is required by the College in the major field, but individual departments/divisions may require a higher average. Students are expected to receive a “C” grade or better in each course in their major. The approved programs are listed under the departments/divisions which offer them.
See Second Bachelor’s Degree for more information about earning a second degree.
See Requirements for more information about earning a double major .
The student who wishes to transfer from one major or minor department/division to another must observe the following procedures:
Report to the Registrar’s Office to obtain a Change of Major form;
Consult the Head of the prospective department/division to ascertain whether the Head is in favor of the change;
Obtain written approval from the current departmental/division Head; and
Return to the Head of the prospective department/division to obtain written approval.
Return the completed form to the Registrar’s Office.
The student must follow the academic program and requirements of the department/division that are in effect at the time of transfer.
Each student’s program of study must include a minor in an academic discipline other than the major discipline. The minor is composed of not less than 18 or more than 21 semester hours. When a major curriculum has a “built-in” minor, the student is required to complete that minor. Each student must declare a minor at the beginning of the junior year unless it has already been declared or has been determined by the major. Declaration of the minor is completed when the appropriate form is submitted to the Registrar’s Office by the student.
Prescribed minors are found in this catalog within the descriptions of the various departments/divisions that offer them. Successful completion of an official minor will be designated on the student’s official record. The official minor designation requires that a minimum of nine (9) of these hours be completed at Xavier.
A student may also satisfy the minor requirement by successfully completing an interdisciplinary minor, which has been approved by the Academic Council of the College, or by successfully completing a double concentration. A double concentration consists of at least twelve hours in each of two disciplines. The specific twelve hours must be approved by the Head of the student’s major department/division and the head of the other two departments/divisions as well as the Dean of the College.
Any exceptions to the above must be approved by the student’s Department Head and the Dean of the College.
For a list of the latest course offerings, visit: http://webusers.xula.edu/aedwards/core/index.html.
Xavier University of Louisiana’s Core Curriculum (the Core) emphasizes Xavier’s identity as a Catholic and historically Black institution and supports the goal that students should achieve both breadth and depth of knowledge in the liberal arts. The Core enriches the undergraduate educational experience by exposing students to integrative approaches in learning and by cultivating nuanced perspectives for engaging in thought and in action the major questions of their lives. Required of all undergraduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences, the 40 credit hours of the Core provide the foundation and, together with the major program of study, contribute to a well-rounded education.
The following Learning Outcomes of the Core Curriculum include skills, knowledge, and values that reinforce Xavier’s mission and its identity as a Catholic and historically Black university.
Students will be able to communicate effectively through writing and speaking.
Students will be able to use quantitative, empirical, and critical reasoning skills to solve problems.
Students will be able to incorporate diverse cultural perspectives in their analysis of issues, from local to global, and to recognize the interconnectivity of human experience.
Students will be able to demonstrate a science-based understanding of the natural world.
Students will be able to interpret and evaluate diverse forms of human expression.
Students will apply socially responsible and ethical principles to promote equity and sustainability in ways that align with Xavier’s mission as a historically Black and Catholic institution.
The Core helps to prepare students for lifelong learning and ethical living. It includes courses that frame an integrative academic experience, support student’s work in their major, and provide the tools to synthesize and apply knowledge, skills, and values. The Core requires students to engage in a continuous search to make meaningful connections by incorporating and applying multiple perspectives and methodologies to find solutions to complex problems. It also includes bookend courses that highlight Xavier’s unique mission. By the time Xavier students complete their course of studies, they are better equipped to exercise global leadership towards the creation of a more just and humane society.
Three skills are embedded throughout the different areas of the Core Curriculum. In practice, the skills of writing, speaking, and critical thinking are all interdependent. Sharpening one of them leads to greater command of the others. The ability to communicate ideas clearly, accurately, ethically, and in an engaging way is essential to success in both academic and professional life.
Oral Communication skills allow students to transmit ideas appropriately in spoken form based on audience, purpose, and context, and to listen with critical and literal comprehension. Integrating Oral Communication across the curriculum enhances students’ ability to analyze and construct messages critically, accomplish communicative goals, and apply ethical communication principles.
Written Communication skills allow students to express ideas clearly and cohesively in multiple written forms to different intended audiences. Integrating Writing across the curriculum enhances students’ ability to produce writing of increasing complexity that has a clear central purpose, appropriate structure, and compelling argument.
Critical Thinking skills allow students to analyze, assess, and reach informed and logical conclusions about different subjects, issues, or concerns. Integrating Critical Thinking across the curriculum enhances students’ ability to investigate increasingly complex questions and produce rational conclusions from multiple perspectives.
Students begin their intellectual exploration during their early years; this will prepare them for more integrated and applied learning as they advance through the curriculum. Students progress through the Core in three distinct stages: 1) Foundations at Xavier; 2) Explorations in the Liberal Arts; and 3) Engagements with Knowledge and Practice.
Special Note:
Courses that fulfill the core may be counted toward majors and minors except as noted for XCOR 3010 /XCOR 3020 .
FOUNDATIONS AT XAVIER (13 hours)
Foundations at Xavier introduces Xavier students to college-level written and spoken rhetoric, quantitative reasoning, and critical thinking and writing skills necessary for success in school and in life. The Experience courses expand both knowledge and skills, and shape the habits of mind that lie at the heart of what it means to live Xavier’s mission. In addition to promoting general academic skills, these courses help students explore issues of self-identity and foster an examination of their individual roles within larger communities. These Experience courses also offer opportunities to create new communities among students and to develop unique mentoring relationships with professors.
XCOR (4 hours)
College Writing (3 hours)
Advanced Rhetoric and Composition (3 hours)
Quantitative Reasoning (3 hours)
EXPLORATIONS IN LIBERAL ARTS (21 hours)
Explorations courses build on the Foundational requirements and foster the breadth of knowledge, skills, and values essential to a well-rounded, liberal arts education within the intellectual space of a Catholic and historically Black university. These categories are not organized by department or discipline, but by areas of inquiry. It is expected that these areas may inspire the creation of new courses - or revisions to existing ones - that will expand the interconnectivity of different perspectives and blur the lines of disciplinary isolation. The courses in any particular category might come from several disciplines. If an individual course is approved for multiple Explorations categories, students may only count that course to fulfill one of the categories. Although Explorations courses can be taken any time before graduation, it is recommended that students complete these required courses during their first two years so that they are better able to integrate all areas of inquiry into their overall academic experience.
*Students must take at least one course from each area below.
African American Heritage and Legacies (3 hours)
Creative Expression and Engagement (3 hours)
Examined Life (3 hours)
Faith and Society (3 hours)
Human Behavior (3 hours)
Human Past (3 hours)
Scientific Reasoning (3 hours)
ENGAGEMENTS WITH KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE (6 hours)
Engagements courses accentuate integrative and applied learning. Catholic intellectual tradition emphasizes that learning is most meaningful when difficult questions are investigated from a variety of perspectives. The Engagements courses allow students to explore connections between disciplines and provide opportunities to study a “big idea” topic from multiple disciplinary perspectives in order to find solutions to complex problems. The Engagements seminars prepare students to contribute to the promotion of a more just and humane society by enhancing students’ preparedness to assume roles of leadership and service in a global society.
Senior Capstone (0 hours)
University Academic Calendar
College of Arts and Sciences Graduate Programs
Printable University Catalogs
All catalogs © 2021 Xavier University of Louisiana.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line9
|
__label__cc
| 0.535263
| 0.464737
|
Science journal editors: a taxonomy
After many years of publishing papers, I have come to recognise wide diversity among journal editors. This variation has major consequences for authors, and it is important that they recognise the creature they are dealing with, if they want their work to be published in as timely and painless a way as possible. I have therefore developed a tripartite system of classification to guide authors.
Taxonomy of the Genus Editoris
This species of editor should be avoided at all costs.
The Returning Officer
This humble creature has a very limited brain and is unable to make decisions. It can, however, count, and it therefore uses a strategy of accumulating reviewer reports until a consensus is reached. Typically, it is risk averse, and a single negative report will lead to rejection of a paper, even if other reports are glowing. If you aren’t rejected, an initial communication from a Returning Officer will say “Please address all the comments of the reviewers in your revision”, giving no guidance about how to deal with contradictory recommendations. When you submit your revision, the Returning Officer will send it back to all the reviewers, even if only minor changes were made, leading to unnecessary delay in publication and more toil for overworked reviewers. Since the Returning Officer cannot make a decision unless there is convergence of reviewer opinions, most papers are doomed to a long process with an ultimately negative outcome.
The Automaton
This is a subspecies of Returning Officer which has no human characteristics at all. It evolved relatively recently with the advent of web-based journal submission systems. It generates letters written in computerese and does not read communications from authors. My most recent experience of an Automaton was with Journal of Neuroscience. The letter from the editor gave a rather ambiguous message, stating that the paper was potentially acceptable, but that major revision was required, and it would need to go back to reviewers. It also included the statement:
Violations: -The gender of the species should be mentioned in the methods
The dictionary definition of ‘violation’ includes such phases as “the act of violating, treating with violence, or injuring; the state of being violated. Ravishment; rape; outrage.” I decided it might be unwise to point this out to the editor, but I did explain that the “gender of species” was actually given in a table in the Methods section. A further round of review took place, and the reviews (which were very useful) were accompanied by another letter from the Automaton. It was identical to the previous letter, gave no indication that the editor had read the paper or my response to reviewers, and simply upped the ante on the violation front, as it now stated:
Violations: -The species is not mentioned in the abstract;
-The gender of the species should be mentioned in the methods
In what, thankfully, proved to be the final round of revision, I put the word “gender” in the text of the Methods. I explained, though, that I was reluctant to put “human children” in the Abstract, as this would be a tautology.
The Vacillator
This is a slightly more evolved form of Returning Officer, which is capable of decision-making, but prone to fits of paralysis when confronted by conflicting information. The hallmark of a Vacillator is that, rather than waiting for consensus between reviewers, it responds to conflicting opinions by seeking yet more opinions, so that a paper may accumulate as many as four or five reviewers.
A variant known as Vacillator statistica sometimes inhabits the environment of medical journals, where the assumption is made that neither the editor nor the researchers understand statistics, so you are asked at submission whether a statistician was consulted. My experience suggests that if you say no, then after an initial round of review, the paper goes to a statistician if it looks promising. It would be fine if the journal employed statisticians who could give a rapid response, but in my case, a brief paper sent to Archives of Disease in Childhood sat for months with a statistical reviewer, who eventually concluded that we did indeed know how to compute an odds ratio.
The Sloth
The Sloth has powers of judgement but finds journal editing tedious, so engages with the process only intermittently. The motivation of the Sloth is often mysterious; it may have become an editor to embellish its curriculum vitae, and is then bewildered when it realises that work is involved. It is important to distinguish the true Sloth, who just can’t summon up the energy to edit a paper, from Crypto-sloths, who may have genuine reasons for tardiness; editors, after all, are beset by life events and health problems just like the rest of us. Vacillators may also be mistaken for Sloths, because of the slowness of their responding, but their level of activity in soliciting reviews is a key distinguishing feature. Even Paragons (see below) may get unfairly categorised as Sloths, as they are dependent on reviewers, who can delay the editorial process significantly. A true Paragon, however, will be pro-active in informing an author if there are unusual reasons for delays, whereas the distinguishing feature of a Sloth is that it is unresponsive to communications and blithely unconcerned about the impact of delays on authors.
Species in class 2 pose less of a threat to an author’s career, but can nevertheless be dangerous to mental health.
The Talent Scout
This species is found in the rarefied habitats of the top high-impact journals, although it starting to spread and may now be found in medium-impact journals who have introduced a triage process. The Talent Scout’s principal concern is whether a research finding has star quality. The species is distinguished from other species by including individuals who are not active researchers: many are individuals with a doctorate in science who have moved into science journalism. Although it can be depressing to have one’s work judged as too unsexy for publication by someone with no expertise in your field, the decision-making process is usually mercifully quick, making it possible to regroup and resubmit elsewhere. Although this means that the impact on the author is less severe than for Class 1 editors, it does have potentially worrying implications for science as a whole, because it introduces bias. For instance, it is all too easy to see why Science published a study of a computer-based intervention for language problems in children: the study was headed by a top neuroscientist, the method was innovative, and it demonstrated potential to help children with a common neurodevelopmental disorder. A study like this presses all the buttons for the Talent Scout. However, the methodology was weak and subsequent randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have been disappointing (see review). I don’t know if authors of those RCTs would have tried to publish them in Science, but my guess is that if they did, their papers would have been rejected because it is simply much less interesting to show that something doesn’t work, than to provide evidence that it does (see blog).
The Deity
The Deity is the opposite of the Vacillator: the Deity makes decisions which may strike authors as unfair or subjective, but which are absolute and irreversible. Deities do not engage in correspondence with authors, but delegate this to office staff, as I found on the one occasion when I tried to engage in debate with a Deity from PNAS. I was incensed by a reviewer report that maintained a postdoc and I had been ‘cherrypicking’ results because we’d used an automated artefact removal procedure to remove noisy trials from a study using event-related potentials (ERPs). The reviewer clearly had no expertise in ERP methods and so did not realise that we were following standard practice, and that the idea of cherrypicking was just silly – it would be quicker to re-run the experiment than to go through the thousands of individual trials removing data we didn’t like the look of. In my letter to the editor, I explained that I did not want the paper reconsidered, but I did want an acknowledgement of the fact that I had not been fudging the data. What ensued was a tedious correspondence with a member of editorial staff, whose response was to send the paper back to the reviewer as part of an ‘appeal’ process, and to then inform me that the reviewer still didn’t like the paper. Nowhere in this process did the Deity descend from the heights to offer any comment. Indeed, I still wonder whether this Deity was really an Automaton. It showed no signs of having any sense of morality.
Another encounter with a Deity was when I sent a paper to New England Journal of Medicine. Since I thought this should have at least warranted review (novel study with important clinical and theoretical implications), I wrote to ask what the reason was for rejecting it without review. The response from editorial staff was classic Deity: they could not give me any feedback as the paper had not been sent out for review.
Species in class 3 are typified by their attitude to the job of editor, which is neither as bean-counter, nor as gatekeeper, but as facilitating the communication of high quality research.
The Paragon reads manuscripts and treats reviewer reports as advisory rather than as votes. He or she aims to make decisions fairly, promptly and transparently. Confronted with conflicting reviewer reports, a Paragon makes an honest attempt to adjudicate between them, and explains clearly to the author what needs to be done – or why a paper has been rejected. The Paragon will listen to author complaints, but not be swayed by personal friendship or flattery. I’ve often heard authors complain about a Paragon who writes such a long decision letter that it is equivalent to a further reviewer report: I don’t see that as cause for complaint. I would sometimes do that myself when I was a journal editor (needless to say, I tried hard to be a Paragon), and I saw it as part of my job to pick up on important points that were missed by reviewers. Paragons write personal letters to authors, and to thank particularly helpful reviewers, rather than relying on computer-generated bureaucratese.
The Obsessive
The Obsessive is a Paragon that has gone over the top. Obsessives are not dangerous like class 1 and 2 editors: they typically damage themselves rather than the authors, to whom they are just irritating. They essentially take upon themselves the job of copy editor, requiring authors to make minor changes to formatting and punctuation, rather than restricting themselves to matters of content and substance. Journal publishers have got wise to the fact that they can save a lot of money by sacking all the copy editors and requiring the academic editor to do the work instead, and they realise they have hit gold if they can find a natural Obsessive to do this. Academics should be aware of this trap: their training equips them to judge the science, and they should not spend hours looking for extraneous full stops and missing italicisation. They should remember that they already do work, typically for no reward, for publishers who make a lot of money from journals, and they should demand that the publisher offers appropriate support to them and their authors. (They should also employ people to assist authors with graphics – see blog).
The main problem for authors is that you often don’t know what species of editor you are dealing with until after the event of submitting a paper. In my main field of psychology, I am impressed at how many journals do have Paragons. The APA journals are usually good, in my experience, though Obsessives do make an appearance, and I know of one case where a junior colleague’s career was seriously blighted by a mega-Sloth. It’s harder to generalise about small moderate-impact journals: many of them are overseen by a dedicated Paragon, but my impression is that you can only be a Paragon for 10 years at most. Editors who have served a longer term than this are liable to transmute into Sloths. I also publish in the fields of neuroscience and genetics, and here I’ve struck more variability, with Returning Officers, Automatons and Deities being fairly prevalent. If you want to publish in the really top journals, you have to grapple with Talent Scouts: my attempts to make my work exciting enough for them have been singularly unsuccessful, and I've given up on them, but it may encourage younger readers to know that I’ve had a happy and successful career all the same.
Note: The author was co-editor of Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry from 1990-1993 and Chief Editor from 1994-1997. This year she signed up as an Academic Editor for PLOS One, in support of their Open Access publishing policy.
Labels: #science #publishing #editing
Science and journalism: an uneasy alliance
“Fish oil helps schoolchildren to concentrate” shouted the headline in the Observer, “US academics discover high doses of omega-3 fish oil combat hyperactivity and attention deficit disorder”. Previous research on this topic has been decidedly underwhelming (see slides for 7th BDA international conference), so I set off to track down the source article.
Well, here's a surprise: the study did not include any children with ADHD. It was an experiment with 33 typically-developing boys. And another surprise: on a test of sustained attention, there was no difference between boys who'd been given supplementation of an omega 3 fatty acid (DHA) for 8 weeks and those given placebo. Indeed, boys given low-dose supplementation made marginally more errors after treatment. So where on earth did this story come from? Well, in a brain scanner, children given DHA supplementation showed a different pattern of brain activity during a concentration task, with greater activation of certain frontal cortical regions than the placebo group. However, the placebo group showed greater activation in other brain regions. It was not possible to conclude that the brains of the treated group were working better, given the large number of brain regions being compared, and the lack of relationship between activation pattern and task performance.
A day or two later, another article was published, this time in the Guardian, with the headline Male involvement in pregnancy can weaken paternal bond. I tried to track down the research report. I couldn’t find it. I traced the researcher. He told me that the piece was not referring to published research, but rather to views he had expressed in an interview with a journalist. He told me he had not intended to recommend that fathers stay away from antenatal classes. He was also concerned that the article had described him as Director of his research institute - in fact he is a lecturer.
At this point, inspired by the example of the Ig Nobel prize, I announced the Orwellian Prize for Journalistic Misrepresentation, an award for the most inaccurate newspaper report of an academic piece of work, using strict and verifiable criteria. An article would get 3 points for an inaccuracy in the headline, 2 points for inaccuracy in the subtitle, and 1 point for inaccuracy in the body of the article. The fish oil piece totalled 16 points.
Comments on the prize were mostly supportive. I had thought I might attract hordes of journalistic trolls but they did not materialise. Indeed, several journalists responded positively, though they also noted some difficulties for my scoring system. They politely pointed out, for instance, that headlines, to which I gave particular weight in the scoring, are not written by the journalist. Also, it is not unknown for university press officers, who regard it as their job to get their institution mentioned in the media, to give misleading and over-hyped press releases, sometimes endorsed by attention-seeking researchers.
But over in the mainstream media, a fight was brewing up. Ben Goldacre, whose Bad Science column in the Guardian I’ve long regarded as a model of science communication, independently picked up on the fish oil article and gave its author a thorough lambasting. Jeremy Laurance of the Independent retorted with a piece in which he attacked Goldacre. Laurance made three points: first, science journalism is generally good; second, reporters can’t be expected to check everything they are told (implying that the fault for inaccuracy lay with the researcher in this case), and third, that journalists work under intense pressure and should not be castigated for sometimes making mistakes.
I would be the first to agree with Laurance’s initial point. During occasional trips to Australia and North America, I've found the printed media to be mostly written as if for readers with rather few neurons and no critical faculties. Only when deprived of them do you appreciate British newspapers. They employ many talented people who can write engagingly on a range of issues, including science. Regarding the second point, I am less certain. While I have some sympathy with the dilemma of a science reporter who has to report on a topic without the benefit of expertise, stories of hyped-up press releases and self-publicising but flawed researchers are numerous enough that I think any journalist worth their salt should at least read the abstract of the research paper, or ask a reputable expert for their opinion, rather than taking things on trust. This is particularly important when writing about topics such as developmental disorders that make people’s life a misery. Many parents of children with ADHD would feed their child a diet of caviare if they felt it would improve their chances in life. If they read a piece in a reputable newspaper stating that fish oil will help with concentration, they will go out and buy fish oil.(I've no idea whether fish oil sales spiked in June, but if anyone knows how to check that out, I'd be interested in the answer). In short, reporting in this area has consequences – it can raise false hopes and make people spend unnecessarily.
On the third point, lack of time, Goldacre’s supporters pointed out that working as a doctor is not exactly a life of leisure, yet Ben manages to do a meticulously researched column every week. Other science bloggers write excellent pieces while holding down a full-time day-job.
It was unfortunate indeed that the following week, Laurance, whom I've always regarded as one of our better science journalists, produced a contender for the Orwellian in an Independent report on a treatment for people with Alzheimer’s disease. Under the title 'Magnets can improve Alzheimer’s symptoms' he described a small-scale trial of a treatment based on repetitive transcranial magnetic simulation, a well-established method for activating or inhibiting neurons by using a rapidly changing strong magnetic field. In this case, the account of the research seemed accurate enough. The problem was the context in which Laurance placed the story, which was to draw parallels with ‘magnet therapy’ involving the use of bracelets and charms. Several commentators on the electronic version of the story went on the attack, with one stating “This is not worthy of print and it is absolutely shameful journalism.”
I was recently interviewed for the More or Less radio 4 program about the Orwellian Prize, together with a science journalist who clearly felt I was being unfair in not making allowances for the way journalists work – using arguments similar to those made by Jeremy Laurance. At one point when we were off the air, she said, “But don’t you make loads of mistakes?” I realised when I said no that I was simultanously tempting fate, and giving an impression of arrogance. Of course I do make mistakes all the time, but I go to immense lengths of checking and rechecking papers, computations, etc, to avoid making errors in published work. A degree of obsessionality is an essential attribute for a scientist. If our published papers contained ‘loads of’ mistakes we’d be despised by our peers, and probably out of a job.
But is the difference between journalists and scientists just one of accuracy? My concern is that there is much more to it than that. I did a small experiment with Google to find out how long it would take to find an account of transcranial magnetic stimulation. Answer: less than a minute. Wikipedia gives a straightforward description that makes it abundantly clear that this treatment has nothing whatever to do with 'magnet therapy'. Laurance may be a busy man, but this is no excuse for his failure to check this out.
So here we come to the nub of the matter, and the reason why scientists tend to get cross about misleading reporting: it is not just down to human error. The errors aren't random: they fall in a particular pattern suggesting that pressure to produce good stories leads to systematic distortion, in a distinctly Orwellian fashion. Dodgy reporting comes in three kinds:
1. Propaganda: the worst case of misleading information, when there is deliberate distortion or manipulation of facts to support the editor’s policy. I think and hope this is pretty rare, though some reporting of climate change science seems to fall in this category. For instance, the Australian, the biggest-selling national daily newspaper in Australia, seems much happier to report on science that queries climate change than on science that provides evidence for it. A similar pattern could be detected in the hysteria surrounding the MMR controversy, where some papers only covered stories that argued for a link between vaccination and autism. It is inconceivable that such bias is just the result of journalists being too inexpert or too busy to check their facts. Another clue to a story being propaganda is when it goes beyond reporting of science to become personal, querying the objectivity, political allegiances and honesty of the scientists. Because scientists are no more perfect than other human beings, it is important that journalists do scrutinise their motives, but the odd thing is that this happens only when scientists are providing inconvenient evidence against an editorial position. The Australian published 85 articles about the 'climategate' leaked emails, in which accusations of dishonesty by scientists were repeated, but they did not cover the report vindicating the scientists at all.
2. Hype. This typically does not involve actual misrepresentation of the research, but a bending of its conclusions to fit journalistic interests, typically by focusing more on future implications of a study rather than its actual findings. Institutional press officers, and sometimes scientists themselves, may collude with this kind of reporting, because they want to get their story into the papers and realise it needs some kind of spin to be publishable. In my interview with More or Less, I explained how journalists always wanted to know how research could be immediately applied, and this often led to unrealistic claims (see my blog on screening, for examples). The journalist’s response was unequivocal. She was perfectly entitled to ask a scientist what relevance their work was, and if the answer was none, then why were they taking public money to do it? But this reveals a misunderstanding of how research works. Scientific discoveries proceed incrementally, and the goal of a study is often increased understanding of a phenomenon. This may take years: in terms of research questions, the low-hanging fruit was plucked decades ago, and we are left with the difficult problems. Of course, if one works on disorders, the ultimate goal is to use that understanding to improve diagnosis or treatment, but the path is a long and slow one. I discussed the conflict between the nature of scientific progress and the journalists’ need for a ‘breakthrough’ in another blog. So the typical researcher is, on the one hand, being encouraged by their institution to talk to the media, and on the other hand knows that their research will be dismissed as uninteresting (or even pointless) if it can’t be bundled into a juicy sound-bite with a message for the lay person. One of two reactions ensues: many scientists just give up attempting to talk to the media; others are prepared to mould an account of their research into what the journalists want. This means that the less scrupulous academics are more likely to monopolise media attention.
3. Omission: this is harder to pin down, but is nonetheless an aspect of science journalism that can be infuriating. What happens is that the papers go overboard for a story on a particular topic, but totally ignore other research in the same area. So, a few weeks before the fish-oil/ADHD paper was covered, a much larger and well-conducted trial of omega-3 supplementation in school-children was published but ignored by the media. Another striking example was when the salesman Wynford Dore was actively promoting his expensive exercise-based treatment for dyslexia, skilfully using press releases to get media coverage, including a headline item on the BBC News. The story came from a flawed small-scale study published in a specialist journal. While this was given prominence, excellent trials of other more standard interventions went unreported (for just one example, see this link). I guess it is inevitable: Telling the world that you can cure dyslexia by balancing on a wobble board is newsworthy - it has both novelty and human interest. Telling the world that you can improve reading with a phonologically-based intervention has a bit of human interest but is less surprising and less newsworthy. Telling the world that balancing on a wobble board has no impact on dyslexia whatsoever is not at all surprising, and is only of interest to those who have paid £3000 for the intervention, so it's totally un-newsworthy. It's easy to see why this happens: it's just a more extreme form of the publication bias that also tarnishes academic journals whose editors favour 'interesting' research (see also Goldacre on similar issues). Problem is, it has consequences.
For an intelligent analysis of these issues, see Zoe Corbyn’s article in the Times Higher Education, and for some ideas about alternative approaches to science reporting, a blog by Alice Bell. I, meanwhile, am hoping that there won’t be any nominations for the Orwellian Prize that earn more points than the fish oil story, but I’m not all that confident.
P.S. I wanted to link to the original fish oil article, but it is no longer available on the web. The text is on my blog page describing the Orwellian prize.
P.P.S. Ah, I’ve just had a new nomination that gets 17 points, largely because it ignored wise advice tweeted recently by Noah Gray (@noahWG), Senior Editor at Nature: “Journalism Pro Tip: If your piece starts talking more about a study's untested implications rather than what the science showed, start over."
P.P.P.S It has been gently pointed out to me that I erred in original version of this blog, and said the Laurance magnet piece was in the Guardian, when in fact it was in the Independent. Deeply embarrassing but now corrected.
Labels: #science #journalism
Genes for optimism, dyslexia and obesity and other mythical beasts
Copyright: www.CartoonStock.com
I recently received an email from a company called mygeneprofile: “By discovering your child's inborn talents & personality traits, it can surely provide a great head start to groom your child in the right way… our Inborn Talent Genetic Test has 99.8% accuracy.” I’d registered to receive information from the company having heard they were offering a genetic test for such diverse traits as optimism, composure, intelligence, and dancing (link).
Despite all the efforts of the Human Genome Project, I was not aware of any genetic test that could reliably predict a child’s personality or ability. I was not therefore surprised when my emails asking for evidence went unanswered, though I continue to receive messages that oscillate between carrots (free gifts! discounts!!) and sticks (without this test “your child will have MISERABLE life (sic))”.
The test company relies on a widespread assumption that people’s psychological attributes are predictable from their genes. So where does this belief come from, and why is it wrong?
People’s understanding of genetic effects is heavily influenced by the way genetics is taught in schools. Mendel and his wrinkly and smooth peas make a nice introduction to genetic transmission, but the downside is that we go away with the idea that genes have an all-or-none effect on a binary trait. Some characteristics are inherited this way (more or less), and they tend to be the ones that textbooks focus on: e.g., eye colour, colour-blindness, Huntington’s disease. But most genetic effects are far more subtle and complex than this. Take height, for instance. Genes are important in determining how tall you are, but this is not down to one gene: instead, there is a whole host of genes, each of which nudges height up or down by a small amount (see link).
The expression of a gene may also depend crucially on the environment; for instance, obesity relates both to calorie intake and genetic predisposition, but the effects are not just additive: some people can eat a great deal without gaining weight, whereas in others, body mass depends substantially on food intake (see link). Furthermore, a genetic predisposition to obesity can be counteracted by exercise (see link).Furthermore, genetic influences may interact in complicated ways. For instance, coat colour in mice is affected by combinations of genes, so that one cannot predict whether a mouse is black, white or agouti (mouse coloured!) just by knowledge of status of one gene.
This means that we get a very different impression of strength of genetic influences on a trait if we look at the impact of a person’s whole genome, compared to looking at individual genes in isolation. The twin study was the traditional method for estimating genetic influences before we had the technology to study genes directly, and it compares how far people’s similarity on a trait depends on their genetic relationship. Researchers measure a trait, such as sensation-seeking, in identical and fraternal twin pairs growing up in the same environment and consider whether the two twin types are equally similar. If both sets of twins resemble each other equally strongly, this indicates that the environment, rather than genes, is critical. And if twins don’t resemble one another at all, this could mean either that the trait is influenced by child-specific experiences, not shared by the co-twin, or that our measure of sensation-seeking is unreliable. But if identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins, this means genes affect the trait, i.e. it is heritable. There are several niggly criticisms of the twin method; for instance, it can give misleading estimates if identical twins are treated more similarly than fraternal twins, or if twinning itself influences the trait in question. For most traits, however, these don’t seem sufficient to explain away the substantial heritability estimates that are found for traits such as height, reading ability, and sensation-seeking. But these estimates don’t tell us about the individual genes that influence a trait – they rather indicate how important genes are relative to non-genetic influences.
Interactive effects, either between multiple genes or between genes and environments, will not be detected in a conventional twin study analysis. If a gene is expressed only in a particular environment, twins who have the same version of the gene will usually also have the same environment, and so the expression of the gene will be the same for both. And for an effect that depends on having a particular combination of genes, identical twins will have the same constellation of genetic variants, whereas the likelihood of fraternal twins having an identical gene profile decreases with the number of genes involved. Heritability estimates depend on comparing similarity of a trait for identical vs fraternal twins, and will be increased if gene-gene interactions are involved.
In contrast, genome-wide association studies are designed to find individual genes that influence specific traits. They adopt the strategy of looking for associations between DNA variants (alleles) and the trait, either by categorising people, e.g. as dyslexic or not, and comparing the proportions with different alleles, or by seeing whether people who have zero, one or two copies of an allele differ in their average score on a trait such as reading ability. When these studies started out, many people assumed we would find gene variants that exerted a big effect, and so might reasonably be termed ‘the gene for” dyslexia, optimism, and so on. However, this has not been the case.
Take personality, for instance, one of the domains that mygeneprofile claims to test for. A few weeks ago, a major study was reported in which the genes of over 5000 people were investigated but no significant associations were found. Commentators on the research argued that the measurement of personality – typically on the basis of self-report questionnaires - may be the problem. But the self-same measures yield high estimates of heritability when used in twin studies. And a similar pattern has been found for other traits: including height, intelligence and obesity, i.e., a mismatch in evidence of genetic influence from twin studies (typically moderate to strong for these traits) and findings of individual genes associated with the trait (with effects that are very small at best).
This account may surprise readers who have read of recent discoveries of genes for conditions such as dyslexia, where the impression is sometimes given that there are strong effects. The reason is that reports of molecular genetic studies usually emphasise the p-value, a measure of how probable it is that a result could have arisen by chance. A low p-value indicates that a result is reliable, but it does not mean the effect is large. These studies typically use very large samples precisely because this allows them detect even small effects. Consider one of the more reliable associations between genes and behaviour: a gene known as KIAA0319 which has been found to relate to reading ability in several different samples. In one study, an overall association was reported with p = .0001, indicating that the likelihood of the association being a fluke is 1 in 10,000. However, this reflected the fact that one gene variant was found in 39% of normal readers and only 25% of dyslexics, with a different variant being seen in 30% of controls and 35% of dyslexics. Some commentators have argued that such small effects are uninteresting. I disagree: findings like this can pave the way for studies into the neurobiological effects of the gene on brain development (see link), and for studies of gene-gene and gene-environment interactions. But it does mean that talk of a ‘gene for dyslexia’, or genetic screening for personality or ability are seriously misguided.
The small effect size of individual genes, and interactions with environment or other genes, are not the only explanations for “missing heritability”. A trait may be influenced by genetic variants that have a large effect but which are individually very rare in the population. These would be very hard to detect using current methods. The role of so-called copy number variants is also a focus of current interest: these are large chunks of DNA which are replicated or deleted and which are surprisingly common in all of us. These lead to an increase or decrease in gene product, but won’t be found with standard methods that focus just on identifying the DNA sequence. Both mechanisms are thought to be important in the genetics of autism, which is increasingly looking like a highly heterogeneous condition – i.e. there are multiple genetic risk factors and different ones are important in different people.
What are the implications of all of this for the stories we hear in the media about new genetic discoveries? The main message is we need to be aware of the small effect of most individual genes on human traits. The idea that we can test for a single gene that causes musical talent, optimism or intelligence is just plain wrong. Even where reliable associations are found, they don’t correspond to the kind of major influences that we learned about in school biology. And we need to realise that twin studies, which consider the total effect of a person’s genetic makeup on a trait, can give different results from molecular studies of individual genes. What makes us individual can’t be reduced to the net effect of a few individual genes.
Bishop, D. V. M. (2009). Genes, cognition and communication: insights from neurodevelopmental disorders. The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1156, 1-18.
Maher, B. (2008). Personal genomes: The case of the missing heritability. Nature, 456, 18-21 doi:10.1038/456018a.
Plomin, R., DeFries, J. C., McClearn, G. E., McGuffin, P. (2008). Behavioral Genetics. (5th Edition). New York: Worth Publishers.
Rutter, M. (2006). Genes and Behavior: Nature-Nurture Interplay Explained. Oxford: Blackwell.
Note: this is a slightly extended version of a blog on Guardian Science Blog, 9/9/10
Labels: #genetics #twins #personality #dyslexia #autism
Genes for optimism, dyslexia and obesity and other...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line16
|
__label__wiki
| 0.674253
| 0.674253
|
The Jawsome Olde Tyme Revue
All revue, all the tyme, all the nues that's flog to blog
Posted by proximal at 12:53
Greetings, extensive fanbase. Allow me to kick off my debut revue here at this jawsome blog by confessing a very personal part of myself:
I’m what you’d call a “casual gamer.”
I know, I know. They’re the worst of the worst, right? I just don’t understand what’s so jawsome about non-casual gamers. Actually, I don’t even know what non-casual gamers are. All that come to mind are professional game testers and that kid from the 1989 classic, The Wizard. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m hard-core when it comes to games with my boys Link or Mario. I do not, however, play Halo or WoW.
But I digress. The purpose of introducing myself as a casual gamer is to introduce a very special casual game I found today.
Sprout is a short, Flash-based puzzle adventure I found online this morning during a quest to cure boredom. It was more than effective, I assure you.
Sprout (I assume that’s his name), a tiny nut* with identity issues and delusions of grandeur, starts the game borne of a coconut and sitting on a volcanic island with a few coconut palms (including its “mother”). In the intro he asks his mom, “Hey man, what am I?”** The palm replies that Sprout’s a coconut palm. Sprout says, “Not an acorn? ’Cause I feel like an acorn.” The palm tells him there’s no possible way and directs him to the nearest oak grove, completely on the other side of the playing map.*** At that point an epiphany strikes Sprout:
“My family sucks. …But I guess a coconut’s the only thing getting off this island.”
The player clicks on the coconut icon in the thought bubble, and Sprout grows into a p erfectly oriented coconut palm hanging off the edge of the beach. A coconut falls off the tree and into the water, and we follow it as it washes up on shore of the mainland, right next to a smarmy little dandelion. The coconut becomes Sprout again, and he starts thinking, “Hey. I could be a coconut palm again if I wanted to… or I could be a dandelion like that sucker over there.” The puzzle element starts here as you choose to be any of a number of plants Sprout meets on the way, in order to help him overcome the obstacles between him and the oak grove.
Before I address the only two drawbacks to this game, let me hit a few of its good points.
First good: the graphics. The crayon-scribble style, obvious in the screen shots, matches the whimsy of the story perfectly and is very easy on the eyes. I’ve seen this style abused and relatively obnoxious in certain commercial franchises which shall remain nameless****, but Sprout gets it right and keeps it right from beginning to end.
What isn’t easy to see from the screenshots are the animation and three-dimensional effects. The scribbles of the ocean water flow back and forth like ocean water. Moving objects, including our hero, slide over the background as animated paper cutouts. The scrolling background even conforms to parallax as the immediate background, two layers of hills and clouds, and the sun all move at different speeds against the (paper-grained) blue sky.
Next good: the general concept. I’m surprised no one came up with this sooner. A plant who can turn into different plants, each with its own ability. It’s very much like A Boy and His Blob but without the ridiculous kid and plot (but also without those jawsome jellybeans). I wouldn’t mind seeing a whole franchise of this character (or a similar one) in different settings and with different flora/fauna helping out. I mean, instead of a herbivore eating and defecating the hero, go further up the food chain, be eaten by a mouse who is then eaten and excreted by an owl! Hear that, developers? Get on this one! It’s a keeper!
Final good: Did I mention how simple this game is? The player needs no reading ability, nor much of a working knowledge of botany, as there’s enough trial-and-error in this game that experimentation will show you most of the things your plants can accomplish (with a few notable exceptions). My six-year-old cousin and eighty-year-old grandfather could handle this game, since its large graphics and lack of hand-eye timing keep it accessible to those with little fine motor control.
In short, it rocks.
“What happened to those two drawbacks?” you may be asking yourself. Or asking me, which is even more ridiculous than asking yourself, since I’m back here speaking to you from the past and you are obviously well into the future. But I’ll answer you anyway: They follow.
Drawback A: Certain tasks in the game are less than intuitive. Remember how I mentioned a few notable exceptions to the simplicity of the game? This is where I note them. At least once in this short game, the player is required to repeat the same action a few times until the desired result results. In most games the first iteration of this action has some effect, even if it’s only a fraction of the desired effect. For example, if the player is melting an ice cube by throwing fireballs at it, the first fireball should melt the ice a little, just to signal that repeatedly shooting fireballs will eventually melt it. Sprout, however, does nothing the first time you attempt that action. Repeating what seems ineffective is counterintuitive and annoying. Games are meant to be frustrating, not annoying. Luckily Sprout provides more than enough jawsomeness to make up for that.
Drawback B: Game’s too short. This revuer could have played for hours and hours, but no. Not much of a drawback, I agree, but play and see if maybe you don’t feel the same way.
Final word: Watch out, Mario and Link. If this thing ever gets picked up, you’re in trouble at the next Smash Bros.
*Figuratively, yes, but I meant it literally.
**All quotes loosely translated from whatever plant-language they speak.
***Completely coincidentally.
****No sense offending the creators of Yoshi’s Island, ditto Story, etc.
Tags: Sprout, video games
Posted by nearby at 11:14
Today's jawsome revue is a revue of something that is basically jawsome* -- Jason Shiga's Knock Knock, an interactive comic book that knock knocked my socks off! Now that that's out of my system, on with the revue.
What exactly is an interactive comic book, you say? I've seen this book referred to as a Choose Your Own Adventure-style book, but to me it's more like solving a puzzle by finding the correct path. Granted, if I recall correctly the CYOA books had quite a few insta-death endings (resulting in having several pages bookmarked for easy backtracking), but this has only one true ending and thus the adventure is already chosen for you. Anyway, it's interactive because on each page, there are several (and I mean several) objects to interact with/actions, and you get to choose which one by turning to the designated page. Pretty cool, huh?
I can't really say much because I don't want to give any hints, so I'll talk about the presentation instead. It's "handmade" which probably means self-published at a local copy shop, which is pretty awesome, except after two run-throughs I'm worried about the binding coming loose. The cover is made to resemble a door, with a handle and an actual hole for the peephole, with the sound effect "KNOCK KNOCK!" emblazoned on it. When you open it, you're face to face with the dude on the other end (featured later in the actual book). The inside face of the cover has instructions, and page 2 has a reminder to read the instructions in case you're a douche and didn't read them. There is a noticeable lack of any kind of attribution to an author, which is unfortunate, but I guess if you bought it you probably know who made it. Still, weird.
The pages change color midway through the book; I guess they ran out of white paper at the copier? Leafing through it (after "winning"), I found an easter egg (I guess?), plus cheat protection, which rules. A large portion of the losing paths are worth following, for either a) clues on how to win, b) insight into the characters and your current predicament, or c) hilarious death scenes. Yeah, that's right, there's characterization going on in this game too! As I died in sundry ways, I developed a deep sense of loathing for the killer and a desire to emerge heroic and victorious.
The cool thing about it being in book form as opposed to being, say, a strip on the internet or a point-and-click game or something, is how simple and self-contained it is. It's just this impenetrable thing of 500 pages waiting for you to unlock its secrets. Pretty neat.
And when you do win? One nit to pick here: it is difficult to immediately understand the implications because it's hard to see what is going on in one of the most important panels. But the panels following it are just confusing enough for you to go back and -- that is when the full awesome, nay, jawsomeness, of the ending hits you.
So yeah, I'm now on the quest to acquire the other books in Shiga's oeuvre -- the ones that are available, that is. It is both cool and annoying that they are hard to find. He has made a great deal of them available to read for free on his website, but this is a rare occasion when having the physical copy is important to me. I'm even tempted to get a second copy of Knock Knock since I don't think I want to loan mine out.
If you decide to give this book a "Berry Good", turn to page 23.
If you decide to give this book a "Peary Good", turn to page 40.
* Basically jawsome defined as having a jawsome content of 98% or higher.
Tags: comics, Knock Knock
Star Ballz
Posted by distant at 10:24
All right, look. Here's the situation. My sadistic colleague gave me the assignment to revue Star Ballz. She had seen it years ago, so she should have known better, but she told me to do it anyway, and hearing that it was a hentai parody of Star Wars, Sailor Moon, and a bunch of other pop culture, I thought it might be fun. I knew it would be a bad movie, but I thought maybe I could enjoy it ironically or at least have some laughs making fun of it. I was young and foolish then.
I'm reluctant to even write this revue, because I just know that some poor fool will read it and make the same mistake I did. Don't do that to yourself! I am perfectly aware that some movies are "so bad they're good;" trust me when I say that this is not one of those movies. It goes so far past "so bad it's good" that not only does it go back to being bad, but it reaches new levels of badness that scientists haven't been able to classify yet.
You might also think, "well, I'm not looking for Hamlet here; porn's porn." All I can say to that is that if you actually get off on this movie, you're probably not the kind of person I ever want to meet. The character designs look like they were drawn in some horny fat kid's Trapper Keeper during sixth-grade social studies class. The animation for the sex scenes is the same few frames cycled over and over again in each shot, and then each shot is repeated several times (even in different scenes), so there are probably about seventeen total frames of animation in all of the sex scenes.
The voices sound like they were recorded over VoIP on dial-up using the built-in microphone on someone's iBook with the gain turned up too high. The best thing I can say about the audio for the sex scenes is that it's consistent with the animation, in that it's a few moans and phrases sampled on someone's Casio keyboard and played over and over again. Everything's mixed all wrong so you can hardly make out the dialogue most of the time, but that's probably for the best. In fact, if you must watch this movie, you should probably just turn the sound off. And the video.
The touted "hilarious parody" consists of including a character for no reason other than to say "look! We are aware of the existence of this character of whose existence you are also aware! Isn't that hilarious?" If you're lucky you might get more value for your buck when the character makes some sort of ass joke. It's the Family Guy school of comedy.
To add insult to injury, the movie includes no fewer than two fake-out endings before it finally does end. I'm letting you know ahead of time in case you ever get kidnapped and tortured by someone who shows you this movie, so the first time the phrase "THE END" comes up, don't get your hopes up, because you still have a good ten minutes left. Er, well, you have ten minutes left, but they are by no means good. The best thing I can say about this movie is that it is only forty-seven minutes long, but then, that's forty-seven minutes too long, and I assure you it feels like much longer. (That's what she said! (And I make that terrible joke only to point out that it's much funnier than any of the ones in Star Ballz.))
My initial reaction to this movie was the desire to punch everyone involved in the production in the mouth, but over time that feeling gave way to a sort of melancholia, and I started to worry about what kind of circumstances in people's lives could have led them to make a movie like this, and how many of them have killed themselves since then. And if they haven't, why the hell not?
Tags: movies, porn, Star Ballz
If Halo 3 and its embarrassing ad campaign complete with Mountain Dew Game Fuel have taught us nothing else (and they haven't), it's that the launch of a video game is a "cultural event," comparable to Woodstock, landing on the moon, or the fall of the Berlin wall. Yet as much as I mock this media blitz right now, my very own beloved Mario was guilty of equal or even worse crassness back in 1989, when the introduction of Super Mario Bros. 3 through the movie The Wizard went over like the third coming of Jesus. Since then, Nintendo have forgotten how to market themselves out of a wet paper bag, and the Mario brand has been diluted by an endless parade of spin-offs that have become franchises of their own (of varying quality), but suffice it to say that there's still a sizeable number of people for whom the prospect of a new Mario platform game creates a great deal of excitement, and quite a few of them grew up to be video game journalists.
What all this means for you, the consumer, is that if you're looking for a "fair and balanced" critique of said game, you may encounter some difficulty. Reviews of this game tend to be several pages of gushing hyperbole with a couple of token complaints thrown in to offset any accusations of bias. Look, I like Mario as much as anybody, but a review like that isn't going to do anyone any good. So with this revue I hope to balance some of that out and give you a better idea of what playing the game is really like, so you're not too disappointed when you play it and it's not the end-all be-all of human existence.
Don't get me wrong, Super Mario Galaxy is a great game. But that's all it is, and it's not perfect. I put it to you that if it were not a Mario game but a game starring some anonymous new characters, we as a society would be considerably less forgiving about some of its flaws. A lot of people raved about Super Mario Sunshine at first too, and now it's the bastard redheaded stepchild of the series. So I implore you, let's skip the "OMG a new Mario game" stage and go straight to looking at it critically.
The story of Super Mario Galaxy, if you really need one, is that Mario gets a letter from Princess Toadstool (Peach) inviting him to her castle because she has something she wants to give him. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Advanced readers may notice that this is exactly the same setup as Super Mario 64, except that this time there's an additional element of mystery because you don't know whether the thing she wants to give him is a cake or some other baked good, possibly a pie. Hell, it could even be a quiche -- this game breaks all the rules. Anyway, before Mario can actually approach Peach's castle, Bowser shows up in his airship (the disturbance you just felt was a million Mario fanboys ejaculating at once due to the return of Super Mario Bros. 3's airship motif) to kidnap Peach again. This time he just picks up her whole castle and takes it with him -- you know, kind of like what he did in Paper Mario. Kind of exactly like that. The one new element is that this time he's enlisted the help of a UFO, and they warp away after hitting Mario with a magic missile that knocks him onto some planet.
There, some little star creatures turn into rabbits and make you chase them around to teach you the controls, after which they introduce you to their "mama," the cyclopean (I can only assume) Princess Rosalina, who explains that, as you could probably have guessed, rescuing Peach will require collecting a bunch of stars, which will also gradually get you access to additional levels and open up the dark areas of this game's "hub world," the Observatory. If this sounds oddly familiar it's because it's the same tired level structure they've been using since Super Mario 64 more than ten years ago. Not a criticism... just an observation.
Okay, so with all that out of the way we can finally get to the meaty stuff: the game mechanics. Setting the game in space is a way to justify having Mario run around on small spheroids, which is a bigger deal than it sounds. When it's used effectively I would say that this is almost as big a change as going from 2D platforming to 3D in Super Mario 64. It's kind of like 3 1/2-D. Being able to explore every side of a surface and jump out of the orbit of one planet and into another opens up a lot of level design possibilities never before seen in a game like this.
It doesn't always live up to its potential, though. Like a little girl with a little curl, when the level design is good, it's very very good, but when it's bad, it's slightly less good. The problem is that the levels that make use of these new gravity-based designs are so fun and new that they make the other, more conventional levels feel quite drab in comparison. Too many levels in Galaxy are just large landmasses floating in space that you can only walk on the top of (which makes no sense, which is part of a separate issue I'll talk about later) -- they wouldn't be at all out of place in Super Mario 64. I suppose Nintendo didn't want to alienate people who preferred the more traditional level design, but seriously, fuck those people. And yes, these levels are fine by those standards, but after being tantalized with the more "galactic" ones, it's kind of a bummer to have to go back.
Besides the level design, the other big change to the Mario formula here is the physics. Maybe the problem here is just my own expectations, but for a game involving a bunch of free-floating stuff in space, I really thought that gravity would be more important. I mean, it's there; it stops you from falling off the planetoids. But that's about it. I do still have a ways to go before finishing the game, but so far, the amount of gravitational force has been the same on every planetoid, regardless of the size, and while you can sometimes do cool tricks like long-jumping around the edge of a planetoid (I haven't managed to get into orbit yet), I haven't encountered a situation where you actually have to use anything like that to your advantage. Which is okay, I guess; I mean, it's not really necessary, but it sure would be cool. Just strikes me as another case of potential not being used.
The other thing about the gravity is that it's somewhat inconsistent, by which I mean, sometimes you can walk around the edge of a planet and sometimes you'll fall off the edge to your death, and it can be hard to know which to expect. Even within planetoids, there may be some walls you can walk up and others that are just walls; some platforms you can walk all the way around and some you'll fall off, with no way to tell which is which. Sure, you can figure it out through trial and error, but if you're expecting Galaxy's gravity to be anything like the universe's gravity, let me disabuse you of that notion right now, my friend. The game uses black holes to justify all of its "falling in a chasm" deaths, but even if you can see a black hole nearby (which is a big "if" anyway due to the automatic camera), it's not always clear what will cause you to fall into it and what won't. In some situations the black holes work fine (it wouldn't be Mario without some jumping across chasms), but other times it seems like the designers didn't feel like making a planet that goes all the way around, so they just made a "flat Earth"-style planet and chucked a black hole under it to keep you from exploring the bottom. I guess it makes more sense than the invisible walls at the edges of levels of earlier games, but not by much, and unexpectedly falling off the world is quite annoying.
The last thing I want to talk about is the camera. I have actually seen a few reviews mention it, but they seem to be focusing on times when it doesn't automatically move to the best position -- which does happen occasionally, but I haven't found it to be a big deal. It does sometimes make it hard to judge the jump distance for stomping on things, and it's probably for that reason that jumping in this game has actually been downplayed quite a bit in favor of a spin attack, which feels like a bit of a kludge, but it gets the job done. But no, what I want to talk about is running around upside down (something you'll have to do fairly frequently). There's a problem that always plagues games where you switch from moving around normally to moving around upside down while the camera stays in the same orientation (something that happens surprisingly often in Nintendo games; see also the spider ball in the Metroid Prime series and the iron boots in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess). It's kind of hard to explain, but basically, once you're upside down, your directional controls are inverted, to an extent. I.e. you were pressing up on the analog stick and moving away from the camera a second ago, but now you've walked up the wall in front of you, but because you're still pressing forward you're now moving toward the camera. So now you need to turn right. Which direction should you move the analog stick? I don't know. I guess to the right would make the most sense, but then you're pressing right and your character is moving left on the screen. Pretty confusing. If pressing left makes your character go left, then the left/right axis corresponds to what's on screen but the up/down axis doesn't. Also pretty confusing. But to make things even more confusing, if you stop moving and let go of the analog stick, then start moving again, pressing the same direction might not have you moving the same direction you were a moment ago, because while you stopped moving the controls re-calibrated themselves so that analog stick direction will correspond to screen direction. Which is probably what you want to happen in the long run, but to press the same direction twice and have your character go a different way each time is a bit disorienting. In Zelda and Metroid, walking upside down was such a minor part of the games that this problem was pretty easy to ignore, but it's considerably more prominent in Galaxy. I don't know what the solution is, but keeping the camera more or less behind Mario at all times as he walks around a planet seems like a good start, although it might make it harder to get a feel for your environment.
So all of these are areas in which I think the game could be improved. Do they stop it from being fun? Hell no. Pretty much every other element of the game more than makes up for these minor quibbles, and it's easily the best 3D Mario game, even if the formula is starting to show its age. Still, when the worst thing you can say about a game is that sometimes it feels like playing Super Mario 64, I think you're in pretty good shape.
Tags: Super Mario Galaxy, video games, Wii
Howdy howdy folks, welcome to my first jawsome revue (though I cannot in good conscience call any of my reviews truly jawsome -- I'm merely referring to it as a revue that is on the jawsome revue blog). Double Happiness is a graphic novella (1999, 64 pg) that delves into a favorite of topics: finding one's identity in a foreign land.
First a confession: I got this book because it was cheap. I ordered Knock Knock (review forthcoming) solely on its Choose Your Own Adventure premise, but didn't want to order just one book. So I browsed Jason Shiga's other selections, and based on pages per dollar -- 64 pages for $5 -- it was the best deal, compared to for example another book that was 60 pages for $25. I kind of wish I'd also sprung for the $25 book since it was another CYOA-themed book and probably would have had far more "replay value." Anyway, basically I had totally forgotten that I had ordered this book.
Okay. So it's about this Chinese guy that goes to live with some distant cousin of his in SF's Chinatown and his attempts to and feelings on fitting in there vs. his past life growing up in Boston. And it kind of goes in a fairly predictable way, including a burgeoning love story, until the last act, where it leads somewhere that was hinted at subtly throughout. So on the surface you have a sort of generic boy-makes-good-in-new-territory story, with undercurrents of something-is-not-quite-right. Granted, I don't know too much about the things that go on, so perhaps to a different audience it's pretty clear.
Which brings me to the art style. Apparently he's aped an artist that is hugely famous in Southeast Asia but not as much anywhere else -- and has provided a glowing recommendation to this artist in the introduction. It's a fairly simple, cartoony style with wobbly lines and all, but it effectively conveys character's emotions and it "reads" easily. There are also some trope-y things, like speed lines, extreeeemely emotional faces with sweat flying off, extreme close-ups, but used sparingly and appropriately.
The thing about the style is that it creates some assumptions as to what kind of story this is going to be -- a bit cutesy, a little romantic, funny, light in tone -- which is, as I said earlier, turned quite suddenly on its ear in the later parts. In fact, the shift hits at the highest point in the main character's arc, just when you think you've got the ending figured out.
I do want to talk more about this but I hate being spoilery (though the odds of you running out and getting this are slim -- but if you do see it, don't hesitate to pick it up; it's a really well-done book), so I'll just leave off with some of the notes I wrote in the outline for this review.
- Parallels to own life, vis a vis being a banana, Asian growing up in a predominantly white community, outsider everywhere (oh cry me a river).
- A lot of nice character moments. I'm a sucker for these.
- Abrupt, obtuse ending that made me google for reviews to try to figure it out.
- What would I have done? Probably the opposite of what the main character did. It seemed like a good idea to me.
Grade: 7 Jaws
Tags: comics, Double Happiness
Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Let me make one thing clear from the start: Zack and Wiki is not a Wikipedia game. I'm sorry to give you the bad news so bluntly, but we might as well get the disappointment out of the way up front. It'll be better for you in the long run. It builds character.
Anyway, in case you haven't heard of it, Zack and Wiki is a new Wii game by Capcom. It's perhaps best known for being the "media darling" of IGN's Matt Casamassina and Mark Bozon, who spearheaded a "Buy Zack and Wiki" campaign during the months before the game was released, running the risk of looking like fools (even moreso than usual; see the photo below) if the game turned out to suck when it finally came out. They decided that such a campaign was necessary because Zack and Wiki has a stupid name. They much preferred its working title, Project Treasure Island Z. In fact they hated the actual title so much that they started referring to it exclusively as "Z&W" and then "Z-Dub," which is obviously much less stupid.
I have to admit that the "Buy Zack and Wiki" campaign sort of worked on me. Not that I based my decision to buy it on the opinions of IGN, which would just be absurd, but they did at least raise my awareness of its existence, and after further investigation I was able to determine that it did look like a game I was interested in playing.
So now the game is finally out, and the question on everyone's minds is: does it live up to the hype? Forget what those guys told you -- I'm here to give you the real scoop on Zack and Wiki.
...but it turns out they were pretty much right and the game is jawsome. I don't know if I would agree with the assertion that everyone should buy it, but I'm glad that I did.
Zack and Wiki is basically a point-and-click adventure/puzzle game that's about using the right item at the right time to accomplish a goal. It plays somewhat similarly to the old Sierra or LucasArts adventure games, but combined with something like The Adventures of Lolo. Instead of one large world with puzzles and items spread out all over the place, Zack and Wiki is set up as a series of individual levels, each of which puts a bunch of obstacles between your character and a treasure chest, and your job is to overcome those obstacles and get the treasure.
"What kind of obstacles?" you may well ask. The answer varies widely. Some puzzles are based on principles of physics, some involve creatures that can be turned into items, some involve items that can be turned into creatures, some have killer robots, mad science, paintings that do stuff, etc. There's a lot of variety, is basically what I'm saying.
You play as Zack, a kid who wants to be an infamous pirate, and you're accompanied by a gold monkey named Wiki, who has the power to turn into a bell that can turn other living things into various tools. You control the duo by pointing and clicking at things on the screen with the Wii remote, or shaking it to ring Wiki's bell and turn stuff into other stuff. Even though there's no real rhyme or reason to what each creature will turn into, you'll pretty quickly get a sense of what each animal can do for you. Complicating matters is the fact that Zack has no sort of inventory system and can only carry one thing at a time. Besides the animal items, there are various things built into each stage that you can interact with, usually by moving the Wii remote in some sort of gimmicky fashion. Some of these motions work pretty well, and some of them don't. Personally I could take or leave them, but if you're one of those people who are like, "I paid for motion sensing and damn it, I'm gonna use it!" then I guess you'll enjoy them.
Anyway, the puzzles are where the game really excels. Like I said, there's a lot of variety to them, and the solutions usually make some kind of sense, at least in video game logic (of course putting weight on a pedestal will make a bridge appear; why wouldn't it?). If you do get stumped, you can use up a "hint doll" and get a vision of what your next move should be, but those dolls ain't free, and in fact the prices go up every time you buy another one, so you'll probably want to use them sparingly (or you could just look up the solution on GameFAQs, but if you do that, you're really only hurting yourself).
This game also brings back the lost art of instant deaths. The game encourages you to just try messing with everything to see what happens, and sometimes you'll be rewarded for doing that, but other times it will kill you. That might sound incredibly frustrating, but it's actually not that bad. For one thing, you have the option of reviving yourself and undoing the move that killed you, using a system similar to that of the hint dolls. But even if you run out of those, the worst that can happen is you have to restart the levels, and most of the time the levels are short enough that once you know what you need to do, it's not that big an inconvenience to go through the motions again (there are a few exceptions with really big levels where you have to wait for Zack to walk long distances).
It's that fact, though, that initially led me to worry about the game's replayability. There are enough levels to keep you busy for a couple of days, depending on how long you play each time, but then what do you do? Fortunately they've taken this into consideration. Your performance on each level is graded based on how efficiently you solve the puzzles. For example, if it takes you a couple of tries to move some items into the right position, you don't get as many points as you would if you got it right on the first try. Additionally, sometimes there are alternate ways to solve puzzles, which might get you a different amount of points. So you can always go back and try to improve your score/ranking on each level.
If, on the other hand, you feel that playing for high scores has been pointless since 1987, there's still other stuff to do. Secret treasures are hidden throughout the levels, whether it's stashes of coins, collectible pixel art of characters from past Capcom games, or a skeleton guy who makes you play a rhythm game for a treasure map, which you can then use with another character who will go out and hunt down the actual treasure for you. That guy can also help you find other treasures to fill up little galleries of characters and creatures from the game, as well as sound/music tests and also probably some other stuff I don't remember off the top of my head. The point is, if you're a completist, you can play this game for a while. There's much more to do than meets the eye.
So that's about it for the game mechanics. What else? The story is pretty much irrelevant. It gets the job done setting up the premise of the game and then mercifully gets out of the way for most of the time, but if you must know, you're trying to collect pieces of this skeleton pirate made of gold so he can come back to life and give you his ship. There's also a hot female pirate who is your rival and will probably be the subject of a lot of fan art before too long.
The graphics are presented in a cel-shaded style that's somewhat similiar to Wind Waker but with better character models. It's very colorful and quite nice, and each 'world' has a different theme, most of which are fairly interesting to look at. The sound is a lot of various noises made by Japanese people, but no full-fledged voice acting (thank god). The music is well done but I didn't find it particularly memorable.
Anyway. The point and click adventure genre is hardly new, but it is still fun, and this game brings some interesting new twists to it. There's a lot to do, and it's all very well polished and presented with style and a unique charm. If that kind of gameplay sounds at all appealing to you, I highly recommend checking out Zack and Wiki. It's the most fun I've had playing a new game in quite some time. And if I may editorialize a bit here, I have to say that it's really a sad state that the industry is in when a jawsome, unique game like this is in danger of being overlooked in favor of games about space marines. So buy Zack and Wiki and support the blue sky in games.
Thank you, and good night.
Tags: video games, Wii, Zack and Wiki
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II
In an earlier post, I asserted that the mission statement of this blog was to revue things that are jawsome, or to revue things that are not necessarily jawsome in a hopefully jawsome way. The subject of tonight's post, the 1987 horror movie Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, falls in the latter category. I could not in good conscience call this movie jawsome, or even good, but it does have a certain charm.
I haven't seen the original Prom Night, but from what I hear on The Internet, that doesn't matter, as aside from sharing a setting, an actor (as a different character), and the catchphrase "It's not who you come with; it's who takes you home," the two are completely unrelated. Prom Night 1 was apparently a straightforward slasher flick, fairly well respected in the genre and set for a remake in 2008. But I don't care about it.
In the world of 1980s horror, you were either a Jason man or a Freddy man. Unless you were a woman. I would count myself firmly among the Freddy camp. Prom Night 1, it would seem, was more of a Jason kind of movie, but Prom Night II: Electric Boogaloo is a rare case of a franchise changing teams mid-race (please pardon my mixed metaphors) and ripping off A Nightmare on Elm Street pretty directly with a supernatural villain and lots of surreal, dream-like sequences (though in this movie they're not dreams). Throw in a 1950s theme with appropriate soundtrack, a pinch of incest, and a dash of showering lesbians and you've got a recipe for wackiness.
The story of Prom Night II: Twenty-Three Skidoo starts in 1950-something at the high school prom, where the titular Mary Lou is floozying it up and making out with some guy, much to the dismay of her prom date, Bill. Demanding vengeance, Bill decides to dump pigs' blood on Mary Lou during her coronation as queen o' the prom. Sorry, did I say pigs' blood? I meant a stink bomb. Unfortunately something goes wrong and Mary Lou's apparently kerosene-soaked prom dress immediately goes up in flames, roasting her alive.
Flash forward to the present (the '80s), where we meet Vicki, a moderately not-unattractive blonde girl with an unfortunate hairstyle and an overbearing mother who's all set to be queen o' this year's prom (Vicki, not her mother). Some boring stuff happens, and Vicki's classmate Josh, who is basically J.T. from Degrassi, is introduced, making a radio out of a potato and saying, "This moment will be inserted into the anals [sic] of science history, and I think we all know how painful that can be." Which should give you some idea of the comic sensibilities of this film. (Okay, I'm underselling it; there actually are some decent jokes in the movie.)
We now learn that Bill, the guy who set Mary Lou on fire, is now principal of the high school and has a son who doesn't want to go to college and sometimes forget to eat. Oh, and that son is dating Vicki.
For some reason that I either missed or they just didn't bother to tell me, Vicki goes down into a spooky basement or something in the school... oh yeah, I think she's trying to find a prom dress because her mother won't let her buy one, and I guess they keep dresses in the school basement. Whatever, it doesn't matter. The point is she finds a mysterious chest and opens it. Little does she know that she's freeing Mary Lou's soul! Which was sealed in the chest for some reason, along with the official prom queen tiara and cape, which Vicki takes.
Next we get a bit of melodrama as Vicki's even-more-unfortunately-coiffed friend Jess reveals... very... slowly... that some guy impregnated her and won't call her back. Fortunately she won't have to worry about this for long. We're about twenty-five minutes in and it's time for the first official murder! (Mary Lou's origin story doesn't count.)
Jess fiddles with the tiara, which pisses off the ghost and all hell breaks loose. By which I mean some bags of shredded paper burst open and some paint falls off the shelf. Then the prom queen cape attacks her and drags her toward a paper cutter. You wouldn't be faulted for thinking she's about to get her head chopped off... but no! It's the classic misdirect, and she actually just ends up hanged by the cape instead. Oh, and then after she's dead, she gets thrown out the window for good measure.
Naturally everyone assumes that Jess killed herself and then threw her own corpse out the window, and some asshole priest uses her funeral to espouse his views about violence in the media (what?). Vicki finds herself mysteriously drawn to Mary Lou's grave.
But the prom must go on! One of the other prom queen nominees or whatever makes a snide remark about Jess, and Vicki flies off the handle. This is foreshadowing because -- I'll save you the suspense -- she's gradually being taken over by Mary Lou's spirit or whatevs. She starts having hallucinations about a dark, nightmarish Silent Hill version of the school, where the Fonz attempts to rape her.
Meanwhile, the nerdy comic relief J.T. guy asks a girl out, which I guess is supposed to make us like his character more, or maybe just remind us that he's in the movie, because to be honest I had forgotten. Then Vicki gets brained with a volleyball, resulting in more creepy hallucinations with everyone calling her Mary Lou and the volleyball net turning into a big spiderweb that she gets caught in. Principal Bill hears her yelling "I'm not Mary Lou" and is disturbed, so he goes to the basement/dress storage room and somehow figures out that Mary Lou's soul escaped from the chest, though I don't know how he knew it was in there in the first place.
On account of getting beaned, Vicki gets the rest of the day off from school, but her psychotic mother decrees that she must spend it confessing stuff to a priest in a pointless scene. That evening she has some more Mary Lou-related hallucinations, in case you haven't figured it out yet. Then her really fucking creepy rocking horse comes alive, unseen hands grope her under the sheets (or something), and her mirror turns into liquid in a gag straight from Evil Dead.
Well, that scene was pretty cool, but by this time the film's leisurely pace is starting to wear thin and you just want her to finish getting possessed and start killing people already. There are some more scenes that don't really add up to much. The priest tries to warn Bill (his former classmate) that Mary Lou is back and that "she can't touch me; I'm a priest," but Bill should be careful and find Jesus, but Bill's not having it. Meanwhile, Vicki complains to her boyfriend about the inconveniences of being possessed, and the mean girl convinces J.T. to rig the prom queen election via computer in exchange for sexual favors.
In an unrelated incident, Vicki slaps mean girl and gets sent to detention. Then, with some pretty cool effects, she gets sucked into the blackboard. She ends up in the basement/dress storage room, naked, and apparently this is the point where she's fully taken over by Mary Lou. Vicki Lou goes back to the priest for another confession, except this time she asks him to fuck her, then kills him. Apparently his crazy notion about being invincible due to his priestiness was inaccurate.
The next day, Vicki's classmates are confused because she's dressing anachronistically and being sassier than usual. J.T. is the only one who correctly assumes that it's because she's possessed. When Vicki Lou's chemistry teacher Mr. Craven (groan) gropes her, she blows the hair out of her face, causing something to ignite the teacher's crotch.
Next is the film's most famous (to me) scene. Vicki Lou and some girl get in a fight in the locker room. When the girl goes off to shower, Vicki Lou joins her and tries to make out with her. The girl gets creeped out and runs away, leading a very nude Vicki Lou to stalk her throughout the locker room while singing the Little Richard hit "Tutti Frutti" in a creepy way. When the girl hides in a locker, Vicki Lou uses her telekinetic powers to crush the locker that she's in like an aluminum can, causing what is presumably brain matter to sluice through the vents. Pretty gross. I actually saw this scene on television many years ago but didn't know what it was, and it left enough of an impression on me that I eventually decided to track down the whole movie.
Anyway, nothing can really top that scene, so I'm sorry to say it's pretty much all downhill from here. Vicki Lou comes to visit Bill and vaguely threatens his son, then goes home and makes out with Vicki's father, which unnerves her mother, whom she telekinetically pushes through the front door, possibly killing her but I'm not sure. Bill knocks his son unconscious with his own shoe, then goes to dig up Mary Lou's grave, but finds preacher-man buried in it instead. Why would Vicki Lou take the time to swap them out? How would she know that he would dig up the grave? It seems like a pretty random and stupid thing to do, but I guess maybe from having dated him, she knew that he was the kind of person who, upon finding out that the girl he killed was possessing his son's girlfriend, would go and dig up her corpse. That's pretty impressive forethought.
Next there's a weird scene where J.T. takes a picture of Vicki Lou at the prom and asks her if she's seen Monica, and she turns into a burst of white light. I have no idea what that's about, but it doesn't seem to affect anything, and the next time we see any of those characters they're just going about their business as usual. So, just ignore it, I guess.
J.T. goes to his secret nerd lab to hax0r the prom queen election results, as per his agreement with mean girl, who shows up and holds up her end of the bargain. Then she goes back to her date, who asks her if she has any more mints because her breath smells great. Gross. When J.T. changes the prom queen from Vicki to mean girl, Vicki Lou doesn't like it and electrocutes him through his computer.
After the most awkward possible reading of the line "Ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna pick the prom queen now," Vicki is announced as the winner. The mean girl is dismayed, and a guy asks her, "How'd you blow it?" See, because she blew that dude, get it? Meanwhile, Bill's son has recovered from the shoe attack and shows up at the school. Also meanwhile, Bill himself is up on the rafter above the stage as Vicki Lou is coronated. Is he going to recreate the stink bomb stunt and burn this girl alive too? As it turns out, no... he just shoots her. Just as his son arrives! But it's too late. She's dead.
But not really! The dessicated corpse of Mary Lou bursts out of Vicki's body (I guess that's where she put it after she took it out of the grave) and everything starts getting all Carrie on us. Oh, by the way, mean girl is randomly impaled with a neon light, so don't worry, she got her comeuppance for being mildly rude. Mary Lou makes a bunch of lights and stuff explode, and I guess this gives her energy and restores her body to mostly non-dessicated status. It also gives her voice a lot of reverb.
Well, Mary Lou rampages a bit and eventually chases Bill's son down to the basement/wardrobe department, where the priest's corpse (how did it get there?) tells him he's in deep shit. Mary Lou pulls the classic "pretend to be a loved one" trick and impersonates Vicki, and Bill's son falls for it, the poor dope. It seems that if she can get him pulled into the chest (the one her soul was stored in, I mean, not her breasts), then... well, I was going to say that she'd be free, but she seems pretty free already, so I don't know what she's trying to do, but basically he's in danger of being sucked into the chest. But at the last second, Bill shows up, puts the tiara on her head, and kisses her. Then there are a lot of bright lights and a crazy tracking shot, and something explodes. The implication is that Bill and Mary Lou are gone, somewhere. Now Bill's son opens the chest and for some reason Vicki comes out of it, even though we saw her get shot and die and a creature burst out of her corpse earlier. I think what they're trying to say is that the real Vicki was in the chest ever since that blackboard scene, and everything since then was really just Mary Lou looking like Vicki, which I guess I can buy.
Anyway, when Vicki comes out of the chest, Bill's son asks her if she takes sugar in her coffee, and she says, "No, that stuff'll kill you." That's a callback to an earlier scene where they had coffee, but it doesn't make any more sense in context. It has nothing to do with the current scene and is really lame.
Cut to: A cop saying, "I don't know what we got here! Something strange," in a way that just sells it. And that's his only line. Anyway, the survivors are leaving the prom. Bill is back, so I guess he didn't die after all... or did he?! He's going to drive Vicki and his son home, but he turns the radio to one of the soundtrack's dozens of songs that include the name Mary Lou! And he's wearing a ring that seems like it probably has some significance, but I wasn't really paying attention to that scene earlier. But at any rate I get the idea that the kids are probably not in a good situation as creepy Bill says, "Hey kids. They're playing our song! Let's cruise." and all the windows roll up and doors lock and they drive away to their doom in a direct rip-off of the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street, except nobody gets pulled through a door which was really the best part. Also, the car's license plate says "MARY LU2". Why the 2? Oh well. The end!
In conclusion, this isn't a very good movie, but for the most part it is at least entertaining, and has some pretty neat special effects set pieces. For me, cheesy horror movies like this live and die (no pun intended) on their creative death scenes, and this one delivers a few pretty decent ones, and it has a sense of humor without becoming a total parody of itself like the later Freddy movies. And if you're not into any of that, well, you can't go wrong with full frontal nudity.
Tags: Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, movies
Dexter 2x06: "Dex, Lies, and Videotape"
And now the Jawsome Olde Tyme Revue presents a new feature, in which my associate and I discuss the latest episode of stuff we've been watching. You'll feel as though you're there standing around the water cooler with us, observing our conversation but not participating, much like all of my social interactions. First up on the agenda is the latest episode of Dexter.
nearby: How's it going?
I saw Dex[ter episode 2x06].
me: What did you think?
nearby: I'm disappointed that Dex is in recovery.
me: At least he killed somebody.
nearby: But he didn't "need" to. Also, Rita's a nag; a harpy. I liked her much better in the first season.
me: Yeah. But they broke up, so it's OK.
nearby: No wonder Paul used to beat her. [chuckles]
me: [laughter]
nearby: God, I'm so horrible.
me: Yeah.
nearby: [grins] But at least you're not offended. Also, I don't like the new Cody.
me: The new Cody?
nearby: The kid. He's new from last season. I mean, they replaced Cody 1.0.
me: Oh. I didn't notice; they all look the same to me.
I like how the FBI guy was like, "It tastes like a hippo."
nearby: [grins] I like how Deb's boyf was like, "you looooooove Grundy." [laughter]
me: Yeah... [chuckles] Grundy.
nearby: Man. Hilarious.
me: Man, the secondary characters were actually not that bad this time (besides Rita).
nearby: I guess. The thing is, of the secondary characters, I usually like Rita, because of her relationship with Dexter. But lately she's become a harp.
me: Frankly I've never liked her.
I like how Lila keeps showing the goods.
nearby: She's always wearing the same kind of underwear (character consistency). That weird thong thing; it's got, like, a thick band and then a thong. Weird.
me: It's probably the same pair.
nearby: She's got a nice pair of 'tocks.
me: She's a butterlips.
nearby: Also, tvclub linked to another TV commenter in the Dexter commentary that I started reading. The funny thing is I already saw this blog before. He retroactively recapped Freaks and Geeks; he was quite fawning about it. Anyway, he did some season 1 reviews of Dex, but not enough. But now I'm reading his commentaries on season 2.
[quoting from the commentaries:]
"Mostly, though, I didn't have much to say. The show was so consistent both in what was working (Michael C. Hall's performance, the flashbacks to Harry's lessons, Dexter's relationships with Deb and Rita, the advancement of the Ice Truck Killer mystery) and what wasn't (office politics in the Miami PD) that I would have been repeating myself week after week."
me: Heh. Yeah.
nearby: It's true.
me: Frankly I like this season better.
nearby: I don't like how Dex is showing too many emotions. [chuckles]
me: [chuckles] I don't know; I think he always had them.
nearby: I guess. I prefer him being like this empty hollow shell of pretending. [laughter]
me: [chuckles] Like me.
nearby: I like how he basically still has no moral compunction about killing, though.
me: Yeah. I guess you're right, though. Dex should need to kill people; otherwise he might stop doing it.
nearby: Yeah. I hope he ends up killing Lila at the end of the season. Or, um, Lundy (Grundy).
me: Why would he?
nearby: She finds out his secret and freaks out. (Butterlips.)
me: But she would have to murder someone.
nearby: Eh. I don't think she'd have to. He doesn't care about Harry's code any more. I mean, like, he's trying a "new me."
me: I don't know; I think he's still using the code. Why else would he kill that guy even though he didn't need to?
nearby: My favorite thing about Television Without Pity's recaps of Dex is the one time where they suggest that Doakes and Dex will kiss (because of Six Feet Under). [laughter]
me: [chuckles] You're such a "shipper."
nearby: UGH! Please, don't call me that.
me: You just want all the dudes to make out with each other.
nearby: No! No. It's funny because the first time i watched Dex, I was like, "Heh, Doakes is Dex's Keith."
me: I did like seeing Dex get all mad this eppy.
nearby: [swooning] Me toooooooo! Also the other eppy, when he beat that dude.
me: Even though that's an emotion.
nearby: I don't mind angry. [chuckles] I agree that he has emotion. It's just like, all effed up.
me: You just don't want the good emotions.
nearby: He probably can't control them, so he buries them.
me: Like me.
nearby: That's why he feels like he has none. He just wants to bury the bad ones, but it's a package deal.
nearby: I like how Dexter never uses an umbrella. He was wet, like, half the time.
me: I didn't notice that, possibly because I never use an umbrella either, so it just seemed natural.
nearby: Also, I forgot to fawn over his shirtless scene. I also like how Dexter is all, "Great, I'm THAT guy."
me: What guy?
nearby: With a love triangle. Well, I gotta eat. Laters.
me: Wah!
Tags: convos, Dexter, TV
Peepshow #1-14
Welcome, one and all, to the Jawsome Olde Tyme Revue, the blog where we revue things that are jawsome -- or is it that the things may not actually be jawsome, but our revue is? It's hard to say.
Anyway, the first item up for revue is issues 1-14 of Peepshow, a comic book by Joe Matt, the man of two first names. I'm not really into the indie comic "scene," so my colleague would probably be better suited to revue this, but she hasn't gotten around to reading it yet, so the task has been delegated to me. So you'll just have to excuse me if I don't know what I'm talking about. All I know about this comic and its author is what I learned from reading it.
Peepshow is an autobiographical comic. The narrator is somewhat unreliable, so it's not clear how much of it is exaggerated or outright fabricated, but it doesn't really matter. I know that being unflattering and self-deprecating in an autobiographical work is a common device, but this guy takes it to a whole new level. During the first storyline (ishes 1-6), he seems to go back and forth between pointing out how much of an a-hole he is and trying to portray himself as a sympathetic character. The first issue is about his crush on a friend of his girlfriend; the second is about him dealing with his girlfriend not being happy about his making a comic about his crush on her friend. You're never sure whether his ridiculous justifications for his behavior are being presented as a target for laughter at his expense or whether he actually expects you to agree with him. It's probably a little of both.
It's kind of a strange mix, but it works. His character is most assuredly an a-hole, but he's still likable. It helps that his friends Seth and Chester (who are apparently other comics peeps, but I'm not familiar with them) are usually around to make fun of him and act as representatives of the reader's incredulity at his a-holeness. (Pictured above: Seth reiterates his analogy that talking to having a conversation with Joe is like being a treadmill.)
So the first six ishes deal with Joe lusting after various women, and the consequences that arise from that. I'd go into more detail, but I wouldn't want to spoil anything. By the way, despite what the title might lead you to believe, this isn't an especially bawdy comic. Oh sure, there's the occasional T&A (and even some C&B in a later ish) and lots of masturbation references, but the really filthy stuff is not explicitly depicted. Just thought you should know so you're not disappointed.
After six ishes of Joe Matt's girl troubles, ishes 7-10 comprise the "Fair Weather" storyline, an abrupt and radical departure from the previous ishes. Out of nowhere, Joe Matt flashes back to his childhood for a story about attending church fairs, making unfair trades with his unwitting friends for rare comics, digging underground forts, and trying to meet a TV horror host. If this all sounds a little saccharine, well, it is, but tolerably so (no worse than any other nostalgic childhood remembrances), and it's somewhat balanced out by Joe and his friend making fun of a retarded girl and sneaking peeks at topless women (not pictured) through a fence. It's a cute enough little story, but it's not really where the author's true talent lies, and maybe I'm no better than the unwashed masses complaining about it on the letters pages, but I have to admit I was glad when this storyline was over and Peepshow returned to the present-day (more or less) neurotic sex-addict version of Joe.
Even so, the last storyline (ishes 11-14) is a different beast. Now Joe is less of an a-hole and more just pathetic. He seems to have stopped interacting with women altogether and now spends all his time borrowing porn videos, dubbing them and editing out all the shots of the guys (with the exception of money shots), and masturbating several times a day. He reaches new heights of patheticness when he comes up with the "stroke of sheer genius" of keeping a second urine bottle in his closet so he'll have to empty them half as often. Aside from Seth and Chester, he now tries to avoid interacting with other people whenever possible, and a large portion of this storyline consists of him talking to himself. It starts off as an exposé of his porn addiction and then drifts into commentary on his comics output and his life in general. Then it just kind of ends, unsatisfyingly. Apparently the next storyline will be about Joe moving to Los Angeles. But this series started in 1992 and is only now up to issue 14, so you probably shouldn't hold your breath waiting for it.
Oh, I guess I should talk about the art style a little bit, since it is a visual medium and all. (Here's the part where I really don't know what I'm talking about.) Well, it's a pretty simple style, black and white (except for the last storyline when the pages turn yellow and he incorporates splashes of red (not the infamous ZZT game)), with bold lines. The early ishes have a more grotesque R. Crumb sort of look to them; "Fair Weather" is just sort of straightforward cartoony; and the last storyline simplifies it even more and makes it look sort of like a newspaper comic strip or something, fuck if I know. Obviously I know nothing about art but I felt obligated to have something about that in here.
I also recommend reading the letters pages, where readers repeatedly admonish Joe Matt for various things and suggest he get therapy. Plus it includes special celebrity guest letter-writers such as Rivers Cuomo, James Kochalka, one of the women depicted in an earlier comic, and Joe Matt's mom.
So, for my money, the first six ishes of Peepshow are the most amusing, but the whole series is worth reading. Czech it out if you get the czance.
Tags: comics, Peepshow
welcome to the jawsome olde tyme revue -- all revue, all the tyme, all the nues that's flog to blog
Hey man.
Hey man
Welcome to the Jawsome Olde Tyme Revue, where we revue things that are jawsome, or jawsomely revue or recap things that are not necessarily jawsome, or just write revues that are on the Jawsome Olde Tyme Revue.
P.S. We are aware that this is a non-standard usage of the term "revue," so don't bother pointing that out. We're reclaiming it.
proximal
welcome to the jawsome olde tyme revue -- all revu...
convos (1)
Double Dragon (1)
Double Happiness (1)
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1)
Knock Knock (1)
Peepshow (1)
Star Ballz (1)
Super Mario Galaxy (1)
The Secret Life of the American Teenager (14)
video game movies (4)
Zack and Wiki (1)
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line19
|
__label__wiki
| 0.716556
| 0.716556
|
Soul-kit speaks untold stories of teenagers through music
Hidden under the monotonous school uniform and chained by the tightened everyday schedule, Korean teenagers lack ways to speak out for themselves. For the sake of this tragic situation, university students gathered their heads to create “Soul-kit,” a group which turns teenagers’ stories and worries into a piece of music.
Soul-kit is a project by 30 passionate students who seek to make music that Korean teenagers can truly symphasize with. It started off when two university students realized the absence of music for teenagers and managed to put their thoughts into practice in 2011.
“In high school, I always felt that there was hardly any music that actually cared about or reflected the lives of teenagers,” said Cho Hye-sun (University of London, 3), the co-president of Soul-kit. “Most of them deal with topics inappropriate for teenagers, and the lyrics tend to be meaningless as well.”
Last September, Soul-kit recruited members who were interested in music and teenage issues. Even though all of the members came from different backgrounds, their love and devotion toward music bonded them together as a group to pursue the same ultimate goal of creating the right culture for teenagers.
“I think it is the absence of communication between teenagers and the rest of the world that begets serious issues,” Joo Sung-yup (Sogang University, 2) said. “Soul-kit wishes to become a means of communication for them.”
To make sure that the songs that they create authentically reflect the thoughts of teenagers, Soul-kit held a story contest last December for teenagers to hear them out. From studying burdens to lookism, many topics that have been concerning teenagers became honest stories for Soul-kit to turn into music.
“I remember a story about teenagers and suited-up commuters criticizing each other—one for conforming to society and the other for not being able to dream,” Moon Ji-ae (Sungkyunkwan University, 2) said. “It was made into a song called ‘Monday Morning’ and I think anyone can sympathize with it.”
The members’ efforts were finally materialized on July 25, when the “SOULKIT 2012: First Project Album” was officially released online. The album includes ten tracks, eight of which were written based on real stories sent from teenagers. Furthermore, the first Soul-kit concert was held on Aug. 7 this year in Sangsang-madang Live Hall. More than 200 people attended, filling up the entire hall.
Although the influence has not been wide enough to change all the teenagers in Korea yet, Soul-kit takes pride in providing memorable experiences and trying to make a big difference to those they are able to touch.
“One student with a serious complex on her appearance sent us an essay, and it was selected to be made into a song,” Moon said. “She invited her friends to the concert and told us that sharing her agony with them helped her open up and regain self-confidence. I was so proud.”
Soul-kit also has a positive impact on changing the members’ personal values regarding their lives.
“Before taking part in Soul-kit, my life was all about attending a prestigious university and majoring in business to get a high-profile job,” Joo said. “Through working with the members and encountering people who agreed with us and willingly offered helping hands, I realized the most important value in life: Helping others.”
As Soul-kit’s official activities for this year has ended, the members’ major concern is where to donate their earnings. Among various options, the group has narrowed down to donating to two organizations: A teen suicide center or school violence prevention center, both of which concern the welfare of teenagers. Even though the exact period of the next recruitment for members is still under discussion, Soul-kit plans to continue sharing its passion and goal with the world.
“Soul-kit’s ultimate aim is to trigger more attention towards teenagers,” Cho said. “Although it is just the beginning, I hope such movement continues and empowers young people by showing them that sincere dreams and passion are all you need to make a difference.”
* Reporter: Chung Yoon-young & Chung Che-yoon
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line24
|
__label__wiki
| 0.831405
| 0.831405
|
Rosalía Confirms That She Is Working With Pharrell Williams | Music News
13 Apr 2018 — Filed Under: Music, Music News
Rosalía Vila, also known as Rosalía, is a Spanish flamenco singer. She released her first album in 2016 titled Los Angeles, working alongside producer and musician Raúl Refree. After, she released many songs with other artists including one with like her boyfriend, C. Tangana called “Antes De Morirme“.
She is set to feature on J Balvin‘s next project and she is also working on her next solo project with Pharrell Williams. She posted a picture and video with no sound on Instagram where she appeared with other people in Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles.
Many artists has worked at Conway including Beyoncé, the king of pop Michael Jackson, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and others.
In her Instagram post, she wrote that it’s a “dream” to work with the “Happy” singer. Also, she confirmed that she will present her next album with brand new sounds at Sónar Festival.
Visit her website for more information.
Watch Instagram post below:
es 1 sueño hacer musica contigo @pharrell 🦄🦄 s/o mike @miguelmilliones
A post shared by ROSALÍA (@rosalia.vt) on Apr 12, 2018 at 12:24pm PDT
Watch her last single called “Aunque Es De Noche” below:
Watch “Antes De Morirme” music video with C. Tangana below:
#Peace.Love.Rosalía
Raúl Ramírez
I was born in a small island where the nature is special, Gran Canaria. When I was a child, I felt that I wasn't like the rest. I spent my childhood around music and many films and books.
When I grew up, I focused my vision in other countries and I found love in different cultures like British, American, Japanese, Korean, etc. Once time I read that “it’s no always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong”, and because of that, I consider myself a very rebel, adventuress and creative person.
Latest posts by Raúl Ramírez (see all)
Parra Join With Nike To Reveal A New Air Max 1 | Fashion News - June 29, 2018
Francis And The Lights – Back In Time | Music Video - June 29, 2018
Pale Waves – Noises | New Music - June 29, 2018
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line25
|
__label__cc
| 0.536047
| 0.463953
|
(908) 236-8417 vanessa@dreammerchantwine.com
Au Bon Climat
www.aubonclimat.com
WINERY HISTORY
Au Bon Climat is a French term for “a well exposed vineyard site”. Being that the winery is situated in one of the preeminent vineyards in Santa Barbara County – The Bien Nacido Vineyard – the name certainly fits. It is the brain child of master winemaker Jim Clendenen.
The winery was founded in 1982. The Central Coast which is now well known as one of the premiere wine growing regions in the country was in its fledgling stage. By 1989 Robert Parker, whom at that time was the dominant voice in the US wine industry, had identified ABC (as the initiated refer to it) as one of the “Best Wineries in the World”. A significant achievement for a winery only seven years old!
The focus at Au Bon Climat is the production of well balanced Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, with a clear nod to the great wines of the Burgundy region of France. Jim does own two vineyards, one at the southern end of the Santa Maria Valley called Le Bon Climat, as well as Rancho La Cuna located in Los Alamos, but he also sources grapes from many of the most historically significant vineyards in all of Santa Barbara County: Bien Nacido, Sierra Madre, Neilson, Sanford & Benedict, and Los Alamos, as well as many from outside the county: Talley Rincon (San Luis Obispo), Elke (Anderson Valley), and Barham-Mendelsohn (Russian River).
Jim also produces a profound wine which emulates the original Corton Charlemagne cepage planted around 800 AD. After extensive research in France, tracing lore and legend, Jim discovered that the original plot had no Chardonnay planted at all! It was a blend made from the Burgundy clone of Pinot Gris called Pinot Buerrot, Pinot Blanc, and a bit of Aligote. The legend that surrounds this historic vineyard site is recaptured on the back label of what is Jim’s favorite white wine, Hildegard. It is named for King Charlemagne’s patient but ultimately intolerant wife. The King loved to party, and the parties lasted days. The local wine was Pinot Noir, and left quite a mess after Charlie’s bacchanalian soirees. In an effort to appease his beautiful bride he ripped out some of the vines from one of his best vineyards (Corton) and planted the above mentioned white grapes in their place. Much less messy. Party on.
Au Bon Climat makes about 22 wines under this unique triangular label. Jim however, never met a grape he didn’t want to ferment, so he has spawned numerous other labels over the years to accommodate his various projects. Presently, he has consolidated most of these projects under the Clendenen Family Vineyards label, though he also makes a small amount of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir under the Ici La Bas label sourced from Oregon and the Anderson Valley.
The winery is located smack in the middle of the dramatically landscaped Bien Nacido Vineyard on the outskirts of Santa Maria. It is not open to the public, however they do welcome visitors from the wine trade by invitation only.
FOUNDER/WINEMAKER BIO – Jim Clendenen, The Mind Behind
Jim graduated from UC Santa Barbara with honors in a Pre-Law program in 1976. And no doubt Jim would have won many arguments throughout what would have surely been an illustrious career in the courtroom, but his path took an unexpected turn while visiting France during his “junior year abroad” in 1974. He discovered that there was a life beyond tacos and beer.
Upon graduation, he rewarded himself with a one month stay in Burgundy and Champagne which sealed the deal on his fate to become one of the pioneers of the Central Coast fine wine world. After a quick initiation stint as a “cellar rat” voraciously learning everything he could about the process of wine making from dirt to barrels, beginning with the 1978 harvest Jim stepped in as the Assistant Winemaker at Zaca Mesa Winery – one of the first estate wineries established in Santa Barbara County. Jim being a firm believer at the time that anything worth doing is worth doing to excess, in 1981 he found a way to work 3 harvests in one year – directing the crush at wineries in Australia and France as well as on his home turf. This masochistic feat convinced him he was ready to start his own winery. He launched Au Bon Climat the following year.
He began working with his now ex-partner Adam Tolmach in a leased space. He quickly cultivated a reputation for making some of the best Burgundian-style Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in the country. He also made delicious Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris. By 1989 Robert Parker included Au Bon Climat on his “short list” of Best Wineries in the World. The honors and accolades have kept coming ever since. In 1991 Oz Clark selected Jim as one of 50 world-wide Creators of Modern Classic Wines. The Los Angeles Times selected him as “Winemaker of the Year” in 1992. Food & Wine Magazine selected Jim as “Winemaker of the Year” in 2001. The leading wine publication in Germany Wein Gourmet named Jim “Winemaker of the World” in 2004. And in 2007 Jim was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s “Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America”. To this day, rarely a year goes by that Jim is not quoted in either a wine or mainstream publication as a sage sharing his passionate philosophy of producing balanced wines that are compatible with food. A style that has fallen in and out of favor over his 35 years of wine making, but never once did he consider veering from his course.
Pinot Gris Pinot Blanc
Chardonnay Santa Barbara
“Los Alamos” Chardonnay
“Sanford & Benedict” Chard
“Nuits Blanches” Chard
Pinot Noir Santa Barbara
“La Bauge” Pinot Noir
“Knox Alexander” Pinot Noir
“Isabelle” Pinot Noir
“Talley Rincon” Pinot Noir
“Bien Nacido” Pinot Noir
Barham Mendelsohn Pinot Noir
Historic Vineyard Collection
Jim Clendenen – Sell Seet
© 2021 River Net Creative Industries | A Division of River Net Computers
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line26
|
__label__cc
| 0.604635
| 0.395365
|
Egypt: Citizenship Requirements at the Test of Presidential Elections
Published: 4/Jun/2012
Source: EUDO Citizenship Observatory
by Gianluca Parolin (EUDO CITIZENSHIP expert, American University of Cairo)
Citizenship seems to have become the last frontier of political litigation in Egypt. It had been so even before the constitutional amendments approved in a national referendum in March 2011, a month after the ousting of President Mubarak. The interest in citizenship has been recently revived by the taxing citizenship requirements set on candidates to run for Egypt’s presidency, effective 2012.
In early April, the Presidential Elections Commission (PEC) decided not to put Hazim Abu Isma’il’s name on the presidential ballot because of his late mother’s acquisition of US citizenship. Abu Isma’il was a front candidate for the Islamist bloc, had started a very active campaign, and seemed to be enjoying immense popularity at the moment of his disqualification. Demonstrations against the PEC’s decision later led to the Abbasiyya riots that resulted in at least nine deaths and several hundreds injured.
After the first round of presidential elections, held on 23-24 May, a case has been filed in the administrative court to demand that the two sons of the front runner for the runoffs, Mohamed Mursi (candidate of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political branch of the Muslim Brotherhood), be deprived of Egyptian citizenship on grounds of their acquisition of a foreign citizenship. The case is likely to have only minor political repercussions for two reasons. First, even if Egyptian law requires an authorisation to acquire a foreign citizenship, the decision to strip the dual national who has not obtained the authorisation of her Egyptian citizenship is not mandatory, and requires a motivated decision of the Council of Ministers (art. 10 and 16 of the Law 26/1975). Second, even in the unlikely case of the administrative court ruling to strip Mursi’s sons of Egyptian citizenship, this will not legally disqualify Mursi, as the amended art. 75 (now art. 26 of the Constitutional Declaration of 30 March 2011) does not mention the offspring’s citizenship.
Read on EUDO Citizenship Observatory website:
http://eudo-citizenship.eu/news/citizenship-news/655-egypt-citizenship-requirements
Themes: Nationality and Elections, Nationality of Politicians
Regions: North Africa, Egypt
Amended amendments to the Egyptian Constitution to set high citizenship requirements for the President pass
Proposed amendments to the Egyptian Constitution to set high citizenship requirements for the President and ignore external voting
Benin’s landmark elections: An experiment in political transitions
Identity politics at work in Gabon
Former DR Congo white parliamentarian found guilty of nationality fraud
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line28
|
__label__cc
| 0.515786
| 0.484214
|
Tag Archives: musica
Posted on February 23, 2012 by Daniel Aston
Spanish symphonic outfit Diabulus In Musica are producing some of the most intriguing sound waves in today’s metal scene. More than just a metal band, the group takes their gothic and classical influences to a new level with their second album The Wanderer. Their debut album Secrets was met with much appraisal with each band member bringing together their own musical styles to create a unique sound along with some special collaborations from renowned musicians. I interview vocalist Zuberoa Aznárez to find out more about the new release and delve into what lies behind the construction of their material.
Daniel Aston: What can fans expect from your upcoming album The Wanderer?
Zuberoa Aznárez: An eclectic album, with big orchestra and choirs, hard guitars, new instruments such as the lute, different flutes, percussions, acoustic guitars… It’s an album that reflects many different feelings, emotions and sounds.
DA: How has the new material developed since your debut album Secrets?
ZA: I think The Wanderer it’s a big step forward. We kept our main influences: classical music and metal, but the arrangements are more ambitious and there is space for more ‘mystic’ sounds as well. I’d say this second album reflects a clear and natural evolution and maturity.
The main difference between Secrets and The Wanderer is the concept, as the new album is a conceptual one. We first thought about what we wanted to tell and then start to work on the songs, having a very clear idea about how they should sound. We maybe were searching for something more like a ‘soundtrack’. Music had to fit what we wanted to tell in each song, it had to recreate the atmosphere we had in mind in each ‘scene’.
I would say that The Wanderer is a very passionate album. All the feelings are perfectly captured. It’s also denser, more bombastic… but also more refined than Secrets.
DA: Your debut featured contributions from a number of respected artists, can we expect any on the new record?
ZA: Yes! We were honored to have Mark Jansen from EPICA grunting and screaming in the track ‘Blazing a Trail’. We invited again our friend and great soprano Maite Itoiz (for the choir, for a duet and to play the lute in one song) and her husband John Kelly (Elfenthal) who is singing in the beautiful ballad ‘Sentenced to Life’.
We also invited some great classical soloists for the big choirs, most of them colleagues from classical ensembles I sing in. And well, I invited myself too hehe to play the baroque and traverse flute as well as some Celtic whistles.
DA: What has been the inspiration for the lyrical side of the new material?
ZA: The World itself. I usually write about my personal worries, which are mostly related with nature, freedom, spirituality and social problems.
In the case of The Wanderer, it talks about a girl who has something ‘special’, ‘different’ and somehow feels isolated. She wanders searching for a place where she can finally be accepted.
The whole concept is an allegory of Mother Earth, the future of humanity and human corruption and the shock among people who stays ‘pure’ or linked with Nature and modern society. It is not easy to reconcile this way of being with all the changes that society is suffering, and above all, with human corruption in all its sides. All these ‘special’ people are unfortunately starting to disappear and in my view, they are the last hope to change the World. It is so sad that human beings are forgetting where we come from!
It is also kind of odd that after thinking about the concept, I’ve seen many artists talking about something similar in their works. It seems that many people perceive that society is not walking towards the right way… It is clear that some of us have this kind of ‘apocalyptic’ thoughts… Maybe that’s a good sign and we can still change?
DA: The band has many musical influences and that is expressed through your music, who would you cite as your main influences?
ZA: Our influences are mainly classical music and metal, although each one has a different musical background. Anyway, not all of these styles have to necessarily influence the music we write.
In my case, what I like the most in the classical field is Early Music, from medieval to baroque. In rock, I started listening to hard rock bands of the 80’s when I was a child. After that I was introduced into power metal and now maybe what I like the most is symphonic and folk metal. I also love ethnic or World music.
In short we don’t have only a musical influence, we like different stuff and we have no boundaries in creating music. In our music it can be found a lot of classical stuff, but also sometimes a folk-ethnic touch, electronic sounds… You can expect anything from us! ;)
DA: How would you describe your music?
ZA: I would say we make ‘passionate’ symphonic metal surrounded by a magic mystic halo…
DA: Do you think it’s important now more than ever for a band to have a unique sound?
ZA: What it is necessary is to stay true, no matter where. If you are searching for something totally different only because you think you have to, you’ll never give the best of yourself. If you are a true artistic spirit, your inspiration will guide you towards the right place, evolution is a natural thing. You need to follow your musical instincts, trying to do your best, of course.
Anyway I think people should focus more on enjoying the music when they like it and when not, forget about it. I listen to the music I like, so the more bands I find of the style I like, the better for me! It’s not a matter of style, but a matter of quality and musical taste. I’m not going to like or not a band only because it is totally different from others or because it cannot be tagged.
DA: How did Diabulus In Musica form originally?
ZA: We all are from Pamplona, which is a small city, so almost all the metalheads here know each other. We were friends since years. I played with Gorka in a local band and Gorka played with Adrián in another one. Xabi and were also involved in the local music scene.
I decided to start the project with Gorka after our previous band disappeared. We immediately thought about Adrián and he accepted immediately. Xabi and Álex joined us later.
DA: What is your opinion on the current music scene with the opportunities and obstacles that appear for bands compared with previous generations?
ZA: Obviously the music scene has changed a lot recently. We couldn’t say if it’s for the better or not… On the one hand, thanks to the Internet you can listen to whatever you want, before we were more limited. Also, it is easier to spread your music, but it’s more difficult to grow and also to get some money to make better albums, gigs, etc… I think there are not going to be ‘icons‘ as Metallica or AC/DC anymore… To make this possible, the music industry needs to earn a lot of money to invest in only a few bands, but as I said, there’s no money and there are many bands nowadays…
DA: Are there any plans for touring once the album has been released?
ZA: We are working on it. At the moment we can only confirm some gigs in Benelux and Spain. We will open for Tarja in Brussels the 27th February and for Leaves Eyes in Spain the same week.
We hope we can visit more countries in Europe this year.
Categories: Interview, Music | Tags: 2012, anzarez, aston, dan, daniel, diabulus, in, interview, metal blade, musica, records, the, wanderer, zuberoa
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line34
|
__label__wiki
| 0.514097
| 0.514097
|
Why Do They Hate U.S.?
We are not exactly the flavor of the month in most countries abroad. In fact, we haven't been that popular for a long time, but recently the hatred of the United States as a country has reached a new peak. A survey last spring showed a further decline in the American reputation:
[In 1999-2000], in a State Department survey, 78% of Germans said they had a favorable view of the U.S. That fell to 61% in our 2002 poll – and to 45% in the survey conducted this spring. Opinion of the U.S. in France has followed a similar track: 62% positive in 1999-2000, 63% last year and 43% in the most recent survey.
What is most striking, however, is how anti-Americanism has spread. It is not just limited to Western Europe or the Muslim world. In Brazil, 52% expressed a favorable opinion of the U.S. in 2002; this year, that number dropped to 34%. And in Russia, there has been a 25-point decline in positive opinions of the U.S. over the past year (61% to 36%).
If anything, fear and loathing of the U.S. has intensified in recent months. A Eurobarometer survey conducted among European Union countries in October found that as many people rate the U.S. as a threat to world peace as say that about Iran. Even in the United Kingdom, the United States' most trusted European ally, 55% see the U.S. as a threat to global peace. And in four countries – Greece, Spain, Finland and Sweden – the United States is viewed as the greatest threat to peace, more menacing than Iran or North Korea.
The U.S. image in the Middle East has been dismal for some time. State Department surveys show that, four years ago, just 23% of Jordanians expressed a favorable view of the U.S. What has changed is that these sentiments have now spread to predominantly Muslim countries far outside of the region. Just 15% of Indonesian Muslims look favorably at the U.S. – down from 61% in 2002, there is considerable evidence that the opinion many Muslims have of the United States has gone beyond mere loathing. In this year's Pew survey, majorities in seven of eight predominantly Muslims nations believe the U.S. may someday threaten their country -- including 71% in Turkey and 58% in Lebanon. And Muslims are increasingly hostile to Americans as well as America; in the past, as the 1983 Newsweek survey showed, people did not let their distaste for U.S. policies affect their view of the American people.
Whether this trend is worrying depends on whom one asks. The American neoconservatives don't care, of course: the Empire is strong enough without a single ally, they think, and 'power is to be exercised -never negotiated'. But Americans answering a recent poll about the importance of foreign opinions beg to differ. Three quarters of the respondents felt that the poor American reputation in other countries is a problem, especially in the war against terrorism. I think that it might also prove uncomfortable in many other international fields such as the containment of infectious diseases, environmental protection and global trade, not to mention the unpleasantness it causes the average American tourist abroad. Some signs of these more general problems are already visible:
The Bush administration has suffered a significant loss of leadership already as a result of snubbing its nose at diplomatic relations. Treated as children by clumsy and arrogant U.S. diplomats..., many nations are rebelling with angry rhetoric and contrary policies.
International trade meetings reflect this defiance. The failure of the World Trade Organization talks in Cancun, the implosion of the FTAA in Miami, and the lack of results at the Special Summit of the Americas in Monterrey are evidence of the mounting resistance to U.S.-tailored economic integration. They also reflect a widespread and deepening rejection of the "our way or the highway" diplomacy of the Bush administration.
The causes of American unpopularity elsewhere are many and some of them are likely to be present for a long time. The United States is the only remaining superpower and as such will stay an object of envy and fear for that reason alone. Its general policies affect other countries in ways which are not always taken into account by those who make the policy, and this causes understandable resentment in the affected countries when the results are negative. There will always be a dislike of the U.S. as so much wealthier than the majority of the world, and disagreement about its proper role in the development of the poor countries. American values differ considerably from those in Western Europe; Americans are more religious than any other developed country, most favor capital punishment, and the U.S. currently votes on social issues in the United Nations in a block with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. The military might of the U.S. makes the military budgets of other countries look ridiculous. And the U.S. Middle East policy has been a cause for anger in the Arab world for a long time.
But the current administration has certainly made things much worse than they needed to be. It is Bush that most foreigners fear and loathe, not the American people. He has succeeded in focusing so many negative emotions on one man by acting as an international bully boy. The Europeans, in particular, hate his unilateral policies and the withdrawal of the U.S. from environmental treaties or the attempt to build a global legal court. And the concept of 'pre-emptive defense' causes people sleepless nights all over the world. If Bush intends to globally advertize the neoconservative policy of 'might makes right', he is doing a great job. He recently boasted about being a 'war president' as part of the 2004 election campaign. But how will this boast sound abroad?
Given that the United States is not currently involved in a formal war, the president's bellicose language--"I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind"--has set other nations, allies and foes alike, on edge. Around the world, the administration's approach to international affairs has governments and their citizens feeling alienated and apprehensive.
It's all very unfair to all decent and nice Americans who know that they are not the sort of war-hungry, dollar-grasping monsters that the foreigners fear and loathe, and who might not have even voted for Bush in the first place. And now they can't even be sure of a friendly reception on their next vacation trip to somewhere exotic. Most unfair. No wonder that the Bush administration is trying to mend matters by various advertizing campaigns and by attacking those foreign news organizations that portray the most anti-American messages.
But these are vain attempts, because the reason for the anti-American sentiment are largely not in biased reporting or ignorance about what America stands for. Consider this parable to the current U.S. situation:
A small village somewhere has a varied population. Most inhabitants are quite poor, a small number (the minister, the lawyer, the teacher and so on) are relatively well-off, and one family, those who live in the big manor house, are rich. Traditionally, the village has pulled together in solving the common problems of fighting crime, maintaining the roads and caring for the environment, though the shares of each inhabitant in the total costs of these activities have disproportionately fallen to the more affluent.
Then the manor house is sold to a new owner. The village organizes a welcoming party in the village hall and hangs up banners to greet the new owners of the manor. But the new owners refuse to attend the party; instead they inform the rest of the village that they will no longer participate in the maintenance of roads or the prevention of pollution or the police activities. When they are asked about the wisdom of this choice, they point out that they can afford to hire their own defense forces and to maintain adequate nature in their own park. They don't need roads as they commute by private helicopters.
Things go on like that for a time. Then there is a break-in at the manor house: a criminal gang kills some of the owners' family members and burns down part of the building. The village acts as one, sending food and cards and asking how they can help. The owners of the manor house tell the whole village to go out to apprehend the killer, the house is turned into a fortress, and the owners still stay away from all village parties. Slowly the roads fall into disrepair and pollution levels rise. The police force (consisting of one officer) is overstretched by the need to keep looking for the criminal gang that attacked the manor house, and everyday tasks remain undone. Then the manor owners suddenly decide that it might be useful to open the house and garden for a day so that the general riff-raff could see how kind and generous the new owners are. Nobody turns up.
This is very much like the U.S. world standing right now. Unfair? For ordinary Americans, very much so. That's why it is so urgent for all of them to vote in the next elections.
On Chicken Litter and Mushrooms
What do these two have in common? Probably nothing except for the fact that they will both perform in this post, one about the wonders of politics and policies. First this piece of very good news:
The US Food and Drug Administration recently announced that the following things can no longer be fed to cows: cow blood, poultry litter (consisting of bedding, spilled feed, feathers and fecal matter), and restaurant wastes. I don't know whether to feel relieved that they've been removed from the list or shocked that they were ever on it to begin with. And I shudder to think what's still on the list.
If a human who likes to snack on other humans is called a cannibal, what is a cow who drinks cow blood called? At least the humans had some choice in developing their weird culinary tastes. Got milk?
Next, something that has to do with mushrooms:
...the Arizona state legislature is led by the draconian speaker Jake Flake. When one moderate Republican representative voted for the governor's program for basic children's services, he was stripped of his committee chairmanship. The conservatives at the statehouse are known as the "Kool-Aid Drinkers", after the religious cultists who committed mass suicide, while the few remaining moderate Republicans call themselves the "Mushroom Coalition" - kept in the dark and covered with excrement.
I love mushrooms. Too bad that from now on I'll be thinking it's moderate Republicans that are sliding down my throat with a bit of garlic butter as an accompaniment.
The U.S.A as a Smorgasbord
The following are my musings on recent political events here, from the AWOL debate about the president to the proposal of a constitutional amendment to 'defend' marriage.
The United States of America is not a melting pot, or even a tossed salad of different ingredients. If it resembles any culinary treat at all, it resembles the smorgasbord: an offering of many separate dishes together; some cold, some hot, some savory, some sweet. It encourages greed and gorging, and the outcome of this is indigestion when the warring ingredients meet each other in the stomach. Indigestion and possibly ulcers.
But also an exquisite sensory experience, a cookbook full of flavors. Whatever one wishes to eat, the smorgasbord provides it: old, familiar dishes in abundance, novel experiments from every culinary culture ever invented. Still, too much variety in food causes increased appetite which causes obesity, an engorgement of everything from myths and religion to body sizes. We dinner guests at this table are obese in such a way, full of grandiose dreams and stomach aches, conflicting desires and violent rage, beautiful principles and the intent to be good. But to feel this maelstrom in ones stomach is hard, so hard and painful. It would be a relief to simplify the menu, limit it to wholesome myths and stories, lofty principles, easy ideas.
No dinner guest can agree about which these might be, of course, so the menu can be changed only with force, ruthlessness, aggression, which are then met with force, ruthlessness and aggression. For how could it be otherwise when ones favorite dishes are threatened, those on which everything depends? And threatened by someone who is not the same, is different, is The Other (who shouldn't have been allowed in the room in the first place, should be booted out now, or at least made to respect this religion, this ideology, this language, this dish.).
There is a violence in this country, in its dining-room, which differs from the violence of guns and knives. This is violence as a basic push-and-shove in how to run a country, a kitchen or a world, open and in-your-face kind of violence. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. If you're not for us you're against us. America: love it or leave it.
But what do you expect, no mere mortal can survive serenely the overabundance, the glut of aromas, tastes, philosophies which attack each other, and the diners, at this table of choices. No mere mortal in some other countries even needs to try, for smorgasbords are rare, and many nations have long ago agreed on a menu of just a few dishes. Boring, perhaps, or, as many believe, a sign of government oppression on freedom of choice. But not always; in some cases the choice of dishes is limited because that is what the diners wish, having come to their preference along the same shared road of a shared past. This may have once contained a smorgasbord, too, but the battles it caused, if any, are now faded into a shared mythology.
But the United States of America is a teenager, as countries go, and its repast is freshly laid. The ingredients are appetizing: freedom, faith, justice, equality of opportunity, but the final dishes can't satisfy everybody: private property, religious orthodoxy, free markets, democracy, equality. Which would you like to sample? How about intolerance, fanaticism and aggression? No? But these, too, are on offer. And so are caring, neighborliness, kindness.
So the dinner guests pick and choose, watching other diners with wary suspicion, urging them to try a different dish, and when this fails, forcing them to do so. Or they taste every dish on the table, hoping that the hot balances the cold, the savory neutralizes the sweet. No wonder that it sometimes seems better if someone else plans the menu: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, Rupert Murdoch, or perhaps even a divine power or a president. But this would never satisfy the majority of the diners.
Blog Maintenance and Quarter- Anniversary
I now have trackback, so ping to your heart's content. The other blog maintenance is of the sort that most of my housekeeping tasks tend to be: on the eternal to-do list. I plan to reorganize the links and add to them considerably when I get a round tuit.
And this is not really maintenance, but my blogging career is now three months old, and I wish to thank all of you who read here for that. I have met many wonderful people here, I have learned a lot and I have had great fun. I hope you haven't been bored to death, either. In any case, I plan for another three months.
The Presidential Prayer Team
Do you belong to it? Is it real or a joke? I'm still not sure, but this article about the presidential prayer team is excellent. A short excerpt:
I was praying in private until someone got the bright idea of starting a Presidential Prayer Team. If you sign up on the Internet--no fee required--you get a sticker that shows George Washington genuflecting, his head bowed, his hat in hand. Each week members receive an e-mail detailing the difficulties the President must deal with that week so that they can pray for heavenly guidance. After all, scientific studies have shown that prayer helps those who are ill to heal even when they don’t know that people are praying for them! (What kind of a control group did they use for this study, I wonder?)
So I signed up and the e-mails started coming. They asked for God’s blessings on Bush and various members of Congress. (Heaven knows they need our prayers: 435 people who can’t agree on what to put on a pizza are making decisions for our whole country!) They prayed for the debut of Mel Gibson’s controversial film on Jesus Christ, and for the end of "unlawful unions" taking place between same-sex couples in San Francisco, though I can’t imagine what either of those issues have to do with the presidency. They offer weekly prayers for the members of the president’s cabinet and the Supreme Court. So I looked again: All of the names mentioned are _Republican_ members of the government. How odd. If I were a conservative, I think I’d be praying to change some liberal minds.
What America do the founders of the Presidential Prayer Team live in? It doesn’t look like my America. Where I live, there are people living on the streets. In winter, they are forced by the cold into emergency shelters. There are more food banks than ever and greater contributions than in the past but they still run short. Seniors buy their drugs from Canada; they used to buy them from Mexico before the U.S. government forbade us to buy them there. So much for NAFTA. Women on welfare have no childcare and few choices. I’ve never seen them mentioned as recipients of the Presidential Prayer Team rogations.
Do read the whole thing.
Rara Avis, Part V: The Life and Times of Caitlin Flanagan
She's the newest staff writer of the venerable New Yorker, one of such literary talents that her fuzzy thinking and careless ways with evidence are quite forgiven by the East Coast Literary Establishment. What would they not forgive for a brilliant writer who is a woman (a definite boost for the affirmative action lefties) and a feminist-basher (an equal bonus for the life-is-a-jungle-and-home-its-refuge righties)? Now the intelligentsia can have their very own Dr. Laura, a woman who tells how it is, puts the blame squarely where it belongs, and suffers no emotional nonsense. Flanagan sees her role at the New Yorker as the insightful critic of the modern family life, a sort of hybrid of Mary McCarthy and Erma Bombeck. That this family life will only belong to the upper classes and that the insightfully critical eye will only focus on the women in these families goes without saying, at least to anyone who has read her columns during the last two years in the Atlantic Monthly.
Which I have done, one of those small things that I like to do to make a life worth living for others. Just as Flanagan believes in the importance of using real napkins as opposed to paper tissues at home dinners, I believe that her writing deserves real scrutiny rather than merely superficial murmurs of "You go, girl."
Her Atlantic Monthly columns, all book reviews, are wonderful little mini sermons on the importance of being a housewife and on the nastiness of educated career-minded women, and I'm using the word 'housewife' quite advisedly here. Flanagan doesn't like stay-at-home-mothers; she likes women who revel in ironing their husband's shirts, planning dust ruffles, darning socks and telling their children to get out of their hair. You might think that she'd therefore be very fond of me, for example, as I'm excellent at all those tasks. You would be wrong. I'm one of the nasties in her books as I'm also highly educated and career-minded. Women must be one-or-the-other in Flanagan's world, and one side must wear the white hats (the good), the other one the black hats (the bad).
I was initially quite shocked to find how deeply Flanagan hates the uppity women of our times. To explain what I mean, here are some examples of her opinions on them:*
"De-cluttering a household is a task that appeals strongly to today's professional woman. It's different from actual housework, because it doesn't have to be done every day...Scrubbing the toilet bowl is a bit of nastiness that can be fobbed off on anyone poor and luckless enough to qualify for no better employment..." (March 2002)
"...this is a book from the perspective of "high-achieving women", and the main impression we get of the type is that they are going to get exactly what they want, and damn the expense or the human toll. These are women who have roared through the highest echelons of the country's blue-chip law firms, investment banks, and high tech companies....
Hewlett does her best to make us sympathetic toward such fiercely driven women, but the comments of a young male New Yorker—meant to reveal what cads high-achieving single men can be—backfire on her. He observes, "There's a whole bunch of them where I work. They're armed to the teeth with degrees—MBAs and the like—they're real aggressive, they love to take control, and they have this fierce hunger for success and for stuff. Everything they do and everything they want is expensive.""(June 2002)
"the hotshot career women who can't manage to coax eligible men into the honeymoon suite."(November 2002)
Take that, you selfish investment bankers, physicians, lawyers, scientists and - dare I even say this? - journalists. You must choose: either stay on the course, and you will be punished with eternal singlehood or a loveless, sexless marriage in a messy, uninviting house, or repent and join the new Future Housewives of America with Caitlin Flanagan. If you do the latter, your life will be good, she vows:
What's missing from so many affluent American households is the one thing you can't buy—the presence of someone who cares deeply and principally about that home and the people who live in it; who is willing to spend a significant portion of each day thinking about what those people are going to eat and what clothes they will need for which occasions; who knows when it's time to turn the mattresses and when the baby needs to be taken out for a bit of fresh air and sunshine. Because I have no desire to be burned in effigy by the National Organization for Women, I am impelled to say that this is work Mom or Dad could do, but in my experience women seem more willing to do it. Feminists are dogged in their belief that liberated, right-on men will gladly share equally in domestic concerns, but legions of eligible men who enjoy nothing more than an industrious morning spent tidying the living room and laundering the dust ruffle have yet to materialize. (March 2002)
It turns out that the "traditional" marriage, which we've all been so happy to annihilate, had some pretty good provisions for many of today's most stubborn marital problems, such as how to combine work and parenthood, and how to keep the springs of the marriage bed in good working order. What's interesting about the sex advice given to married women of earlier generations is that it proceeds from the assumption that in a marriage a happy sex life depends upon orderly and successful housekeeping. (Jan/Feb 2003)
Of course, you might not agree with Flanagan that it is pointless to expect men to carry out any household chores or childrearing, or that sex indeed is a wifely duty (as she argues in the column from which the second quote is taken). If these trouble you or if you wonder what evidence she might have for the argument that people in traditional marriages had better sex, well, then you're probably one of the black hats and not intended to read the Atlantic Monthly or the New Yorker in the first place. You are not in their desired readership profile.
Flanagan is a stubbornly dualistic thinker. That housewives equal 'good' and professional women equal 'bad' is only one example of this pattern. Another one is her habit of seeing the world as consisting of only two classes: the upper class where women have nannies for their children and the class of the poor immigrants from which these nannies come. There is something innocently childlike about this vision of the world, as there is also in her fictional dream of a housewife's life, but the truth is that her treatment totally omits all the women whose lives fit none of these descriptions, and these women are numerically the majority.
And what about men in Flanagan's writings? Here are some of her views on the male sex:
The national Boy Project may have taught America's young men to treat women with new respect in the classroom and the boardroom, and it has certainly prepared them for an unprecedented amount of no-strings nooky; what it has not impelled them to do is to make a bride of every hard-charging woman who suddenly—and fleetingly—wants to play fifties girl with a diamond solitaire and a box full of Tiffany invitations. (December 2002)
What we've learned during this thirty-year grand experiment is that men can be cajoled into doing all sorts of household tasks, but they will not do them the way a woman would. They will bathe the children, but they will not straighten the bath mat and wring out the washcloths; they will drop a toddler off at nursery school, but they won't spend ten minutes chatting with the teacher and collecting the art projects. They will, in other words, do what men have always done: reduce a job to its simplest essentials and utterly ignore the fillips and niceties that women tend to regard as equally essential. And a lot of women feel cheated and angry and even—bless their hearts—surprised about this. In the old days, of course, men's inability to perform women's work competently was a source of satisfaction and pride to countless housewives. A reliable sitcom premise involved Father's staying home for a day while Mother handled things at his office; chastened and newly admiring of the other's abilities, each ran gratefully back to familiar terrain.
Under these conditions, pity the poor married man hoping to get a bit of comfort from the wife at day's end. He must somehow seduce a woman who is economically independent of him, bone tired, philosophically disinclined to have sex unless she is jolly well in the mood, numbingly familiar with his every sexual maneuver, and still doing a slow burn over his failure to wipe down the countertops and fold the dish towel after cooking the kids' dinner. He can hardly be blamed for opting instead to check his e-mail, catch a few minutes of SportsCenter, and call it a night . (Jan/Feb 2003)
The Between Boyfriends Book describes men in a manner so dismissive and callous that had a man written such a book about women, the cries of misogyny would be deafening. But upper-middle-class women hold a lot of power in our culture these days. Still, though, there's one bit of power women will never wrest from men: the decision to deem one group of women candidates for marriage and another group candidates for quick and quasi-anonymous sex. (December 2003)
It's a long time since I last read something similar to these ideas. In fact, it was in the 1950's. Flanagan's men are 1950's men, unchanged and unchangeable. Do they wear white or black hats in her tales about life? This is difficult to decide: on the one hand men are given the freedom and liberty not to have any nonfinancial responsibilities towards their wives and children, on the other hand men are treated as genetically incapable of learning the simplest household chore if it hasn't always been labeled a guys' job.
Given Flanagan's tendency towards rigid, dualistic thinking, there must be one Wicked Witch orchestrating all these breakdowns in the family lives of the comfortable classes. And there is! It's feminism, as is pretty evident from the quotes I have included here. Feminism is all wrong, thinks Flanagan, because men will always be 1950's men and women will always have higher housekeeping standards than men. For Caitlin Flanagan feminism was and is nothing but an upper class white woman's ego trip. Her view of feminism pays no attention to feminist-sponsored legislation that now guarantees equal treatment of women and men at work or in education or to the feminist-initiated changes in societal views on rape and domestic violence. That it might actually be a good thing for the society to have women who are physicians or lawyers or politicians or managers or even journalists doesn't seem to occur to her either. Instead, her latest book review takes a step even further and accuses feminism (i.e. uppity women's ego trips) of surviving only due to serfdom (i.e. the use of nannies from poor, developing countries). In fact, it's titled "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement".
This article contains revelations about Flanagan's own life that stunned me. It turns out that she hired a nanny to help her in the house while she was trying to be a good housewife, and it turns out that neither she nor her husband have ever changed the sheets in their beds. Either they have the filthiest house imaginable, or - is this too mean to say? - a form of serfdom must be taking place in their household: someone else is changing the sheets.
It is now very hard for me to take anything she writes seriously. Yet she does talk about topics which are important, and she does have a point, though not the one she thinks she has. If she could only drop her obsession about the uppity feminists, she might notice that what she's really writing about is class, and class is one of the few things that are non-mentionable in the mainstream media. That's why it is quite acceptable to blame professional women who employ nannies under poor working conditions, as this is a problem caused by selfish, ambitious women (and the job of child-rearing, in any case, is seen as not a job at all, but something women are supposed to do for nothing), but not acceptable to ask about the wages and benefits of the person who bags your groceries at the supermarket or cleans your windshield at the gas station or vacuums and dusts your office at work.
She also has a second unintended point, and that is the tremendous demands of work that are now seen as expected. Most professionals think nothing about sixty hour workweeks, and much longer weeks than that are not unheard of. What is homelife like for someone with such hours? Never mind if the worker is male or female, there is something deeply disturbing in expecting someone to work so hard that no meaningful time can be spared for ones nearest and dearest. And Flanagan is right to state that those in the upper classes can refuse such hours; it doesn't make them or their families starve. Indeed, I'd like to see a major strike amongst the well-heeled, with a general renewed emphasis on the goal of an eight-hour day for all workers, and Barbara Ehrenreich, at least, agrees with me.
Flanagan is even partly right in goading feminists to work harder on behalf of the poorest women, though her total refusal to acknowledge that any such work is already being done makes it tricky to find the arguments where her accusations are valid.
I suspect that Caitlin Flanagan will not try to adjust her writing so as to properly address these issues. Why not continue with the recipe that has proven so successful: the general bashing of uppity women? In this she's not really a rare bird, of course, but rather a participant in a female growth industry with such luminosities as Camilla Paglia, Ann Coulter, Wendy McElroy and Laura Schlessinger: the anti-feminist movement. The more I think about this series, the more convinced I become that I'm a poor human-watcher, that my copybook is full of jottings about the most ordinary of all sparrows: people in the service of the prevailing powers.
Now, if I could find the male equivalent of Caitlin Flanagan, a man who consistently and mercilessly bashes other men as men rather than as individuals, now that would be a find! A true rara avis for my collections. Can anybody help me here?
*You can link to the articles from which these quotes were taken by going to the back issues of the Atlantic Monthly . They are ordered by year and month, and Flanagan is always under the Book Reviews in the lists of contents.
1. "Girls having sex with snakes" shouldn't bring up my blog. Do you hear me, Google?
2. Listen to old Herodotus:
When Heracles reached the country which is now Scythia, the weather was bad and it was bitterly cold, so he drew his lion's skin over him and went to sleep. While he slept, the horses which he had unharnessed from his chariot and turned loose to graze mysteriously disappeared. As soon as he awoke Heracles began to look for them, and roamed all over the country until he came at last to a place called Hylaea, or the Woodland, where in a cave he found a viper-maiden - a creature which from the buttocks upwards was a woman, but below them was a snake.
Can you guess who he is talking about here?
For a moment he looked at her in astonishment; then asked if she had seen his mares straying around. She replied that they were in her own keeping, and promised to return them to him on condition that he lay with her.
Utter rubbish. I didn't have to use any extortion methods whatsoever!
Heracles complied. The viper-woman, however, did not at once give him back the mares, but put off the fulfilment of her bargain in order to keep Heracles as long as possible for her lover, though all he wanted himself was to get the horses and go.
All he wanted was to get the horses and go. Right! And pigs do fly. Herodotos got it all wrong, and it gets even worse after this bit. Lies, all lies. Why Herodotos calls his book The Histories is one of those eternal mysteries, in the same class as the Fox News' slogan "Fair and Balanced". Come to think of it, the two sources have a lot in common, though Herodotos is considerably more entertaining.
Rara Avis, Part V: The Life and Times of Caitlin F...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line36
|
__label__cc
| 0.654426
| 0.345574
|
T’ESTIMO
by Faiyaz | 29 June 2017 | Europe, Spain, Travel
Barcelona, t'estimo. It's the city that keeps on giving, unconditionally. Gems to be discovered and enjoyed are scattered generously throughout every street. And speaking of streets, Barcelona is the dream city for people who, like myself, enjoy exploring on foot. The neat, grid-like plan of the city means that with a dash of patience, you could effectively get to most of your destinations. Till date, I've never heard anyone say that they didn't enjoy their time in Barcelona, or that they ever felt bored. There's so much to do and see, whether you're an explorer, a culture vulture, a foodie, a sports fan (Força Barça!), a shopaholic or a beach bum. Personally, I'm a little bit of everything. Despite visiting twice already, there's still enough reason for me to visit a third time (fingers crossed). Places to visit and things to do... Antoni Gaudí's architecture - if you can, you should check all of them out. The ones on the top of my list are La Sagrada Família, Casa Batlló, Parc Güell and Palau Güell. Gaudí's eccentric eye and uncontainable imagination have resulted in some of the most beautiful architecture I've ever seen. Parc De La Ciutadella - perfect for a picnic, especially in the warmer months. It's always bustling with life, making it a great spot to people watch. At one end you're greeted by the majestic Arc De Triomf, and at the other, the Barcelona Zoo. Neighbourhoods to explore - Las Ramblas is a long stretch of one of the most crowded promenades and is teeming with tourists. Here you'll find everything from markets and art to souvenirs and street food. Do remain alert, because...
On my first visit to Granada, I proudly proclaimed that "the city definitely warrants a second visit". A year later while touring Spain, I proved myself right. As often happens after you discover something great, when you experience it again and again, it seems to lose it's charm - it's never as good as the first time. An experiential desensitisation, if you will. However, it's definitely not so with Granada. Other than the 40 degree temperature difference from my previous visit, everything else was the same. The same ease of life lingered in the air, seducing you with every breath. The same levels of awe for what has remained from it's explosive history, juxtaposed with the repose of modernity. When you're under the Andalusian sun, surrounded by so many gems waiting to be discovered, with Sierra Nevada as a backdrop, there is almost nothing that could make you feel any sort of tension. It's as if life itself in Granada is rose-tinted. I think it's now safe to say that it's one of my favourite cities to travel to and I look forward to these future visits. In the meantime, here are some snapshots from my brief return to a most magical place. Wearing: Mango - Shirt // Acne Studios - Trousers // Gloria Ortiz - Hat // Bershka...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0046.json.gz/line41
|
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
No dataset card yet
- Downloads last month
- 6