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Human Trafficking: Vulnerabilities That They Can Exploit
November 14, 2017 Ryan Martin Podcast
Listen: iTunes • Google Play • SoundCloud
The fourth episode of season 2 of All the Rage focuses on the perpetrators. To cover such a broad topic, we broke it into three segments: slave owners internationally, sex traffickers here in the US, and the johns.
Washington Post Video: Backpage.com CEO is called to testify in Congress
Episode Guests:
Dr. Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick (Kroc School of Peace Studies at the
University of San Diego)
Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick is a writer and professor at the Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. He is the author of What Slaveholders Think: How Contemporary Perpetrators Rationalize What They Do(2017) and co-editor of From Human Trafficking to Human Rights (2012). His newest book Protest Tech: How Social Movements Use Disruptive Technology, explores the ways movements use tools and technologies to bring social change. Shorter work has appeared in Slate, Al Jazeera, the Guardian, Huffington Post, and Aeon (as well as in academic journals most people have never heard of).
Rachel Thomas (Ending the Game)
A graduate of UCLA with a Masters in Education and a personal survivor of human trafficking, Rachel has extensive experience teaching, training, curriculum writing, public speaking and mentoring. As Director of Sowers Education Group, she has educated and inspired a wide range of audiences including teens, social service providers, churches,
teachers, college students, and law enforcement. Sowers’ intervention curriculum Ending The Game is being used by over 170 facilitators in 8 states and helps survivors break the bonds of attachment to traffickers and the trafficking lifestyle.
Since 2012, Rachel has reached over 36,000 live audience members and millions more through numerous media outlets including The T.D. Jakes Show, The New York Times Upfront Magazine and ABC’s Newsmakers. Rachel was also honored by Congressman Ed Royce of California’s 39th district and Los Angeles Supervisor Don Knabe for her leadership and trafficking prevention efforts. To learn more about Sowers or Rachel Thomas, please visit www.SowersEducationGroup.com.
Jody Haskin (International Organization For Adolescents)
Jody Haskin is the Program Director and Anti-Trafficking Specialist at IOFA. Jody has worked to support and lead various anti-trafficking programs for IOFA since 2013. Currently, Jody leads the Training and Technical Assistance initiative funded through the Department of Justice Office on Violence against Women. Jody has trained both professionals and community leaders on the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSE) and child labor trafficking through the Asian American Trafficking Outreach Project (AATOP) in Chicago, and has contributed to curricula and handbook development to guide child welfare professionals in identifying and responding to child trafficking for the New York Office of Children and Family Services. Jody graduated from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies (JKSIS) at the University of Denver with a Master’s degree in International Human Rights with a concentration in Human Trafficking and Public Policy. While attending JKSIS, Jody was a member of the Human Trafficking Center, in which she completed research on human trafficking in Canada, as well as its effects on the security of the U.S. and Canadian border. Jody was also a Fellow at Polaris in Washington D.C., where she worked to support the training and technical assistance department in its human trafficking trainings to community members, law enforcement, and the hotel industry. Jody’s foundation of her passion for social justice and human rights stems from her education in Social Work at Western Michigan University.
Sergent Matt Wilson (Brown County Sherrif’s Office)
Matthew Wilson is a Sergeant Investigator for the Brown County Sheriff’s Office. Matthew was hired in 2006 and has worked in the Patrol Division, Court Security and the multijurisdictional Drug Task Force before being promoted to his new position in January, 2017. Matthew’s current assignment is to investigate human trafficking as well assist with Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC).
EpisodesHuman Trafficking Episodes
Previous Post:Does Commitment Promote Forgiveness?
Next Post:Human Trafficking: A Topic that Gets a Reaction Out of People
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AMEC Afro-Middle East Centre
Middle East General
South African foreign policy
Palestine-Israel
(Northern) Mozambique
Playground for foreign powers: MENA region as target for foreign intervention - 7-9 October 2019
Teaching Palestine - 18-19 March 2019
Between state and society: (r)Evolution of non-state actors in the MENA region - 28-29 August 2018
Turkey and South Africa: Regional powers with global responsibilities - 26 January 2017
(Re)assessing the Islamic State group and its futures - 23-24 August 2016
A new Middle East: Resetting the balance of power - 7-9 Dec 2015
Towards a new security architecture for the MENA region - 18-19 March 2017
Sudan: Struggling for democracy, resisting military rule - July 2019
Speaking tours
Ramzy Baroud-September 2019
Lebanon\
The launch of the book 'The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story'. Palestinian author Dr. Ramzy Baroud
Published in Pictures
An Evening With Ramzy Baroud - Journalist / Author / Historian on Palestine
Published in Videos
He has just recently written a book "The Last Earth - A Palestinian Story" which tell the stories of dispossession, exile, and loss of ordinary Palestinians.... but it is also about hope and residence in modern Palestine.
The war ahead: Netanyahu's election gamble will be costly for Israel
Published in Israel
By Ramzy Baroud
On 1 September, the Lebanese group Hizbullah, struck an Israeli military base near the border town of Avivim. The Lebanese attack came as an inevitable response to a series of Israeli strikes that targeted four different Arab countries in the matter of two days. The Lebanese response, accompanied by jubilation throughout that country, shows that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may have overplayed his cards. However, for Netanyahu it was a worthy gamble, as the Israeli leader is desperate for any political capital that could shield him against increasingly emboldened contenders in the country’s 17 September general elections.
A fundamental question that could influence any analysis of the decision to strike Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Gaza is whether the strategy originated from the Israeli government or the limited personal calculations of Netanyahu himself. I contend that the latter is true.
Israel has already violated the sovereignty of all of these states and territories, bombing some of them hundreds of times in the past; but striking all at once is unprecedented. Since neither Israel nor its US allies offered any convincing military logic behind the campaign, there can be no other conclusion than that the objectives were entirely political. One obvious sign that the attacks were meant to benefit Netanyahu, and Netanyahu alone, is the fact that the Israeli prime minister violated an old Israeli protocol of staying mum following this type of cross-border assault. It is also uncommon for top Israeli officials to brag about their country’s intelligence outreach and military capabilities. Israel, for example, has bombed Syria hundreds of times in recent years, yet has rarely taken responsibility for any of these attacks.
Compare this with Netanyahu’s remarks following the two-day strikes of 24-25 August. Only minutes after the strikes, he hailed the army’s ‘major operational effort’, proudly declaring that ‘Iran has no immunity anywhere’. Regarding the attack in the southeast region of Aqraba in Syria, Netanyahu went into detail, describing the nature of the target and the identities of his enemy.
Two of the Hizbullah fighters killed in Syria were identified by the Israeli army, which distributed their photographs while allegedly travelling on the Iranian airline, Mahan, ‘which Israel and the United States have identified as a major transporter of weaponry and materiel to Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies in Syria and Lebanon,’ according to the Times of Israel.
Why would Israel go to this extent, which could surely help the targeted countries to uncover some of Israel’s intelligence sources? The Economist revealed that ‘some…in Israel’s security and political establishments are uncomfortable’ with Netanyahu’s tireless extolling of ‘Israel’s intelligence-gathering and operational successes in surprising detail.’
The explanation lies in one single phrase: the 17 September elections.
In recent months, Netanyahu has finally managed to wrestle the title of israel’s longest-serving prime minister, a designation that the Israeli leader has earned, despite his chequered legacy dotted with abuse of power, self-serving agendas and several major corruption cases that implicate netanyahu directly, as well as his wife and closest aides.
Yet, it remains unclear whether Netanyahu can hang on for much longer. Following the 9 April elections, the embattled Israeli leader tried to form a government of like-minded right-wing politicians, but failed. It was this setback that resulted in the dissolution of the Israeli Knesset on 29 May and the call for a new election. While Israeli politics is typically turbulent, holding two general elections within such a short period of time is rare, and, among other things, demonstrates Netanyahu’s faltering grip on power.
Equally important is that, for the first time in years, Netanyahu and his Likud party are facing real competition. Their rivals, led by Benjamin Gantz of the Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) party, are keen to deny Netanyahu every possible constituency, including his own pro-illegal settlements and pro-war supporters.
Despite Gantz’s attempt to project his party as centrist, his statements in recent months are hardly consistent with the presumed ideological discourse of the political centre anywhere. The former Chief of General Staff of the Israeli army is a strong supporter of illegal Jewish settlements and an avid promoter of war on Gaza. Last June, Gantz went as far as accusing Netanyahu of ‘diminishing Israel’s deterrence’ policy in Gaza, which, he said, ‘is being interpreted by Iran as a sign of weakness’. In fact, the terms ‘weak’ and ‘weakness’ have been ascribed repeatedly to Netanyahu by his political rivals, including top officials within his own right-wing camp. The man who has staked his reputation on tough personal or unhindered violence in the name of Israeli security is now struggling to protect his image.
This analysis does not in any way discount the regional and international objectives of Netanyahu’s calculations, leading among them being his desire to stifle any political dialogue between Tehran and Washington, an idea that began taking shape at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France. But even that is insufficient to offer a rounded understanding of Netanyahu’s motives, especially because he is wholly focused on his own survival, as opposed to future regional scenarios.
However, the ‘Mr Security’ credentials that Netanyahu aimed to achieve by bombing multiple targets in four countries might not yield the desired dividends. Israeli media is conveying a sense of panic among Israelis, especially those living in the northern parts of the country and in illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Golan Heights. This is hardly the strong and mighty image that Netanyahu was hoping to convey through his military gamble. None of the thousands of Israelis who are currently being trained to survive Lebanese retaliations are particularity reassured regarding the power of their country.
Netanyahu is, of course, not the first Israeli leader to use the military to achieve domestic political ends. The late Israeli leader, Shimon Peres, did so in 1996 and failed miserably, but only after killing over 100 Lebanese and United Nations peacekeepers in the Southern Lebanese village of Qana.
The consequences of Netanyahu’s gamble might come at a worse price for him than simply losing the elections. Opening a multi-front war is a conflict that Israel cannot win; at least, not any more.
Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story, and his forthcoming book is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons. Baroud has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Ramzy Baroud will be in South Africa from 16 to 24 September on a book tour hosted by AMEC. He will be addressing audiences in Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Polokwane. For more information, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Condemnation grows over Trump's shift on Jerusalem
The fate of Jerusalem has long been one of the thorniest issues between Israel and the Palestinians. To talk more about this, we joined by, Matshidiso Motsoeneng a researcher at the Afro-Middle East Centre.
Matshidiso Motsoeneng on America relocating its embassy to Jerusalem
The United States Embassy officially relocated to Jerusalem on May 14, 2018, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. The initiative was driven by President Donald Trump
ISIS in Africa: Reality far different from IS propaganda
Upgrading Morocco-SA ties: good for both, but no difference …
Does Pakistan’s refusal to join Saudi Arabia in Yemen indica…
The 'European' refugee crisis
Remaining and expanding: Measuring the Islamic State group’s…
Tweets by @AfroMiddleEast
All analyses in chronological order
About AMEC
Established in 1998, the Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC) aims to foster, produce and disseminate the highest quality of research on the Middle East, to maintain public discussion and to help shape the public discourse on issues related to the Middle East. Amec's research includes relations between Africa and the Middle East.
AMEC engages in funded research on the contemporary Middle East, and accepts research commissions from government, business, academia, non-governmental organisations, and community-based organisations.
PO Box 411494, Craighall,
Copyright © 2015 Afro-Middle East Centre. All Rights Reserved. Website by
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Theatrical Review: The Bourne Ultimatum
In what seems to be right on the heels of The Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne is still on the run in Russia and now having flashbacks to his early indoctrination. A British reporter gets wind of everything going on with everything with the CIA and the program that gave us Bourne and is trying to uncover everything, leading to a new category of covert ops called Blackbriar within the CIA, but the CIA is on to that as well and thus begins the cat-and-mouse chase with The Bourne Ultimatum.
Paul Greengrass is back at the helm for this movie after handling the last film in the series. Greengrass gave us what I thought was last years best movie of the year with United 93. For the most part, I think he’s in fine form here, particularly with many of the film’s set pieces. The chases and fight scenes in this movie are absolutely convincing as hell, filmed in Greengrass’ shaky handheld camera style, they’re just a lot of fun to watch.
Unfortunately, there are some points in the movie where it just falls on tired Hollywood cliches- particularly that the people in charge of the CIA are, of course, older white men, that any of the women involved here are automatically good, and that the project that created Jason Bourne is intrinsically wrong by the fact of the remorse that he’s suffering from all of the killing that he’s done.
I look at the creation of Jason Bourne to have a lot of similarities with a comic book character, Captain America, except that Cap’s missions have always been portrayed as noble, whereas in the space of the Bourne films, there’s nothing that shows that any of the missions that Bourne performed before his memory loss had any good to them at all. Now for these movies, and Bourne’s state of mind within these films, that’s fine, but to just leave it at that to me anyway falls into a cliche (and make no mistake, the third film leaves it at that). The end result could still be the same, but ignoring the fact that under this project that Bourne may have indeed done good for the country, just seems to push an idea of governmental pessimism that’s certainly popular for the time, but still becoming now an endlessly tired cliche. Personally, I feel that as a citizen of this country, I want agents like Jason Bourne out there in the world.
No fault at all of the cast, all of whom are very good here. Matt Damon continues to show why he’s as good as he is with his earnest portrayal of Bourne and watching him in the action scenes he’s totally convincing that he can do all of the stuff that he’s doing. Joan Allen and Julia Stiles are back from the previous film and joining in with this film are actors David Strathairn, Albert Finney and Scott Glenn, all of course playing the “bad guys” of the piece, and I think doing a great job, but that little bit of balance that I mentioned above just isn’t present.
This is fine as it is, I know with the exception of a particularly bad audience that we had, I had a pretty good time overall with the film. But one wonders just how much more meaty this could’ve been had there been a little more balance shown to the ideas and execution of the ideas that created the project that created Bourne. This is a good series and it wouldn’t hurt it at all to do that, to gray the line more than to draw it out in pure black and white.
About Darren Goodhart
Darren Goodhart is a 44-year old St. Louis-based Graphic Designer and Illustrator (and former comic book artist) who's been seeing movies all his life, but on an almost weekly basis in theatres for the last 20 years and owns nearly 1,000 DVDs for his home theatre. He's learned a lot about film over the 20 year period, and has taken his appreciation beyond the mainstream. His favorite types of film are mostly genre entertainment, but he also enjoys a wide range of drama, action and cult-y stuff from around the world, and is currently re-discovering a love affair with lower budget exploitation and genre films from the 70s and early 80s. He doesn't try to just dismiss any film, but if there's a bias against one, he'll certainly tell you that in the space of his reviews.
08. August 2007 by Darren Goodhart
Categories: Text Reviews, Theatrical Review | 1 comment
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Hey Book Las Vegas Tours Community!
Copyright © 2021 Book Las Vegas Tours. All rights reserved.
5 Amazing Vegas Comic Book Stores
7 Vegas-Themed Halloween Costumes
Why “7” is the Luckiest Number
John Da'Atri
5 Weird Facts About Las Vegas
Weird & Wild
Want to Rent a Lamborghini in Las Vegas?
You can find an amazing rate
One Love Las Vegas: Nude Lifestyle Resort in the Desert
A FUN nudist retreat
18 Dec, 02:00 PM
There are tons of awesome spots in Vegas where you can buy, sell or trade comics, toys, and collectibles. You don’t need to be a super-fan to stop in. It’s a great way to spend an hour or an afternoon.
Believe it or not, Las Vegas hosted the last lingerie pillow fight in WWE history
Can you believe Las Vegas hosted the last lingerie pillow fight in WWE history?
Brianethorn
Halloween is one of those festivals where people want to dress up all sultry and spooky. Vegas being the epicenter for Halloween celebrations, it offers many costume inspirations to choose from. Here are some ideas:
5 Famous Vegas Mobsters
From speakeasies and casinos to the entertainment industry at large, mobsters have always played an influential role in the growth and shaping of Las Vegas. It is a city that, for better or worse, has always been of great interest to the mob, particularly...
4 Unusual Laws Only Found In Las Vegas
Las Vegas may have a reputation for being a place where only the craziest, weirdest, and strangest things happen, however, that doesn’t mean that the city hasn’t tried to put a stop to all of the shenanigans going on! It’s surprising to see just how many...
Remember When Las Vegas Hosted WWE's Festival of Friendship?
WWE is responsible for some of the most magical storytelling on television. One example is 2017 's Festival of Friendship hosted in Las Vegas
5 Ways to Raise Your Adrenaline in Las Vegas
In Vegas, “everything is possible” is more than just a banal platitude.
19 Aug, 02:44 AM
5 Weird Laws in Vegas
Las Vegas has its share of laws that make you wonder why exactly they were passed! Here’s a list of the five weirdest laws in Las Vegas!
5 People Who Lost it All in Vegas
Vegas, for all its glory, entertainment, and splendor, does have a dark side. Here’s a list of five people who took on the casinos at their own game and unfortunately for them, ended up losing everything in Las Vegas!
Whether you believe in a spiritual world or adhere to a strictly secular world-view, whether you consider yourself superstitious or firmly rational, we can all agree that the number 7 holds a special place in the hearts and minds of most gamblers. Why? T...
30 Jul, 01:00 PM
Sin City attracts all sorts of crazy and insane personalities, so it’s natural that a ton of weird stuff has happened within its borders! Here are five weird facts about Las Vegas that you probably didn’t know.
5 Biggest Gamblers in History
The following individuals have gone down in history as some of the most notorious figures in the world of gambling.
9 Jul, 04:00 PM
Casino Scandals That ROCKED the Industry
Throughout the years, the casino business in Las Vegas and other parts of the world hasn't always been rosy. Casinos have been swindled out of heaps of dollars through scandals. While some of the cheaters have figured out how to escape, a significant numb...
Five Bands That Got Their Start In Las Vegas
With the huge number of performers and artists who got their start in Las Vegas, it’s clear that the bright lights and buzzing atmosphere of the city encourage creative expression in a way that no other place ever will. Here are five bands who took Sin...
30 Jun, 02:10 PM
Today's Top Weird & Wild
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Central and Eastern European Migration Review
Issue edited by: Majella Kilkey, Aneta Piekut, Louise Ryan
The mission of the Central and Eastern European Migration Review (CEEMR) is to foster an academic discussion on scholarly works and research pertaining to migration within, into and out of the Central and Eastern European region. CEEMR addresses a broad range of topics related to international migration including determinants, mechanisms and consequences of international migration, as well as migration policies, migrants’ integration and ethnic relations.
Central and Eastern European Migration Review is published biannually by the Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw and the Polish Academy of Sciences as an online, open-access journal. Materials presented in the journal include original research articles and research reports. Priority is given to research addressing the CEE region perspective and comparative analyses. However, studies based on original empirical data focused only on a single country also fit the scope of the journal. The language of the contributions is English. Before publication, each submitted paper is subject to a double-blind peer review by at least two independent experts. We invite sociologists, economists, demographers, political scientists, lawyers, psychologists, historians and anthropologists to submit their works.
CEEMR is indexed in: Emerging Sources Citation Index - Web of Science (ESCI), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL), Central European Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (CEJSH), Google Scholar, European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH PLUS), the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers and BazEkon. CEEMR is digitally archived in the Digital Repository of the National Library of Poland.
The number of points awarded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education for a publication in CEEMR: 20.
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ChamberMusicianToday
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Home>rock>Rock Music
Posted-on December 12, 2020 July 23, 2020 By lineBylinejimmy
Glam rock emerged from the English psychedelic and artwork rock scenes of the late Sixties and can be seen as both an extension of and reaction in opposition to those trends. Musically diverse, various between the straightforward rock and roll revivalism of figures like Alvin Stardust to the advanced art rock of Roxy Music, and can be seen as a lot as a fashion as a musical subgenre.
The first group to advertise themselves as psychedelic rock have been the 13th Floor Elevators from Texas. The Beatles launched lots of the main elements of the psychedelic sound to audiences in this period, similar to guitar suggestions, the Indian sitar and backmasking sound effects. Psychedelic rock significantly took off in California’s emerging music scene as groups adopted the Byrds’s shift from folks to folks rock from 1965. The psychedelic lifestyle, which revolved around hallucinogenic drugs, had already developed in San Francisco and significantly prominent products of the scene have been Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.
In Detroit, storage rock’s legacy remained alive into the early Nineteen Seventies, with bands such as the MC5 and the Stooges, who employed a way more aggressive strategy to the shape. These bands began to be labelled punk rock and are actually typically seen as proto-punk or proto-hard rock.
It can also be heard as an influence on artists as diverse as Billy Joel, Kid Rock and the Killers. A unusual time, 1971—though rock’s balkanization into genres was nicely underway, it was usually hard to tell one catch-phrase from the next. “Art-rock” could imply something from the Velvets to the Moody Blues, and though Led Zeppelin was launched and Black Sabbath celebrated, “heavy metallic” remained an amorphous concept.
He later released a collection of four albums that all achieved gold standing; Welcome, Borboletta, Amigos, and Festivál. Al Hurricane Jr. would additionally started his profitable rock-infused New Mexico music recording career in the Nineteen Seventies, together with his 1976 rendition of “Flor De Las Flores”. Los Lobos also gained recognition right now, with their first album Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles in 1977.
Later in the decade this fashion, which contained a mix of grunge, punk, metallic, rap and turntable scratching, spawned a wave of successful bands like Linkin Park, P.O.D. and Staind, who had been often categorised as rap metal or nu metal, the primary of which are one of the best-promoting band of the genre.
Among the first wave of performers to achieve mainstream success as rap rock had been 311, Bloodhound Gang, and Kid Rock.
A extra metallic sound – nu metal– was pursued by bands including Limp Bizkit, Korn and Slipknot.
Alternative steel emerged from the hardcore scene of other rock within the US within the later 1980s, but gained a wider viewers after grunge broke into the mainstream within the early Nineteen Nineties.
Glam is most famous for its sexual and gender ambiguity and representations of androgyny, beside intensive use of theatrics. It was prefigured by the showmanship and gender-identity manipulation of American acts such because the Cockettes and Alice Cooper. Psychedelic music’s LSD-inspired vibe began within the folks scene.
After the early successes of Latin rock within the Nineteen Sixties, Chicano musicians like Carlos Santana and Al Hurricane would proceed to have successful careers all through the Nineteen Seventies. Santana opened the decade with success in his 1970 single “Black Magic Woman” on the Abraxas album. His third album Santana III yielded the single “No One to Depend On”, and his fourth album Caravanserai experimented along with his sound to blended reception.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s lead guitarist, Jimi Hendrix did prolonged distorted, feedback-stuffed jams which turned a key feature of psychedelia. Psychedelic rock reached its apogee in the final years of the decade. Key recordings included Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow and the Doors’ Strange Days. These developments peaked in the 1969 Woodstock festival, which saw performances by a lot of the main psychedelic acts.
These acts instantly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention. In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their combination of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play conventional English folks music on electrical instruments. The folks rock movement is often thought to have taken off with The Byrds’ recording of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” which topped the charts in 1965. With members who had been a part of the cafe-based folks scene in Los Angeles, the Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, together with drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major factor within the sound of the style. Later that year Dylan adopted electric devices, much to the outrage of many folk purists, together with his “Like a Rolling Stone” becoming a US hit single.
The British Invasion tremendously influenced storage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (typically surf or scorching rod groups) to adopt a British influence, and encouraging many extra groups to form. Thousands of storage bands had been extant in the US and Canada through the era and tons of produced regional hits. Despite scores of bands being signed to main or massive regional labels, most were industrial failures. It is generally agreed that garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically round 1966. By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the nationwide charts and at the local degree as amateur musicians faced faculty, work or the draft.
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What the think tanks are thinking
Search in All Fields Title Author Subject for
Defense Policy3
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You searched for: Content Type Book Remove constraint Content Type: Book Publishing Institution Foreign Policy Research Institute Remove constraint Publishing Institution: Foreign Policy Research Institute
1. Parliament without Politics: The Effort to Consolidate Authoritarian Rule
Author: Ann M. Lesch
Content Type: Book
Institution: Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract: General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, Egypt’s ruler since July 2013, brooks no dissent. Having “saved” Egypt from the Muslim Brothers, he has ruled by decree in the absence of a parliament, supported by a handpicked technocratic cabinet. His security apparatus muzzles the press, keeps dissident voices off-air, arrests secular as well as Islamist critics, and clamps down on civil society. He has built ten new prisons to accommodate the overflow, as political prisoners may now total 60,000.[1] As typical of military rulers, he announces grandiose projects – the new channel in the Suez Canal, the Dabaa nuclear power plant, million-unit agricultural and housing schemes, and a multi-billion dollar new capital city – without taking into consideration their cost, integrating them into long term plans, conducting comprehensive feasibility studies, or examining their social and environmental impact.
Topic: Security, Civil Society, Islam, Politics, Authoritarianism
Political Geography: Egypt
2. America the Vulnerable: Our Military Problems And How To Fix Them
Author: John F. Lehman (ed), Harvey Sicherman (ed)
Abstract: A decade has passed since the end of the Cold War. The demise of the Soviet Union concluded the most vulnerable period in American history, a time when the possibility of nuclear attack threatened the very existence of the United States. No wonder then that Americans heaved a mighty sigh of relief, having survived to watch the fall of their country's most powerful enemy.
Topic: Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Terrorism
Political Geography: United States, America
3. The Evolution of the Executive and Executive Power in the American Public
Author: Mackubin Thomas Owens, Stephen F. Knott
Abstract: As Americans, we take for granted the idea of a government that is both free and yet strong enough to preserve the security of its citizens. But the fact is that such a government is a recent invention, first emerging as a result of political thought and practice in eighteenth century England and only coming to full flower in Philadelphia with the drafting of the American Constitution of 1787. As Harvey Mansfield wrote in his book Taming the Prince, “the combination of freedom and strength does not arise easily or naturally,” a fact confirmed “both by the grand outline of modern history and the experience of the ancients.” Throughout history, strong governments have generally been monarchies, but at the expense of freedom. It was in republics that freedom was supposed to reside but, before the creation of the American Republic, the republican form of government had a mixed record at best. Ancient republics were characterized by constant struggle between the few (oligarchs) and the many (the demos) that led to instability and weakness. Modern republics also either came to grief (the German cities) or faded into irrelevance and obscurity (Venice and the Dutch Republic). But in Philadelphia, the Founders created a government that combined the freedom of republics with the strength of monarchies. The Founders’ innovation that permitted this pairing of freedom and security to work was the “executive.” In Mansfield’s words, “the executive provided the strength of monarchy without tolerating its status above the law, so that monarchy would not only be compatible with the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution, but would also be expected to serve both. Furthermore, the recasting of monarchy as executive power made it dependably democratic as well as legal and constitutional.”
Topic: Security, Politics, Governance, Democracy
Political Geography: Europe
4. The Gulf Cooperation Council's Unified Military Command
Author: Brahim Saidy
Abstract: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which brings together the countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, took an unprecedented step during its 34th Summit (held in Kuwait City on December 10-11 2013) by setting up a unified military command structure for its member states. This move reflects the commitment of the GCC to establish a credible joint defense force able to advance the goal of collective security in the region. This military command will have a force of around 100,000, half of which would be contributed by Saudi Arabia, the main advocate of this initiative. GCC members will coordinate air, land, and marine forces under one common structure. In this regard, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister, Sheikh Khalid Bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa, has stated: “We want to create a central command that coordinates between all sub-commands and makes them work under one umbrella. But, the new structure [the Unified Military Command] won’t replace the Peninsula Shield forces.”[1] In terms of collective defense, the core purposes of this command structure are to provide strategic and operational command for all GCC missions and prepare members for operational employment as interoperable multinational forces. This command is expected to have a minimum number of operational commands (land, air and maritime command) as well as joint intelligence system and integrated missile defense in order to execute essential operational and peacetime missions. The challenge for this plan is to be able to undertake command and control of the full range of the military missions, including command and control multinational and multiservice forces, but more importantly to be able to support operations under the political and strategic direction of the GCC. This means that the main goal is not limited to improving coordination between different parts of existing national defense systems, but rather to establishing a real joint operational command structure. The progress towards a fully integrated defense system would allow the GCC to become a real military alliance along the lines of NATO.
Topic: Security, Defense Policy, Economics, Politics
Political Geography: Saudi Arabia, Persian Gulf, Gulf Cooperation Council
5. The West and the Muslim Brotherhood After the Arab Spring
Author: Lorenzo Vidino
Abstract: Few observers foresaw the Arab Spring, but it should not have surprised anyone that the Islamist movements - the most organized movements in the Arab world - became the main beneficiaries of the turmoil that ensued. Islamism, in its gradualist and pragmatic approach embodied by the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots worldwide, seems ready to reap the rewards of its three decades-old decision to abandon violence and focus on grassroots activities. This monumental change has created many concerns among liberals, religious minorities and, more generally, all non-Islamists in the countries where Islamists have won. In addition, Arab states ruled by non-Islamist regimes have expressed concern. The former worry that Islamist ideology - even in its more contemporary, pragmatic form - remains deeply divisive and anti-democratic, often at odds with their values and interests. The latter believe that on foreign policy issues, most of the positions of various Brotherhood-inspired parties are on a collision course with the policies of established regimes in the region.
Topic: Foreign Policy, Political Violence, Islam, Self Determination, Political Activism, Elections, Democracy
Political Geography: Middle East, Egypt
6. Transforming the Philippines’ Defense Architecture: How to Create a Credible and Sustainable Maritime Deterrent
Author: Felix Chang
Abstract: This paper argues that to adequately defend its maritime claims, the Philippines should consider an external defense architecture designed around mobile coastal defense batteries equipped with long-range anti-ship missiles and protected by an integrated air defense umbrella. Such an architecture would provide the Philippines with an effective means to not only counter surface combatants and improve the survivability of its own forces against naval aviation or ballistic missiles, but also do so with lower procurement, maintenance, and operational readiness costs than a traditional force would require. The Philippine government’s new capabilities-based defense budgeting process offers the country an opportunity to study and adopt this sort of defense architecture, which has become increasingly necessary as rising powers, such as China, have begun to test Philippine maritime sovereignty at places like Scarborough Shoal and the Spratly Islands.
Topic: Defense Policy, Emerging Markets, Political Economy, Maritime Commerce, Natural Resources
Political Geography: China, Philippines
7. The Foreign Fighters Problem, Recent Trends and Case Studies: Selected Essays
Author: Michael Noonan
Abstract: On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have confronted third-party national combatants. Known as “foreign fighters,” these individuals have gained deadly skills and connections that can be exported or exploited to devastating effect in other locations. Over the past two decades, the foreign fighters phenomenon has grown after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979—to the ethnically cleansed fields of the Balkans to Chechnya and beyond. But this is not a new problem. This report is the second volume of findings from an important series of FPRI conferences on the so-called foreign fighter problem. These conferences have brought together leading experts in the field to examine and discuss this phenomenon from different ideational and disciplinary perspectives. While the first volume dealt primarily with functional areas of the phenomenon, this edition focuses primarily on the case studies of al Qaeda franchises or allied affiliates in Somalia, the Maghreb, Yemen, and Afghanistan/Pakistan. Today, the outcomes of the geopolitical revolution unfolding across North Africa and the Middle East are far from clear, the problems associated with al Qaeda and its affiliated movement are likely to breed havoc for the foreseeable future across the region. Furthermore, the veterans spawned by such conflicts undoubtedly will present problems for international security writ large, too. The cases and phenomenon analyzed here may well provide important lessons for both those interested in the regions under examination here, but also for others who examine international challenges far removed from the study of radical extremism of the al Qaeda variety.
Topic: War, International Security, Insurgency, Violent Extremism
Political Geography: Arab Countries, North Africa
8. The Constitutional History of U.S. Foreign Policy: 222 Years of Tension in the Twilight Zone
Author: Walter A. McDougall
Abstract: In 1973, Congress passed the infamous War Powers Resolution (WPR), over Richard Nixon’s veto. It was perhaps the most ambitious Congressional effort to bridle the President since the battle with Andrew Johnson over Reconstruction. The WPR is worth reading—once—then forgetting, because its convoluted, contradictory, and doubtless unconstitutional mix of instructions, restrictions, and ticking clocks has never been honored by any administration or upheld by any court. Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush all dispatched U.S. forces into combat situations without paying more than lip service to the WPR. In 1990, following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, President Bush stationed 100,000 personnel in Saudi Arabia. He sought no authorization and, in fact, informed just one member of Congress: Senator Sam Nunn (D., Ga.). When he then prepared Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait, 54 Congressmen led by the chairman of House Armed Services Committee, Berkeley radical Ron Dellums (D., Calif.), filed for an injunction to stop the war. U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene ran for cover. Noting that 54 fell far short of a majority, he judged the case “not ripe for judicial determination.”
Topic: Foreign Policy, War, Governance, Law, Constitution
Political Geography: United States
9. Abraham Lincoln: Leadership and Democratic Statesmanship in Wartime
Author: Mackubin Thomas Owens
Abstract: No president in American history has faced a greater crisis than Abraham Lincoln confronted in 1861. Although sections of the country had threatened disunion many times in the past, the emergency had always passed as some compromise was found. But in 1861, Lincoln, who had won the election of 1860 because of a split in the Democratic Party, faced a rebellion “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” By the time of his inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven states had declared their separation from the Union and had set up a separate provisional government called the Confederate States of America. A little over five weeks later, at 4:30 am on April 12, 1861, rebel gunners opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. In response, Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to serve ninety days. Denouncing the president’s policy of “coercion,” four more states left the Union. The ensuing war, the most costly in American history, would last for four agonizing years. When it was over, some 600,000 Americans had died and the states of the South had suffered economic losses in the billions of dollars when measured in terms of today’s currency
Topic: Civil War, Politics, History, Elections
License and Registration
About CIAO
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The Grail Quest Series by Bernard Cornwell
Posted on June 1, 2006 by Jeff Grim / 3 Comments
As a huge fan of the Sharpe Series by Bernard Cornwell (Richard Sharpe is a British soldier during the Napoleonic Wars – a must read for all military history fiction fans – the first book is Sharpe’s Tiger), I decided to explore some more of Cornwell’s writings. As a result, I came across the Grail Quest Series (book titles include The Archer’s Tale, Vagabond, and Heretic). As you can tell from the Series title, the books concentrate on the mystery of the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. This Series is as well written and researched as the Sharpe Series. They are well worth a look.
Rather than try to give you my poor attempt at explaining the plots of each book, I will paraphrase from Publisher’s Weekly:
The Archer’s Tale
The young archer Thomas of Hookton joins the forces of King Edward III to fight against France, which takes place in the mid-14th century at the beginning of the Hundred Years War. Thomas, excellent skill with the bow, survives the pillaging of his village to become an archer and then rescues a female counterpart known as the Blackbird after she’s nearly raped by Sir Simon Jekyll during one of the troop’s raids in France. The nobleman becomes Thomas’s chief rival as Jekyll continues to pursue the Blackbird, and Thomas is finally cast out of his unit after failing to kill Jekyll in an ill-conceived assassination attempt. He recovers and is able to get a royal pardon. The three members of Cornwell’s romantic triangle eventually meet during a huge climactic battle at Cr‚cy (sic), where Thomas must face up to a demanding family legacy involving a quest for a special lance.
The novel follows Thomas of Hookton, the bastard son of a recently murdered priest whose family claims it once possessed the Holy Grail. No one is certain the Holy Grail actually exists, but many believe it does, and kings are waging war and committing murder in the search for it. Thomas has a book of his father’s, which might reveal clues to the Grail’s location, if only he could make head or tails of it. But others are aware of the book’s existence, and Thomas’s motley enemies and rivals – including Guy Vexille, the French cousin who murdered his father; a Dominican Inquisitor who loves his job; and a treacherous English knight – are all hot on his trail. Thomas must also fight mercenaries, Scots and Frenchmen in gruesome, long-drawn-out battles.
For years, English archer Thomas of Hookton has been searching for the Holy Grail. Thomas is not certain it ever existed, but obscure clues link his family to the mysterious vessel. In 1347, driven by his desire to plumb the truth of the Grail as well as to earn money from the plunder of French lands and property, Thomas and a small group of soldiers capture a castle in Gascony, the homeland of Thomas’s father. Thomas hopes to hold the castle against the French, raid the countryside for loot and draw the attention of his evil cousin Guy Vexille. Vexille appears, but so does the army of a local lord, sent to besiege the castle, and the vicious brother of a treacherous and cunning bishop who is determined to secure the Grail. Fighting honorably amid extreme brutality, Thomas is aided by loyal English archers, English and French men-at-arms, local bandits, a Scottish mercenary and a heretic girl with unusual powers. Outnumbered by his enemies, he faces the might of a huge cannon and the power of the Church’s greed-not to mention the dreaded Black Death. Most daunting of all, however, is the decision Thomas must make when he finally discovers the truth about the Holy Grail.
With all of that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the books. Cornwell’s style is fast-paced with many twists and turns to keep you guessing. The style is not formulaic like so many other book series that I have read. As a result of the twists and turns, you can never get truly attached to characters because you do not know if they will killed on the next page. Despite this, it is still hard to read about how some characters are eliminated.
I like how Cornwell fleshes out the main characters and their backgrounds. This is particularly true for Thomas and Guy Vexille. You get little details about the history of the Vexille family in each of the books to where, by the end of the last book, you fully understand the family’s connection with the Grail.
As is par for the course with Cornwell, you get an excellent feel for the time period. You understand the major political figures and events of the time period. You also get a front seat description of some of the major battles that occurred during the time the books are written. For example, Cornwell thoroughly and easily explains why the English were able to defeat the French at the Battle of Crécy – two words – English archers.
If you like to read about the effects of weapons on the human body, Cornwell is particularly adept at explaining this. He explains what different types of arrows do to different armor and the human body. Some of his descriptions are not for the weak hearted, but I doubt those types of people would be reading his books anyway.
In sum, Cornwell delivers another masterful series on a time period that many Americans know little about.
The Hidden by Kathryn Mackel
Lull or hiatus?
Lars Walker says:
What about the religious element? I read and enjoyed THE ARCHER’S TALE, but have avoided the later because because I thought I smelled a Code. Are the books based on a conventional postmodern view of the church, that is, one that sees it as wholly corrupt, destroying freedom and suppressing truths preserved by heretics? Dan Brown stuff?
I don’t think Cornwell takes a postmodern view of the church. Yes, there are some bad people who represent the Church (the Dominican Inquisitor and the French Archbishop), but their are also good people who represent it as well (the monk in the first and second books and the Abbot in the third book). Also, even though Thomas is not a saint by any means, he still believes in an all-knowing, all-powerful God. I hope this helps.
That’s good to know, because I really enjoy Cornwell’s work.
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hidden Personalities
hidden Addresses
hidden Maps
hidden Bibliography
hidden Subjects
Entries / Benckendorff A. K. (1781-1844), statesman
Benckendorff A. K. (1781-1844), statesman
Categories / Capital/Personalia
Categories / Army. Navy/Personalia
Categories / Tsarskoe Selo and town of Pushkin. The digital chronological reference book/Pushkin personality
BENCKENDORFF (v. Benckendorff) Alexander Khristoforovich (Konstantin Alexander Karl Wilhelm Christopher) (1781, St. Petersburg 1844), Count (1832), statesman and military officer, Infantry General, Cavalry General (1829), honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1827). Brought up and educated in the boarding school of abbot C.D. Nicholas. From 1798 was on military service, took part in the Russo-Prusso-French War (1806-07) and Russo-Turkish War (1809-11). At the time of the Patriotic War of 1812 and campaigns of 1813-14 commanded an independent cavalry detachment, operating at the enemy rear. In 1814 appointed Brigade Commander, in 1816 - Division Commander, in 1819 — Chief of Staff of the Guards Corps. In the 1810s became a mason, and member of the St.Petersburg Masonic Lodge "United Friends". His conduct during the disorders in the Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment (1820) caused the displeasure of Emperor Alexander I, who disregarded his memorandum on secret societies and the organisation of secret police (1821). Appointed Division Commander in 1821. From 10 November 1824 to 14 March 1825 served as acting Military Governor of Vasilievsky Island, was in charge of the recovery and rebuilding of this district after a devastating flood on 7 November 1824. Exerted himself in suppressing the insurrection on the Senate Square 14 December 1825, member of the Investigation Commission on the case of Decembrists, from then onwards enjoyed confidence and favour of Emperor Nicholas I. In June 1826 was appointed Gendarme Chief, initiator of establishment and Chief of the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery (secret police), from December 1826, senator, and from 1831, member of the State Assembly and the Cabinet of Ministers. Despite the common misconception, Benckendorff took little interest in the activities of secret police, leaving it to his subordinates. In 1839 was elected honorary member and trustee of Demidov's Charity House for Workers. From 1841, chairman of the Committee of the Prison Welfare Society. From 1842, chairman of the Building Commission for Construction of the St. Petersburg - Moscow Railroad. In 1831-44, patron of St. Catherine's Lutheran Community in St. Petersburg. One of the founders, and, from 1835, chairman of the board of the Second Russian Fire Insurance Society and Life Insurance Society. In St. Petersburg resided in the house of Baron Chabeaut on Fontanka River Embankment, later in a state apartment in the house of Gendarme Chief (10 Panteleymonovskaya Street). He left behind him his personal papers (some of which have been published).
Work: Benckendorff's notes: 1812 Patriotic War. 1813 Liberation of the Netherlands. Moscow, 2001.
References: Олейников Д. И. Александр Христофорович Бенкендорф // Российские консерваторы. М., 1997. С. 63-94.
D. N. Shilov.
Alexander I, Emperor
Benckendorff Alexander Krristoforovich
Nicholas I, Emperor
Nicolle Charles Domenique
the Demidovs
Fontanka River Embankment/Saint Petersburg, city
Pestelya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 10
Олейников Д. И. Александр Христофорович Бенкендорф // Российские консерваторы. М., 1997
Записки Бенкендорфа: 1812 г. Отеч. война. 1813 г. Освобождение Нидерландов. М., 2001
The subject Index
Guards Corps Staff
Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment
Decembrist Revolt of 1825
Chancellery, His Imperial Majesty's Personal
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Beyond the grid in Africa
Andrew Herscowitz and Katrina Pielli
On June 30, 2013, in Cape Town, South Africa, US President Barack Obama announced Power Africa ‒ an initiative to bring together technical and legal experts, the private sector and governments from around the world to work in partnership to increase the number of people with access to power in sub-Saharan Africa.
Rooted in partnerships, Power Africa is working with African governments, the private sector and other partners in sub-Saharan Africa to add more than 30,000 megawatts (MW) of cleaner, more efficient electricity generation capacity as well as increase electricity access by adding 60 million new home and business connections. To date, Power Africa has assisted with the financial closure of transactions expected to install over 4,100MW of new, cleaner power generation capacity when fully online. Power Africa has also made progress toward its connection goals. The additional 4,100MW of power has the potential to enable approximately four million new connections through increased availability of power.
While grid expansion quickly reaches urban and peri-urban areas, the deep rural areas may remain unserved for decades. For this reason, Power Africa is helping to advance off-grid and small-scale solutions (e.g., solar lanterns, solar rooftop systems, mini-hydro, mini-grids) to increase access to underserved areas through Beyond the Grid. Beyond the Grid is a Power Africa sub-initiative that drives private investment in off-grid and small-scale energy solutions to ensure that people living in remote areas also get access to power. This sub-initiative utilizes Power Africa’s innovative transaction-focused model to accelerate transactions and drive systemic reforms to facilitate future investment for off-grid and small-scale renewable energy solutions under 10MW. Beyond the Grid focuses on two strategic priorities driving toward achieving the goal of adding 60 million new home and business connections:
1. Addressing recurring market constraints in the household energy market by increasing access to financing and providing technical assistance.
2. Striving to achieve scalable, cleaner community-level solutions that offer electricity access greater than the first tier of task lighting. Ensuring enabling environments are supportive through regulatory and policy regimes is critical to facilitate private sector success.
First, sustainable, private sector-led business models for off-grid and small-scale energy solutions are beginning to succeed in the marketplace ‒ bolstered by decreasing costs of technology, innovative financing options, and a growing cohort of entrepreneurs meeting the demand of sub-Saharan Africa’s underserved populations. Building on this momentum, Beyond the Grid utilizes the full suite of tools and resources of the many US Government agencies and other donor and private sector partners, working together as part of the Power Africa team to mobilize finance to small-scale energy projects, as well as partner with our international partners to coordinate and leverage activities.
Second, growth and successful scaling of the small-scale renewable energy sector hinges on the public sector providing transparent regulatory and policy regimes that provide clear, predictable rules for project development, investment and operation. However, existing policies and regulatory frameworks are not always primed to support new and emerging business models enabled by rapidly transforming technologies like mobile money.
To catalyze the private sector’s significant resources, Beyond the Grid supports activities that create an enabling environment for development and investment in this space. For example, Power Africa, the World Bank Group, and the Government of Ghana are collaborating on sector reform issues, including tariff reform, private sector participation, and securitization for natural gas and electricity supply chains. In August 2014, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) signed the Ghana Power Compact, an investment of up to $498.2 million to support the transformation of Ghana’s electricity sector and stimulate private investment, which has bolstered the Electricity Company of Ghana and transparent quarterly updates for cost-reflective tariffs. Ensuring that tariffs fully reflect the cost of producing power is critical to the liquidity of the institutions in the sector and helps attract investors who can be confident that their investments will yield a return.
Through the Power Africa Toolbox, Beyond the Grid makes use of services across US-government and other donor partner agencies to fulfill its objectives. For example, the US-Africa Clean Energy Financing initiative (ACEF) and the US African Development Foundation (USADF) have funded companies and projects expected to reach one million new connections. There are many opportunities for Power Africa to work with the private and public sectors, as well as the financial sector, to reach our goals. The following are several examples of such opportunities.
USADF, in partnership with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and General Electric Africa, supports the Off-Grid Energy Challenge. The Challenge provides $100,000 grants to entrepreneurs and private organizations developing innovative off-grid technologies. The Challenge is entering its third round, having already provided support to 28 small enterprises over the past two years. In addition to providing 11 grants, the third round is also opening entries to three new countries in East Africa ‒ Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia.
The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) provides grants for early-stage project development. For example, USTDA has funded feasibility studies for mini-hydro projects in Rwanda and Tanzania, project development support for grid-connected solar in Rwanda, and isolated solar diesel hybrid mini-grids in Lake Victoria in Tanzania.
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) has a long history of working in Africa and supports Power Africa by providing financing and political risk insurance to on-grid and off-grid power projects. In addition, OPIC also seeks to develop new partnerships and processes to support investors.
• OPIC is part of the ACEF program, which provides project preparation support to help get early-stage projects off the ground. This program has committed more than $9 million so far to early-stage solar, wind, biomass and hydropower projects in Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Namibia, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Senegal.
• OPIC has developed a new process called the Innovative Financial Intermediary Program (IFIP) to help us support atypical deal structures and propose pooled capital, such as an investment fund, as well as debt financing, such as OPIC’s traditional loans and guaranties.
• OPIC has also developed a new tool called Portfolio for Impact (PI), which essentially helps facilitate highly impactful early-stage projects.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) worked with Power Africa’s private sector partners and the African Development Bank to create a book on Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). This book is facilitating and expediting private investment in renewable energy. CLDP brought together African government lawyers who are directly involved in drafting these documents with the lawyers who represent banks and project developers to come up with a clear guide in both English and French that will help reduce the time it takes to negotiate deals.
The USAID develops the off-grid and small-scale renewable energy sectors through its instruments:
• Development Innovation Ventures (DIV), a competitive grants program for innovative ideas that provides support to innovations that, through rigorous analysis, demonstrate real-world viability and convincing evidence that the private sector will invest in scaling up their scheme.
• The Development Credit Authority (DCA), a facility that provides risk guarantees to financial institutions to ensure that otherwise unsupported enterprises can receive financial assistance.
• Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement in Research (PEER), a competitive grants program which supports development-centered, in-country research and capacity-building in partnership with US-government supported facilities.
• CTI-Private Financing Advisory Network (CTI-PFAN), a facility that provides guidance and financial support to projects in the renewable energy environment, from early stages to financial closure.
• Power Africa Transaction Advisors, who provide project development advisory support to project sponsors in the public and private sectors. This support can extend beyond project-specific assistance to technical advice on national renewable energy programs and regulatory refinement to promote private investment in off-grid cleaner energy solutions, encourage and support rural electrification and reduce restrictions on importation of renewable energy sector equipment.
Beyond the Grid’s current project portfolio of over 100 projects spans the full range of off-grid solutions and small-scale renewable technologies, and touches countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Several examples include:
In Kenya, a biomass project rids the environment of an invasive tree species and generates electricity for a village and local industry. The intention is to expand this program to up to 15 systems which will make use of locally available invasive species or biomass waste, such as macadamia shells, coconut shells and bagasse from other industries.
● In Tanzania, Beyond the Grid is working closely with the government and a project developer to develop a portfolio of several mini-hydropower schemes. Through the Off-Grid Challenge, USADF is supporting mini-hydro and solar mini-grids, as well as a solar lantern franchise focused on the development of women entrepreneurs.
● In Ethiopia, USAID is supporting the development of a mini-grid using a small wind turbine and solar PV; USADF is working on an innovative financing scheme for solar home systems; and USAID PEER is supporting a local university in research on the development of micro-grids.
● In Ghana, USADF is supporting the development of a portable solar charging system for mobile phones, allowing the vendor to set up the system which forms part of his storefront.
● In Liberia, USAID is supporting a run-of-river mini-hydro project and a biomass to biodiesel project using palm oil that will run a small generator.
● In Rwanda, an 8.5MW grid-connected solar PV system has been installed at the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) by Gigawatt Global with support from ACEF. Apart from the supply of electricity, the ASYV is providing jobs, ongoing education in solar PV, and a steady rental income for the solar farm. The system occupies 17 Ha and is shaped like the African continent.
A look ahead for Beyond the Grid
As the cost of solar PV reduces, so too does the ease with which solar home systems can be installed and maintained in remote areas. There is a large market opportunity in sub-Saharan Africa, which makes this technology a natural focus area for Beyond the Grid to rapidly scale up and increase rural electrification. Power Africa is working with partners to develop a targeted effort to scale up household solar solutions.
Power Africa’s over 100 private sector partners have committed more than $20 billion toward specific projects, including $1 billion in commitments under Beyond the Grid to ensure that people living in remote areas have access to power. Beyond the Grid will continue to galvanize collaboration, engage in critical actions to accelerate transactions, and drive systemic reforms to facilitate future investment in off-grid and small-scale energy solutions.
Web: http://www.usaid.gov/powerafrica
Email: powerafrica@usaid.gov
Power Africa
Andrew M. Herscowitz is the coordinator for President Barack Obama’s Power Africa and Trade Africa initiatives. Katrina Pielli is a Senior Energy Advisor to Power Africa at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), secunded from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Ms. Pielli focuses on energy access issues in sub-Saharan Africa.
National urban policies: Thriving on strengthened partnerships
Mariam Lady Yunusa Yunusa
Building Resilience Against Climate Change: African Risk Capacity
Mr. Mohamed Beavogui
ECOWAS Policy For Gender Mainstreaming In Energy Access
Mahama Kappiah
Why Cities, Towns and Regions Are Creating a Roadmap Towards 100% Renewable Energy
ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability
Climate change could cause abrupt biodiversity losses this century
Christopher Trisos and Alex Pigot
What renewable energy and home repair have in common
Bertrand De la Borde
Creating African markets for global climate action
Alzbeta Klein
Africa races towards enduring dream of a Great Green Wall
Monique Barbut
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Equal Time For Freethought
Tune In, Pay It Forward, Question EVERYthing!
Audio Archives 2002-Present!
Show 544/545: Raoul Martinez on “Creating Freedom”
Raoul Martinez on “Creating Freedom” (Two-Parter)
Oddly enough, on Equal Time for FREEthought, the term freedom doesn’t come up too often. Well, not in an affirmative fashion, at least. We’ve been around too long to believe in things like the free market, free elections, or free media (though on WBAI, we come the closest to this). But we do tend to advocate for free speech and, of course, free thought. But what does freedom mean? Are we free in modern Western societies and to what degree? Can freedom be created out of non-freedom? And what can our understanding of all this help us to build a healthier, more humanistic society?
Today we will talk with Raoul Martinez about these questions and more. Raoul is a writer, artist, and award-winning filmmaker. His documentary, ‘The Lottery of Birth‘, premiered in 2012 as episode one of a series entitled Creating Freedom. It was nominated for Best Documentary at London’s Raindance Film Festival and went on to win the Artivist Spirit 2012 Award at Hollywood’s Artivist Festival. Accompanying the series is Raoul’s first book, also called Creating Freedom, written over four years and informed by over a decade of research.
Audio for part-one can be found here!
Audio for part-two can be found here!
Next on ETFF…
ETFF is on hiatus. If this changes, you will find out at this part of the website!
Please visit our archives for audio for our programs dating back to 2002!
(Tune in), Pay it Forward, and Question Everything!
Audio Archives by Month
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fundementalism
Show 601: Riane Eisler and Douglas Fry on Nurturing Our Humanity
Show 600: Jacques W. Martiquet on VYVE!
Show 599: HSPs: Highly Sensitive Persons
Show 598: Naturalistic Xmas Special 2019!
Show 597: Darcia Narvaez
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Celebrity Chef Mario Batali Officially Fired from ABC Show 'The Chew'
The move follows sexual misconduct allegations by several women
Earlier this week, celebrity chef, restaurateur and TV personality Mario Batali took a step back from his empire following allegations of sexual misconduct. Now, ABC has officially cut ties with him and announced that he will no longer appear on daily daytime talk show The Chew.
"Upon completing its review into the allegations made against Mario Batali, ABC has terminated its relationship with him and he will no longer appear on The Chew," an ABC spokesperson said in a statement. "While we remain unaware of any type of inappropriate behaviour involving him and anyone affiliated with our show, ABC takes matters like this very seriously as we are committed to a safe work environment and his past behaviour violates our standards of conduct."
News of Batali's inappropriate behaviour broke when Eater published allegations from four women accusing the chef of sexual misconduct over at least the past two decades.
In interviews, the women described incidents involving groping, unwanted touching and sexual innuendo both in and out of the workplace.
Batali didn't deny the allegations, admitting that they "match up" with how he has behaved.
"That behaviour was wrong and there are no excuses," Batali told Eater. "I take full responsibility and am deeply sorry for any pain, humiliation or discomfort I have caused to my peers, employees, customers, friends and family."
At the time of that statement, Batali said that he was going to "step away from day-to-day operations of my business."
His restaurant company B&B Hospitality Group has committed to implementing additional independent sexual harassment training, though at the time of the allegations Batali remained the owner of his restaurants.
Market chain Eataly USA, which Batali was a minority shareholder in, has since severed ties with the chef, removing all books and products bearing his name and likeness from their locations.
The Food Network, meanwhile, has put plans to revive the celebrity chef's show Molto Mario on hold.
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World bodies establish fund for rebuilding Lebanon
10:25 03 December 2020 Author : Staff
PARIS(AA)
French President Emmanuel Macron said Wednesday that the World Bank, the UN and the EU have decided to establish a humanitarian fund for the reconstruction of Lebanon.
Macron made the announcement during the second virtual aid conference organized by France and the UN since the disastrous Aug. 4 explosion that destroyed Beirut's port and wrecked large parts of the capital.
He said the pledged aid on Aug. 9 was fulfilled and that 280 million euros (US$339.4 million) had been collected.
Noting that 12,500 tons of flour were distributed to the Lebanese people and 73,000 people had received financial aid, Macron said around 30 hospitals were provided with medical equipment and 25,000 people were allocated a place to stay.
He pointed out that 20% of Lebanon’s population lives below the poverty line and that aid should continue.
Macron said that without the rapid establishment of a government in Lebanon to enable reforms, there would be no international help for the country. He added that he will pay a new visit to Lebanon this month.
The Aug. 4 blast came at a time when the country was reeling under a crippling economic crisis amid the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
The explosion killed at least 192 people and injured more than 6,000.
Palestine group says news about election false
Iraq: Turkmen martyrs remembered in Erbil
Palestinian factions to meet in Egypt on elections
Thai Woman, 19 Rohingya Arrested For Illegal Entry in Thailand
19 Rohingya and a Thai woman accused of housing them have been arrested for illegal entry to
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Ramelli's Bookwheel presents an interesting historical paradox. On the one hand, it demonstrates an immense technological breakthrough that combines engineering techniques (epicylic gears, horizontal axle, shelves that don't drop objects when spun around) that had immense ramifications on later conceptions of how to view and access information (the ability to easily cycle through various texts or windows of information) and incorporating epicyclic gears in more objects besides clocks, to name a couple of examples. On the other hand, it is an example of sheer engineering arrogance on the part of Ramelli. The Bookwheel, as it is presented by Ramelli himself, is a testament to his own self indulgence. Much like a Guitar Virtuoso, like Jimi Hendrix or Yngwie Malmsteen, who uses guitar solos as opportunities to demonstrate the limits of their manual dexterity and speed (often at the expense of good taste), Ramelli’s Bookwheel is an impractical showcase of Ramelli’s ability to implement complex engineering techniques to accomplish tasks that could have been done much more simply and efficiently. In fact, the Bookwheel’s ultimate impracticality is demonstrated by the fact that it was never constructed. Ramelli himself never made any actual specifications for how it should have been made. [[Image:ramelli2.jpg|thumb|right| Ramelli's Bookwheel (Gnudi)]] ==Biography== Agostino Ramelli was born in Como, Italy in 1531. He grew up amidst war and political turmoil. Wars for independence as well as wars for position and power occurred all around him. Growing up, he was trained in the arts of war and mathematics by warlord Gian Giacomo de’ Medici. He soon developed into a key military engineer in the Italian military where he provided his expertise in fortification and machinery used for assaulting enemy cities. He was involved in the battles and was even captured by an opposing army once. The French King Henry III hired Ramelli briefly. “The Great Engineer”, as he was called, served the French magistrate until the death of Henry III. Coming back to work for his native Italy for some time, died somewhere in his late 70s. Although the date of his death is unknown, property documents with his signatures have been found dated as late as August of 1608, although it is not believed that he lived for terribly long after that. (Gnudi 11-19; Gille 199-200) ==The Various and Ingenious Machines of Captain Agostino Ramelli== Agostino Ramelli wrote and published “The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli” in 1588 in both French and Italian. Printed on 195 silver plates, Ramelli’s book illustrated inventions and mechanisms for raising water, milling grain, and war time machines. Noted for originality, these inventions are also known for being virtually unrealistic. Other inventors of this time care to show off their talents in creative engineering. “”Besson, Ramelli, and a few others have given us machines invented by them on paper, but few of them can be at all effective,” said Salomon de Caus, an early seventeenth-century engineer (Gille 199). They emphasized play and amusement. Another problem with the book is that it made it difficult for anyone to reproduce any of the actual machines or wheels/pulleys. There were no instructions on how to build these inventions nor were their any sorts of measurements or lists of materials included. One would have to study the sketch shown and the bit of text Ramelli provided. (Gille 199; Gnudi 15-17) [[Image:ramelli.jpg|thumb|left| Ramelli (Gnudi]] ==The Book That Never Happened== He drew sketches in preparation for another book on fortifications, but “wrote with bitterness and…disdain of the trusted member of his household who ‘…appearing to praise by giving me the title of expert…furtively robbed me of many special drawings…an published them as his own.’ (Gnudi 17)”. Some experts believe that person to be Ambroise Bachot, an architect and engineer to Henry IV whose work has always been related to Ramelli’s, although Ramelli never named his suspected thief. (Gnudi 17-19) ==Ramelli’s Design== Ramelli’s revolving bookcase had a circular structure that was built around a horizontal axis, which meant that the shelves on the wheel could be rotated up or down. This gave it the look of a Vetruvian Water wheel (or a ferris wheel) as opposed to the merry-go-round design that had been popular earlier. Each shelf is set at an angle of 45 degrees with respect to the floor at all times. (Hall 389) This prevents the books from falling of the shelves during rotation. This design was also capable of saving space because all the information was moved vertically. This choice actually following the western tradition of axle design, although Ramelli was unique for applying this method to the book wheel. (Hall 390) ===The Chinese revolving bookshelf and early European bookshelves=== Ramelli’s use of a horizontal axle was in contrast to the Chinese model of rotating bookshelves which work with a vertical axle. The earlier Chinese Bookcases dated as far back as the 6th century and they were massive structures as opposed to the Book Wheel designed by Ramelli. (Hall 390-1). This model has been speculated to have come about due to the translation work done by Buddhists in China at the time (Needham 553-554). Ramelli’s wheel also differed greatly from earlier European made devices. An earlier model designed by Bocaccio during the early 15th Century consisted of a round table that could be raised or lowered by rotating a central screw that is fixed to the base. The main purpose seemed to focused on raising or lowering the table between eye level and average table height. (Clark 307) Other examples demonstrated the ability to be manipulated with or without the ability to adjust the height and or the position of objects on the table. Almost all of these however required the device to be turned along a vertical axis (meaning the movement took place on a horizontal plane, excluding the ability to increase or decrease its height. [[Image:Bookwheel.jpg|thumb|right|Another version of the bookwheel (Hall)]] ===Epicyclic gears=== One of the more ingenious parts of the construction of the wheel was Ramelli’s incorporation of Epicyclic gears. This helped keep the angles of each of the shelves constant with respect to the floor, so that any book resting on a shelf would not fall off as one spinned the device. (Hall 392) The basic concept behind epicyclic gears is that it consists of several jagged edged gears (with “teeth”) that stem from a central position. The gears vary in radius. The motions of the gears can be described by a caption written for a prototype of a model of Dante Gnudi in folio 112r of Codex Madrid I.: “Wheel a turns to the right. And b to the left, and c also to the right, wheel m turns to the left, that is, opposite to a, because even if the axle of a is square, it is round inside wheel m. Wheel b has no axle, while one arm of the axle of wheel m rotates and turns b and c around a. the last revolves in the direction opposite to b.” [[Image:Snapshot 2008-12-03 14-15-54.jpg|thumb|left| Epicyclic gears (Reti)]] Although seemingly convoluted, the epicyclic gear model was capable of achieving the feat of maintaining the angles of the bookshelves on Ramelli’s wheel at a constant 45 degree angle in relation to the floor. This might not have been possible with a simpler axle design. It is fascinating that he used this particular gear system, which featured a set of Idler gears that were needed to reverse the rotation of the outer set of gears. (Hall 396) This particular particular type of gearing had existed in ancient times, for example in the Antikythera machine, which was, if the reconstruction of it was accurate, an ancient greek predecessor to the computer which incorporated this method of using gears in parallel motion. It was also featured in 14th century geared astrolabes. . It is, however, not clear how Ramelli came into contact with this particular principle of gear design. Some scholars believe that he adapted it from horology or from a clock that he might have come across, which featured the system, and then applied it to his book wheel. (Hall 394) Then there is also the importance of Ramelli’s predecessor, Leonardo Da Vinci. ===The Da Vinci Connection?=== Many parallels have been drawn between the work of Ramelli and Leonardo Da Vinci. It isn’t that far of a leap considering that the two were both interested in engineering and Da Vinci did have a major impact on those who came after him. Scholars have made a particular connection between them because of their shared interest in epicycle gear trains. Leonardo had experimented with the notion of utilizing the epicycle gear system for some unknown device. As Ladislao Reti points out, Leanardo’s design is very similar to the one Ramelli intended to use for his bookwheel. The difference was that Da Vinci’s outer gears did not match the central gear in terms of the amount of teeth they had. Also, unlike Ramelli, Da Vinci did not have a specific device in mind as he was making this model. He was more interested in the actual mechanism rather than a specific use for it. (Reti 578) Da Vinci also was considering a manner in which to have the elements of the gear train maintain at a constant angle relative to the floor. (Reti 579) However, Ramelli’s use of the Epicyclic gear system does not necessarily mean that he was copying or deriving his invention from Da Vinci. It is possible that the two were both just studying the knowledge that had been accumulating since ancient times. (Reti 580) One could go even further and say that Ramelli was neither completely original in his ideas nor was he merely copying the work of those who came before him. He was, as Reti pointed out, incorporating “not only his own ideas and fantasies but also the sound technical tradition of his time and the experience and dreams of his predecessors in the invention of machines" (581). ===Design for Showmanship’s Sake?=== Excerpt from Ramelli's book, The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli, specifically the description he gives of the Bookwheel: <i> “This is a beautiful and ingenious machine, very useful and convenient for anyone who takes pleasure in study, especially those who are indisposed and tormented by gout. For with this machine a man can see and turn through a large number of books without moving from one spot. Moreover, it has another fine convenience in that it occupies very little space in the place where it is set, as anyone of intelligence can clearly see from the drawing. This wheel is made in the manner shown, that is, it is constructed so that when the books are laid on its lecterns they never fall or move from the place where they are laid even when the wheel is turned and revolved all the way around. Indeed, they will always remain in the same position and will be displayed to the reader in the same way as they were laid on their small lecterns, without any need to tie or hold them with anything. This wheel may be made as large or small as desired, provided the master craftsman who constructs it observes the proportions of each part of its components. He can do this very easily if he studies carefully all the parts of these small wheels of ours and the other devices in this machine. These parts are made in sizes to proportionate to each other. To give a fuller understanding and comprehension to anyone who wishes to make and operate this machine, I have shown here separately and uncovered all the devices needed for it, so that anyone may understand them better and make use of them for his needs.” </i> (508) One of the main complaints made about Ramelli is that he made his devices, like the bookwheel, more complex than they needed to be. He would utilize “ gears to perform even such tasks as converting rotary to reciprocal motion, where a simple crankshaft would do” (Hall 392). There was an inherent artistic arrogance involved in both his design and in his presentation of it. He would speak about the bookwheel in his own book in hyperbolic terms as well as delving into a condescending tone towards the reader. This seems to be typical for him and other authors of “Theater of Machines” type books. The goal was to show off the ‘virtuosity’ of their engineering skill (much like a guitarist would during a solo) in terms of their ability to manipulate systems to accomplish extraordinary feats. (Hall 392) Ramelli did not even include any specific measurements in his design. This isn’t to suggest that Ramelli was untalented and simply full of outlandish ideas. That wasn’t the case. But to an extent, his ego came to the surface more often than the rational practical ability to help humanity. ==Influence== Ramelli’s bookwheel was for the information savvy people of the day. Today there is technology that allows us to cross reference more things quicker, observe multiple things at once, and feed our ADD minds. ===Memex=== Conceived by Vannevar Bush in the 1940's, the memex continued the same logic as the Bookwheel, in terms of being able to keep track of information and be able to easily access that information while researching. The memex was essentially conceived as a self contained research library contained within a desk. On top of the desk are translucent screens for reading the material being studied. There is also a keyboard and sets of buttons and levers. One part of the desk is for storage of information using microfilm. (Bush 149) The user is able to store books under code numbers for easy access. They can also use the keyboard to skip through pages. (Bush 150). This descendant of the bookwheel was the predecessor of hyperlinks and works using the concept of associative thought. (Bush 148) ===Computer Screen Viewing=== In today's age, we want to be able to multitask as much as possible. When using computers, it is no different. It used to be that you needed to open up separate windows for each function, program, or web page on your screen. If you wanted to view a different window, you had to click and drag it away or minimize it. Then web browsers made it possible for multiple tabs to be opened up in the same internet window, making it easier and faster to view multiple web sites at once. Now you can cross reference windows even quicker. Both Mac and PC operating systems have functions that clear away the screen, moving all the windows to the edges so you can view your desktop with the push of a key or swipe of a mousepad. Or you can view all of your open windows and programs and documents at one time so to be able to switch from window to window faster. This makes it even possible to view multiple pictures and/or videos at the same time. [[Image:screenshot.png|thumb|right|MAC Screenshot (Procida). ]] ===Dual Screens=== The information technology and need for a vast view of things has called for computers to be capable of being set up with multiple screens. Some people have two, three, and sometimes even four screens paneled side by side to give the user a wider, more vast view of their computer activities. More extreme examples of multi-monitor set-ups can be seen in fictional settings such as <i>The Dark Knight</i>, where Batman has a large amount of computer screens to form a large image or virtual workspace. ===Car Transmissions=== Ramelli's epicyclic gear train used in his bookwheel to keep the books in place while rotating have been used in modern engineering. "The trasnmission gears of the Model T Ford automobile, for example, were epicyclic." (Gnudi 558) =Bibliography= *Aiken, John, William Enfield, Nicholson, Thomas Morgan, and William Johnston. General Biography: Or, Lives, Critical and Historical, of the Most Eminent Persons of All Ages, Countries, Conditions, and Professions, Arranged According to Alphabetical Order. G.G. and J. Robinson, 1807. *Bush, Vannevar. As We May Think. 1945 *Clark, John Willis. The Care of Books. Cambridge, 1909. P. 307, fig. 148 *Gille, Bertrand. Engineers of the Renaissance. 1966. 199-200. *Gnudi, Martha T., trans. The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli (1588). Great Britain: Johns Hopkins University, 1976. *Hall, Bert S. and Ramelli, Agostino. A Revolving Bookcase by Agostino Ramelli. Technology and Culture, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Jul., 1970), pp. 389-400 *Ladislao Reti. Leonardo and Ramelli. Technology and Culture, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Oct., 1972), pp. 577-605 *Needham, Joseph and Ling, Wang. Science and Civilization in China. Cambridge, 1965. *Platts, John. A new universal biography, chronologically arranged; containing interesting accounts, critical accounts, critical and historical, of the lives and characters, labours and actions, of eminent persons, in all ages and countries, conditions and professions,. Sherwood, Jones, and Co., 1826. *Procida Jr., William P. MAC Screenshot. 3 Dec. 2008.
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Around the World with Corey Sandler
VISIT MAIN WEBSITE AT www.coreysandler.com
Tag Archives: Rhode Island
4 November 2018:
Newport, Rhode Island, US:
Winter Coming
November 4, 2018 Corey Sandler
By Corey Sandler
We sailed out of Boston last night and into the teeth of a storm headed up the coast. To get from Boston to Newport, our course was essentially this:
west to exit Boston Harbor and its many islands and to get far enough out to sea to be clear of Provincetown on the hook of Cape Cod, then
south, past Provincetown and thirty more miles to the east coast of the island of Nantucket and an additional 30 miles below Nantucket to stay clear of the shoals and rocks, then
west in the main transatlantic channel about 60 miles until we were in line with the entrance to Narragansett Bay, and then finally
north, back up to Aquidneck Island, the home of Newport, Rhode Island.
If that sounds like a complicated route that includes all four cardinal points of the compass, that’s because it is. The waters around Cape Cod and Nantucket are very hazardous to uninformed mariners.
In any case, we arrived at midday in Newport, to a beautiful fall day. This is the last day of this cruise, which began in Montreal, and a fitting end.
Here are some scenes from Newport. You can read more about this special place by entering Newport in the search bar of this blog.
All photos and text Copyright 2018 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.
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Now available, the revised Second Edition of “Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession” by Corey Sandler, for the Amazon Kindle. You can read the book on a Kindle device, or in a Kindle App on your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.
If you would like to purchase an autographed copy, please see the tab on this page, “HOW TO ORDER A PHOTO OR AUTOGRAPHED BOOK”
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Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession: The Tragic Legacy of the New World’s Least Understood Explorer (Kindle Edition)
Around the World with Corey SandlerCorey SandlerNewportRhode IslandSandlerSilversea
Modest Abodes
October 17, 2018 Corey Sandler
We have been coming in and out Newport all season, and for many years in the past, and always concentrating on the magnificent “cottages” built by the very wealthy industrialists and financiers of America’s Gilded Age that followed the American Civil War and continued into the early decades of the 20th century.
On this visit, a glorious fall day, we returned to one of the most elegant and meaningful houses in Newtown. Not a cottage, but a house of worship: the Touro Synagogue, the oldest Jewish temple in North America, built in 1763.
It is an extraordinary place, emblematic of the origins of Newport as a place of tolerance for most people, including Jews, Quakers, and other religious denominations who were not always welcome elsewhere in the colonies.
At Touro Synagogue is displayed a copy of George Washington’s famous letter to the congregation, one of the most magnificent pieces of writing and expressions of tolerance by an American president.
He wrote:
“May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
We are once again in the beautiful town of Newport on Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.
We have not been enjoying the best weather for much of the last few weeks with the exception of a superb day yesterday in Boston.
Today, Newport was cold and windswept but still beautiful. The mansions, which were called with a wink and a nudge “cottages” are preparing to close for the winter but the major cottages are still open.
We went for a walk in the rain to The Elms, and here are some of the pictures I took. Inside.
A NEWPORT ALBUM
On a previous, sunny day:
The Big Bay
September 26, 2018 Corey Sandler
We are headed back to the north, but first we have pulled into Narragansett Bay on the south shore of Rhode Island for a return visit to Newport.
Narragansett Bay encompasses about 147 square miles of handsome shorefront, islands, and shores. Seven waterways enter into the bay, including the Taunton, Pawtuxet, and Blackstone rivers.
Within the bay are Newport at the south end of Aquidneck Island on the ocean. At the northeasternmost reach is Fall River (where Lizzy Borden cut her teeth). And the northernmost part of the bay is home to Providence, the capital of Rhode Island.
Just for the record: most of Rhode Island is on the mainland, not on an island.
Once again we went for a visit to one of the less-known historic houses of Newport: Hunter House, built about 1748 by a prosperous local merchant and Colonial Deputy Governor.
With the outbreak of the American Revolution, the governor was forced to flee and the home was used as headquarters for the French forces in Newport assisting the American rebels.
We sailed into the bay in a deep fog and mist, which deepened the sense of history here.
Here is the fog, the Hunter House, and the nearby Brenton Counting House of the same time: 1748, Newport’s Golden Era, more than 130 years before the second wave of money have rise to the Gilded Age.
NEWPORT THIS MORNING
Here’s a glimpse of The Breakers, one of the most famous of the “cottages” on Newport, built during the Gilded Age by some of the aged gilded of the time.
You can read even more about Newport in my posting from September 24.
The Cottage Industry
Newport, Rhode Island was where the rich came to play.
One game, at the peak of the Gilded Age, was a grand form of one-upsmanship, a competition to impress, astound, and outspend each other.
They built “cottages”, a word some used with a wink and a nod.
After the Civil War came the Gilded Age, a time of great wealth and expansion.
Bar Harbor in Maine, and the Adirondacks of upstate New York boomed: a surge of privately owned American castles, if you will. Newport was perhaps the greatest beneficiary.
Fall in New England in town and at the Tennis Hall of Fame. All photos by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.
The Breakers is the grandest of the summer “cottages.”
Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt established his fortune in steamships and later the New York Central Railroad, which was key to the nation’s industrial growth in the late 19th century.
His grandson, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, became Chairman and President of the railroad in 1885, and purchased a wooden house called The Breakers.
After a fire in 1892, he commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a replacement.
Hunt created a 70-room Italian Renaissance-style palazzo inspired by the 16th century palaces of Genoa and Turin.
It’s a pleasant little cottage.
CHATEAU-SUR-MER
On this visit we took the opportunity to visit a lesser-known gem of the Newport properties: Chateau-sur-Mer.
This home, erected in 1852, was a product of the China trade. It predates most of the Gilded Age Cottage of Newport, but in many ways outshines cold and formal marble with its warm carved wood interior including hand-carved Italian woodwork, Chinese porcelain, and other treasures.
The Mansion was home to three generations of the Wetmore family.
9 October 2013: Newport, Rhode Island
October 9, 2013 Corey Sandler
When Fall Comes to New England
By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises
Our sail-away from New York was, just as we hoped, spectacular. Silver Whisper backed out of Pier 88 at 5 pm, and we moved majestically down the Hudson River toward its exit to the sea.
The gangway from Pier 88 to our ship during the quiet morning before guests came aboard. Photo by Corey Sandler
The view from the Bridge of Silver Whisper as we backed out of the pier. Photo by Corey Sandler
On our port side was Manhattan; to starboard, the Statue of Liberty. I was up on the bridge giving commentary, but—as always—I had my camera with me.
Scenes from our sailaway. Photos by Corey Sandler
And then we sailed into New England. One of my favorite songs is When Fall Comes to New England, by the singer-songwrite Cheryl Wheeler. She has a lovely line about autumn colors; she says that the leaves turn “Irish Setter red.”
Newport, Rhode Island is where the rich came to play.
One of their games, at the peak of the Gilded Age, was a grand form of one-upsmanship.
The colors of New England. The Newport Museum of Art, and the gardens at the historic Touro Synagogue. Photo by Corey Sandler
It was a competition to impress, astound, and outspend each other.
They built “cottages”, a word they used with a wink and a nod.
Downtown Newport. Photo by Corey Sandler
In some ways, Newport and the rest of Rhode Island was a model for the ideal of America, a place where freedom of conscience and religion was paramount.
They had been all but driven out of Boston by strict and punitive laws and discrimination.
A year later, the original settlement of Pocasett divided, and a group moved south to found Newport.
By this time, many had become Baptists.
Their political beliefs had been shaped by the difficulties of Boston.
At the heart of their plans was separation of church and state, codified in the Newport Town Statutes of 1641.
Newport became one of the first secular democracies in the world, certainly one of the first in the Americas.
Newport’s Redwood Library, and an old hotel in town. Photos by Corey Sandler
The original settlers were soon joined in the 1650s by others including Jews and members of the Religious Society of Friends: the “Quakers.”
In the years leading up to the American Civil War, Newport began to attract influential artists, writers, scientists, educators, architects, theologians, architects, and landscape designers.
Summer residents included the activist and poet Julia Ward Howe, the famed Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing, the author Henry James and his psychologist brother William James.
Bar Harbor in Maine, and the Adirondacks of upstate New York boomed: a surge of privately owned American castles, if you will.
Newport was perhaps the greatest beneficiary.
The Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport. Photos by Corey Sandler
My wife and I live in this part of the world, on the island of Nantucket about 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. And so we know Newport and southern New England quite well.
On this visit, I chose to go on a photo safari. I concentrated on the glorious details of Fall in New England.
Silver Whisper at anchor, offshore of Newport. Photo by Corey Sandler
All photos and text copyright 2013 by Corey Sandler. If you would like to purchase a copy of a photo, please contact me.
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Under the Cold Moon, the End of the Beginning?
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Waiting to Inhale
Imagination Out of Focus
Calendar of Postings to this blog
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Art Terminology
Intaglio - The process of incising a design beneath the surface of a metal or stone. Plates are inked only in the etched depressions on the plates and then the plate surface is wiped clean. The ink is then transferred onto the paper through an etching press. The reverse of this process is known as relief printing.
Planographic - The process to print impressions from a smooth surface rather than creating incised or relief areas on the plate. The term was devised to describe lithography.
Relief - All printing processes in which the non-printing areas of the block or plate are carved, engraved or etched away. Inks are applied onto the projected surface and transferred onto the paper. The reverse process is known as intaglio printing.
Printmaking Techniques
Aquatint – A printing technique capable of producing unlimited tonal gradations to re-create the broad flat tints of ink wash or watercolor drawings. This is achieved by etching microscopic cracks and pits into the image on a master plate, typically made of copper or zinc. Spanish artist Goya used this technique.
Blind - Printing using an uninked plate to produce the subtle embossed texture of a white-on-white image, highlighted by the shadow of the relief image on the uninked paper. This technique is used in many Japanese prints.
Collograph - Printing technique in which proofs are pulled from a block on which the artwork or design is built up like a collage, creating relief.
Drypoint - Printing technique of intaglio engraving in which a hard, steel needle incises lines on a metal plate, creating a burr that yields a characteristically soft and velvety line in the final print.
Engraving - Printing technique in which an intaglio image is produced by cutting a metal plate or box directly with a sharp engraving tool. The incised lines are inked and printed with heavy pressure.
Etching - Printing technique in which a metal plate is first covered with an acid-resistant material, then worked with an etching needle to create an intaglio image. The exposed metal is eaten away in an acid bath, creating depressed lines that are later inked for printing.
Iris or Giclée - A computerized reproduction technique in which the image and topography are generated from a digital file and printed by a special ink jet printer, using ink, acrylic or oil paints. Giclée printing offers one of the highest degree of accuracy and richness of color available in any reproduction techniques.
Lithography - Printing technique using a planographic process in which prints are pulled on a special press from a flat stone or metal surface that has been chemically sensitized so that ink sticks only to the design areas and is repelled by the non-image areas. Lithography was invented in 1798 in Germany by Alois Senefelder.
Mezzotint - A reverse engraving process used on a copper or steel plate to produce illustrations in relief with effects of light and shadow. The surface of a master plate is roughened with a tool called a rocker so that if inked, it will print solid black. The areas to be white or gray in the print are rubbed down so as not to take ink. It was widely used in the 18th and 19th centuries to reproduce portraits and other paintings, but became obsolete with the introduction of photo-engraving.
Monotype - One-of-a-kind print made by painting on a sheet of metal or glass and transferring the still-wet painting onto a sheet of paper by hand or with an etching press. If enough paint remains on the master plate, additional prints can be made, however, the reprint will have substantial variations from the original image. Monotype printing is not a multiple-replica process since each print is unique.
Offset Lithography - A special photo-mechanical technique in which the image to be printed is transferred to the negative plates and printed onto paper. Offset lithography is very well adapted to color printing.
Serigraphy (Silk-screen) - A printing technique that makes use of a squeegee to force ink directly onto a piece of paper or canvas through a stencil creating an image on a screen of silk or other fine fabric with an impermeable substance. Serigraphy differs from most other printing in that its color areas are paint films rather than printing ink stains.
Woodcut - Printing technique in which the printing surface has been carved from a block of wood. The traditional wood block is seasoned hardwood such as apple, beech or sycamore. Woodcut is one of the oldest forms of printing dating back to the 12th century.
Common Art Print Terms
Acid-free Paper or Canvas - Paper or canvas treated to neutralize its natural acidity in order to protect fine art and photographic prints from discoloration and deterioration.
Canvas Transfer - Art reproduction on canvas which is created by a process such as serigraphy, photomechanical or giclée printing. Some processes can even recreate the texture, brush strokes and aged appearance of the original work.
Color-variant Suite - A set of identical prints in different color schemes.
Impression - Fine art made by any printing stamping process.
Limited Edition – A limited number of identical prints numbered in succession and signed and supervised by the artist. Any additional prints have been destroyed.
Monoprint - One-of-a-kind print conceived and printed by the artist and or under the artist's supervision.
Montage (Collage) - An artwork comprising of portions of various existing images such as from photographs or prints and arranged so that they join, overlap or blend to create a new image.
Multiple Originals - A set of identical fine prints in which the artist personally conceived the image, created the master plates and executed or supervised the entire printing process. Example: etching.
Multiple Reproductions - A set of identical fine prints reproducing the image of an original artwork created by a non-printing process. Example: serigraph of an oil on canvas.
Open Edition - A series of prints or objects in an art edition that has an unlimited number of copies.
Original Print - One-of-a-kind print in which the artist personally conceived the image, created the master plates and executed the entire printing process.
Provenance - Record of ownership for a work of art, ideally from the time it left the artist's studio to its present location, thus creating an unbroken ownership history.
Remarque – Additional enhancements by the artist on some or all of the final prints within an edition.
Restrike - Additional prints made from a master plate, block, lithograph stone, etc. after the original edition has been exhausted.
Print Proof Types
Proofs are prints authorized by the artist in addition to the limited signed and numbered edition. The total size of an art edition consists of the signed and numbered prints plus all outstanding proofs. If a set of proofs consists of more than one print, numbers are inscribed to indicate the number of the prints within the total number of the particular type of proof, (e.g., AP 5/20 means the fifth print in a set of twenty identical prints authorized as artist proofs). Proofs are generally signed by the artist as validation of the prints.
Artist's Proof (AP) - Print intended for the artist's personal use. It is common practice to reserve approximately ten percent of an edition as artist's proofs, although this figure can be higher. The artist's proof is sometimes referred to by its French épreuve d'artist (abbreviation E.A.). Artist's proofs can be distinguished by the abbreviation AP or E.A., commonly on the lower left of the work.
Cancellation Proof - Final print made once an edition series has been finished to show that the plate has been marred/mutilated by the artist, and will never be used again to make more prints of the edition.
Hors d'Commerce Proof (HC) - Print identical to the edition print intended to be used as samples to show to dealers and galleries. These proofs may or may not be signed by the artist.
Printer's Proof (PP) - Print retained by the printer as a reference. Artists often sign these prints as a gesture of appreciation.
Trial Proof (TP) - Pre-cursor to a limited edition series, these initial prints are pulled so that the artist may examine, refine and perfect the prints to the desired final state. Trial proofs are generally not signed.
Abbreviations Used in Art
2nd Ed - Second edition: prints of the same image as the original edition but altered in some way (as in change of color, paper or printing process).
2nd st - Second state: prints of proofs which contain significant changes from the original print.
AP - Artist's Proof (see definition)
Del - (Latin, delineavit) He (she) drew it. Generally inscribed next to the artist's signature.
HC - (French, Hors d'Commerce) Prints from an edition intended to be used as samples to show to dealers and galleries.
PP - Printer's proof (see definition)
TP - Trial proof (see definition)
Miscellaneous Art Terminology
Abstract - A 20th century style of painting in which nonrepresentational lines, colors, shapes, and forms replace accurate visual depiction of objects, landscape, and figures. The subjects often stylized, blurred, repeated or broken down into basic forms so that it becomes unrecognizable. Intangible subjects such as thoughts, emotions, and time are often expressed in abstract art form.
Abstract Expressionism - 1940's New York painting movement based on Abstract Art. This type of painting is often referred to as action painting.
Acrylic - A fast-drying paint which is easy to remove with mineral spirits; a plastic substance commonly used as a binder for paints.
Action Painting - Any painting style calling for vigorous physical activity; specifically, Abstract Expressionism. Examples include the New York School art movement and the work of Jackson Pollock.
Art Nouveau - A painting, printmaking, decorative design, and architectural style developed in England in the 1880s. Art Nouveau, primarily an ornamental style, was not only a protest against the sterile Realism, but against the whole drift toward industrialization and mechanization and the unnatural artifacts they produced. The style is characterized by the usage of sinuous, graceful, cursive lines, interlaced patterns, flowers, plants, insects and other motifs inspired by nature.
Bauhaus - A design school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 in Germany. The Bauhaus attempted to achieve reconciliation between the aesthetics of design and the more commercial demands of industrial mass production.
Chiaroscuro - In drawing, painting, and the graphic arts, chiaroscuro (ke-ära-skooro) concerns the rendering of forms through a balanced contrast between light and dark areas. The technique that was introduced during the Renaissance, is effective in creating an illusion of depth and space around the principal figures in a composition. Leonardo Da Vinci and Rembrandt were painters who excelled in the use of this technique.
Classical Style - In Greek art, the style of the 5th century B.C. Loosely, the term “classical” is often applied to all the art of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as to any art based on logical, rational principles and deliberate composition.
Cubism - An art style developed in 1908 by Picasso and Braque whereby the artist breaks down the natural forms of the subjects into geometric shapes and creates a new kind of pictorial space. In contrast to traditional painting styles where the perspective of subjects is fixed and complete, cubist work can portray the subject from multiple perspectives.
Dadaism - An art style founded by Hans Arp in Zurich after WW1 which challenged the established canons of art, thoughts and morality etc. Disgusted with the war and society in general, Dadaist expressed their feelings by creating "non-art."
Expressionism - An art movement of the early 20th century in which traditional adherence to realism and proportion was replaced by the artist's emotional connection to the subject. These paintings are often abstract, the subject matter distorted in color and form to emphasize and express the intense emotion of the artist.
Fauvism -A short-lived painting style in early 20th century France, which featured bold, clashing, arbitrary colors - colors unrelated to the appearance of forms in the natural world. Henri Matisse was its best-known practitioner. The word fauve means “wild beast.”
Fine Art - An art form created primarily as an aesthetic expression to be enjoyed for its own sake. The viewer must be prepared to search for the intent of the artist as the all-important first step toward communication and active participation.
Futurism - Art movement founded in Italy in 1909 and lasting only a few years. Futurism concentrated on the dynamic quality of modern technological life, emphasizing speed and movement.
Gouache -Opaque watercolors used for illustrations.
Hard-Edge Painting -A recent innovation that originated in New York and was adopted by certain contemporary painters. Forms are depicted with precise, geometric lines and edges.
Harmony - The unity of all the visual elements of a composition achieved by repetition of the same characteristics.
Hatching - A technique of modeling, indicating tone and suggesting light and shade in drawing or tempera painting, using closely set parallel lines.
Iconography - Loosely, the “story” depicted in a work of art; people, places, events, and other images in a work, as well as the symbolism and conventions attached to those images by a particular religion or culture.
Impasto - A thick, juicy application of paint to canvas or other support; emphasizes texture, as distinguished from a smooth flat surface.
Impressionism - An art movement founded in France in the last third of the 19th century. The artist's vision was intensely centered on light and the ways it transforms the visible world. This style of painting is characterized by short brush strokes of bright colors used to recreate visual impressions of the subject and to capture the light, climate and atmosphere of the subject at a specific moment in time.
Mannerism -A term sometimes applied to art of late 16th early 17th century Europe, characterized by a dramatic use of space and light and a tendency toward elongated figures.
Maquette - In sculpture, a small model in wax or clay, made as a preliminary sketch, presented to the client for approval of the proposed work, or for entry in a competition. The Italian equivalent of the term is bozzetto, meaning small sketch.
Medieval Art - The art of the Middle Ages ca. 500 A.D. through the 14th century. The art produced immediately prior to the Renaissance.
Medium - The material used to create a work of art. Also, a term used for the binder for paint, such as oil.
Minimalism - A style of painting and sculpture in the mid 20th century in which the art elements are rendered with a minimum of lines, shapes, and sometimes color. The works may look and feel sparse, spare, restricted or empty.
Mixed Media - Descriptive of art that employs more than one medium – e.g., a work that combines paint, natural materials (wood, pebbles, bones), and man made items (glass, plastic, metals) into a single image or piece of art.
Monochromatic - Having only one color. Descriptive of work in which one hue - perhaps with variations of value and intensity - predominates.
Monotype - A one-of-a-kind print made by painting on a sheet or slab of glass and transferring the still-wet painting to a sheet of paper held firmly on the glass by rubbing the back of the paper with a smooth implement, such as a large hardwood spoon. The painting may also be done on a polished plate, in which case it may be either printed by hand or transferred to the paper by running the plate and paper through an etching press.
Montage - A picture composed of other existing illustrations, pictures, photographs, newspaper clippings, etc. that are arranged so they combine to create a new or original image. A collage.
Mosaic - An art form in which small pieces of tile, glass, or stone are fitted together and embedded into a background to create a pattern or image.
Mural - Any large-scale wall decoration done in painting, fresco, mosaic, or other medium.
Museum - A building, place or institution devoted to the acquisition, conservation, study, exhibition and educational interpretation of objects having scientific, historical or artistic value. The word Museum is derived from the Latin muses, meaning "a source of inspiration," or "to be absorbed in one's thoughts."
Narrative Painting - A painting where a story line serves as a dominant feature.
Naturalistic - Descriptive of an artwork that closely resembles forms in the natural world. Synonymous with representational.
Negative Space - The space in a painting around the objects depicted.
Neoclassicism - “New” classicism - a style in 19th century Western art that referred back to the classical styles of Greece and Rome. Neoclassical paintings have sharp outlines, reserved emotions, deliberate (often mathematical) composition, and cool colors.
Neo-Expressionism - “New” expressionism - a term originally applied to works done primarily by German and Italian artists, who came to maturity in the post-WWII era; and later expanded (in the 1980’s) to include certain American artists. Neo- Expressionist works depict intense emotions and symbolism, sometimes using unconventional media and intense colors with turbulent compositions and subject matter.
Neutral - Having no hue; black, white, or gray; sometimes a tannish color achieved by mixing two complementary colors.
Op Art - Short for Optical Art, a style popular in the 1960s that was based on optical principles and optical illusion. Op Art deals in complex color interactions, to the point where colors and lines seem to vibrate before the eyes
Overlap Effect - Spatial relationships are achieved by placing one object in front of another. The object closest to the viewer blocks out the view of any part of any other object located behind it (or, where the two objects overlap, the one in back is obscured).
Painterly - Descriptive of paintings in which forms are defined principally by color areas, not by lines or edges. Where the artist's brushstrokes are noticeable. Any image that looks as though it may have been created with the style or techniques used by a painter.
“Pep Art” – An amalgamation of Pop Art and energy painting, pioneered by modern American artist David Willardson.
Perspective - The representation of three-dimensional objects on a flat surface so as to produce the same impression of distance and relative size as that received by the human eye. In one-point linear perspective, developed during the fifteenth century, all parallel lines in a given visual field converge at a single vanishing point on the horizon. In aerial or atmospheric perspective, the relative distance of objects is indicated by gradations of tone and color and by variations in the clarity of outlines.
Photorealism - A painting and drawing style of the mid 20th century in which people, objects, and scenes are depicted with such naturalism that the paintings resemble photographs – an almost exact visual duplication of the subject.
Pictoral Space - The illusory space in a painting or other work of two-dimensional art that seems to recede backward into depth from the picture plane, giving the illusion of distance.
Picture Plane - An imaginary flat surface that is assumed to be identical to the surface of a painting. Forms in a painting meant to be perceived in deep three-dimensional space are said to be “behind” the picture plane. The picture plane is commonly associated with the foreground of a painting.
Pointillism - A branch of French Impressionism in which the principle of optical mixture or broken color was carried to the extreme of applying color in tiny dots or small, isolated strokes. Forms are visible in a pointillist painting only from a distance, when the viewer's eye blends the colors to create visual masses and outlines. The inventor and chief exponent of pointillism was George Seurat (1859-1891); the other leading figure was Paul Signac (1863-1935).
Polychromatic - Having many colors, as opposed to monochromatic which means only one hue or color.
Pop Art - A style of art which seeks its inspiration from commercial art and items of mass culture (such as comic strips, popular foods and brand name packaging). Pop art was first developed in New York City in the 1950's and soon became the dominant avant-garde art form in the United States.
Post Impressionism - A term applied to the work of several artists - French or living in France - from about 1885 to 1900. Although they all painted in highly personal styles, the Post-Impressionists were united in rejecting the relative absence of form characteristic of Impressionism and stressed more formal qualities and the significance of subject matter.
Prehistoric Art - Art forms predating recorded history, such as Old, Middle, and New Stone Ages.
Pre-Columbian - Art created in the America's by native people that pre-dates the discovery of the new world
Primary Colors - Any hue that, in theory, cannot be created by a mixture of any other hues. Varying combinations of the primary hues can be used to create all the other hues of the spectrum. In pigment the primaries are red, yellow, and blue.
Print - An image created from a master wood block, stone, plate, or screen, usually on paper. Prints are referred to as multiples, because as a rule many identical or similar impressions are made from the same printing surface, the number of impressions being called an edition. When an edition is limited to a specified number of prints, it is a limited edition. A print is considered an original work of art and today is customarily signed and numbered by the artist.
Primitive Art - Paintings and drawings of and by peoples and races outside the influence of accepted Western styles. Also, works by artists with a "naive" style often due to little, if any, training (or works intentionally made to look this way).
Realism - Any art in which the goal is to portray forms in the natural world in a highly representational manner. Specifically, an art style of the mid 19th century, which fostered the idea that everyday people and events are worthy subjects for important art.
Renaissance - The period in Europe from the 14th to the 16th century, characterized by a renewed interest in Classical art, architecture, literature, and philosophy. The Renaissance began in Italy and gradually spread to the rest of Europe. In art, it is most closely associated with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.
Representational - Works of art that closely resemble forms in the natural world. Synonymous with naturalistic
Rococo - A style of art popular in Europe in the first three quarters of the 18th century, Rococo architecture and furnishings emphasized ornate but small-scale decoration, curvilinear forms, and pastel colors. Rococo painting has a playful, light-hearted romantic quality and often pictures the aristocracy at leisure.
Romanesque - A style of architecture and art dominant in Europe from the 9th to the 12th century. Romanesque architecture, based on ancient Roman precedents, emphasizes the round arch and barrel vault.
Romanticism - A movement in Western art of the 19th century generally assumed to be in opposition to Neoclassicism. Romantic works are marked by intense colors, turbulent emotions, complex composition, soft outlines, and sometimes heroic subject matter.
Salon - Fashionable gathering of artists, writers, and intellectuals held in a private home.
Scale - Size in relation to some “normal” or constant size. Compare with proportion.
Sculpture - A three-dimensional form modeled, carved, or assembled.
Secondary Colors - A hue created by combining two primary colors, as yellow and blue mixed together yield green. In pigment the secondary colors are orange, green, and violet.
Sfumato - From the Italian work for “smoke,” a technique of painting in thin glazes to achieve a hazy, cloudy atmosphere, often to represent objects or landscape meant to be perceived as distant from the picture plane.
Simultaneous Contrast - The tendency of complementary colors to seem brighter and more intense when placed side by side.
Still Life - A painting or other two-dimensional work in which the subject matter is an arrangement of objects - fruit, flowers, tableware, pottery, and so forth - brought together for their pleasing contrasts of shape, color, and texture.
Stippling - A pattern of closely spaced dots or small marks used to create a sense of three-dimensionally on a flat surface, especially in drawing and printmaking. See also hatching, cross-hatching.
Study - A detailed drawing or painting made of one or more parts of a final composition, but not the whole work.
Style - A characteristic, or a number of characteristics that we can identify as constant, recurring, or coherent. In art, the sum of such characteristics associated with a particular artist, group, or culture, or with an artist’s work at a specific time.
Surrealism - A painting style of the early 20th century that emphasized imagery and visions from dreams and fantasies, as well as an intuitive, spontaneous method of recording such imagery, often combining unrelated or unexpected objects in compositions. The works of Magritte and Dali, and Picasso are included in the genre.
Symbol - An image or sign that represents something else, because of convention, association, or resemblance.
Symbolism - An art style developed in the late 19th century characterized by the incorporation of symbols and ideas, usually spiritual or mystical in nature, which represent the inner life of people. Traditional modeled, pictorial depictions are replaced or contrasted by flat mosaic-like surfaces decoratively embellished with figures and design elements.
Triptych - A three-part work of art; especially a painting, meant for placement on an altar, with three panels that fold together.
Trompe-L’oeil - A French term meaning "deception of the eye." A painting or other work of two-dimensional art rendered in such a photographically realistic manner as to ‘trick’ the viewer into thinking it is three-dimensional reality.
Underpainting - The traditional stage in oil painting of using a monochrome or dead color as a base for composition. Also known as laying in.
Value - The relative lightness or darkness of a hue, or of a neutral varying from white to black.
Vanishing Point - In linear perspective, the point on the horizon line where parallel lines appear to converge.
Vehicle - The entire liquid contents of a paint.
Wash - Used in watercolor painting, brush drawing, and occasionally in oil painting and sculpture to describe a broad thin layer of diluted pigment, ink, glaze or patina. Also refers to a drawing made in this technique.
Watercolor - A painting medium in which the binder is gum arabic. Water is used to thinning, lightening or mixing.
A signed print is one signed, in pencil or ink, by the artist and/or engraver of the print. A print is said to be signed in the plate if the artist's signature is incorporated into the matrix and so appears as part of the printed image.
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Stag Spotlight: Manuela Nicolini
Manuela Nicolini, a graduate student on the Fairfield University women’s volleyball team from Castelnuovo, Italy, is entering her final year of eligibility to play. It is no secret that this year will be an...
Keeping Up With Coach Kress
Kevin Stush
Todd Kress is the head coach of the Fairfield University women’s volleyball team, and this fall is his seventh consecutive season with the Stags. However, those seven seasons were not his first with...
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Phoebe Charpentier
In the past few years Fairfield University has been growing, both physically and conceptually, with new academic buildings and programs for incoming students to look forward to. One of the most recent...
Opinion: Division I Student Athletes Should Receive Unlimited Meal Swipes
While most would think it to be glamorous, the daily life of a Division I student athlete is a grind. Balancing practices, schoolwork, working out and a social life all at the same time takes an extreme level...
Volleyball Finishes Remarkable Run in Minnesota
The Fairfield University women’s volleyball team saw their 2019 season come to an end this past Friday, Nov. 23. The Stags fell short in three consecutive sets of the first round in the National Collegiate...
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The Fairfield University volleyball team had the upper hand against Marist College (12-13, 10-5 MAAC) on Wednesday, Nov. 6, Rider University (14-13, 11-4 MAAC) on Saturday, Nov. 9 and Saint Peter’s (3-25,...
Volleyball Vanquishes Weekend Opposition
Amy McDonough
Good things come in threes, and for the Fairfield University women’s volleyball team this past week proved exactly that. The Stags continued their winning streak in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference,...
Volleyball Remains Untouchable in MAAC
The volleyball team at Fairfield University remains undefeated 8-0 in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, marking the halfway point in conference play. They go 14-4 overall succeeding a pair of conference...
Fairfield Conquers Conference Competition
The Fairfield University women’s volleyball team (9-4) went up against Iona College women’s volleyball (1-14) on Sunday, Oct. 6. Fairfield won three consecutive sets in the Metro Atlantic Athletic...
The Fairfield Mirror
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Tag: Get On Up
August 8th, 2014 — 10:31pm
Get On Up –rm This is the story of a young boy from rural Georgia who was abandoned by his parents, raised by madam from a brothel, fascinated by the gospel music in the local church and ultimately became the godfather of soul music. It is about a young man who spent time in jail, who essentially only had himself to rely on and yet always had tremendous belief in himself to the point of being self-centered, egotistical or narcissistic if you will. But in this case, he had the goods. He became a music legend he of course is James Brown.
The film is the brain child of Brian Glazer who is a well known movie and television producer who combined his talent with the skills of another music legend Mick Jagger, who has acknowledged being a great fan and being influenced himself by Brown. Jagger brought his music skills to the film as producer and music director. There are at least two more essential ingredients to this biopic and that would be director Tate Taylor (The Help) and Chadwick Boseman who previously starred as Jackie Robinson in 42.and now becomes James Brown. He does this by his speaking voice, mannerisms and learning the distinctive choreography of Brown’s movements during song and everyday life. This includes his swagger as well as his splits and the special way he whipped a microphone around. There also was some very skillful lip-synching accomplished by Boseman and the actors who played his band and backup singers since the great singing in this movie was the original voice of James Brown.
In addition to Boseman there was some great acting that needs to be acknowledged. Lennie James play Brown’s tough and angry father while Viola Davis was the woman inside the mother of Brown who loved him. yet abandoned and rejected him but still tried to come back when he was a success. Octavia Spencer was the madam in the brothel who took him in and more or less had the heart of gold. Dan Aykroyd was Ben Bart the white Jewish agent who became very close to Brown throughout much of his career and was called papa by him. Neisan Ellis was Bobby Byrd one the most loyal members of the original Flames which was Brown’s first groupbefore Brown became a phenomenon by himself. Brown’s complicated relationship with Byrd reflects his self-image of seeing himself as something very special but yet having a lingering need for close friendship that he may never have found.
On one hand the film used flashbacks to effectively show the genesis of Brown’s unique character but yet they seemed to abruptly pull us away from the engrossing music and the story of how Brown was rising to the top, dealing with racial issues including the country’s response to the death of Martin Luther King as well as how Brown faltered in his personal life. There were many backup players moving in an out of Brown entourage as well as various women and children We could not always be sure who they were in his life which might be defect in the film. In addition, we and at least one other person agreed that the conversations of Brown and some others were not always understandable which could be the dialect, or an audio problem but would seem to be a flaw. The running time of the film was 2 hours and 18 minutes and while we can’t say what should have been cut, it probably could have been shorter. However,we have no complaints in re-experiencing the great music and moves of the incomparable James Brown.(2014)
Comment » | 3 Stars, Biography, Drama, Musical
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Back to Fiona's Finding Service
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ALEXANDER, 8TH LORD REAY
When Lord Eric sold the estate in 1829, no proper provision was made for his brother and successor in the title, the Hon. Alexander. This is what the Rev. Dr. Macintosh Mackay, an intimate acquaintance of Lord Alexander, writes in the Ben Reay Notes : -
"Lord Eric's younger brother, Alexander, then a Major in the army, with a numerous family, got not one farthing of the proceeds of the sale. He was left destitute and worse than destitute - he was imposed upon by being made to believe that his brother purchased an estate for him in Demarara, a Negro estate ! But on that estate being examined, it was found pledged to the teeth, and was sold by judgment of the Court for its debts - debts which were not covered by the sale. A natural daughter of Eric's married a baronet in Hertfordshire. She was dowered by her father and made very rich, while his brother Alexander, with his whole family, was left pennyless."
His Lordship served for some time in the Gordon Highlanders, but on the embodiment of the 93rd or Sutherland Highlanders he joined that corps as a captain, and in 1815 was retired on half-pay and the rank of major. He afterwards held the rank of Barrack-Master of Malta.
Lord Alexander married, 8th Apr 1809, Marion, daughter of Colonel Gall, Military Secretary to Warren Hastings, and widow of David Ross, Calcutta, eldest son of Lord Ankerville, a judge of the Court of Session.
Lord Reay, who died in 1863, had by her the following children: -
George Alexander, died 1811
Eric, who succeeded
Anne Marion, died 1852
Sophia, married in 1852 Charles Arthur Aylmer, and died in London without issue in 1866. As she had expressed a desire to be buried beside her great-grandfather, Am Morair Mor, her body was re-interred in the Reay vault at Tongue on Monday, 9th Sep 1867, when a huge concourse of people attended the obsequies from all parts of Strathnaver. It was the last burial in the Reay vault; and on the preceding Sabbath the Rev. Dr. Macintosh Mackay preached the funeral sermon, which was afterwards published, in the Free Church of Tongue to as many people as could be packed into the building.
Mary, died 1852
Clara, died 1862
Elizabeth, died 1862
Charlotte, married John Drever of the India Civil Service, and died without issue in 1852.
e-mail to:fnsnclr@btinternet.com
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Michael Takeo Magruder
Resident Artist
< Back to Gazelli
Takeo _ Bio
Michael Takeo Magruder (b.1974, US/UK) is a visual artist and researcher who works with new media including real-time data, digital archives, immersive environments, mobile devices and virtual worlds. His practice explores concepts ranging from media criticism and aesthetic journalism to digital formalism and computational aesthetics, deploying Information Age technologies and systems to examine our networked, media-rich world.
In the last 15 years, Michael’s projects have been showcased in over 250 exhibitions in 34 countries, and his art has been supported by numerous funding bodies and public galleries within the UK, US and EU. In 2010, Michael was selected to represent the UK at Manifesta 8: the European Biennial of Contemporary Art and several of his most well-known digital artworks were added to the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art at Cornell University. More recently, he was a Leverhulme Trust artist-in-residence (2013-14) collaborating with Professor Ben Quash (Theology, King’s College London) and Alfredo Cramerotti (Director, Mostyn) to research and develop a new solo exhibition – entitled De/coding the Apocalypse – exploring contemporary creative visions inspired by and based on the Book of Revelation. In 2014, Michael was commissioned by the UK-based theatre company Headlong to create two new artworks – PRISM (a new media installation reflecting on Headlong’s production of George Orwell’s 1984) and The Nether Realm (a living virtual world inspired by Jennifer Haley’s play The Nether). The following year, he was awarded the 2015 Immersive Environments Lumen Prize for his virtual reality installation A New Jerusalem. Michael is currently artist-in-residence at the British Library, undertaking an arts-research project – entitled Imaginary Cities – that involves the creative examination of digital map archives drawn from the Library’s 1 Million Images from Scanned Books collection.
For further information about Michael’s work, visit www.takeo.org.
See All Works
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High Heat, Humidity Could Affect More Than 1.2 Billion People by End of Century
TUESDAY, March 24, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- As the Earth continues to warm from climate change, an estimated 1.2 billion people will be affected by heat stress from extreme heat and humidity by 2100, a new study predicts.
That is four times more people than are affected today and over 12 times more than would have been affected if climate change hadn't happened, researchers say.
"When we look at the risks of a warmer planet, we need to pay particular attention to combined extremes of heat and humidity, which are especially dangerous to human health," senior author Robert Kopp said in a Rutgers University news release. He is a professor and director of the Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences in New Brunswick, N.J.
Heat stress occurs when the body can't cool down properly through sweating. When body temperature rises quickly, the brain and other organs can suffer damage. Heat stress can cause heat rash and heat cramps or heat exhaustion. But heat stroke can be deadly.
For the study, researchers modeled various climate simulations.
They found that if the planet warms by 3 degrees Fahrenheit, extreme heat and humidity could affect places where about 500 million people live today. If temperatures rose 4 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly 800 million people would be affected.
The planet has already warmed 2 degrees Fahrenheit above levels from the late-19th century, the researchers noted.
An estimated 1.2 billion people would be affected if the Earth warmed by 5 degrees Fahrenheit, which is expected by the end of the century.
"Every bit of global warming makes hot, humid days more frequent and intense. In New York City, for example, the hottest, most humid day in a typical year already occurs about 11 times more frequently than it would have in the 19th century," said lead author Dawei Li, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The report was published recently in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
For more on heat stress, head to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
SOURCE: Rutgers University, news release, March 12, 2020
Inova Trauma Center
Emergency and Urgent Care Services
Heat-Related Illnesses (Heat Cramps, Heat Exhaustion, Heat Stroke)
A Dangerous Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria May Now Lurk in U.S. Water, Soil
Affection, at Least for Women, May Be Rooted in Genes
AHA News: Farms Flourish and Nourish in Philadelphia Neighborhood
Air Pollution Made in One State Can Cause Deaths in Others
Heat Stroke Quiz
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Pandemic Having More Impact on U.S. Hospitals Than Thought: Study
FRIDAY, May 29, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the United States spend more time in the hospital and are more likely to require intensive care than patients in China, a new study says.
The findings suggest that the coronavirus pandemic may be putting greater strain on U.S. hospitals than previously assumed, according to researchers.
"The hospital resources needed to meet the needs of severely ill patients are substantial," said lead author Joseph Lewnard, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley.
"We found that observations from China may not provide a sufficient basis for anticipating the U.S. health care demand," he said in a university news release.
Lewnard and his colleagues analyzed the medical records of nearly 1,300 Kaiser Permanente members in California and Washington state who were hospitalized with confirmed cases of COVID-19 between the start of the year and early April.
Of those, 42% required intensive care, and 18% died of COVID-19. Estimates from China suggested that about 30% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients will require intensive care.
The researchers said their findings show the need to gather data in different regions and health care settings worldwide. They warned against relying on models based on data from other countries.
"The spread of COVID-19 and its impact on local health care systems show differences across the world," said study co-author Vincent Liu, a research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Northern California.
He pointed out that health care systems differ and their capabilities and structure affect local response. As a result, it's important to understand how local data compare to the experience seen in other countries.
The study also provided more evidence that older people are hit hardest by COVID-19. About 50% of hospitalizations were among adults 60 and older, and 25% among adults 73 and older.
And men seemed to be at greater risk than women. Hospitalized men older than 80 had a 58% risk of death, while the risk was 32% among hospitalized women of the same age.
The study did have some positive findings, showing that social distancing measures are successfully "flattening the curve" of new coronavirus transmission.
"Those efforts are going to be critical for this next phase, in which social distancing measures are gradually relaxed," Liu said in the release. "We need our communities to stay really engaged, because these data show that even the actions of individuals and small groups can really impact the spread of the virus."
The study was published online May 26 in the BMJ.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19.
SOURCE: University of California, Berkeley, news release, May 26, 2020
Choosing a Hospital
1 in 4 Gets Unneeded Antibiotics at Children's Hospitals
1 in 5 Hospitalized NYC COVID-19 Patients Needed ICU Care
11 States Could Face ICU Doc Shortages as Coronavirus Cases Surge
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Larry Preddy, BSP
Larry was born in St. Joseph’s Hospital in Estevan. Larry lived in Tribune, Saskatchewan until 1961 when the Preddy family moved to Estevan. Larry graduated from Estevan Collegiate Institute in 1965 and entered the College of Pharmacy at the University of Saskatchewan, graduating with his Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy in 1969. After graduation Larry began his pharmacy career at the Estevan Co-op Pharmacy, leaving there to manage the White Cross Drug Store in Estevan. Larry went on to work for Federated Co-operatives in Saskatoon and eventually returned to White Cross Drugs in Estevan. After a brief stint working for Bi-Rite Drugs in Estevan Larry and Allen purchased Henders Drugs on January 1, 1985 and he has worked there ever since.
Larry has been involved with many local and provincial organizations over the years. He spent almost 10 years on the Southeast Health District Board of Directors, has spent many years on the PharmaChoice Board of Directors and is currently the chairman of the Economics Committee for the Pharmacist’s Association of Saskatchewan.
Larry is a PACT trained pharmacist (trained to aid with smoking cessation) and is trained in the area of Prescriptive Authority for Pharmacists, including Emergency Contraception.
Away from work, Larry enjoys fishing, gardening, walking, volunteering at Woodlawn Regional Park and spending time with his 3 Miniature Schnauzers – Jake, Rx and Bella.
Allen Miller, BSP
Allen was born in Carlyle. He graduated from the College of Pharmacy at the University of Saskatchewan in 1970. He has worked at Henders Drugs since he was an apprentice in 1965.
Allen is a PACT certified pharmacist and qualified for Prescriptive Authority, including emergency contraception.
Allen enjoys golfing, belongs to the Estevan Elks club and is an avid Saskatchewan Roughrider fan.
Dawn Marie Sloan-Beahm
Dawn Marie graduated from the College of Pharmacy at the University of Saskatchewan in 1989. Originally from Fairholme, Sk., she worked at a variety of locations during her apprenticeships including: Anderson Pharmacy in North Battelford, Maidstone Pharmacy in Maidstone, Leonard Fysh Drugs in Moose Jaw and Shoppers Drug Mart in Saskatoon. Upon graduation, she was recruited by the Federated Co-op Management Training Program. After spending six months training in Rosetown, Sk., she served a short-term staff pharmacist position at the Lloydminster Co-op before taking over as Pharmacy Manager at the Estevan Co-op (now known as the Southern Plains Co-op) in January of 1990. She stepped down to the staff pharmacist position in 1995 due to a desire to reduce her work hours to allow for marriage and a family. In February of 2003, the pharmacy department at the Co-op was closed due to the pharmacist shortage issues of that time, and Dawn Marie came to work at Henders Drugs.
During her time at the Estevan Co-op, Dawn Marie recruited and trained several new pharmacy graduates, initiated an “Ask Your Pharmacist” column in the local newspaper, and was twice published in the Pharmacy Post magazine. She has spent volunteer time in the Quota Club of Estevan, the Estevan Golden Eels Swim Club, St. John the Baptist Parish, is a member of the Catholic School Community Council for her childrens’ school and holds a seat on the Urban Aboriginal Grant Committee. She has spoken as an educator for various groups on many issues including “Mr. Finley’s Pharmacy” which educates grade-school children about what a pharmacist does, safe medication use at the senior housing complexes, contraception options for a high school sex education class, “Brand vs Generic” to a high school economics class, what it takes to become a pharmacist at Career Days, smoking cessation for the Relay for Life fundraisers, and “Arthritis Medications” for the Arthritis Society of Saskatchewan.
Dawn Marie has a special interest in Pediatric Medicine. Because two of her children have asthma, she has paid particular attention to keeping up to date on the latest asthma treatment protocols. She has also been trained as a PACT pharmacist for smoking cessation and as a Pharmacist Prescriber.
Dawn Marie is married and has four children. Her very busy family have been able to take advantage of the many sports, cultural and arts activities available within this diverse community. Her hobbies include camping with her family, reading, singing, sewing and photographing her family.
Travis Maley
Travis enjoys practicing pharmacy which stems from a lifelong passion for science and the pursuit of knowledge. He is also proud to be a part of the community of Estevan. To have a job that not only provides new challenges each day, but also allows him the opportunity to work with and interact with such amazing people makes him feel very fortunate.
Marcy joined the Henders staff in 2017 as a pharmacy assistant. She now has over 15 years experience in compliance packaging, filling prescriptions, cycle counting & customer service in a pharmacy setting. Marcy and her husband moved to the Estevan area in 2006. They both enjoy camping, boating and working around the yard in their spare time.
Joanne has been with Henders forever (over 25 years). She works the front store and takes care of deliveries and numerous other jobs. Customer service is her specialty. People come in just to say hello and visit with her. In her downtime you will find her at the golf course , in her beautiful yard, crocheting, or doing puzzles.
Peggy and Jean
Jean and Peggy were both hired by Henders Drugs in 1985. They are responsible for the daily operation of the front store, sharing management duties including staffing, ordering all front store products, giftware and customer relations. They have worked as a team for the better part of 26 years. They bring a wealth of experience in operating the front store. Peggy does the decorating, painting and general handyman work around the store making her a great asset. Jean works in the pharmacy doing patient compliance packs and does general administration such as received on accounts, accounts paid, payroll and daily upkeep.
Peggy enjoys running in marathons, gardening and painting for hobbies.
Jean does volunteer work with several organizations, gardens and spends time with her grandchildren.
Marty Miller is the Nurse Manager of the Health and Wellness Clinic at Henders Drugs. She brings a varied background both in education and job experience to the position.
Marty graduated as an LPN from the Saskatchewan Institute of Arts and Science, Kelsey Campus, nursing program in 1972 and worked at St. Joseph’s Hospital in a variety of departments from the Alcohol and Drug Addiction Treatment Centre to an Obstetrics/Surgery Rotation from 1972-1995.
Marty received her Social Work Designation from the University of Waterloo, 1994.
She filled the position of Coordinator Victim Services South East Regional Victim Services from 1995-1998. Her next position was Parent Resource Coordinator for Estevan from 1998-2006.
Marty manages the Health and Wellness Clinic at Henders Drugs.
1220 – 4th Street
Estevan, SK S4A 0W9
Email: henders@pharmachoice.ca
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YOUR PORTFOLIO DESIGN: ASSUME THE FETAL POSITION / JOHN MAULDIN´S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
| Etiquetas: Black Swans, Credit Bubbles, Economics, Eurasia, Investment Strategies, Recession, Stock Markets, The Fed, World Economic And Political
Your Portfolio Design: Assume the Fetal Position
Somehow in the last few months I found myself going from merely concerned about developed-world markets to outright advocating defensive positions. I thought some of the presentations at my Strategic Investment Conference would cheer me up. They did not.
In fact, what I heard from economists, portfolio strategists, analysts, and hedge fund managers made me even more bearish. Yes, this conference by its nature tends to dwell on risks. The people I invite are successful precisely because they know how to spot (and avoid) macroeconomic risks.
This year’s crowd was generally gloomy (with some notable and vigorous exceptions), though I didn’t sense any panic. It was more frustration at the lack of clarity and choices, coupled with general concern that there is a major central bank policy error brewing. One of my associates captured the mood with this tweet on the second day.
https://twitter.com/PatrickW/status/735582566762336256
(We had several excellent sponsors, but I didn’t think to invite any antidepressant companies. We may do that next year.)
Now, you could take a contrarian view and say that “bad” is actually bullish. You might even be right – but I don’t think so. Bullish/bearish isn’t a binary state. There are always shades of gray. You can be bullish on some assets and bearish on others.
You can think the stock market is generally overpriced but still see value in certain stocks. You can be positive on some countries and negative on others.
In fact, most speakers had at least one if not several investment classes they were quite bullish on rather than US stocks. Mark Yusko asked the three ETF portfolio construction panelists to name their favorite country ETF. I was actually surprised when all three answered with the same country – India. There were several very positive comments on Mexico and the business climate and opportunities there.
There was even a mention (by former Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher) of how efficient their regulators and bureaucracies were. Not something we hear about the US or Europe.
I think we are often pessimistic because we want easy answers. We want to either buy stocks or sell them and then do something else. Successful investing isn’t so simple. You have to observe, analyze, and consider the alternatives before you come up with the right solutions.
Sometimes you can go through that process and still end up bearish on almost everything. Richard Fisher seems to be in that camp. Asked in our final wrap-up panel Friday morning how his own portfolio was positioned, Fisher answered with one word: “Fetal.” And while his answer got a general laugh and a lot of pushback on the final panel from Niall Ferguson, who thinks he sees the beginning of an inflection point, it seemed a pretty good summary of the conference. I think most people walked away trying to think how they could position their portfolios more defensively.
My own suggestion was to diversify among trading strategies rather than among long-only asset classes, a theme that we will explore in a future letter.
Why So Nervous?
You don’t often hear such candor from people like Fisher. He’s been in the banking system’s top tier for a long time and is hardly a permabear. He earned his reputation as a monetary hawk because he thought the economy was strong enough to handle higher interest rates.
Fisher also has a good bubble-spotting record. I discussed one of his speeches in a 2006 letter I called “Honey, I Created a Bubble.” Even then, he talked about the housing market entering a correction. We only later learned how painful a bubble’s bursting could be.
More recently, Fisher earned headlines last January when he claimed that the Fed had “front-loaded a tremendous market rally” in 2009. Here is a three-minute video you should watch.
Fisher’s SIC comments were broadly consistent with what you hear in the video. He thinks the markets will take a long time to digest the Fed-driven bubble, and in the meantime he is very cautious. Markets are fragile, and any kind of shock could get ugly. I believe that is what he meant by the “fetal” comment.
We will get into what those shocks might possibly be in a moment, but this seems to be a good time to bring up today’s job report. It indicated a shockingly disappointing 38,000 new jobs, with a downward revision of 59,000 jobs to the two prior month’s reports.
Some 458,000 people left the job market, which is what pushed the unemployment rate down to 4.7%. The 3-month average is now just 116,000 versus the 6-month average of 170,000 and the 12-month average of ~200,000.
The Federal Reserve had been making noises as though they might finally raise rates at the June meeting or at the July meeting at latest. It is very hard for me now to imagine them doing so. We’re watching the unfolding one of the greatest policy errors in central banking history. Not having taken the opportunity to raise rates during 2014 when new jobs were averaging 250,000, the Fed may now have waited too long, such that any rate increase, no matter how trivial, becomes a shock.
This was actually one of the main points of my own speech, that during the next global recession we’re going to see the most massive combined policy errors by central banks ever witnessed. All will not end well.
If somehow (in a world turned upside down) a President Donald Trump asked me for my recommendation as to a new Federal Reserve chairman, Richard Fisher would be on my very short list. I’m not certain he is masochistic enough to want to do it, but he is patriotic enough that he might step once more into the breach for the good of the country. (My suggestion would be the same to a President Hillary Clinton, but I would bet that the European Central Bank’s raising rates next month into positive territory is lots more likely than my ever being approached by a Democratic president on economic policy.)
What might the shocks be that Richard Fisher was alluding to? Anatole Kaletsky of Gavekal listed three global economic risk factors in his SIC remarks. Annoyingly, all three are political. I say “annoyingly” because I’m old enough to remember when governments did not pretend to control the world economy. Now governments everywhere are bigger and more ambitious, as are central banks. They still can’t control the economy, but leaders think they can, and their attempts usually make things worse.
You can watch the short video above, but in summary Anatole’s potential trouble spots are
The June 23 “Brexit” vote in the UK
US elections on November 7
German elections in mid-2017.
Any one of these has the potential to spark major economic disruption. Richard Fisher said most people underestimate Brexit’s consequences. Departing from the European Union would force the UK to renegotiate hundreds of treaty agreements on everything from airport landing rights to bank settlements. Currently the UK is one of the developed world’s strongest economies. A win by the “leave” side could stop that trend, even if Brexit ultimately works out for the best.
I have friends on both sides of Brexit, by the way; and as an American I don’t get to vote. Nor does Richard Fisher. I will respect whatever decision the UK voters make.
Their house, their rules. Regardless, their choice will affect the whole world. Just as many international readers are unsettled by the concept of a Donald Trump presidency, my English readers should understand the concerns of those who look upon the Brexit vote in much the same way. Brexit will bring changes to the system, if it happens, and we’re not sure how those changes will affect us and whether they will be good.
The same is true, possibly more so, if American voters send Donald Trump to the White House. Whatever you think about Hillary Clinton (and I will admit I don’t think much), she is at least a known quantity. Nothing she does is likely to rattle the markets. Trump, should he win, will bring an entirely new way for Washington to operate (and that is not necessarily bad). His trade, immigration, tax, and foreign policies could be quite unlike what anyone alive today has seen before.
David Rosenberg, for his part, thinks Trump will be good for the economy but bad for Wall Street. Watch this:
While we’re talking about Trump, you might also like these clips from George Friedman and Pippa Malmgren.
Eurasian Headache
George Friedman was as geopolitically negative as some of the other speakers were on the economy. He thinks the Eurasian landmass, home to most of the human race, is falling apart. The European “Union” is a troubled relationship at best and could soon see an ugly breakup. Russia is struggling to find balance in a post-Soviet, post-oil world. China has to make a tough transition away from its export boom years and build a sustainable domestic economy. And Middle East problems continue to foment.
The German problem Anatole Kaletsky listed as a key risk is on Friedman’s radar screen, too. Friedman believes Germany is far too dependent on exports that are now dwindling as its customers tighten their belts – and that is before we enter a global recession. The situation might be manageable if other challenges weren’t also demanding attention.
Merkel may have successfully papered over the Greek debt problem, but she won’t be so lucky with much larger Italy. The banking system there is completely unsustainable. (George and I have shared notes and discussions on this topic. The picture in Italy is much more serious than the mainstream media is portraying).
The refugee crisis is going to get worse before it gets better, and frictions will likely strengthen Germany’s right-wing and nativist political parties. Presently they are no threat to Merkel’s leadership but could well become so after 2017 elections.
A renewed NATO Cold War against Russia is forcing Germany to increase defense spending and devote more attention to foreign policy at the precise time it really needs to get its home situation straight.
As pessimistic as George was on Eurasia, he was almost equally positive on the New World. He thinks the Canada/US/Mexico trade zone is the world’s economic center of gravity. No one else has the same combination of domestic demand, technology, innovation, innovation, and political stability. Yes, we have problems, not least of which is the massive debt we accrued in the course of reaching this dominant position. Other than Brazil (and the distressingly sad case of Venezuela), however, the Americas are in far better shape than Europe, Asia, or Africa.
Party Like It’s 1999
After the first day’s generally negative talks by analysts and economists, everyone was ready for a real-world view. How did someone who actually manages real money see the situation? We had several panels and speakers on that topic. Let’s focus on one – my good friend Mark Yusko, who heads Morgan Creek Capital Management. He manages billions and pioneered the endowment approach many universities now take with their portfolios. Surely, you might think, someone in his position would have a more enlightened view than those bearish economists.
Enlightened, yes, but hardly bullish. Mark poured cold water on whatever bullishly warm feelings the audience may have clung to. He listed not one but ten plausible scenarios that could send markets down to the basement. I will focus on his “Surprise #6: Déjà vu, Welcome to #2000.2.0.”
That’s right: Mark says it’s year 2000 all over again. That was when the tech bubble popped and sparked an ugly bear market and recession.
This theme resonated for me because this very newsletter actually grew out of my late-1990s updates on the Y2K problem. In a sea of pundits forecasting either doomsday or no problems at all, I was firmly in the middle and believed that the combination of economic imbalances (including the tech bubble) and computer glitches would land us in a recession. All my research told me we would see some problems and disruptions but not the collapse of civilization. That call turned out to be right. Even more amazingly, the portfolios I suggested in my book at the time, The Y2K Recession, turned out to be right on target. I don’t think I have ever been as lucky with my prognostications since that time.
Among the disruptions, however, was the Federal Reserve’s move to withdraw the liquidity it had pumped into the system for those who expected a payment system breakdown and thus hoarded physical cash. Alan Greenspan took the fed funds rate from 5.4% on Y2K day to 6.5% in October 2000.
(Younger readers will do a double-take on those numbers. Yes, borrowing overnight money once cost more than 6%. Furthermore, the Fed is perfectly capable of hiking rates 100 basis points or more in less than a year. Or at least it used to be.)
The bear market that followed was, at the time, the most significant anyone had seen since the early 1980s. High-flying tech stocks crashed, one after the other; and Bill Clinton’s move to release Human Genome Project data sent the biotechnology sector up in flames. It was a painful time that no one who lived through it wishes to repeat – but Mark Yusko thinks we will repeat it, starting now. Here’s one of the 100 or so slides from his presentation.
In the 2000–2003 period we had the tech bubble bursting, corporate scandals like Enron, the 9/11 attacks, and an honest-to-God, old-fashioned, job-killing recession. I remember at the time how everyone kept thinking, “Ok, this has been bad, but it’s over now.” But it wasn’t over. After repeated fake-outs and final capitulation, we finally emerged from the muck (just in time to start an unsustainable housing bubble, but that’s another story). It was at the end of that recession that I coined the term Muddle-Through Economy.
One thing people forget is that we had a very accommodative Fed during that time. As I said above, Greenspan pushed short rates up to 6.5% in September 2000. Just a year later, he had them down to 3% and ultimately to 1% in mid-2003. That Fed was willing to move at light speed if it thought it necessary, unlike more recent regimes.
Another eerie parallel Mark noted was in corporate earnings. Observe the red dashed line in this chart.
The shaded areas are the last two recessions. We see that earnings peaked a few quarters ahead of each recessionary period, then slid deeply into negative territory before recovering as the recession ended.
This time around we seem to be about halfway down to the trough. It’s entirely possible we are in a recession right now and don’t know it yet. The start date is discernible only in hindsight.
Margin debt is another bad sign. The red area in the left chart below shows how debit balances build up right along with market peaks.
Again, right now we appear to be in a place much like the early stages of the last two bear markets.
Finally, 2016 also marks the eighth year of the presidential cycle. The average stock return for the eighth year of all US presidential terms since 1901 is -14%. So if you liked 2000 and 2008, you should love the way 2016 ends (gulp). (By the way, I admit that there are not many data points to actually determine whether there is anything to the eighth year of the presidential cycle. The chart might just be data mining to make your bearish argument look good. Then again…)
So where in all this do we find any hope? Mark explained in his voluminous quarterly outlook (read it here, and please note that you have to get to page 27 before you actually begin the analysis. The first part is a comparison of Prince and Shakespeare to the markets. Fun reading, though…)
In the equity markets, gains most often happen slowly and losses usually happen quickly. You can see this in the numbers, as the average bull market is much longer than the average bear market (more than five times longer at 97 months versus 18 months). Therefore, it is critical to always be looking for long opportunities, especially during the brief corrective periods (when things go on sale). To reiterate a point we have discussed in prior letters which was a paraphrase of the line from The Merry Wives of Windsor, “The essential problem that we highlighted last quarter is that when it comes to bubbles and crises, you can be a few hours early, but you can’t be one minute late.”
To use another old quote, the time to buy is when blood is running in the streets. If, like Mark Yusko, you are already in defensive positions (or in Richard Fisher’s fetal position), you will soon have some excellent buying opportunities. Those with less foresight are going to dump some valuable assets, not because they want to but because they have no choice. They’ll need the liquidity.
What should you buy? That’s not entirely clear yet, nor will we be able to catch the precise bottom. As they say, no one will ring a bell. But if Mark Yusko is right, the chance ought to arrive in the next year or so.
I could go on for another hundred pages sharing the new information we heard at SIC. I think you have a lot to chew on, though, plus some videos to watch and re-watch, so I’ll leave it there. More next week.
A funny thing about the fetal position: babies eventually find their way out of the darkness and into the real world. They encounter pain and tears on the journey but are always glad they made it.
We who go through the coming economic rebirth will likewise feel some pain. Yet the pain will have a purpose. It will end in due course, and we’ll have a new world to enjoy.
New York, Cleveland, and Home
I am finishing this letter while flying in an old US Airways plane that has now been given the new American Airlines logo – but it’s still an old plane. My girlfriend (her name is Shane, by the way) and I will be landing soon in Philadelphia and driving to Princeton, New Jersey, to help her son check out of boarding school. We will also watch him play baseball for what is known as a travel team. For those of you not familiar, travel teams are teams put together from among the best players in an area, and they travel and play tournaments against other travel teams, honing their skills. Many of these young men go on to earn scholarships at colleges, and some even make the pros.
Later this weekend or Monday morning I head for New York for a round of meetings, ending in one of those great dinners with friends like Art Cashin, Jack Rivkin, Richard Yamarone (I hope), and a few players to be named later, where we will dissect the world and all its problems.
Then I’ll be back home and working on my seemingly endless to do list. My full intention is not to travel all that much this summer until I finish my book. I am going to make one potential exception. My doctor and close friend Michael Roizen has down-front box seats to the Cleveland Cavaliers. As NBA basketball fans know, the Cavaliers are in the finals with the Golden State Warriors. Golden State has home court advantage, so games three, four, and a possible sixth will be played in Cleveland.
I have personally experienced the electricity and excitement in the small arena and an NBA game six just twice, both times with my own Mavericks. There is nothing more exciting than a game seven. I can assure myself of getting to attend at least one of the playoff games by choosing either three or four. That would be the safe choice. But I don’t think either team can close it out in five games (for non-NBA fans, it is a best-of-seven series, which means you have to win four), so I am going to gamble that it goes to at least game six and hope that Cleveland can close it out while I am in the arena. I think that is worth losing a day of book production. You have to have priorities.
You have a great week. Technically speaking, summer doesn’t start for another few weeks, but somehow for me summer has always begun with the first of June. Here’s wishing your summer is pleasant and full of fun.
Your thinking about hedges analyst,
THE ECB´S ILLUSORY INDEPENDENCE / PROJECT SYNDICATE
| Etiquetas: ECB, Economics, Europe Economic and Political, Greece
The ECB’s Illusory Independence
ATHENS – A commitment to the independence of central banks is a vital part of the creed that “serious” policymakers are expected to uphold (privatization, labor-market “flexibility,” and so on). But what are central banks meant to be independent of? The answer seems obvious: governments.
In this sense, the European Central Bank is the quintessentially independent central bank: No single government stands behind it, and it is expressly prohibited from standing behind any of the national governments whose central bank it is. And yet the ECB is the least independent central bank in the developed world.
The key difficulty is the ECB’s “no bailout” clause – the ban on aiding an insolvent member-state government. Because commercial banks are an essential source of funding for member governments, the ECB is forced to refuse liquidity to banks domiciled in insolvent members. Thus, the ECB is founded on rules that prevent it from serving as lender of last resort.
The Achilles heel of this arrangement is the lack of insolvency procedures for euro members. When, for example, Greece became insolvent in 2010, the German and French governments denied its government the right to default on debt held by German and French banks. Greece’s first “bailout” was used to make French and German banks whole. But doing so deepened Greece’s insolvency.
It was at this point that the ECB’s lack of independence was fully exposed. Since 2010, the Greek government has been relying on a sequence of loans that it can never repay to maintain a façade of solvency. A truly independent ECB, adhering to its own rules, should have refused to accept as collateral all debt liabilities guaranteed by the Greek state – government bonds, treasury bills, and the more than €50 billion ($56 billion) of IOUs that Greece’s banks have issued to remain afloat.
Of course, such a refusal would close down Greek banks and lead immediately to Greece’s exit from the eurozone, because the government would be forced to issue its own liquidity.
The only alternative would be a meaningful debt restructuring to end Greece’s insolvency.
Alas, Europe’s political establishment, unwilling to adopt either option, has chosen to extend Greece’s insolvency – which it pretends has been resolved through new loan tranches.
The ECB’s ongoing acquiescence in the extend-and-pretend charade demanded by Greece’s creditors has demolished its claim to be independent. To keep Greece’s banks open, and accept their government-guaranteed collateral, the ECB is obliged to grant Greek debt an exemption from its no-insolvency rule. And, to keep the noose firmly around Greece’s neck, Germany insists that this exemption is conditional on its approval – or, in euro-speak, that the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers confirms that “Greece’s fiscal consolidation and reform program are on track.”
So, in effect, it is politicians that tell the ECB when to cut off liquidity to an entire banking system. While the ECB can claim independence vis-à-vis insolvent, peripheral governments, it is entirely at the mercy of the governments of Europe’s creditor countries.
To illustrate the ECB’s conundrum, it is worthwhile revisiting the creditors’ treatment of the Greek government elected in January 2015. By December 2014, it had become clear that the previous government was on its last legs and that the leftist Syriza party was on its way to power. The governor of Greece’s central bank, an arm of the ECB, “predicted” that markets were facing a liquidity squeeze, implying that a Syriza victory would render the banking system unsafe – a statement that would be inane were it not calculated to start a bank run.
By the time I became Finance Minister that February, after Syriza’s electoral victory, the bank run was in full swing and stocks were in free fall. The reason, of course, was the common knowledge that Germany, vehemently opposed to our government, was about to switch off the green light required by the ECB to maintain the exemptions allowing it to accept Greek collateral.
To stabilize the situation, I flew to London to address financiers with a message of moderation and sensible policies regarding both reforms and debt restructuring. The following morning, the stock exchange rebounded 13%, bank shares rose by more than 20%, and the bank run ceased.
On that day, the ECB, pressured by Germany, rescinded an important part of its exemption, thereby cutting off Greek banks’ direct access to the ECB and diverting them to pricier financing from Greece’s central bank (so-called emergency liquidity assistance).
Unsurprisingly, stock prices plummeted and the bank run returned with a vengeance, bleeding €45 billion of deposits out of the system over the next few months. Meanwhile, Germany and other creditors began to push Greece to accept new austerity measures as the price of reversing the “ECB’s” decision.
This was not the ECB’s only politically driven intervention. Equally aggressive was its decision to curtail Greek banks’ spending on government treasuries, by instructing them to refuse debt rollovers. This diminished my ministry’s capacity to repay the International Monetary Fund, which was insisting on drastic pension cuts and on the removal of the last protections for Greek workers.
For five months, as the ECB’s noose tightened, we resisted German and IMF demands for further austerity. Finally, the complete cessation of all liquidity to Greece’s banks in June 2015 forced their closure. This was followed by the final push to divide our government and force the prime minister to capitulate – as he did, accepting the latest extend-and-pretend loan of €85 billion.
Almost a year later, Greece’s creditors were pushing for even greater austerity in exchange for more loan tranches. At this point, Greece’s central-bank governor (who had triggered the original bank run in December 2014) publicly alleged that our government’s stance until June 2015 caused the loss of €45 billion worth of deposits, the ensuing bank closures, and the new extend-and-pretend loans. The bully was blaming the victim, and the ECB was openly embracing its role as enforcer for its political masters: the creditors.
The eurozone’s current design makes ECB independence impossible. Worse, the pretense of independence serves as a fig leaf for interventions that are not only politically driven, but that are also utterly inconsistent with the principles of liberal democracy.
http://prosyn.org/ocdyTLW
THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY: GUNS, WEED AND RELEVANCE / THE ECONOMIST
| Etiquetas: Libertarian Party, U.S. Economic And Political
Guns, weed and relevance
Gary Johnson could launch the Libertarians on a big third-party run
AS THE likely presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, Gary Johnson has a lot to be modest about; and he is. “Everybody I meet seems to like me,” says the two-term former Republican governor of New Mexico. “But I’m a Libertarian, so doesn’t that denote there are some loose screws out there?” He leaves the question hanging.
Tiny, electorally trifling and obsessed with guns and weed, cherished emblems of its 11,000 members’ freedom, the party has never mattered in national politics. It is by some measures America’s third-biggest—yet not flattered by that comparison. In 2012 Mitt Romney crashed to defeat with 61m votes; Mr Johnson, who ran for the Libertarians after failing to be noticed in the Republican primaries, won 1.3m. Yet he could be about to improve on that.
Mr Johnson and his running-mate, Bill Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts, are expected to emerge from the Libertarians’ convention in Orlando on 30th May with the party’s ticket. If so, he could feasibly launch the biggest third-party run since Ralph Nader won almost 3% of the vote for the Green Party in 2000—including 100,000 votes in Florida that may have cost Al Gore the presidency.
Or he could do better; a poll by Monmouth University put Mr Johnson on 11% in a three-way race with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. That was especially creditable given how little he is known; he figured in almost no national polls in 2012. It has encouraged Mr Johnson to think he could register the 15% vote-share that would guarantee him inclusion in this year’s televised debates.
With publicity, he could catch on. He has the accomplishments of a chest-beating conservative hero—he is a self-made millionaire, triathlete and razor-beaked deficit hawk; he vetoed 750 spending bills in New Mexico. He is also a sometime dope smoker (he resparked his youthful habit in 2005 to manage the pain from a paragliding accident), who comes across as almost goofily unaffected. He speaks in horror of the disdain many Americans show for Mexican immigrants—whom he calls “the cream of the crop”—as if it were borne of some crazy misunderstanding, rather than embedded nativist resentment and economic anxiety. Voters sick of political polish might like the mix: he really is authentic. Yet Mr Johnson’s main cause for hope is the unpopularity of the likely Republican and Democratic alternatives.
Around 60% of voters dislike Donald Trump and 55% Hillary Clinton. That should encourage more Americans to vote as freely of the old duopoly as they increasingly claim to be; 42% say they are independent voters, up from 30% a decade ago. And the Libertarians’ voguish message of fiscal conservatism, social liberalism and anti-interventionism has something for the disaffected of both big parties. Compared with a straightforward Trump-Clinton match-up, the Monmouth poll suggested Mr Johnson could take 6% of the vote from Mrs Clinton and 4% from Mr Trump.
The particular unease of many Republicans with their presumptive candidate—along with their failure hitherto to launch a conservative rival to him—explains a surge of interest in the Libertarian confab in Orlando. After Mr Trump sewed up their nomination in Indiana this month, Google reported a 5,000-fold increase in online searches for Mr Johnson. He is not to all Republican tastes; Mr Trump’s most outspoken critics in the party tend to hold neoconservative views on security. Yet even they hope he might bring disenchanted Republicans to the polls in November, and thereby retain their support for Republican candidates in the coterminous congressional contests.
Mr Johnson rejects Mr Trump utterly: “There’s nothing about Donald Trump that appeals to me.” Yet he sounds most hopeful of picking up support from disaffected Democrats, especially followers of Senator Bernie Sanders, whom he says he agrees with on almost everything—including the evil of crony capitalism and virtues of pot—except the economy. Yet how would he woo them?
Mr Johnson’s suggestion is unconventional. On the basis that, he argues, with some support from surveys, Americans are more libertarian than they know, he would point them to an online quiz, “Isidewith.com”, to help them work out where they stand. “I say, “Take the quiz, and whoever you pair up with, I think you should knock yourself out over them.” His own experience with the quiz, he sweetly relates, suggest he agrees with 73% of Mr Sanders’s proposals, 63% of Mrs Clinton’s and 57% of Mr Trump’s.
PEMEX´S PENSION PROBLEM: WHY THE OIL GIANT IS ON SLIPPERY GROUND / KNOWLEDGE WHARTON
| Etiquetas: Brazil, Latin America Economic And Political, Mexico
Pemex’s Pension Problem: Why the Oil Giant Is on Slippery Ground
For decades following its nationalization in 1938, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) was the symbol of Mexican state ownership and the country’s growing prowess as a producer of oil and gas.
Pemex accounted for one-third of the tax revenues paid to the Mexican government.
In recent years, the tables have turned, forcing Mexico’s federal government to bail out Pemex, rather than rely on the oil giant for a significant share of its revenues. In mid-April, Mexico’s finance ministry announced a series of measures to improve Pemex’s finances, providing a $4.2 billion liquidity boost that includes a capital injection of 26.5 billion Mexican pesos ($1.5 billion) and a credit facility for a further 47 billion pesos. The support measures also include tax breaks that will allow Pemex to deduct more of its exploration and production costs.
Apart from the prospect of continued low prices for its oil and gas output, what are the other challenges facing Pemex? In what respects do these challenges resemble – and differ from – the pension-related problems confronting Petrobras, the state-owned energy giant of Brazil?
For years, Pemex’s $90 billion in unfunded pension liabilities has been a major headache, as life expectancy in Mexico has almost doubled over the past 70 years while pension benefits have remained broadly unchanged. “Instead of getting money from Pemex, the Mexican government has been asked to supply money to Pemex,” explains Kirk Sherr, president of Clearview Strategy Group, an international energy consultancy that has advised companies in Latin America. “What happened was that Pemex didn’t really think about the future; they forked over money to the government every year. But they were not setting aside any money for pension obligations, even though they were accruing them as liabilities.” These liabilities, which have doubled in the past five years, are by far the largest of any oil and gas company in the world. According to Bloomberg, they are almost four times as high as those of Exxon Mobil, which was second-largest at $24.4 billion, as of November 2015.
Output Drops, Price Falls
Meanwhile, Mexico’s oil output declined for 11 consecutive years, while crude prices have plummeted more 70%. In the fourth quarter of 2015, Pemex reported a loss of $9.3 billion, bringing its full-year loss to a record $32 billion. Output dropped to an average of 2.28 million barrels per day in the fourth quarter, a drop of 3.5% year-on-year, but sharply lower than the nearly 3.5 million barrels produced a little over a decade ago. Although output has constantly declined over the past decade, Pemex’s staffing has increased 4% to 153,000 workers during this period. Says Sherr: “Maybe they’re at the end of this [loop], but not yet. This is a negative feedback loop that is very damaging.”
Traditionally, notes Sherr, many Pemex jobs have been “sinecure positions.” Firings or downsizing were rare, and the job was not tied to individual performance. “No one’s job was tied to performance [of Pemex] as a whole, so the whole thing kept getting bigger and bigger. So they have these tremendous pension obligations, and they are trying to downsize.”
Last November, Pemex agreed with its powerful oil workers’ union to overhaul the pension program. In December, the company announced an estimated reduction on its pension liabilities of approximately $11 billion, which the government is expected to match. Near the end of 2015, the company reached an agreement to change its pension plan into a “defined contribution” from a “defined benefits” plan, and increased the retirement age for employees who have been with the company for fewer than 15 years to 60 years of age, and 30 years of service from the previous 55 years of age and 25 years of service. The government also injected about $2.9 billion in the form of non-tradable notes maturing in 2050.
Fittingly, Pemex’s new director-general José Antonio González Anaya is not an oilman but an American-trained economist with expertise in managing pension systems. A graduate of MIT, with a doctorate from Harvard, González Anaya was formerly a World Bank economist and professor at Stanford University’s Center for the Analysis of Development. In Mexico, he previously served as director-general of the Mexican Social Security Institute. “He is an economist who has made his bones in pension reform,” explains Sherr, who is also an adjunct professor of energy, security and technology development at Georgetown. “The fact that one of the top oil and gas companies in the world is now being run by a pension specialist tells you where the government is focused. Arguably they are not really focused on making Pemex a better company, per se; they are, in the near term, focused on making sure that they get the best pension negotiations possible.”
Monica de Bolle, non-resident fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., agrees. “It is not surprising that Pemex is having these problems. Even if oil prices had not dropped the way they did, output in Mexico has been falling for more than a decade.
Inevitably, there was going to be a point where Pemex was no longer the main source of revenues for Mexico but a financial drag. This situation has been pushed forward because of what’s been happening to oil prices.”
Future Bleak
Despite the initiatives to lessen its pension obligations, de Bolle argues: “The future of Pemex looks quite bleak. Even if oil prices reverse course at some point, you’re still faced with this problem of oilfields that are basically depleted. With the deep-seawater stuff [in Mexico], like the pre-salt [offshore deposits] in Brazil, it’s not at all clear how you actually extract that. In Brazil, they have extracted some of it but it can be very costly; the breakeven prices vary widely depending on a number of technical and geological factors. It’s no wonder that Mexico has shifted gears for many years, and tried to advance other things with respect to its economy. It has tried to be a more open economy and diversify its manufacturing sector. It has done a number of other things to stay at least a bit away from oil dependency.”
Meanwhile, notes Sherr, Pemex is not only not contributing money to the government, it also continues to lack the funds it needs to slow the pace of its declining output. He explains: “The government is [now] saying we’ll cover the pension obligations, but you’ve got to slash your budget.
And that includes both people and investments. But production is already declining because the fields are aging, and the big rounds [of auctions] have not yet resulted in new increased production from private investment.” This is now permitted under the recent energy reforms of the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto. “So less money is coming in. Less money is being invested in new production. The outlook for the next year is lower production, which means less money coming in, even at higher price levels for oil.”
“Because they [Pemex] have let the problem grow to such an enormous size, I can just imagine how complicated the discussions are internally,” adds Sherr. “There are a variety of ways you can cut.
You can cut wholesale across different divisions, or you can do little cuts consistently. No matter what you do, though, you are going to piss people off. And when you do that, you have to have money in the bank. Typically, people will get a check as they go out the door and they are going to have money coming [to them] regularly. And if you miss a couple of payments in Latin America, people go talk to someone in the press, and they tell them that the Pemex pension [reform is failing].
Then they are dead in the water [because of the bad publicity].”
Why were the ramifications of Pemex’s ballooning pension obligations ignored so long? On the one hand, notes Sherr, it’s because oil and gas specialists are trained to focus not on the financial complexities of pension systems, but on the challenges of energy exploration and production. He explains: “This is one of the key stories that was reported and then glossed over because it is not really relevant to oil and gas. The pension story would fall on the side of labor law and social security issues.”
Another factor that may have discouraged attention to this complex issue is widespread financial illiteracy in Latin America. Olivia Mitchell, Wharton professor of business economics and public policy, and a former commissioner of the Chilean Pension Reform Commission, notes that her own research shows that “most Chileans had no idea how much they paid in commissions, how their money was invested, or how their benefits would be determined at retirement. Only one-fifth of the participants had the faintest idea about how much money they held in their accounts (even within plus or minus 20%).” Mitchell, who is also executive director of the Pension Research Council, adds that “financial illiteracy is a big problem, and not one confined to Chile. Yet the nation’s failure to educate its citizenry about how their pensions work and their role in retirement security is central to why three-quarters of the population [of Chile] now feels that a major overhaul is required.”
Comparisons with Petrobras
In significant ways, the pension crisis at Pemex runs parallel to that at Petrobras, the Brazilian energy giant, whose pension fund, known as Petros, lost more than 6 billion reals ($1.9 billion) in 2014, more than twice the 2.4 billion reals it lost in 2013. Founded in 1970, Petros is Brazil’s second biggest pension fund, with more than 72 billion reals under management in 2013, including investments in oil and telecommunications companies and the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in Brazil’s Amazon.
“The two countries [Mexico and Brazil] are facing the same challenge,” says de Bolle. “They’ve gone through the demographic boom and are both going through the phase when the population is aging. The dependency ratios are rising. In both countries, the pension system is way overburdened.
How do you resolve that? You need to do tough reforms. You have to think seriously about raising retirement age — changing the payment benefit structure. It’s a very tough nut to crack. Both countries are facing these issues in the short-to-medium term. It’s no longer an issue that you can ignore because it’s 20 years out. To me, it’s no wonder that they [both] have somebody heading the oil company who understands pensions and how they work.”
All these Latin American oil companies follow the same basic trajectory. As Sherr explains:
“They discover oil. Then the oil company becomes the national symbol, identifiable with the country in so many ways. And, of course, shady deals go on in these companies. In the case of Petrobras, it has always been at the core of corruption. Just as in Pemex. The difference, which sets Petrobras apart now, is the sheer scale of corruption. They also face similar legal constraints. For example, Pemex has to have [an ownership] stake in all its projects. So does Petrobras. That puts a huge burden on these companies. And in a world where oil prices are falling, these companies look very similar in terms of the challenges that they face.”
De Bolle agrees, but adds, “There are several things that help Mexico. Certainly the proximity to the U.S. is a huge one. That makes a very big difference. The other thing is that Mexico, for a very long time now, has had an agenda of trade openness that sets it apart from the rest.
Mexico began opening its economy with NAFTA back in the 1990s, when the rest of the region – even Chile, Colombia and Peru — were completely oblivious to the need to open their economies. Of all the countries in Latin America, Mexico is the one economy you can say is globally integrated into value chains and has a manufacturing sector that is part of those global chains. The effort that Mexico has made in striking and negotiating free-trade agreements all over the world really sets them apart.”
The positive impact of Mexico’s recent openness to global trade and investment will soon be felt on the pipeline, power and downstream side. This April, the Mexican government deregulated, almost a year earlier than first anticipated, the import of refined products into Mexico, enabling private investors to enter the market and operate gas stations. On the other hand, explains Sherr: “Longer term, it’s not clear yet where Pemex ends up in all this. Like Petrobras, it will take years to climb out from under these pension and other obligations. And in the meantime, a lot of good opportunities will be missed because they will have gone to other companies. Or [Pemex] will have had to partner with those other companies to make [those opportunities] viable.”
There is already better news for Mexico on the midstream (the pipeline) side. On April 1, Mexico conducted its first power auction, awarding 1,720 megawatts of wind and solar energy.
A total of seven wind and solar organizations were awarded electricity contracts and clean energy certificates.
The outcome of the auction is expected to help the government meet its long-range goal of producing 35% of its energy from clean sources by 2024. Winning bids came from such European firms as Spain’s Alten Renewable Energy and Italy’s Enel Green Power, which expects to invest $1 billion in the construction of three solar plants in Mexico.
In the short term, “until the uncertainty around the U.S. electoral process is finally over, there will be a little bit of constraint on investment [into Mexico’s energy sector],” Sherr argues. “Once that is cleared up, North America is well positioned economically to aggregate the benefits of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico with this energy reform. I think the Mexican economy will be very dynamic and you’ll be able to see some of the secondary effects of the reform. It is much later than President Peña Nieto probably would have hoped; the changes will come just around the time he is leaving office.”
CRAKING DOWN ON RUSSIA´S CALIPHATE / FOREIGN POLICY
| Etiquetas: ISIS, Russia
Cracking Down on Russia’s Caliphate
In Dagestan, authorities are trying to quash an Islamist insurgency that has sent hundreds of young Russians to Syria. They might be making it worse
Oliver Carroll
DAGESTAN, Russia — The totemic Eastern Mosque rises from the outskirts of Khasavyurt, a formless market town located 1,000 miles south of Moscow, in the predominantly Muslim republic of Dagestan.
In the weeks leading up to his arrest in early April, Imam Muhammad Nabi Magomedov hardly left its walls. When he did, he traveled in a convoy with armed guards. He was concerned for his safety, his aides say, and he knew an arrest was likely. Shortly before his detention, he had even taken to social media to warn that he was being monitored by security services.
Magomedov had reason enough to be worried, having recently staged — and won — a standoff with the Russian state over the fate of Khasavyurt’s smaller Northern Mosque. The authorities argued the mosque had become a major Islamic State recruiting post in the region. Privately, many local activists did not disagree: Some of the congregants “might” have acted as recruiters, they told Foreign Policy. But when Russian special forces turned up in February to shutter the mosque, it was seen by local activists as a step too far. “If there are criminals, arrest them — don’t close the mosque!” one said.
It did not take long for the region’s security services to find out they’d miscalculated. Within a few hours of the mosque’s closure, Magomedov had assembled more than 5,000 followers from other congregations across the republic, who then marched on the town hall and demanded the local administration reopen the mosque. The standoff lasted a few hours before the authorities caved in. It was an embarrassing about-face and also served as an alarming reminder of the imam’s ability to mobilize.
But the fight over the mosque wouldn’t end there. On April 8, following Friday prayers, government security forces cordoned off the larger Eastern Mosque. Magomedov gave himself up for questioning.
In the middle of the interrogation, his associates say, he was taken away by security officers in masks and transferred to a regional counter-extremism center in Makhachkala, the Dagestani capital. There, they say, he was beaten. A local court ordered that he be detained until an investigation is completed; he has been in custody since.
The stakes of the fight against extremism in Russia’s southernmost republic are high. In recent years, Dagestan has overtaken neighboring Chechnya as the country’s most deadly region.
Ethnic heterogeneity — more than 30 languages are spoken locally — and political infighting have contributed to a power vacuum that has made the republic a fertile ground for the insurgency. Links between the region and Syria are already well-established: Russian is now the third-most spoken language within the caliphate, behind Arabic and English, and a disproportionately large number of Russians make up the Islamic State’s high command.
A series of terrorist attacks this year, claimed by the local branch of the Islamic State, has raised the specter that the group is planning to use Dagestan as a base to come good on its 2015 promise to spill blood in Russia “like an ocean.”
“From what I see every day, [the Islamic State] is stepping up its efforts here — on the Internet and through networks in certain towns and cities,” said activist Sevil Novruzova, who lost her brother to a local insurgency in 2008. (He was killed in a security operation within months of joining up with extremists.) Since then, Novruzova has collaborated with authorities on counter-extremism efforts. “Make no mistake, our youth is being used,” she said. “We might be running out of time.”
But if Russia is stepping up its efforts to tackle the insurgency here, the harshness of its tactics — which target a broad range of anti-Russian forces, not only the Islamic State — could also backfire.
In the weeks before his arrest, Imam Magomedov had warned of the dangers of a too-forceful approach to combating terrorism in Dagestan, predicting a coming backlash. “I tell the police they are pushing people away from us,” he said in an interview with FP. “They are men, and if they get hassled every day, they will do things.”
Magomedov was the fifth Salafi imam to be arrested in Dagestan since the beginning of the year. In comments to FP, a member of the local security establishment, who asked to remain anonymous, said authorities were committed to breaking up the management of the region’s ultra-conservative Salafi mosques, which, they argue, have become terrorism incubators.
In Makachkala, law enforcement officers were certainly keeping close watch on the congregation at the city’s last remaining Salafi mosque on Vengerskikh Boitsov Street. In the space of five minutes on a recent Friday, a group of police officers pulled at least a dozen bearded men from the crowds making their way toward the mosque. To drill in the point, leaflets distributed at the mosque remind attendees of their rights in case of detention.
According to the mosque’s press officer, Muhammad Abu Khamza Magomedov, about half the congregation is now on a high-risk police register.
Being on the register means being asked to leave blood, saliva, and even 30-second voice samples.
Once registered, the men face a number of restrictions: They are generally limited to local travel; their employers may be contacted to let them know they are on the list; and they are often the first ones to be arrested at the time of any trouble, sometimes on a flimsy pretext.
“More and more, we are being asked to defend young Salafi men who turn to us after arbitrary detention,” said Selim Magomedov, a lawyer in Makhachkala who defends several Salafi clients. “If a fighter has a father or a brother — especially a younger brother — the practice now is that law enforcement will also suddenly find grenades and cannabis on him.” It is, argues the lawyer, “a combination so standard that whenever any Dagestani hears it, he becomes suspicious.”
The threat of closure has hung over the Vengerskikh Boitsov mosque since late 2015. The other main Salafi mosque in the capital, Al-Nadiriya Mosque on Kotrova Street, which was attended by Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev during his time in Dagestan, was closed abruptly in December.
A month earlier, authorities had also attempted to impose their own choice of imam at the Vengerskikh Boitsov mosque but were rebuffed by its management.
That Dagestan has a serious problem with disaffected youth turning to radical Islam is clear enough. By the estimates of local security services, between 900 and 3,000 young Dagestanis have joined the Islamic State over the last few years, the vast majority of them Salafi Muslims.
One of the clerics from the Vengerskikh Boitsov mosque, Nadir Medetov, swore allegiance to the Islamic State, and he has urged others to join him in Syria since.
But intense scrutiny from security services is putting Salafi moderates in a difficult situation.
According to Murad Dibirov, assistant to the now-detained Imam Nabi Magomedov, moderates were being “caught between two very big fires” — the Russian state, ready to crack down at the first signs of radicalism, and the Islamic State, ready to recruit from their congregations should clerics appear too quick to appease. The imam’s attempts to reach a peaceful settlement on the Northern Mosque issue, for example, had provoked a YouTube admonishment from fighters in Syria. “They said we were mistaken to not call people to arms and then said our imam was not worth following,” Dibirov said.
Under close watch, Makhachkala’s Vengerskikh Boitsov mosque seemed to be trying to play it safe.
On a recent Friday, much of the service, which took place in front of a packed congregation, was devoted to matters of personal hygiene: “A Muslim has the obligation to be clean at mass.
He does not come to Friday mass smelling of garlic. He does not smoke. A good Muslim cleans his teeth, washes himself, and wears his best clothes.”
This time last year, the same preacher was stressing the superiority of sharia over Russian legislation, one follower admitted.
The main transport artery that leads from the capital of Makhachkala into Dagestan’s mountain villages narrows at the mouth of a small tunnel. On any given day, government counterterrorism operations underway on the other side of the tunnel might force it to close, so travel here is unpredictable. Some days, a journey might take 10 minutes; at other times, several hours.
On a recent day, however, an operation was just finishing, so gray vehicles were pulsing back out of the tunnel. It was a display of modern Russian military prowess, with three dozen modernized Ural trucks, the latest “Tiger” four-wheel-drive vehicles, and perhaps a hundred stony-faced soldiers cooped up inside. Waiting on the other side was a dramatic, rugged, mountainous road leading to the ultra-conservative village of Gimry. Cars shared the path with wandering livestock, and the roadside was peppered with green signs in Arabic and Russian, several containing quotes from Imam Shamil, a local leader who led a guerrilla resistance movement against the Russian Empire in the 19th century. “Heroes do not think about the consequences,” one declared.
Dagestan has always been a reluctant part of Russia, and by nature of their geographical isolation, radical religious views, and general poverty, the mountain villages on the other side of the tunnel have played key roles in the region’s centuries-long on-off war with the Russian state. At several more recent points in history, these villages fell completely under the control of militant Islamists and existed as self-governed enclaves within Russia.
Gimry, with a population of 2,000, emerged during the 1990s as a key stronghold of the anti-Russian insurgency, closely associated with the so-called Caucasus Emirate, a local jihadi organization linked to al Qaeda that has since almost entirely been superseded by the Islamic State.
The police avoid taking chances here. The village of Gimry itself is cordoned off from the outside world, as it has been since 2007. Locals enter via a security checkpoint and have to declare a passcode upon arrival and exit. Practically every resident is on a police register.
Further down the road, Radik, a patrol police officer on loan from Tatarstan who asked to be identified by his first name only, says a pressure-cooker atmosphere has developed inside Gimry.
Few of his colleagues believe the isolation policy could hold forever, he says. “You can see the people are tired of us. You go into the village, and you will find lots of angry widows and sons without fathers. It’s a matter of time before the sons grow up into fighters,” Radik said.
Over the last few years, Gimry has seen a steady outflow of jihadi fighters to Syria, though the level of this outflow is fiercely debated. A source within the local security services suggested that perhaps as many as 50 of Gimry’s 2,000 residents are now fighting for the Islamic State in one way or another. Another source, a leading local Islamic publisher who asked to remain anonymous, says that number is vastly inflated, and many of those presumed fighting in Syria are in fact living normal lives in Turkey.
Forty miles or so northwest of Gimry, the village of Novosasetli, with a population of 2,500, has a similar story. Up until a few short years ago, it was known across Russia as a center of Islamic teaching, and many made the pilgrimage there to listen to its famous clerics. Over time, the village has also become a leading exporter of jihadis. Depending on whom you listen to, between 20 and 50 of its residents left to join various jihadi causes. Initially, they left to join the fighters of the Caucasus Emirate in the forests and mountains, but after this group ceased to be a serious military concern in 2014, local commanders almost completely switched their allegiance to the Islamic State. Many fighters now head to Syria.
“We find out what has happened to the ones who went via WhatsApp, which ones are dead, and so on,” said Ahmed Khaibulayev, a deputy of the village council.
According to the security services, a preacher by the name of Abu Umar Sasitlinsky, who was active in Novosasetli until leaving for Turkey in 2013, radicalized many of the village’s young men.
According to his followers, Sasitlinsky was no more than a philanthropist, the founder of the Islamic Center for Orphans — an incongruously expensive-looking and now abandoned three-story facility built on the edge of the village. Security sources insist such activities were merely a ruse, and in fact Sasitlinsky was using Bahraini and Saudi funds to recruit for the Islamic State.
At one point, a traffic barrier separated this ultra-conservative village from the outside world.
That is gone, but the Russian government remains unwelcome here. The village builds its own roads, installs its own broadband systems, and has its own sharia court. Khaibulayev says the locals do not trust the Russian police. “We don’t let them in unless it’s a very serious issue,” he said. “The security guys realize it’s better to keep their noses out.”
For most of Novosasetli’s residents, indeed, the state remains synonymous with counterterrorism raids. Not so long ago, such raids were frequent, targeted at insurgents who would occasionally stay in houses on the edge of the village during the cooler winter months.
Khaibulayev says bored village kids used to follow military trucks as they entered the village.
“It was almost a local attraction: First came the trucks, then the armored carriers, then local police, the security guys, and then you had explosions as someone’s house was blown up.”
The insurgents had a certain amount of local support, Khaibulayev admits, “especially among youngsters who thought giving them cash and food was the right thing to do by Islam.” But a turning point came in June 2014, when Russian security forces used grenade launchers to blast their way through a hut housing a known fighter and his girlfriend. Both were killed in the attack. The ferocity of the operation caused those in the village to rethink their policy; following a meeting, village elders decided to ask the insurgents to leave. Since then, a truce of sorts has formed between Novosasetli and security forces, but signs of resentment — and potential trouble to come — still linger.
On the road alongside collapsed concrete rubble, a van swerves past, with a dozen or so children clinging on to the back bumper.
“Allahu akbar,” the children shout, giggling.
YOUR PORTFOLIO DESIGN: ASSUME THE FETAL POSITION /...
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GSA’s McClure: Cloud computing and open data in federal government aren’t going away
July 20, 2011 By Alex Howard
To those in media, government or commentariot who think that cloud computing or open data might be going away in federal government after the departure of federal CIO Vivek Kundra next month, Dave McClure offered a simple message today: these trends are “inevitable.”
Cloud computing, for instance, will “survive if we change federal CIOs,” he said. “It’s here, and it’s not going away. McClure describes cloud computing as a worldwide global development in both business and government, where the economics and efficiencies created are “compelling.” The move to the cloud, for instance, is behind US plans to close or consolidate some 800 data centers,, including hundreds by the end of 2011.
Cloud computing was just one of five macro trends that McClure “listed at this year’s FOSE Conference in Washington, D.C. FOSE is one of the biggest annual government IT conferences.
inevitable. Here’s the breakdown:
1) Cloud computing
The GSA is the “engine behind the administration’s ‘cloud-first’ strategy,” said McClure, lining up the procurement details for government to adopt it. He said that he’s seen “maturity” in this area in the past 18-24 months. Two years ago, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was spending time at conferences and panels defining it. Now we have cloud deployments that are robust and scalable, said McClure, including infrastructure as a service and email-as-a-service.
Government cloud deployments now includes public facing websites, storage, disaster recovery andare beginning to move into financial apps.
2) Collaboration and engagement
The cloud is teaching us that once we free data, make it accessible, and make it usable, it’s
creating opportunities for effective collaboration with citizens, said McClure, noting that this trend is in its “early stages.”
3) Open data and big data
Data.gov has “treasure troves” of data that entrepreneurs and citizens are turning into hundreds of applications and innovations, said McClure. Inside of government, he said that access to data is creating a “thirst” for data mining and business intelligence that help public servants work more efficient.
4) Mobile
Mobile computing will be the next wave of innovation, said McClure, delivering value to ourselves and delivering value to citizens. Government is “entrenched in thinking about creation of data on websites or desktop PCs,” he said. That perspective is, in this context, dated. Most of the audience here has a smartphone, he pointed out, with most interactions occurring on the hip device. “That’s going to be the new platform,” a transition that’s “absolutely inevitable,” he said, “despite arguments about digital divide and broadband access.”
As McClure noted, you have to include security at a government IT conference. The need for improved security on the Web, for critical infrastructure, on email and where ever else government has exposed attack surface is clear to all observers.
application, big data, CIO, Citizen 2.0, cloud computing, cybersecurity, digital divide, event, Gov 2.0, open data, open governmentcollaboration, cybersecurity, FOSE, gov 2.0, mobile, open government
VickieP
I think you mean “commentariat” (similar words are “secretariat,” “proletariat,” “commissariat”).
Reply August 7, 2011 at 8:09 am
← USA.gov hosts nationwide hackathon on open data from 1.USA.gov URL shortener
Designing better government with open government at the CFPB →
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COVID-19 recovery for Guttenberg Care Center
Note: The following news release was submitted by ABCM Corporation and addresses the COVID-19 outbreak at the Guttenberg Care Center and the current recovery status.
As of Jan. 6, Guttenberg Care Center, owned and operated by ABCM Corporation, is confirming a total of 27 residents and 48 staff members have recovered from the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. Currently, there are not any residents or staff who are actively positive with the virus. Eagle Ridge Independent and Assisted Living is happy to report they have remained COVID free since the beginning of the pandemic. Due to privacy regulations, we cannot share further information.
Administrator Miranda Barnhart said, “Our most recent round of PCR testing was completed over the past two days to meet the testing requirements put forward by the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).” Barnhart went on to say, “We will continue to test bi-weekly for all staff and residents. If these results continue to come back negative, we will be able to move out of outbreak status per state and federal guidelines.”
Staff will continue to be screened prior to the beginning and end of each shift, and residents and tenants are closely monitored throughout the day and night. All residents and staff will continue to be diligent with our precautions, test frequently including asymptomatic testing, and we will notify staff, residents, tenants, and family members of ongoing developments.
“The continued support, outreach, and thoughts from families, community professional partners, community members, and ABCM Corporation has been astounding. We extend a huge thanks to Dr. Michele Dikkers, Medical Director and all Guttenberg Municipal Hospital and Clinics for their partnership, guidance, and support during these challenging weeks.” Barnhart went on to say, “We’d also like to thank Sarah Moser, of Clayton County Emergency Management, and the staff at Clayton County Visiting Nursing Association, for checking in often and making sure we had adequate supply of PPE and all staffing needs were met.”
“The families of our residents and tenants have been very supportive, understanding, and cooperative with the changes that have had to happen over the past several weeks, and for that, we are very grateful,” noted Barnhart. “It’s been a challenging few weeks, but the residents and staff have been great working with the transitions and are excited to see the facility recovering the from the outbreak and coming to an end. No one wants to go through an outbreak, but I could not be more proud of how the residents, tenants, and team handled the situation,” said Barnhart.
Guttenberg Care Center is one of 31 rehabilitation and long-term care centers owned and operated by ABCM Corporation in Iowa.
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Link to Information about Longitude
Wikipedia - definitions
Prime Meridian – 0°
International Date Line
Royal Observatory, England
Play Find Your Longitude
Longitude and Latitude Tools Longitude is an imaginary line that runs from the North Pole to the South Pole and is used to describe the location of a place on Earth east or west of the zero or prime meridian. In 1884, the International Meridian Conference adopted the Greenwich Meridian as the universal prime meridian or zero point of longitude. Longitude is measured in degrees ranging from 0° at the Prime Meridian to +180° eastward and -180° westward. Each degree of longitude is further sub-divided into 60 minutes, each of which is further sub-divided into 60 seconds.
The prime meridian, and the opposite 180th meridian (at 180° longitude), separate the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. As you travel west from Greenwich England towards the United States, your longitude is designated in degrees (minutes and second) west longitude. New York City is located in the Western Hemisphere at approximately 74° West longitude, or simply 74° W. Once you reach 180° W the longitude will change from degrees west to degrees east and begin decreasing from 180° east until you once again reach Greenwich England at 0°. Conversely as you travel east from Greenwich towards Europe and Asia, your longitude is designated in degrees (minutes and second) east longitude. Moscow is located in the Eastern Hemisphere at approximately 37° East longitude, or simply 37° E. The Aleutian Islands chain in Alaska stretches from approximately 164° West longitude crossing 180° longitude; and extending to 172° East longitude at Attu Island. Click here to see a map of the Aleutian Islands.
Longitude can be calculated by knowing the time difference at a given location and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Since there are 24 hours in a day and and the Earth is divided in to 360 degrees of Longitude, the sun moves across the sky at a rate of 15 degrees Longitude per hour (360° / 24 hours = 15° / hour). So if the time zone a person is in is four hours ahead of UTC then that person is near 60° longitude (4 hours X 15° per hour = 60°). The word near was used because the point might not be at the center of the time zone; also the time zones are defined politically, so their centers and boundaries often do not lie on meridians at multiples of 15°. In order to perform this calculation, a person needs to have a chronometer (watch) set to UTC and needs to determine local time by solar observation or astronomical observation. The details are more complex than described here: see the "Wikipedia" articles on Universal Time and on the Equation of time for more details.
◊ Prime Meridian (0° longitude)
◊ International Date Line (180° longitude)
◊ Royal Observatory, Greenwich England
◊ Distance between lines of longitude
◊ John Harrison; developed the first successful chronometers
◊ Further Reading
For more information about longitude, visit the following sites:
Wikipedia - iongitude
Social Studies for Kids
From Stargazers to Starships by Dr. David P. Stern; section 5 – Latitude and Longitude
From Stargazers to Starships by Dr. David P. Stern; section 5a – Navigation
NOVA - "Lost at Sea - The Search For Longitude"
The History Channel - Latitude and Longitude
Earth-Sun Relationships/Navigation
Return to the page index. Return to the top of the page.
Prime Meridian (0° longitude)
The Prime Meridian is also known as the International Meridian or Greenwich Meridian line of longitude that, by international convention, runs through "the primary transit" instrument (main telescope) at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich England and is defined to be 0 degrees.
Heading south from the North Pole, the Prime Meridian passes through the following countries:
Antarctica to the South Pole
For more information about the Prime Meridian, visit the following sites:
The Prime Meridian of the World (0° longitude)
Longitude by Dava Sobel; Published by Walker & Co
The Prime Meridian – The Greenwich Guide
Origin of the First Latitude Scale & First Prime Meridian
History of the Prime Meridian -Past and Present
The world is divided into 24 time zones, each time zone is 15° of longitude wide (360° divided by 24 hours – the approximate length of a day). A new day begins at The International Date Line (IDL). The International Date Line is located at 180° line of longitude, exactly one-half way around the planet from Greenwich, England.
Each Time Zone is measured relative to Greenwich, England. The military, meteorologist and the aviation industry refer to Greenwich Mean Time as Zulu time. As you travel from west to east, and travel from one time zone to the next, the time you will set your watch forward by one hour as you enter each new time zone. Tine zones to the east of Greenwich England are denoted by a positive number. Example, if it is noon in Greenwich, it will be 1:00 pm in the time zone to the east of Greenwich, or GMT + 1. The first time zone to the east is said to be +1, the next is +2 until you reach the time zone just west of the International Date Line at +12. When you cross the International Date Line, you subtract one day and the time zone is now -12. The next time zone is -11. This pattern continues until we once again reach the prime meridian at time zone zero.
As an example, London England is in time zone zero while Los Angeles, California is in time zone -8. This means when it is 2 pm (or 14:00) in London, it is only 6:00 am in Los Angeles (14:00 - 8 = 6). If we traveled east from London to Wellington, New Zealand which is time zone +12, then it will be 2 am the next day in Wellington, New Zealand (do you really want to see the math? OK 14 + 12 = 26, since 26 is greater than 24, then the time is 26 - 24 = 2 on the next day).
The International Date Line makes detours around political boundaries because the date to the east of the line is one day earlier than that to the west of the line. The line deviates to pass around the far east of Russia and various island groups in the Pacific because no country wants to have its citizens functioning on two different dates. Time zones also often follow political boundaries for the same reason. Some countries have adopted non-standard time zones, usually 30 minutes offset. Two countries that have adopted this standard are Afghanistan and India. This allows all locations within the country to have the same local time.
For more information about the International Date Line, visit the following sites:
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
What Time Is It Around The World Right Now?
U.S. Naval Observatory
About Geography
From Stargazers to Starships by Dr. David P. Stern – see the sections titled, Local Time (LT) and Time Zones & The Date Line and Universal Time (UT)
Royal Observatory, Greenwich England
The Royal Observatory located in Greenwich England is the oldest scientific institution in Britain, founded for navigational purposes in 1675 by Charles II. John Flamsteed, Astronomer Royal, was appointed to work at the Royal Observatory and to get the help of the heavens in finding longitude at sea by calculating "time" from the movement of the heavens. Flamsteed spent forty years plotting the stars in the sky.
The Royal Observatory main contributions have been in navigation, timekeeping, determination of star positions, and almanac publication. In 1767 it began publishing The Nautical Almanac, based on the time at the longitude of Greenwich; its popularity among navigators led in part to the Greenwich meridian's being made Earth's prime meridian and the starting point for international time zones in 1884.
For more information about the Royal Observatory, Greenwich England, visit the following sites:
Royal Observatory Home Page
Old Greenwich Royal Observatory - Greenwich Guide
The Royal Observatory Greenwich (Historic Photo)
The Greenwich Star (Historic Photo)
John Flamsteed
Little known facts about time, astronomy and the ROG
Distance between lines of longitude
The distance between each line of longitude changes as you move north or south. To visualize this think of the earth as a peeled orange with the lines between each wedge of the orange as the lines of longitude. At the equator (0° latitude), each degree of longitude is about 70 land miles apart (The circumference of the earth is 24,859.82 miles divided by 360 degrees equaling 69.06 miles per degree at the equator). At 34° north or south, each degree of longitude is 57.3436 miles. Close to the poles at 80° North or South, there are only 12 miles between each degree of longitude.
For more information about Calculating the distances between two places on earth, visit the following sites:
Latitude/Longitude Distance Calculation
Calculate distance between two cities
Calculate distance and bearing between two Latitude/Longitude
On October 22nd, 1707 a British fleet led by Sir Cloudesley Shovell struck the rocks of Gilstone Ledges on the Scilly Isles, about 2000 men were lost in the accident. This tragedy led the British Parliament to authorize the British Longitude Act in 1714. This created the Longitude Prize in the amount of 20,000 pounds reward (£10,000 for any method capable of determining a ship´s longitude within one degree, £15,000, within 40 minutes, and £20,000 within one half a degree) for anyone who could devise a practical method of determining longitude at sea. The estblishment of the Longitude Prize led to a race between men of education (Astronomers) and men that labored with their hands (mechanic's/Clock makers) to invent an accurate method of determining the time at sea. Eventually John Harrison (1693-1776) designed and built the world's first successful chronometers.
Between 1730 and 1759, John Harrison designed 4 chronometers designated H1 to H4. It was Harrison´s H4 watch that proved to be three times better than required to win longitude prize.
For more information about John Harrison, visit the following sites:
John Harrison and the Longitude problem; Royal Observatory
Time galleries at the Royal Observatory
Father of the chronometer
Longitude by chronometer
Greenwich Park and Blackheath (Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory)
Longitude : The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel.
Tools of Navigation by Rachel Dickinson.
The Discovery of Longitude by Jonathan Medwin.
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Streets and Highways Code - SHC
DIVISION 1. STATE HIGHWAYS [50 - 897]
CHAPTER 4. Cooperation By and With the State [760 - 834]
ARTICLE 2.5. Advance Mitigation Program [800 - 800.9]
( Article 2.5 added by Stats. 2017, Ch. 5, Sec. 35. )
(a) The Advance Mitigation Program is hereby created in the department to enhance communications between the department and stakeholders to protect natural resources through project mitigation, to meet or exceed applicable environmental requirements, to accelerate project delivery, and to mitigate, to the maximum extent required by law, environmental impacts from transportation infrastructure projects. The department shall consult on all activities pursuant to this article with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, including activities pursuant to Chapter 9 (commencing with Section 1850) of Division 2 of the Fish and Game Code.
(b) Commencing with the 2017–18 fiscal year, and for a period of four years, the department shall set aside no less than thirty million dollars ($30,000,000) annually for the Advance Mitigation Program from the annual appropriations for the State Highway Operation and Protection Program and the State Transportation Improvement Program for the planning and implementation of projects in the Advance Mitigation Program. Mitigation credits or values generated or obtained with these funds may be used only for transportation improvements in the State Transportation Improvement Program or the State Highway Operation and Protection Program, and may be transferred to another agency, but only upon full reimbursement of the department pursuant to subdivision (b) of Section 800.6.
(c) Upon the order of the Director of Finance, the Controller shall transfer the amount identified for the Advance Mitigation Program in subdivision (b), as determined by the department and the Department of Finance, to the Advance Mitigation Account in the State Transportation Fund.
(d) The annual Budget Act and subsequent legislation may establish additional provisions and requirements for the program.
(Amended by Stats. 2017, Ch. 95, Sec. 10. (SB 103) Effective July 21, 2017.)
800.5.
For purposes of this article, the following terms have the following meanings:
(a) “Acquire” and “acquisition” mean, with respect to land or a waterway, acquisition of fee title or purchase of a conservation easement that protects conservation and mitigation values on the land or waterway in perpetuity.
(b) “Administrative draft natural community conservation plan” means a substantially complete draft of a natural community conservation plan that is released after January 1, 2016, to the general public, plan participants, and the department.
(c) “Advance mitigation” means mitigation implemented before, and in anticipation of, environmental effects of planned transportation improvements.
(d) “Commission” means the California Transportation Commission.
(e) “Conservation easement” means a perpetual conservation easement that complies with Chapter 4 (commencing with Section 815) of Title 2 of Part 2 of Division 2 of the Civil Code.
(f) “Department” means the Department of Transportation.
(g) “Mitigation credit agreement” means a mitigation credit agreement pursuant to Chapter 9 (commencing with Section 1850) of Division 2 of the Fish and Game Code.
(h) “Natural Communities Conservation Plan” means a plan developed pursuant to Chapter 10 (commencing with Section 2800) of Division 3 of the Fish and Game Code.
(i) “Planned transportation improvement” means a transportation project that a transportation agency has identified in a regional transportation plan, an interregional transportation plan, a capital improvement program, or other approved transportation planning document, excluding any project that is associated with or interacting with the high-speed rail program. A planned transportation improvement may include, but is not limited to, a transportation project that has been planned, programmed, proposed for approval, or that has been approved.
(j) “Program” means the Advance Mitigation Program implemented pursuant to this article.
(k) “Regional conservation investment strategy” means a regional conservation investment strategy approved by the Department of Fish and Wildlife pursuant to Chapter 9 (commencing with Section 1850) of Division 2 of the Fish and Game Code.
(l) “Regulatory agency” means a state or federal natural resource protection agency with regulatory authority over planned transportation improvements. A regulatory agency includes, but is not limited to, the Natural Resources Agency, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, California regional water quality control boards, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
(m) “Transportation agency” means the department, a metropolitan planning organization, a regional transportation planning agency, or another public agency that implements transportation improvements.
(n) “Transportation improvement” means a transportation capital improvement project.
(Added by Stats. 2017, Ch. 95, Sec. 11. (SB 103) Effective July 21, 2017.)
(a) The funds in the Advance Mitigation Account created in Section 800.7 shall be used only to do the following:
(1) Purchase, or fund the purchase of, credits from mitigation banks, conservation banks, or in-lieu fee programs approved by one or more regulatory agencies. The department may also establish mitigation banks, conservation banks, or in-lieu fee programs, or fund the establishment of mitigation banks, conservation banks, or in-lieu fee programs, in accordance with applicable state and federal standards, if the department determines that those banks or in-lieu fee programs would provide appropriate mitigation of the anticipated potential impacts of planned transportation improvements identified pursuant to Section 800.8.
(2) Pay, or fund the payment of, mitigation fees or other costs or payments associated with coverage for the department’s or other transportation agency’s projects under natural community conservation plans approved pursuant to Chapter 10 (commencing with Section 2800) of Division 3 of the Fish and Game Code, or habitat conservation plans approved in accordance with the federal Endangered Species Act. The department shall, upon commencement of a regional conservation investment strategy pursuant to paragraph (3), provide written notification thereof to the executive administrative officer of any administrative draft natural community conservation plan, approved natural community conservation plan, or approved regional federal habitat conservation plan that overlaps the proposed area of the regional conservation investment strategy.
(3) Prepare, or fund the preparation of, regional conservation assessments and regional conservation investment strategies. Where a regional conservation investment strategy has been approved by the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the department may do either of the following:
(A) Enter into, or fund the preparation of, mitigation credit agreements with the Department of Fish and Wildlife; purchase credits from an established mitigation credit agreement; or implement, or fund the implementation of, conservation actions and habitat enhancement actions as needed to generate mitigation credits pursuant to those mitigation credit agreements.
(B) Acquire, restore, manage, monitor, enhance, and preserve lands, waterways, aquatic resources, or fisheries, or fund the acquisition, restoration, management, monitoring, enhancement, and preservation of lands, waterways, aquatic resources, or fisheries that would measurably advance a conservation objective in the regional conservation investment strategy if the department concludes that the action or actions could conserve or create environmental values that are appropriate to mitigate the anticipated potential impacts of planned transportation improvements.
(4) Where the advance mitigation mechanisms in paragraphs (1) to (3), inclusive, are not practicable, the department may implement advance mitigation, or fund the implementation of advance mitigation, in accordance with a programmatic mitigation plan pursuant to Section 800.9. No more than 25 percent of the funds in the Advance Mitigation Account may be allocated for this purpose over a four-year period.
(b) The department may use, or allow other transportation agencies to use, mitigation credits or values generated or obtained under the program to fulfill the mitigation requirements of planned transportation improvements if the applicable transportation agency reimburses the program for all costs of purchasing or creating the mitigation credits or values, as determined by the department. Those costs shall be calculated using total cost accounting and shall include, as applicable, land acquisition or conservation easement costs, monitoring and enforcement costs, restoration costs, transaction costs, administrative costs, contingency costs, and land management, monitoring, and protection costs.
(c) The department shall track all implemented advance mitigation projects to use as credits for environmental mitigation.
(d) Projects or plans prepared pursuant to this section that overlap with any approved natural community conservation plan or approved regional federal habitat conservation plan, shall be consistent with that plan and shall include an explanation of whether and to what extent they are consistent with any overlapping state or federal recovery plan, or other state-approved or federal-approved conservation strategy.
(e) Mitigation credits created pursuant to this section may be used for covered activities under an approved natural community conservation plan only in accordance with the requirements of the plan. Individuals and entities eligible for coverage as a participating special entity under an approved natural community conservation plan may use mitigation credits created pursuant to this section only if the plan’s implementing entity declines to extend coverage to the covered activity proposed by the eligible individual or entity.
(f) By July 1, 2019, and biennially thereafter, the department, pursuant to Section 9795 of the Government Code, and notwithstanding Section 10231.5 of the Government Code, shall submit to the Legislature a report that describes to what extent the Advance Mitigation Program has accelerated the delivery of transportation projects. At a minimum, the report shall include the following:
(1) An accounting of the Advance Mitigation Account funds.
(2) Identification of expected state and federal resource and regulatory agency mitigation requirements for transportation projects utilizing the Advance Mitigation Program.
(3) A discussion of the extent to which those requirements are satisfied using advance mitigation credits.
(4) The use of funds to prepare, or to fund the preparation of, regional conservation assessments and regional conservation investment strategies.
(5) Recommendations for maximizing the ability of the Advance Mitigation Program to satisfy state and federal mitigation requirements.
(g) By July 1, 2018, or one year after the initial Advance Mitigation Program investments have begun, whichever is earlier, and biennially thereafter, the Department of Fish and Wildlife shall, pursuant to Section 9795 of the Government Code, and notwithstanding Section 10231.5 of the Government Code, submit a report to the Legislature that describes the extent to which the Advance Mitigation Program has improved the quality and effectiveness of habitat mitigation provided by the department for transportation projects and makes related recommendations on how to maximize these attributes. The report shall also include recommendations on how to maximize the quality and effectiveness of habitat mitigation developed pursuant to the Advance Mitigation Program.
(h) Nothing in this article shall be construed to impose any restrictions or requirements on the department for activities that do not involve the utilization of Advance Mitigation Account funds. Nothing in this article shall be construed to require the department to use the Advance Mitigation Program.
(i) Prior to making any expenditure from the Advance Mitigation Account, the Director of Transportation shall make a determination and justification that the proposed expenditure is likely to accelerate project delivery of specific projects.
(j) Any state water or transportation infrastructure agency that requests approval of a regional conservation investment strategy pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 1852 of the Fish and Game Code that may be used to facilitate mitigation for an infrastructure project shall not be subject to the limitation on the number of regional conservation investment strategies set in Section 1861 of the Fish and Game Code.
The Advance Mitigation Account is hereby created in the State Transportation Fund as a revolving fund. Notwithstanding Section 13340 of the Government Code, the account shall be continuously appropriated without regard to fiscal years for purposes of the Advance Mitigation Program. The activity of the account shall be reported to the commission. The program is intended to become self-sustaining. Expenditures from the account shall later be reimbursed from project funding available at the time a planned transportation project is constructed.
The program is intended to improve the efficiency and efficacy of mitigation only and is not intended to supplant the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act (Division 13 (commencing with Section 21000) of the Public Resource Code) or any other environmental law. The identification of planned transportation projects and of mitigation projects or measures for planned transportation projects under this article does not imply or require approval of those projects for purposes of the California Environmental Quality Act (Division 13 (commencing with Section 21000) of the Public Resource Code) or any other environmental law.
The department, pursuant to this article and for the purpose of implementing the Advance Mitigation Program, may develop a programmatic mitigation plan pursuant to Section 169 of Title 23 of the United States Code to address the potential environmental impacts of future transportation projects for the purpose of required mitigation approved by federal, state, and local agencies. The programmatic mitigation plans shall include, to the maximum extent practicable, the information required for regional conservation investment strategies.
SHCStreets and Highways Code - SHC2.5
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The Yeti Trilogy
By Sam Brooks
↳ ARTS, Theatre & Performing Arts
Written by Natalie Medlock, Thomas Sainsbury, Daniel Musgrove
Directed by Sophie Roberts
Basement Theatre, Auckland | September 3-7
While I wasn’t fortunate enough to see the first two parts in the Yeti trilogy (I Am Yeti and Yeti is Dead) on their previous outings, I’ve heard amazing things about both plays. So it’s with a lot of anticipation that I went into The Yeti Trilogy, which incorporates both these shows with a third part (Yeti in the Himalayas) completing the saga.
It’s a deceptively simple premise. Natalie Medlock plays Yeti, a Nepalese immigrant who wants to be a screenwriter and is, as her name suggests, a yeti. She moves in with aspiring screenwriter and depressive Tom (Thomas Sainsbury) and his wife Yvette (Yvette Parsons). The plot unfolds in ridiculous fashion, involving Daniel Musgrove in a dual role as Tom’s mum and Yeti’s ex-boyfriend Simon and also Chris Parker as a Jeremy Kyle-esque figure.
I haven’t seen a comedy like this before. While it bears the loose trademarks of a Sainsbury play, and he is a co-writer here, there’s another level of weirdness that makes things that shouldn’t be funny really funny. A simple gag like a dude in a dress becomes funny with Musgrove’s committed performance, as does Parker’s energetic talk show host parody. And even the more offbeat stuff works well, like Sainsbury’s thousand dances, which are abruptly and sadly cut short, and the entirety of what Parsons is doing for the show’s one hour and forty five minutes.
But the reason that this comedy is unique, and the main reason to see it, is Medlock’s performance as Yeti. From the moment she’s onstage in an adorably makeshift yeti costume, complete with fluffy white eyebrows and boots, she’s electric to watch. It’s something that should be a one-off, lazy joke: she’s a yeti with a funny voice and a funny sensibility. But Medlock, and co-writers Musgrove and Sainsbury, bring a surprising amount of humour out of her interactions with the real world and also the crazy world of the play. Medlock also gives Yeti an endearing simplicity and a bizarre soulfulness. By the time we get to the third act (or second half of the play), we are totally enamoured with Yeti, and her interactions with her ex-boyfriend Simon are a highlight of the play. Despite a hilarious, understandable crack at one point, Musgrove and Medlock have a chemistry that made me want to see a play entirely about Yeti and Simon’s relationship.
As a production that appears to have once been two plays with a third added on, it isn’t flawless and some of the seams show. I found the second part, which as a standalone was Yeti is Dead, to be a little bit of a dip compared to the first and third acts, just for the lack of Yeti in the action. The show is a rough in spots and some gags run longer than they should. Not all the jokes hit as hard as they might; I felt like I was the only person who laughed (quite loudly) at an Adrian Lyne joke, which is not something I was expecting at a show at the Basement, or a show anywhere, for that matter. However, director Sophie Roberts keeps the show moving along at a clip, and cohesively too, especially with a massive genre shift in the last ten minutes or so. For what is essentially a two hour comedy, it goes by like a dream.
Flaws aside, I genuinely enjoyed The Yeti Trilogy and would seriously recommend seeing it. It boasts a lot bawdy, surrealistic humour, and I was most happy to spend two hours in the presence of a character as genius as Yeti. She’s the kind of character that doesn’t come around often, and you’ll regretting missing her if you don’t catch her now.
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How Algorithms and Human Journalists Will Need to Work Together
by Andreas Graefe
Photo by Arthur Caranta and used here with Creative Commons license.
This post originally appeared on The Conversation.
Ever since the Associated Press automated the production and publication of quarterly earnings reports in 2014, algorithms that automatically generate news stories from structured, machine-readable data have been shaking up the news industry. The promises of this technology – often referred to as automated (or robot) journalism – are enticing: Once developed, such algorithms could create an unlimited number of news stories on a specific topic at little cost. And they could do it faster, cheaper, with fewer errors and in more languages than any human journalist ever could.
The two types of coverage will likely become closely integrated, with computers using their strengths and the humans focusing on ours.
This technology provides an opportunity to make money creating content for very small audiences – even, perhaps, customized news feeds for an audience of just one person. And when it works well, readers perceive the quality of automated news as on par with news written by human journalists.
As a researcher and creator of automated journalism, I’ve found that computerized news reporting can offer key strengths. For example, automated journalism can analyze patterns in large amounts of data far more quickly than humans. I’ve also identified important weaknesses that highlight the importance of humans in journalism, whose ability to make judgment calls about what is newsworthy is irreplaceable.
Identifying automation’s abilities
In January 2016, I published the “Guide to Automated Journalism,” which reviewed the state of the technology at the time. It also raised key questions for future research, and discussed potential implications for journalists, news consumers, media outlets and society at large. I found that, despite its potential, automated journalism is still in an early phase.
Right now, automated journalism systems are serving specialized audiences, large and small, with very particular information, producing recaps of lower-league sports events, financial news, crime reports and earthquake alerts. The technology is constrained to these types of tasks because there are limits to what sorts of information it can take in and process into text that humans can easily read and understand.
It works best when handling structured data that is accurate like stock prices. In addition, algorithms can only describe what happened – not why, making it best for routine stories based solely on facts that have little room for uncertainty and interpretation, such as when and where an earthquake happened. And because the major benefit of computerized reporting is that it can do repetitive work quickly and easily, it is best used to cover repetitive topics that require producing a large number of similar stories, such as sporting event reports.
Covering elections
Another useful area for automated news reporting is election coverage – specifically regarding results of the numerous polls that come out almost daily during major campaigns. In late 2016, I teamed up with fellow researchers and the German company AX Semantics to develop automated news based on forecasts for that year’s U.S. presidential election.
The forecasting data were provided by the PollyVote research project, which also hosted the platform for publishing the resulting texts. We established a completely automated process, from collecting and aggregating the raw forecasting data, to exchanging the data with AX Semantics and generating the texts, to publishing those texts.
Over the course of the election season, we published nearly 22,000 automated news articles in English and German. Because they came from a fully automated process, the final texts often had errors, such as typos or missing words. We also had to spend much more time than we had expected troubleshooting problems. Most of the issues came from errors in the source data, rather than the algorithm – highlighting another key challenge of automated journalism.
Finding the limits
The process of developing our own text-generating algorithms taught us firsthand about the potential and limits of automated journalism. It’s crucial to make sure the data is as accurate as possible. And it is easy to automate the process of creating text from a single set of facts, such as the results of a single poll. But adding insights, like comparing that poll to others in the past, is much harder.
Perhaps the most important lesson we learned was how quickly we reached the limits of automation. When developing the rules governing how the algorithm would turn data into text, we had to make decisions that might seem easy for people to make – such as whether a candidate’s lead should be described as “large” or “small,” and what signals could suggest a candidate had momentum in the polls.
Those sorts of subjective decisions are very hard to formulate into predefined rules that should apply to any situation that has occurred historically – much less to any situation that might occur in future data. One reason is that context matters: A four-point lead for Clinton in the run-up to the election, for example, was normal, whereas a four-point lead for Trump would have been big news. The ability to understand that difference and interpret the numbers accordingly is crucial for readers. It remains a barrier that algorithms will have a hard time overcoming.
But human journalists will have a hard time outcompeting automation when covering routine and repetitive fact-based stories that merely require a conversion of raw data into standard writing, such as sports recaps or company earnings reports. Algorithms will be faster at identifying anomalies in the data and generating at least first drafts of many stories.
All is not lost for the people, though. Journalists have plenty of opportunities to take on tasks algorithms cannot perform, like putting those numbers in proper context – as well as providing in-depth analyses, behind-the-scenes reporting and interviews with key people. The two types of coverage will likely become closely integrated, with computers using their strengths and the humans focusing on ours.
Andreas Graefe is the endowed Sky Research Professor at Macromedia University.
Tagged: algorithm Automated journalism big data robot journalism
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Group Banned From Praying at Western Wall
Posted by Jeff from d53-152-230.try.wideopenwest.com (64.53.230.152) on Monday, April 07, 2003 at 1:07AM :
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM - The Israeli Supreme Court on Sunday barred a Jewish women's group from worshipping at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, but ruled that the government had to name an alternative prayer site within a year.
The women had provoked the ire of the ultra-Orthodox religious establishment by wearing prayer shawls and reading from the Torah, the Jewish holy book, while praying at the Wall.
Women are allowed to pray at the Wall in a section separate from that of the men, but ultra-Orthodox tradition holds reading from the Torah as a male preserve.
Calling the 5-4 verdict "not very brave," the leader of the Women of the Wall group, Anat Hoffman, said the judges effectively classified women as second-class citizens.
The court accepted the government's position that allowing the group to pray at the site constituted a danger to public safety.
In the past, attempts by the women to worship at the Wall, while wearing prayer shawls and reading from the Torah, have provoked anger and violence from the ultra-Orthodox community.
But the expanded nine-judge panel said the government has a year to provide an alternative place for worship at a nearby site called Robinson's Arch or the court will allow the women to return.
Sunday's ruling reversed an earlier high court that supported the women.
Rabbi Andrew Sacks, director of the Conservative Jewish movement's Rabbinical Assembly, said in a statement, that "those who support pluralism should be saddened by this decision."
He said the movement does not insist on its right to pray at the main section of the wall "in the interest of peace."
The Western Wall is a retaining wall of the Second Temple compound, destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., part of the disputed hilltop that Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call Haram al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam.
-- Jeff
: Group Banned From Praying at Western Wall : 2 hours, 55 minutes ago : By GAVIN RABINOWITZ, Associated Press Writer : JERUSALEM - The Israeli Supreme Court on Sunday barred a Jewish women's group from worshipping at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, but ruled that the government had to name an alternative prayer site within a year. : : The women had provoked the ire of the ultra-Orthodox religious establishment by wearing prayer shawls and reading from the Torah, the Jewish holy book, while praying at the Wall. : Women are allowed to pray at the Wall in a section separate from that of the men, but ultra-Orthodox tradition holds reading from the Torah as a male preserve. : Calling the 5-4 verdict "not very brave," the leader of the Women of the Wall group, Anat Hoffman, said the judges effectively classified women as second-class citizens. : The court accepted the government's position that allowing the group to pray at the site constituted a danger to public safety. : In the past, attempts by the women to worship at the Wall, while wearing prayer shawls and reading from the Torah, have provoked anger and violence from the ultra-Orthodox community. : But the expanded nine-judge panel said the government has a year to provide an alternative place for worship at a nearby site called Robinson's Arch or the court will allow the women to return. : Sunday's ruling reversed an earlier high court that supported the women. : Rabbi Andrew Sacks, director of the Conservative Jewish movement's Rabbinical Assembly, said in a statement, that "those who support pluralism should be saddened by this decision." : He said the movement does not insist on its right to pray at the main section of the wall "in the interest of peace." : The Western Wall is a retaining wall of the Second Temple compound, destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., part of the disputed hilltop that Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call Haram al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam.
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Home .:. About .:. Biography
Drew Spence
Ethnic xxxx
Job xxxx Footballer
Desc xxxx
Org xxxx Women National Team
Club as Player xxxx
Chelsea Women FC
2020 01 21 Retrieve
[Drew Spence thinks that the club’s new signing Sam Kerr has settled in well] She is a really chilled out girl and she has been with us for a couple of weeks now. She didn’t have a lot of sessions before playing that first game. She is waiting for that first goal to go in (which she has now scored) but I am sure when it does that she will feel calmer. She has fit in with everyone. We are a very relaxed group so it is probably the best team to go into. She is doing well in training, she has lightning pace to get in-behind and she is doing that already. She has settled in well
[FA today categorically denied that the Sampson issue has anything to do with Drew Spence’s omission from the national team set-up] Players are only ever picked on merit and all English players in the WSL are watched and considered for selection
2020 04 17b Retrieve
[When Chelsea’s Drew Spence eventually hangs up her boots, she’ll do so with few regrets] Phil [Neville, current England coach] hasn’t spoken to me once. It’s a funny one really because I feel like I’ve deserved a chance, a least a chance to go to a camp or something like that. To not be given that chance makes me question, ‘Is it because of what happened?’ I think it is because of what happened if I’m totally honest. I think I’ve only been called in once since it happened and that was the camp straight after so that probably was to make them look good in the media. The reason why I didn’t speak out straight away was because I was worried, I was stressed at the time. There was a lot going on behind closed doors
My main concern was whether it would affect me playing for my country. I’m happy with the decision I took, I didn’t speak out then, morally it wouldn’t have been right, but it is what it is. If I get a chance in the future then great, but if I don’t, I’m not losing any sleep over it. I’ve got a good career at Chelsea, we’re winning titles, we’re challenging every season, so I’m happy with my status at the moment. If I wasn’t winning trophies here maybe I would be more down about it. If I wasn’t at such a successful club maybe it would play on my mind a bit. But I’m really happy with where I am at this stage of my career. There’s so much more I want to achieve but I’ve just got to carry on working hard and see what happens
If we don’t win it within the next two years, I feel like it’ll be a massive failure to be honest
The team that we have at the moment can easily win the Champions League. I think everyone knows that. With the depth that we have, we should be challenging. Hopefully we can finish the season this year, get in the top two spots, and then next year it’s all guns blazing really
I think it’s difficult for me because a lot of people always write me off. Every year, I’ve got to push myself. I know there’s going to be signings coming in every year. Emma’s made that clear every season really, to make sure that the squad is pushing again and pushing to another level. It’s just really believing in yourself and making sure [you’re] doing everything right in training every day and competing with the players that come in. I think at the beginning, I didn’t have as much confidence as I do in myself now, but thankfully Emma had that faith in me and just stuck by me. She was brutally honest and told me what I need to improve on. I think sometimes you just need honesty. I think that’s what I needed from a younger age. If you have someone that believes in you, but they’re also honest with you, I think that helps massively
Beta 2020. We are creating footballer's biography profile based on their daily statement. Please donate by becoming My Patreon Patron
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Okinawans Stage More Anti-U.S. Base Protests in Tokyo
Pan Orient News
Tokyo- (PanOrient News) Hundreds of Japanese people took to the streets of Tokyo on Saturday (Sep.20th) to protest their government’s decision to build a facility for the U.S. military on reclaimed land in Henoko, Okinawa.
Protestors marched in the popular Shibuya district in central Tokyo to express their anger and accuse Tokyo and Washington of making plans that will threaten the environment and endangered species in the area.
Last December, Okinawa Gov. Hirokazu Nakaima approved landfill work to build a replacement facility in the less populated Henoko coastal district of Nago town, despite strong local opposition. The Okinawa prefectural government approved on August 28 the start of rock drilling off Henoko, a necessary step to fill in the offshore area and build a replacement facility for a key U.S. military base in the southwestern prefecture. This is being done so the functions of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station in Ginowan can eventually be moved.
The drilling project, covering around 172 hectares, will be completed by March 31, 2017.
Japan's top government spokesman Suga said the relocation of the base to Henoko is the only viable solution, but opponents such as Nago Mayor Susumu Inamine and local fishermen have protested the move and expressed concern about water pollution and the impact on local fishing.
First agreed on in 1996 between Japan and the United States, the Futenma relocation plan has been hampered by strong local opposition as well as political wrangling.
In Henoko, non-violent protests have continued on a daily basis as the work continues. Okinawans and other Japanese supporters held rallies in Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto to express their opposition and try to force the Japanese government to change course. Protesters said that despite the fact that more than 80% of people in Okinawa are against the construction of the U.S. military base, the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is promoting the construction of the base in Henoko.
A woman opposed to the Henoko project in Okinawa held a banner appealing for the end of the "forced" construction of the US base in Henoko to protect endangered see animals such as the dugong and turtle, as well as coral reefs.
Banners raised by demonstrators called for the abolishment of the US-Japan military treaty, and pledged, "We won't let them construct a military base at Henoko".
But there’s little chance the Japanese government will change its plans, observers say. The tension with China and North Korea has prompted the Japanese government to move more of its forces to Okinawa and nearby islands in preparation for emergency situations in the region especially over the Senkaku Islands claimed by both Japanese and China.
Labels: Asia, Japan, military, occupation, Okinawa, United States
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The race to the horizon
The fascinating background and history of the Volvo Ocean Race have turned it into one of the best-known and toughest endurance races in the sporting calendar. For four and a half decades, participants have challenging themselves and each other as they sail its course. In this article, we will trace the race back to its beginning - and beyond, looking at the developments that shaped modern sea travel and made it possible in the first place. We trace the history of the race all the way back to the opening of the Panama and Suez canals, and then how - decades later - Robin Knox-Johnson became the first man to sail single-handedly round the planet. We then describe the foundation of the race in the 70s, and the developments that turned it into the event we know today - with its cutting-edge boats, teams of world champion sailors and non-stop coverage.
The secrets of Volvo Cars’ driving simulator
The virtual world meets the real world in Volvo Cars’ driving simulator, a machine that helps its engineers perfect the way every Volvo responds to your inputs.
From the islands of Stockholm to the streets of San Francisco, Sweden’s food culture is becoming a powerful symbol of the country’s spirit of innovation.
1966 was quite a year for music. The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Bob Dylan all released groundbreaking albums that completely transformed the cultural landscape. But while Lennon and McCartney and their contemporaries were busy reinventing the way music was made, a classical music enthusiast called John Bowers was focusing his attention and expertise on reinventing the way we listened to it.
Volvo Cars’ safety: a proud heritage
The safety vision that nobody will be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car is the result of a dedication to saving lives that has been passed on from generation to generation of Volvo people since the company was founded in 1927.
Beauty and utility
Naimakka's bracelets - made from functional parachute cord - are fast becoming must-have accessories. Now, they've blended their own unique style with Volvo Cars' safety vision.
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Culture & Architecture
The Mayor of Novi Sad
Capital Investments
Citizens’ Complaint and Open Office
Contact Center for Citizens
Home › CITY OF NOVI SAD ANNOUNCES PUBLIC CALL FOR CONSTRUCTION OF PUBLIC GARAGES
CITY OF NOVI SAD ANNOUNCES PUBLIC CALL FOR CONSTRUCTION OF PUBLIC GARAGES
The City of Novi Sad has issued a Public Call for Design, Construction, Management and Maintenance of Public Garages in the Territory of the City of Novi Sad for four public garages, in Modena Street, at the corner of Uspenska and Šafarikova Street, near the Provincial Government and Assembly of AP Vojvodina, as well as in the Republic Square. The concession is organized in lots and interested parties can submit a bid for one or more lots.
Consequently, the City has continued to strategically address the lack of a parking space, as one of the most common side effects of urban development. According to the results of the Smart Plan analysis for the City of Novi Sad, the most prominent lack of parking space is in the central city area.
The construction of one above ground and three underground public garages in the inner city center will rationally solve the problem of stationary traffic and create preconditions for landscaping of the city squares and bringing them to purpose provided by the Detailed Regulation Plan.
Considering that it is a big investment and that the Public Call is international, the City expects the participation of both domestic and foreign investors and the creation of new jobs.
The Public Call was published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, on the Public Procurement Portal, on the City's website, on the website of Tenders Electronic Daily - the Internet edition of the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union, as well as in daily newspapers distributed on the territory of the Republic of Serbia.
The deadline for submission of bids is February 21st, 2020 by 10.00 a.m. CET.
Novi Sad, 16th December 2019
Republic of Serbia
Novi Sad today
© City of Novi Sad Design and Development by JKP Informatika - Novi Sad & EtonDigital | About site
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The History of Fondue and the Cheese Cartel that Popularized It
May 20, 2015 Dan Lewis Uncategorized 0
Take a mix of cheeses — gruyere as one, if you’re going authentic — and toss it into an earthenware pot. Add in some wine and garlic if you’d like, and place the pot over some Sterno or other portable heat source. While the cheese melts, find yourself some stale bread and some long forks or skewers. Once the pot of cheese begins to bubble, place some bread on the end of that fork, dip the bread into the cheese mix, and let it cool just a bit. Then pop the cheese-covered bread into your mouth, grab another piece of bread, and repeat until the cheese (or bread if you’re doing it wrong) is all gone.
Congratulations, you’ve just eaten fondue. If you liked it, you can thank a century-old cheese cartel.
Fondue has a long and opaque history, at least until the mid-1900s. As noted by the BBC, Homer — the Greek poet — made reference to “a mixture of goat’s cheese, wine and flour” in the Iliad nearly 3,000 years ago. The first modern recipe emerged in a 1699 in a cookbook from Zurich which, according to Wikipedia, “call[ed] for grated or cut-up cheese to be melted with wine, and for bread to be dipped in it” but never used the word “fondue.” Other than that, though, mentions of the recipe were intermittent. Up until about 1930, the dish remained regional, even inside of Switzerland.
That changed, in part, due to World War I. The First World War ravaged the European countryside and, in particular, France and Germany. But Switzerland, which remained neutral throughout the war, was left relatively unscathed — and so did its cows. During and after the war, Switzerland had the ability to produce a lot more cheese than Europe could purchase, and pre-World War II tariffs and trade restrictions made the problem even worse. So a group of Swiss cheese makers came together to create something called Schweizer Käseunion AG, or the Swiss Cheese Union. Starting in 1914, the cartel — with the government’s blessing and support — controlled everything relating to cheese in the country: how much could be produced, what prices cheese makers could charge, and even restricting the types of cheeses that could be made. Understandably, these actions made them unpopular. In a recent (April 2015) NPR story, a reporter asked restaurant managers about the Swiss Cheese Union only to find that the managers disavowed any knowledge of the Schweizer Käseunion at all. One expert the reporter spoke to said that was because the people interviewed likely saw themselves as “survivors” of the cartel.
The abuse of power by the Union was mostly successful, though. But industries have to grow to survive, and Swiss cheeses aren’t immune to this need. By the 1930s, there was still a lot of cheese making capacity and a lot of upset cheese makers who were being told to stop producing it. So the Swiss Cheese Union found a way to do more without asking the cheese makers to do even less: the cartel went into marketing.
Having already limited the supply of Swiss cheeses, the Union looked at ways of increasing demand. One of the reasons that Americans refer to Emmental — the hard cheese with holes, as seen here — as “swiss cheese” is because the Union focused many of its early marketing efforts on popularizing that variety. But its biggest success came from the 1930s to the 1970s, when the cartel popularized fondue. Before the Union got in the mix, fondue wasn’t well known in most of Switzerland and, for that matter, was unheard of internationally. It was, however, common in some parts of the Swiss Alps, perhaps because the people there happened to have a lot of cheese and had a hard time keeping their bread fresh due to the climate conditions.
The Swiss Cheese Union decided that this was the product they had been looking for — think about the extraordinary amount of cheese that goes into a fondue pot. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the Union began mailing fondue recipes to households across Switzerland. An advertising blitz, per NPR’s Planet Money, featured attractive Swiss partygoers gathered around the fondue pot while touting the vat of melted fat as a healthy choice for a snack. Over the decades, fondue became increasingly popular — the Union’s ploy had worked. The dish’s popularity has waned since, but not before much of the world tried it. Fondue is still very common in restaurants throughout Switzerland, and one can still find fondue sets in most cooking stories around the globe.
As for the Swiss Cheese Union, it did not last the century. In part due to corruption among its officials (with some ending up in prison), the Schweizer Käseunion folded in 1999.
Bonus Fact: The holes in Emmental cheese is caused by a gas emitted by a bacteria — gas which doesn’t escape during the cheese making process. Wikipedia explains: “In the late stage of cheese production, P. freudenreichii consumes the lactic acid excreted by the other bacteria, and releases carbon dioxide gas, which slowly forms the bubbles that make holes. Failure to remove CO2 bubbles during production, due to inconsistent pressing, results in the large holes (‘eyes’) characteristic of this cheese.”
Take the Quiz: Cheese or Crackers: There are 23 items listed below. Twenty are types of cheese. The other three are types of crackers. Can you pick the 20 cheeses with choosing a cracker first?
From the Archives: This Cheese Stands Alone: The very rare, very expensive moose cheese.
Related: A pretty nice fondue set. Cheese, bread, Sterno, and overbearing cartel boss not included.
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You are here: About XPN // Press Room // PR 2013 // WXPN Features Little Green Cars as the XPN Artist To Watch for April
WXPN Features Little Green Cars as the XPN Artist To Watch for April
Little Green Cars give XPN listeners an incredibly diverse compilation in which the only constants are the mesmerizing male and female harmonies and the security that every track is beautifully and sincerely crafted. Their flexibility makes Absolute Zero worth listening to all April long; it is available now on Spotify, and the album will be released on July 15.
"Dublin's Little Green Cars have made a confident, excellent debut album. After seeing them perform at SXSW I was really impressed by their live performance," says Bruce Warren, Assistant General Manager of Programming for WXPN. "Their harmonies are exquisite, the songwriting complex and unique but still accessible."
Dan Reed added, "It's going to be interesting to see what this very young Dublin band do with their considerable talents. Fans of great harmony groups (think contemporary Mamas & Papas) please take note."
For more info on the XPN Artists To Watch series and this month's featured artist click here.
Since 2003, the XPN Artists To Watch series has been a reflection of WXPN's commitment to nurturing fresh, new talent and exposing listeners to the best new music. Each month, the XPN Artists To Watch series spotlights a different up-and-coming performer who has produced an album or body of work that demonstrates outstanding vision, creativity and songwriting ability. Month-long on-air promotion is combined with online features to help audiences discover each artist.
WXPN, the nationally recognized leader in Triple A radio and the premier guide for discovering new and significant artists in rock, blues, roots and folk, is the non-commercial, member-supported radio service of the University of Pennsylvania. WXPN produces World Cafe®, public radio’s most popular program of popular music hosted by David Dye and syndicated by NPR, and the Peabody Award winning Kids Corner hosted by Kathy O’Connell. WXPN also produces the XPN2 Singer-Songwriter Radio stream as its secondary radio channel in HD that is also available online. WXPN serves the greater Philadelphia area at 88.5 FM, the Lehigh Valley at 104.9, Worton/Baltimore at 90.5 FM, Lancaster/York at 88.7 FM, Harrisburg at 99.7 FM and the world via online streaming at XPN.org.
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IRAQI PRESIDENCY
عربی کوردی English
Presidential News
President Speech
Barham Ahmed Salih Qasim
The 9th President of the Republic of Iraq
Dr. Barham Ahmed Salih Qassim is the ninth President of the Republic of Iraq. The Iraqi Parliament elected him as the President of Iraq on October 2, 2018 with an overwhelming majority.
President Salih has assumed several high-ranking positions in the Iraqi federal government. He served as the Deputy Prime Minister for economic affairs, and the head of the economic committee from 2005 – 2009. In 2005, he served as the Minister of Planning in the Iraqi transitional government, and in 2004 as Deputy Prime Minister in Iraq’s interim government.
H.E. Dr. Salih was tasked by the Kurdish leadership to head the Kurdistani electoral slate, was designated to form the sixth Kurdish government and, served as the Prime Minister of the Iraqi Kurdish Region from 2009 – 2011. He was also the Prime Minister of the Kurdish Regional Government in Sulaymaniyah from 2001 – 2004.
The President was born on September 8, 1960. He earned his Doctor of Engineering in Statistics and Computer Applications from the University of Liverpool in 1987, and his bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and Construction from the University of Cardiff in 1983.
President Salih is fluent in Arabic, Kurdish, and English languages.
He is interested in the cultural and academic fields. He founded the American University of Iraq – Sulaymaniyah. He is an ardent supporter of civil society and, non-governmental organizations.
Dr. Salih was active in the opposition to Saddam’s dictatorial regime. He was arrested by the Special Investigative Committee in 1979 in Kirkuk. Later, he was arrested again at the Military Intelligence HQ in Sulaymaniyah.
The President is married to Dr. Sarbagh Salih. The First Lady is a botanist and women’s rights activist. Together they have a son and a daughter.
Iraqi President Approves Iraq's Accession to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change
Iraqi President Ratifies Financing Election Expenses Act
President Ratifies Country’s new Electoral Law
Iraqi Nursing Syndicate's Law Being Endorsed by President
Iraqi Presidencies defines best practice for next federal elections
President, Receiving Egypt's PM, Affirms Iraq's Eagerness to Promote Cooperation Between the Two Nations to Coordinate Positions Which Would De-escalate Tensions and Establish Peace in the Region
President, Meeting Italian Minister of Defence, Confirms Iraq's Desire to Build Strong Relationships with Italy and EU, Underlines that World Must Join Forces to Address Challenges
Iraqi National Leaders Assert Improving State Regulation of Weapons in the Country, Protecting of Diplomatic Missions and Responding to the Lawlessness Acts Which Harm the Security and Sovereignty of the Country
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Smash Pages Q&A: Stuart Moore
The comics veteran discusses his work for Ahoy Comics, “Captain Ginger,” the upcoming “Bronze Age Boogie” and more.
Stuart Moore has been working in comics in a variety of ways for decades. He was an editor at DC Comics, where he was one of the founding editors of the Vertigo imprint, overseeing books like Swamp Thing, Jonah Hex, Preacher and Hellblazer, before working on DC’s Helix imprint, where he oversaw Vermilion, The Black Lamb and Transmetropolitan, before working on the Marvel Knights imprint, overseeing Alias and Fantastic Four 1234. He’s written books like Firestorm with Jamal Igle, Namor: The First Mutant and The 99. He also adapted Brian Jacques’ Redwall, and created projects like Earthlight, Lone, Giant Robot Warriors and Para.
Right now Moore is working at Ahoy Comics, where he’s not just working behind the scenes, but also writing books for the company. Those books include Captain Ginger, the first season of which wrapped up last month, and Bronze Age Boogie, which launches in April. That’s in addition to writing a story for Ahoy’s Free Comic Book Day issue coming out in May, and one story in June’s Steel Cage One Shot. The titles are all very different kinds of stories that feature collaborations with talented artists doing some of the best work of their careers.
Somehow Moore found a few minutes to answer my questions.
How did you first come to comics?
I answered an ad! I was a book editor, and DC wanted someone from outside comics to work in Karen Berger’s department, which became Vertigo a couple of years later. That’s the short, dingus answer. The true answer is that I’d been reading them all my life. I think Howard the Duck got me through age 15.
I started writing in earnest in the early 2000s, and I’ve been fortunate enough to work on a mix of company- and creator-owned characters. I love writing Deadpool or Firestorm, but there’s nothing quite like brewing up your own universe from scratch.
How did you end up working at Ahoy Comics?
Tom Peyer, the editor-in-chief, is an old friend of mine. They asked me to pitch in and consult at first, help out a bit. Then Ahoy’s Publishing Ops person, Sven Larsen, got snapped up by Marvel! So I wound up doing a bit more behind-the-scenes work, in addition to my writing.
Your first miniseries at Ahoy just wrapped up. What is Captain Ginger, for those who missed it?
Captain Ginger is about a starship with a 100% feline crew. It’s also sort of about the self-destruction of humanity. With lots of cat jokes.
The idea sounded fun when it was announced, but you also make it clear very quickly that they’re cats. They may be smarter and flying in space ships, but they’re cats. Which is one way to take a very serious existential tale of survival in space and add comedy. But you’ve written a number of sci-fi and adventure stories over the years. What did you get to do here that is something new that you wanted to do?
I love cats. I’ve almost always lived with them. They’re arrogant, selfish creatures, but very, very loving, too. I wanted to see what would happen if they had just a tiny bit more self-awareness, and were placed in a situation where they had to cooperate in order to survive.
I also created the series specifically for June Brigman. June and I have worked together before, and I know of her love for cats. I think she and Roy Richardson, her husband, have 10 of them right now. Her artwork is classical, elegant and straightforward, but I also knew she could depict cat emotions and movement better than anyone in the field.
There’s a lot of visual humor in the series. Cats in the background and kittens playing everywhere. How much of that was in the script and how much of that is Brigman throwing a few more cats into the background of scenes?
It was definitely a mixture. I came up with most of the main gags – the cats jumping at lights on the screen, the way their eyes work, that sort of thing. But June kept drawing more and more of them in the background—especially all the little cats that the big cats are petting or shooing away while they’re trying to fight off enemy ships or keep the atomic pile from blowing. That wound up contributing to the world-building, the whole way the cats operate together and how they’ve evolved.
June Brigman and Roy Richardson are busy drawing Mary Worth seven days a week, but you announced that there is a second miniseries in the works. Is there anything you want to say about what you have planned or things you didn’t get to do in the first series?
Oh yes, quite a lot. The last page of issue #4 points the way to the second series…it’s meant as a teaser for what’s coming next. The second series—we call them seasons, at Ahoy—will be six issues long, and quite traumatic for some of our characters.
That ending to issue #4, incidentally, was originally the end of issue #1. I decided we needed more time to get to know the crew and the ship before throwing them into a possibly fateful confrontation.
So shifting focus, tell me about Bronze Age Boogie? Where did this idea come from?
Bronze Age Boogie was born in the grindhouse theaters of Times Square, in the dark hearts of scowling newsstand owners, in the discos of Harlem, in all the basements where kids of the ‘70s practiced Kung Fu and knew, deep down, that if they missed an issue of Luke Cage, they’d never ever get another chance to read it.
But it’s also about today, you know? Life in mid-70s New York seemed very precarious, like you were balancing by your toes on a ledge, every second of your life. This time in history feels like that, too.
Like a lot of people I read the initial description when the book was announced and thought, oh, barbarians, very Bronze age of comics. But this particular barbarian lives 3949 years before the 1970s, during the actual Bronze age, which literally made me laugh out loud. But for you, what are the comics or novels that for you really define the 1970s and the Bronze age and earlier period of human history?
Ha! Thanks. The nexus, the point where those two lines cross, is sword-and-sorcery comics, which were big in comics’ bronze age and take place, sortofkindofmaybe, in the actual bronze age. So Conan and his fellow barbarians were a big inspiration here.
But the Martians are also an important part of the picture. If this is a “team book”—and it is, in a way, though there are no superheroes in it—then the Martians are the Lex Luthor, the Thanos, the Big Bad. The history of their attempts to invade Earth forms the structure of our story.
What has it been like working with Alberto Ponticelli and Giulia Brusco on the book, because the artwork is just stunning?
I agree. They’re both just lovely people and incredibly talented. Alberto has a lot of freedom to lay out the story, and his character designs are stunning. One of the big advantages we have over the comics creators of the past is that we can email and fileshare images back and forth, fine-tuning characters and dialogue until we get them right. When a creative team is in sync, that can be pretty great. I feel like we’ve got that rhythm going here.
All three of you seem very conscious that this story may sound like an homage or pastiche, but you’re all taking it very seriously and trying to find new ways for these elements and ideas to come together
Oh yes, absolutely. The art style and coloring on this book are very modern. The writing varies. I’ve tried to use some tricks you don’t see very often anymore, but all in service of the story. I like pulling something out and surprising the reader, but my goal is always to tell the story.
You also have a backup story – very bronze age of comics – “Major Ursa.”
“Major Ursa” is about the first bear in space, shot up by the U.S. in 1958 in an attempt to beat the Russians. If you’ve ever read comics before, you can probably guess that some pretty weird things happen to him up there. It’s written by TV writer/producer Tyrone Finch and drawn by Mauricet (Dastardly and Muttley), and it’s quick and fun and full of surprises.
You’ve also written a short comic that appears in the FCBD issue from Ahoy. Do you want to say a little about that?
Yes, we’re returning briefly to Captain Ginger for an eight-page story flashing back to our hero’s kittenhood. Which, regular readers can guess, wasn’t very happy. It’s by the regular Ginger team, and it’ll be available for free in the back of Dragonfly and Dragonflyman, on May 4.
If that weren’t enough, in June Ahoy is publishing Steel Cage One Shot, which has three stories by three different creative teams, one of which is by you and Peter Gross. Can you say a little about “Bright Boy?”
I don’t want to say too much about “Bright Boy”—it’s one of those stories I’d like people to experience fresh. It’s very much about where we are today as a society, as a civilization, and where we’re going. Also, it has robots who quote Shakespeare.
So for people on the fence – maybe they dislike apes, maybe they hate Happy Days, maybe they break out in hives looking at 70s fashion, I don’t know – what’s your final closing plea/elevator pitch for why they should check out Bronze Age Boogie?
Hey, it’s not ALL bellbottoms and wide collars! Most of issue #1 takes place in ancient times. I want to keep people guessing. There are a lot of twists and turns, savage battles and tender moments. In both time periods.
This is an epic, time-spanning story of heroism, cowardice, humor, and adventure—and thanks to Alberto and Giulia, it’s told with a lot of style. So get on out to that comic shop and tell them “I want the BOOGIE.”
Author Alex DuebenPosted on February 19, 2019 February 19, 2019 Categories InterviewsTags Ahoy Comics, Bronze Age Boogie, Captain Ginger, comic books, interviews, Stuart Moore
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Tim Deal / Hight
Writer/Artist/Producer
Felix Jaehn
Karma [TV Track]
Karma [INST]
Rapture [TV Track]
Karma [Clean]
Tim Deal / Hight is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, DJ and songwriter from the UK who is making waves.
As a writer/ producer Hight has been collaborating with various artists. He has recently co-written and did additional production on the latest Tom Walker single 'My Way, he co-wrote and co-produced 'Waste' on Lily Allen's latest album and has written and produced singles by Felix Jaehn, Loop, Don Diablo, Sondr, Grace Davies (X Factor) and many others. He has also produced and co-written the forthcoming Eliza & The Bear album and has been writing with John Newman, Dan Caplan, George from Aluna George, James Hype, Rak Su, Yxng Bane and many more.
As an artist Hight combines underground electronic and mainstream disco elements with influences from Daft Punk to DNCE. He caught the attention of international DJ Felix Jaehn who asked Hight to support him on his Bonfires Tour throughout Germany in September of 2016. Since then they worked in the studio together and produced the hit single 'Hot2Touch' which also features vocalist Alex Aiono. The track reached platinum sales status in Germany and was No. 1 in the German airplay charts for a number of weeks. It currently has over 107 million streams on Spotify.
Hight has had a number of his own releases starting with ‘Runway’ which was released on Spinnin's sub-label SOURCE recordings and was played out by some of the biggest DJs in the world. He is now working in the studio on his next singles as well as appearing at a few festivals over the Summer and doing various remixes for the likes of Kodaline, Tom Walker, Kovic, Felix Jaehn.
Watch this guy as he starts reaching new heights!
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What is this? From this page you can use the Social Web links to save Baseball Hall of Fame Catcher Gary “Kid” Carter Passes Away at the Age of 57 to a social bookmarking site, or the E-mail form to send a link via e-mail.
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Baseball Hall of Fame Catcher Gary “Kid” Carter Passes Away at the Age of 57
Posted in: Deceased,MLB,Obituary,Sports
Baseball and its fans mourn over the passing of Hall of Fame great Gary Carter.
The “Kid” played for 19 years with the following teams, Mets, Montreal, San Francisco and the Los Angeles Dodgers, he was an 11 time All-Star, and finished his career with a .262 average, 324 home runs and 1,225 RBIs. However, as anyone who ever saw Gary Carter play, he will be forever known for his fire, passion and love of the game. Carter was the poster child on how the game of baseball should be played. Sadly, Carter was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor last May. Our prayers go out to the family and friends of Gary Carter who has died far too young. Rest in Peace.
Carter was diagnosed with four brain tumors last May, two weeks after finishing his second season as coach at Palm Beach Atlantic University. In recent months, the family hoped that, with chemotherapy and other treatments, the tumors were in check. But in January, the family revealed that doctors found several new tumors on Carter’s brain.
“I am deeply saddened to tell you all that my precious dad went to be with Jesus today at 4:10 p.m. This is the most difficult thing I have ever had to write in my entire life but I wanted you all to know,” Carter’s daughter, Kimmy Bloemers, wrote on the family website.
“He is in heaven and has reunited with his mom and dad. I believe with all my heart that dad had a STANDING OVATION as he walked through the gates of heaven to be with Jesus,” Bloemers wrote.
Gary Carter was one of my favorite players of all time, even though he was the one who started the Mets comeback against the Red Sox in the 1986 World Series. Carter was a class act. Rest in Peace Kid.
Return to: Baseball Hall of Fame Catcher Gary “Kid” Carter Passes Away at the Age of 57
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Title: Ethernet
Subject: Twisted pair, Computer network, IEEE 802.1aq, O2 wireless box, G.709
Collection: American Inventions, Ethernet, Ieee Standards, Local Area Networks
A Cat 5e connection on a laptop, used for Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area (LAN) and larger networks. It was commercially introduced in 1980 while it was first standardized in 1983 as IEEE 802.3,[1] and has since been refined to support higher bit rates and longer link distances. Over time, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies such as token ring, FDDI, and ARCNET. The primary alternative for contemporary LANs is not a wired standard, but instead a wireless LAN standardized as IEEE 802.11 and also known as Wi-Fi.
The Ethernet standards comprise several wiring and signaling variants of the OSI physical layer in use with Ethernet. The original 10BASE5 Ethernet used coaxial cable as a shared medium. Later the coaxial cables were replaced with twisted pair and fiber optic links in conjunction with hubs or switches. Data rates have been incrementally increased from the original 3 megabits per second experimental version to a 100 gigabits per second standard over its history.
Systems communicating over Ethernet divide a stream of data into shorter pieces called Frame (networking)s. Each frame contains source and destination addresses and error-checking data so that damaged data can be detected and re-transmitted. As per the OSI model, Ethernet provides services up to and including the data link layer.
Since its commercial release, Ethernet has retained a good degree of backward compatibility. Features such as the 48-bit MAC address and Ethernet frame format have influenced other networking protocols.
Standardization 2
Shared media 3.1
Repeaters and hubs 3.2
Bridging and switching 3.3
Advanced networking 3.4
Varieties of Ethernet 4
Layer 2 – Datagrams 5
Autonegotiation 6
An 8P8C modular connector (often called RJ45) commonly used on Cat 5 cables in Ethernet networks
Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974.[2][3] It was inspired by ALOHAnet, which Robert Metcalfe had studied as part of his PhD dissertation.[4] The idea was first documented in a memo that Metcalfe wrote on May 22, 1973, where he named it after the disproven luminiferous ether as an "omnipresent, completely-passive medium for the propagation of electromagnetic waves".[2][5][6] In 1975, Xerox filed a patent application listing Metcalfe, David Boggs, Chuck Thacker, and Butler Lampson as inventors.[7] In 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Metcalfe and Boggs published a seminal paper.[8][1]
Metcalfe left Xerox in June 1979 to form 3Com.[2][10] He convinced Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Intel, and Xerox to work together to promote Ethernet as a standard. The so-called "DIX" standard, for "Digital/Intel/Xerox", specified 10 Mbit/s Ethernet, with 48-bit destination and source addresses and a global 16-bit Ethertype-type field. It was published on September 30, 1980 as "The Ethernet, A Local Area Network. Data Link Layer and Physical Layer Specifications".[11] Version 2 was published in November, 1982[12] and defines what has become known as Ethernet II. Formal standardization efforts proceeded at the same time and resulted in the publication of IEEE 802.3 on June 23, 1983.[1]
Ethernet initially competed with two largely proprietary systems, Token Ring and Token Bus. Because Ethernet was able to adapt to market realities and shift to inexpensive and ubiquitous twisted pair wiring, these proprietary protocols soon found themselves competing in a market inundated by Ethernet products, and, by the end of the 1980s, Ethernet was clearly the dominant network technology.[2] In the process, 3Com became a major company. 3Com shipped its first 10 Mbit/s Ethernet 3C100 transceiver in March 1981, and that year started selling adapters for PDP-11s and VAXes, as well as Multibus-based Intel and Sun Microsystems computers.[13]:9 This was followed quickly by DEC's Unibus to Ethernet adapter, which DEC sold and used internally to build its own corporate network, which reached over 10,000 nodes by 1986, making it one of the largest computer networks in the world at that time.[14] An Ethernet adapter card for the IBM PC was released in 1982, and, by 1985, 3Com had sold 100,000.[10]
Since then, Ethernet technology has evolved to meet new bandwidth and market requirements.[15] In addition to computers, Ethernet is now used to interconnect appliances and other personal devices.[2] It is used in industrial applications and is quickly replacing legacy data transmission systems in the world's telecommunications networks.[16] By 2010, the market for Ethernet equipment amounted to over $16 billion per year.[17]
An Intel 82574L Gigabit Ethernet NIC, PCI Express x1 card
In February 1980, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) started project 802 to standardize local area networks (LAN).[10][18] The "DIX-group" with Gary Robinson (DEC), Phil Arst (Intel), and Bob Printis (Xerox) submitted the so-called "Blue Book" CSMA/CD specification as a candidate for the LAN specification.[11] In addition to CSMA/CD, Token Ring (supported by IBM) and Token Bus (selected and henceforward supported by General Motors) were also considered as candidates for a LAN standard. Competing proposals and broad interest in the initiative led to strong disagreement over which technology to standardize. In December 1980, the group was split into three subgroups, and standardization proceeded separately for each proposal.[10]
Delays in the standards process put at risk the market introduction of the Xerox Star workstation and 3Com's Ethernet LAN products. With such business implications in mind, David Liddle (General Manager, Xerox Office Systems) and Metcalfe (3Com) strongly supported a proposal of Fritz Röscheisen (Siemens Private Networks) for an alliance in the emerging office communication market, including Siemens' support for the international standardization of Ethernet (April 10, 1981). Ingrid Fromm, Siemens' representative to IEEE 802, quickly achieved broader support for Ethernet beyond IEEE by the establishment of a competing Task Group "Local Networks" within the European standards body ECMA TC24. As early as March 1982 ECMA TC24 with its corporate members reached agreement on a standard for CSMA/CD based on the IEEE 802 draft.[13]:8 Because the DIX proposal was most technically complete and because of the speedy action taken by ECMA which decisively contributed to the conciliation of opinions within IEEE, the IEEE 802.3 CSMA/CD standard was approved in December 1982.[10] IEEE published the 802.3 standard as a draft in 1983 and as a standard in 1985.[19]
Approval of Ethernet on the international level was achieved by a similar, cross-International Organization for Standardization (ISO) TC97SC6, and the ISO/IEEE 802/3 standard was approved in 1984.
Internet protocol suite
Application layer
MGCP
ONC/RPC
RTSP
TLS/SSL
Transport layer
DCCP
SCTP
Internet layer
ICMPv6
Link layer
Ethernet evolved to include higher bandwidth, improved media access control methods, and different physical media. The coaxial cable was replaced with point-to-point links connected by Ethernet repeaters or switches to reduce installation costs, increase reliability, and improve management and troubleshooting. Many variants of Ethernet remain in common use.
Ethernet stations communicate by sending each other data packets: blocks of data individually sent and delivered. As with other IEEE 802 LANs, each Ethernet station is given a 48-bit MAC address. The MAC addresses are used to specify both the destination and the source of each data packet. Ethernet establishes link level connections, which can be defined using both the destination and source addresses. On reception of a transmission, the receiver uses the destination address to determine whether the transmission is relevant to the station or should be ignored. Network interfaces normally do not accept packets addressed to other Ethernet stations. Adapters come programmed with a globally unique address.[2] An EtherType field in each frame is used by the operating system on the receiving station to select the appropriate protocol module (e.g., an Internet Protocol version such as IPv4). Ethernet frames are said to be self-identifying, because of the frame type. Self-identifying frames make it possible to intermix multiple protocols on the same physical network and allow a single computer to use multiple protocols together.[20] Despite the evolution of Ethernet technology, all generations of Ethernet (excluding early experimental versions) use the same frame formats[21] (and hence the same interface for higher layers), and can be readily interconnected through bridging.
Due to the ubiquity of Ethernet, the ever-decreasing cost of the hardware needed to support it, and the reduced panel space needed by twisted pair Ethernet, most manufacturers now build Ethernet interfaces directly into PC motherboards, eliminating the need for installation of a separate network card.[22]
10BASE5 Ethernet equipment. Clockwise from top-left: A late-model transceiver with an in-line 10BASE2 adapter, a similar model transceiver with a 10BASE5 adapter, an AUI cable, a different style of transceiver with 10BASE2 T-connector, two 10BASE5 end fittings, an orange "vampire tap" installation tool (which includes a specialized drill bit at one end and a socket wrench at the other), and an early model 10BASE5 transceiver (h4000) manufactured by DEC. The short length of yellow 10BASE5 cable has one end terminated and the other end prepared to have a termination fitting installed; the half-black, half-grey rectangular object through which the cable passes is an installed vampire tap.
Ethernet was originally based on the idea of computers communicating over a shared coaxial cable acting as a broadcast transmission medium. The methods used were similar to those used in radio systems,[3] with the common cable providing the communication channel likened to the Luminiferous aether in 19th century physics, and it was from this reference that the name "Ethernet" was derived.[23]
Original Ethernet's shared coaxial cable (the shared medium) traversed a building or campus to every attached machine. A scheme known as carrier sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD) governed the way the computers shared the channel. This scheme was simpler than the competing token ring or token bus technologies.[4] Computers were connected to an Attachment Unit Interface (AUI) transceiver, which was in turn connected to the cable (later with thin Ethernet the transceiver was integrated into the network adapter). While a simple passive wire was highly reliable for small networks, it was not reliable for large extended networks, where damage to the wire in a single place, or a single bad connector, could make the whole Ethernet segment unusable.[5]
Through the first half of the 1980s, Ethernet's 10BASE5 implementation used a coaxial cable 0.375 inches (9.5 mm) in diameter, later called "thick Ethernet" or "thicknet". Its successor, 10BASE2, called "thin Ethernet" or "thinnet", used a cable similar to cable television cable of the era. The emphasis was on making installation of the cable easier and less costly.
Since all communications happen on the same wire, any information sent by one computer is received by all, even if that information is intended for just one destination.[6] The network interface card interrupts the CPU only when applicable packets are received: The card ignores information not addressed to it.[7] Use of a single cable also means that the bandwidth is shared, such that, for example, available bandwidth to each device is halved when two stations are simultaneously active.
Collisions happen when two stations attempt to transmit at the same time. They corrupt transmitted data and require stations to retransmit. The lost data and retransmissions reduce throughput. In the worst case where multiple active hosts connected with maximum allowed cable length attempt to transmit many short frames, excessive collisions can reduce throughput dramatically. However, a Xerox report in 1980 studied performance of an existing Ethernet installation under both normal and artificially generated heavy load. The report claims that 98% throughput on the LAN was observed.[24] This is in contrast with token passing LANs (token ring, token bus), all of which suffer throughput degradation as each new node comes into the LAN, due to token waits. This report was controversial, as modeling showed that collision-based networks theoretically became unstable under loads as low as 37% of nominal capacity. Many early researchers failed to understand these results. Performance on real networks is significantly better.[25]
In a modern Ethernet, the stations do not all share one channel through a shared cable or a simple repeater hub; instead, each station communicates with a switch, which in turn forwards that traffic to the destination station. In this topology, collisions are only possible if station and switch attempt to communicate with each other at the same time, and collisions are limited to this link. Furthermore, the 10BASE-T standard introduced a full duplex mode of operation which has become extremely common. In full duplex, switch and station can communicate with each other simultaneously, and therefore modern Ethernets are completely collision-free.
Repeaters and hubs
A 1990s network interface card supporting both coaxial cable-based 10BASE2 (BNC connector, left) and twisted pair-based 10BASE-T (8P8C connector, right)
For signal degradation and timing reasons, coaxial Ethernet segments had a restricted size. Somewhat larger networks could be built by using an Ethernet repeater. Early repeaters had only two ports, allowing, at most, a doubling of network size. Once repeaters with more than two ports became available, it was possible to wire the network in a star topology. Early experiments with star topologies (called "Fibernet") using optical fiber were published by 1978.[26]
Shared cable Ethernet was always hard to install in offices because its bus topology was in conflict with the star topology cable plans designed into buildings for telephony. Modifying Ethernet to conform to twisted pair telephone wiring already installed in commercial buildings provided another opportunity to lower costs, expand the installed base, and leverage building design, and, thus, twisted-pair Ethernet was the next logical development in the mid-1980s.
Ethernet on unshielded twisted-pair cables (UTP) began with StarLAN at 1 Mbit/s in the mid-1980s. In 1987 SynOptics introduced the first twisted-pair Ethernet at 10 Mbit/s in a star-wired cabling topology with a central hub, later called LattisNet.[10][27][28] These evolved into 10BASE-T, which was designed for point-to-point links only, and all termination was built into the device. This changed repeaters from a specialist device used at the center of large networks to a device that every twisted pair-based network with more than two machines had to use. The tree structure that resulted from this made Ethernet networks easier to maintain by preventing most faults with one peer or its associated cable from affecting other devices on the network.
Despite the physical star topology and the presence of separate transmit and receive channels in the twisted pair and fiber media, repeater based Ethernet networks still use half-duplex and CSMA/CD, with only minimal activity by the repeater, primarily the Collision Enforcement signal, in dealing with packet collisions. Every packet is sent to every port on the repeater, so bandwidth and security problems are not addressed. The total throughput of the repeater is limited to that of a single link, and all links must operate at the same speed.
Bridging and switching
Patch cables with patch fields of two Ethernet switches
While repeaters could isolate some aspects of Ethernet segments, such as cable breakages, they still forwarded all traffic to all Ethernet devices. This created practical limits on how many machines could communicate on an Ethernet network. The entire network was one collision domain, and all hosts had to be able to detect collisions anywhere on the network. This limited the number of repeaters between the farthest nodes. Segments joined by repeaters had to all operate at the same speed, making phased-in upgrades impossible.
To alleviate these problems, bridging was created to communicate at the data link layer while isolating the physical layer. With bridging, only well-formed Ethernet packets are forwarded from one Ethernet segment to another; collisions and packet errors are isolated. At initial startup, Ethernet bridges (and switches) work somewhat like Ethernet repeaters, passing all traffic between segments. By observing the source addresses of incoming frames, the bridge then builds an address table associating addresses to segments. Once an address is learned, the bridge forwards network traffic destined for that address only to the associated segment, improving overall performance. Broadcast traffic is still forwarded to all network segments. Bridges also overcame the limits on total segments between two hosts and allowed the mixing of speeds, both of which are critical to deployment of Fast Ethernet.
In 1989, the networking company Kalpana introduced their EtherSwitch, the first Ethernet switch.[8] This worked somewhat differently from an Ethernet bridge, where only the header of the incoming packet would be examined before it was either dropped or forwarded to another segment. This greatly reduced the forwarding latency and the processing load on the network device. One drawback of this cut-through switching method was that packets that had been corrupted would still be propagated through the network, so a jabbering station could continue to disrupt the entire network. The eventual remedy for this was a return to the original store and forward approach of bridging, where the packet would be read into a buffer on the switch in its entirety, verified against its checksum and then forwarded, but using more powerful application-specific integrated circuits. Hence, the bridging is then done in hardware, allowing packets to be forwarded at full wire speed.
When a twisted pair or fiber link segment is used and neither end is connected to a repeater, full-duplex Ethernet becomes possible over that segment. In full-duplex mode, both devices can transmit and receive to and from each other at the same time, and there is no collision domain. This doubles the aggregate bandwidth of the link and is sometimes advertised as double the link speed (for example, 200 Mbit/s).[9] The elimination of the collision domain for these connections also means that all the link's bandwidth can be used by the two devices on that segment and that segment length is not limited by the need for correct collision detection.
Since packets are typically delivered only to the port they are intended for, traffic on a switched Ethernet is less public than on shared-medium Ethernet. Despite this, switched Ethernet should still be regarded as an insecure network technology, because it is easy to subvert switched Ethernet systems by means such as ARP spoofing and MAC flooding.
The bandwidth advantages, the improved isolation of devices from each other, the ability to easily mix different speeds of devices and the elimination of the chaining limits inherent in non-switched Ethernet have made switched Ethernet the dominant network technology.[29]
Advanced networking
A core Ethernet switch
Simple switched Ethernet networks, while a great improvement over repeater-based Ethernet, suffer from single points of failure, attacks that trick switches or hosts into sending data to a machine even if it is not intended for it, scalability and security issues with regard to broadcast radiation and multicast traffic, and bandwidth choke points where a lot of traffic is forced down a single link.
Advanced networking features in switches and routers combat these issues through means including spanning-tree protocol to maintain the active links of the network as a tree while allowing physical loops for redundancy, port security and protection features such as MAC lock down and broadcast radiation filtering, virtual LANs to keep different classes of users separate while using the same physical infrastructure, multilayer switching to route between different classes and link aggregation to add bandwidth to overloaded links and to provide some measure of redundancy.
IEEE 802.1aq (shortest path bridging) includes the use of the link-state routing protocol IS-IS to allow larger networks with shortest path routes between devices. In 2012, it was stated by David Allan and Nigel Bragg, in 802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging Design and Evolution: The Architect's Perspective that shortest path bridging is one of the most significant enhancements in Ethernet's history.[30]
Varieties of Ethernet
The Ethernet physical layer evolved over a considerable time span and encompasses coaxial, twisted pair and fiber-optic physical media interfaces, with speeds from 10 Mbit/s to 100 Gbit/s. The first introduction of twisted-pair CSMA/CD was StarLAN, standardized as 802.3 1BASE5;[31] while 1BASE5 had little market penetration, it defined the physical apparatus (wire, plug/jack, pin-out, and wiring plan) that would be carried over to 10BASE-T.
The most common forms used are 10BASE-T, 100BASE-TX, and 1000BASE-T. All three utilize twisted pair cables and 8P8C modular connectors. They run at 10 Mbit/s, 100 Mbit/s, and 1 Gbit/s, respectively. Fiber optic variants of Ethernet offer high performance, electrical isolation and distance (tens of kilometers with some versions). In general, network protocol stack software will work similarly on all varieties.
Layer 2 – Datagrams
A close-up of the SMSC LAN91C110 (SMSC 91x) chip, an embedded Ethernet chip.
In IEEE 802.3, a datagram is called a packet or frame. Packet is used to describe the overall transmission unit and includes the preamble, start frame delimiter (SFD) and carrier extension (if present).[32] The frame begins after the start frame delimiter with a frame header featuring source and destination MAC addresses. The middle section of the frame consists of payload data including any headers for other protocols (for example, Internet Protocol) carried in the frame. The frame ends with a 32-bit cyclic redundancy check, which is used to detect corruption of data in transit.[33]:sections 3.1.1 and 3.2
Autonegotiation
Autonegotiation is the procedure by which two connected devices choose common transmission parameters, e.g. speed and duplex mode. Autonegotiation was an optional feature on first introduction of 100BASE-TX, while it is also backward compatible with 10BASE-T. Autonegotiation is mandatory for 1000BASE-T.
Chaosnet
Sneakernet
Ethernet over twisted pair
Ethernet crossover cable
Gigabit interface converter
List of device bit rates
LocalTalk
Media Independent Interface
PHY (chip)
Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet
Small form-factor pluggable transceiver
Terabit Ethernet
10-gigabit Ethernet
100-gigabit Ethernet
5-4-3 rule
^ The experimental Ethernet described in the 1976 paper ran at 2.94 Mbit/s and had eight-bit destination and source address fields, so the original Ethernet addresses were not the MAC addresses they are today.[9] By software convention, the 16 bits after the destination and source address fields specified a "packet type", but, as the paper says, "different protocols use disjoint sets of packet types". Thus the original packet types could vary within each different protocol. This is in contrast to the EtherType in the IEEE Ethernet standard, which specifies the protocol being used.
^ In some cases, the factory-assigned address can be overridden, either to avoid an address change when an adapter is replaced or to use locally administered addresses.
^ There are fundamental differences between wireless and wired shared-medium communications, such as the fact that it is much easier to detect collisions in a wired system than a wireless system.
^ In a CSMA/CD system packets must be large enough to guarantee that the leading edge of the propagating wave of the message got to all parts of the medium before the transmitter could stop transmitting, thus guaranteeing that collisions (two or more packets initiated within a window of time that forced them to overlap) would be discovered. Minimum packet size and the physical medium's total length were, thus, closely linked.
^ Multipoint systems are also prone to strange failure modes when an electrical discontinuity reflects the signal in such a manner that some nodes would work properly, while others work slowly because of excessive retries or not at all. See standing wave for an explanation. These could be much more difficult to diagnose than a complete failure of the segment.
^ This "one speaks, all listen" property is a security weakness of shared-medium Ethernet, since a node on an Ethernet network can eavesdrop on all traffic on the wire if it so chooses.
^ Unless it is put into promiscuous mode.
^ The term switch was invented by device manufacturers and does not appear in the 802.3 standard.
^ This is misleading, as performance will double only if traffic patterns are symmetrical.
^ a b c d e The History of Ethernet. NetEvents.tv. 2006. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
^ "Ethernet Prototype Circuit Board". Smithsonian National Museum of American History. 1973. Retrieved September 2, 2007.
^ Gerald W. Brock (September 25, 2003). The Second Information Revolution. Harvard University Press. p. 151.
^ Mary Bellis. "Inventors of the Modern Computer". About.com. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
^ U.S. Patent 4,063,220 "Multipoint data communication system (with collision detection)"
^ a b c d e f von Burg, Urs; Kenney, Martin (December 2003). "Sponsors, Communities, and Standards: Ethernet vs. Token Ring in the Local Area Networking Business". Industry & Innovation 10 (4): 351–375.
^ a b Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel Corporation and Xerox Corporation (30 September 1980). "The Ethernet, A Local Area Network. Data Link Layer and Physical Layer Specifications, Version 1.0". Xerox Corporation. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
^ Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel Corporation and Xerox Corporation (November 1982). "The Ethernet, A Local Area Network. Data Link Layer and Physical Layer Specifications, Version 2.0". Xerox Corporation. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
^ a b Robert Breyer & Sean Riley (1999). Switched, Fast, and Gigabit Ethernet. Macmillan.
^ Jamie Parker Pearson (1992). Digital at Work. Digital Press. p. 163.
^ Rick Merritt (December 20, 2010). "Shifts, growth ahead for 10G Ethernet". E Times. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
^ "My oh My – Ethernet Growth Continues to Soar; Surpasses Legacy". Telecom News Now. July 29, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
^ Jim Duffy (February 22, 2010). "Cisco, Juniper, HP drive Ethernet switch market in Q4". Network World. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
^ Vic Hayes (August 27, 2001). "Letter to FCC". Retrieved October 22, 2010. IEEE 802 has the basic charter to develop and maintain networking standards... IEEE 802 was formed in February 1980...
^ IEEE 802.3-2008, p.iv
^ 2.4.9 – Ethernet Hardware Addresses, p. 29, explains the filtering.
^ Iljitsch van Beijnum. "Speed matters: how Ethernet went from 3Mbps to 100Gbps... and beyond".
^ Geetaj Channana (November 1, 2004). "Motherboard Chipsets Roundup". PCQuest. Retrieved October 22, 2010. While comparing motherboards in the last issue we found that all motherboards support Ethernet connection on board.
^ Charles E. Spurgeon (2000). Ethernet: The Definitive Guide. O'Reilly.
^ Shoch, John F. and Hupp, Jon A. (December 1980). "Measured performance of an Ethernet local network". Communications of the ACM (ACM Press) 23 (12): 711–721.
^ Boggs, D.R., Mogul, J.C., and Kent, C.A. (September 1988). "Measured capacity of an Ethernet: myths and reality". DEC WRL.
^ Eric G. Rawson; Robert M. Metcalfe (July 1978). "Fibemet: Multimode Optical Fibers for Local Computer Networks". IEEE transactions on communications 26 (7): 983–990.
^ Spurgeon, Charles E. (2000). Ethernet; The Definitive Guide. Nutshell Handbook. O'Reilly. p. 29.
^ Urs von Burg (2001). The Triumph of Ethernet: technological communities and the battle for the LAN standard. Stanford University Press. p. 175.
^ "Token Ring-to-Ethernet Migration". Cisco. Retrieved October 22, 2010. Respondents were first asked about their current and planned desktop LAN attachment standards. The results were clear—switched Fast Ethernet is the dominant choice for desktop connectivity to the network
^ Allan, David; Bragg, Nigel (2012). 802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging Design and Evolution : The Architects' Perspective. New York: Wiley.
^ "1BASE5 Medium Specification (StarLAN)". cs.nthu.edu.tw. 1996-12-28. Retrieved 2014-11-11.
^ The carrier extension is defined to assist collision detection on shared-media gigabit Ethernet.
^ "802.3-2012 - IEEE Standard for Ethernet" (PDF). ieee.org. IEEE Standards Association. 2012-12-28. Retrieved 2014-02-08.
Digital Equipment Corporation, Intel Corporation, Xerox Corporation (September 1980). "The Ethernet: A Local Area Network". ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 11 (3): 20. — Version 1.0 of the DIX specification.
"Internetworking Technology Handbook". Cisco Systems. Retrieved April 11, 2011.
Charles E. Spurgeon (2000). Ethernet: The Definitive Guide. O'Reilly Media.
IEEE 802.3 Ethernet working group
IEEE 802.3-2012 standard
Ethernet family of local area network technologies
10 Mbit/sec
10BASE-T
100 Mbit/sec
Gigabit/sec
10 Gigabit/sec
40/100 Gigabit/sec
EtherType
CSMA/CD
StarLAN
10BROAD36
10BASE-FB
10BASE-FL
100BaseVG
LattisNet
10G-EPON
GMII
XGMII
XAUI
All Ethernet-related articles
Basic computer components
Image scanner
Light pen
Pointing stick
Refreshable braille display
Disk pack
Central processing unit (CPU)
HDD / SSD / SSHD
Network interface controller
Random-access memory (RAM)
Data ports
FireWire (IEEE 1394)
Parallel port
American inventions
Local area networks
Telecommunication, Optical fiber connector, Art, Electromagnetism, Internet
Ethernet, Modbus, Information technology, Optical fiber, Automation
IPv6, Transmission Control Protocol, IPv4, Internet, IP address
Ethernet, OSI model, Internet Protocol, IPv4, Logical link control
Ethernet, Media Independent Interface, Vampire tap, Medium Attachment Unit, Ethernet physical layer
Ethernet, Alexander Graham Bell, Crosstalk, Telecommunication, Internet
Internet, Ethernet, Computer science, World Wide Web, Arpanet
IEEE 802.1aq
Ethernet, Avaya, IEEE 802.1ah, Plsb, Ieee 802.1q
O2 wireless box
Wi-Fi, Ethernet, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n
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Jimmy Dean King
Life Legacy
Jimmy Dean King, of Austin, passed away October 2, 2017, at the age of 77, after a short, but courageous battle with cancer. He was born in Abilene, TX, on November 12, 1939, to Owen and Blanch Wilson King. His parents and his brother, Norman C. King, and sister, Ann Miller, preceded him in death. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn King of 57 years, son Preston King and Michael Hill of Austin, daughter Krystal and Bill Perry of Manvel, TX, daughter Larina and Mark Wechsler of Orlando, FL, and six grandchildren, Jonathan King and Quintin Bernard of Austin, Will and Ellise Perry of Manvel, Savannah and Makenna Wechsler of Orlando, FL. He is also survived by sister, Barbara Dougherty of San Diego, CA, brother O.G. King of Lumberton, TX, three nephews and seven nieces, and his good friend, Raymond Francen. At a young age, Jimmy moved to San Diego, CA, where he developed his love for boats, fishing, diving, and surfing. Deep sea fishing became a lifelong hobby. He enjoyed many days at his Rockport get-away, fishing in the Gulf. His other hobbies were piloting his private plane, and appearing as an extra in movies, including Temple Grandin, Sin City and How to Eat Fried Worms. They also enjoyed travel and toured many of the states, plus London, Germany, Italy and Japan. An important part of his life was spent playing cards and dominoes with friends and family.
Jimmy graduated from Mission Bay High School in San Diego, CA where he met his wife, Carolyn Ellison. They married on December 26, 1959, and he was forever a devoted husband. He was on the hand ball and track teams in school, and played guitar and sang in a rock band. His favorite artist was Elvis Presley. Jimmy had a franchised home delivery milk route in San Diego. In 1967, he moved his family to Austin to open D&L Motorcycles, and co-owned that dealership with Raymond Francen for 33 years. He continued to manage their commercial properties with Francen until his death. Neighbors knew Jimmy as the man who kept an immaculately groomed lawn with pristine landscaping. He was a hard-working man with very strong ethics and morals. He was baptized in the Baptist Church at age 14. Jimmy was a strong leader in a quiet way. He helped anyone in need but never wanted acknowledgement. Family looked to him for advice and guidance, even though he was the youngest of five. And although he was a serious man in public, he had an incredible sense of humor, loved practical jokes and was able to make anyone laugh.
Visitation will be held on October 14 at 12:00-2:00 p.m. at Beck Funeral Home, 15709 Ranch Road 620, Austin. Graveside services will be October 15, 2:00 p.m. at Memorial Hill Park Cemetery, 14501 North I-35, Pflugerville, Texas, under the direction of Beck Funeral Home. Reception to follow at Faith Lutheran Church, Austin.
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Mauro Icardi: 'I don't know if there is love or respect' from Inter Milan
Thread: Mauro Icardi: 'I don't know if there is love or respect' from Inter Milan
Inter Milan forward Mauro Icardi has broken his silence a fortnight after being scrapped of the club captaincy in a message on Instagram in which he has expressed his love for the Serie A club, but questioned whether everybody within the Nerazzurri feels the same way.
Icardi, 26, was told he was being replaced by goalkeeper Samir Handanovic on the eve of Inter's Europa League trip to Rapid Vienna.
He pulled out of the squad for that trip and has since been receiving treatment for a knee injury which club doctors say is not serious. He has nevertheless been overlooked for Inter's recent squad selections and was also left out of the squad which travelled to Cagliari on Thursday.
In his message, posted on his Instagram page, he insisted he had always respected the club, but asked whether this respect is now being shown to him.
"It's in the most difficult moments that you show true love," he wrote. "It was in those moments that I decided to stay at Inter, with Inter. When I felt that, with my goals, I could help Inter become stronger than many things. Stronger than the problems of Financial Fair Play. Stronger than our difficulties when lots of people were saying we were not worth much as a team.
"At Inter. With Inter. And despite everything, I always decided to stay. For the love of these colours. I refused offers that a professional footballer would find it hard to refuse, even more so in similar conditions. I played with physical pain which brought me to tears after games and in the following days. But I always insisted about playing, even going against medical advice.
"Because taking to the field, I was able to forget all pain, with the only objective to give all I could to help these colours. At Inter. With Inter. For LOVE of the Nerazzurri colours. Because there is only Inter. I showed my children that you need to maintain hope. I taught them that winning is difficult, but doing it with Inter has a unique significance that only a true Interista can understand, and feel. My children's eyes do not lie.
"They learned about this love for Inter in my home. I realised my dreams and I realised the dreams of us Interisti by getting back into the Champions League, with the team I captained. Because I always felt and transmitted love for these colours. I always disapproved of those who, at the first opportunity, tried to leave this club. I respected the fans, my teammates, the club, and all of the coaches that have come and gone while I've been here.
"I've collaborated with the club, on and off the field, in helping every new player settle in, showing them that we could only reach our objectives with passion. I know what love for Inter is, and Inter fans know this because they saw me when I suffered and cried and fought, and ultimately experienced joy for these colours. At Inter. With Inter.
"But as I've said, all of these sacrifices were made for the love of these colours, respecting everybody. I don't know if there is love or respect towards Inter and towards me on the part of those who make decisions. I don't know if some people have the desire to act and resolve things only and exclusively for the love of Inter. In a family, a lot of things can happen: beautiful and ugly.
"And for love, you can put up with a lot; with everything. But respect must never be lacking. These are my values, these are the values I've always fought with. In my history. At Inter. With Inter."
Inter coach Luciano Spalletti said at a news conference on Thursday that enough has already been said about Icardi, including from senior management, as he sidestepped the subject.
General manager Beppe Marotta earlier this week said he expected to present Icardi's wife and agent Wanda Nara with an offer for a new contract within the next few weeks, although he added he could not be sure it would be accepted.
Icardi has now missed Inter's last four fixtures, and will miss a fifth when they face Cagliari on Friday. In his place, 19-year-old Facundo Colidio was called up to the squad by Spalletti on Thursday.
family, games, have, help, news, play, sport, sports
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Displaying items by tag: Africa
Tuesday, 23 June 2020 00:00
Turkey's Libyan Intervention Heightens Franco-Turkish Systemic Rivalry
By Michaël Tanchum
On June 18, 2020, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced the alliance is opening an investigation prompted by France's allegation that one of its naval frigates was targeted for attack by a Turkish naval warship in the Mediterranean as the frigate sought to interdict a civilian Turkish vessel suspected of transporting weapons to Libya. Although Turkey denies the allegation, the incident represents a new escalation in the rising tensions between Turkey and France already inflamed by France's increasing naval cooperation with Cyprus. Following the recent success of Turkey's military intervention to preserve Libya's Government of National Accord, Ankara reportedly plans to establish an air base and a naval base in the country. Reorienting the strategic architecture of the region more in Turkey's favor, the two Libyan bases will greatly boost Turkey's engagement with the nations of North Africa and the Sahel. Facing a potential loss of influence in Africa, France may choose to align more deeply with Turkey's rivals in Libya.
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Displaying items by tag: United States
A Dangerous Policy of Turkish Containment in the Eastern Mediterranean
By Micha’el Tanchum
Turkey's provocative action of sending two drillships into Cypriot waters to explore for natural gas is a response to a grander provocation coming from the Republic of Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, and Israel to exclude Turkey from the marketing of Eastern Mediterranean gas. This common front, composed of interlinked security partnerships among the region's current natural gas producers and Greece, has been increasingly supported by the United States, France, and Italy, each of whom has significant economic investments in Eastern Mediterranean gas. For Ankara, its NATO allies' support of this common front is tantamount to a policy of soft containment against Turkey. The hardening of this containment through substantial naval support to the Republic of Cyprus as a response to Turkey's actions could send the Eastern Mediterranean into a dangerous escalation spiral that could permanently alter Turkey's relationship with NATO.
The Kurdish "Other" and the American Enemy Ensure the Cohesion of Turkey's Nationalist Regime
By Cengiz Çandar
The perception of a Kurdish threat from Syria, abetted by the United States, has provided the Turkish regime with its raison d’être. It is the glue that holds the power coalition of a variety of ultranationalists together. As long as the regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan relies on the Kurdish “other” for its internal cohesion – and ultimately for its survival – that imperative will continue to determine Turkish foreign policy. But Turkey’s strategic reorientation is also sustained by a long history of deep-seated suspicion of American motives. Indeed, Turkish-American relations were never harmonious and their history has taught the Turkish state elite not to trust the United States, and never before had so much been at stake as today.
How the Fed Empowered Erdogan, and How It Now Undermines his Rule
By Barış Soydan
It is impossible to understand the electoral successes so far of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the undisputed leader of Turkey since 2003, without taking the spectacular growth of consumerism in the country into consideration. Notwithstanding the fact that the neoliberal economic policies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have disproportionately benefited the wealthiest in Turkish society, low-income earners have also benefited from the economic growth of the last sixteen years. Yet this growth has to a large extent relied on the quantitative easing program of the U.S. Federal Reserve. The end of quantitative easing will be consequential for Erdoğan and his party. Erdoğan is not going to be able to retain the same level of support that he has enjoyed among low-income earners. Get ready for substantial drops in AKP votes in the municipal elections in March.
A Crisis Foretold: Anatomy of Turkey's Threatening Economic Meltdown
Last year, Turkey was the fastest growing economy among the G20 countries. Now it is going through a severe currency crisis. The lira has lost more than 40 percent against the US dollar this year. A recession is at the door. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accuses the United States of waging economic 'war' against Turkey and has threatened to ‘look for new allies’. Yet Turkey has no alternative to Western capital, and will sooner or later going to have to do whatever it takes to restore the confidence of Western investors.
Living on Different Planets: Washington, Ankara and the Zarrab Case
By Svante E. Cornell and Halil Karaveli
Reza Zarrab’s testimony in early December to a New York court was hardly helpful in breaking the impasse in Turkish-American relations. By implicating Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan directly in the oil-for-gold trade that is the subject of the trial, Zarrab may have contributed to a new low in the fraught alliance. However, the case is symptomatic of the fact that Turks and Americans lack basic trust. It also illustrates that they are now on completely different frequencies. The Zarrab case means entirely different things to Turks and Americans, and this disconnect risks contributing to a break that neither party may actually want.
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Bidding war gets Vancouver homeowners more than $1 million over their asking price
Posted on December 20, 2015 by Viv Harvey
Shari Kulha | June 8, 2015 | Last Updated: Jul 2 3:22 PM ET
More from Shari Kulha
The 1,832-square-foot home has a cathedral ceiling, a mid-century fireplace and windows on three sides overlooking the pool terrace.A West Vancouver home that was listed at $2.98 million received nine offers and is now in contract to sell at $4.1 million. That’s 37 per cent over asking.
Lived in by the same family for 30 years, this 60-year-old bungalow isn’t extraordinary, really, with its four bedrooms and three bathrooms.
“Currently there is a charming and very livable four-bedroom home on this magnificent piece of land, however, this is definitely a builders dream come true!” says listing agent Viv Harvey of the 1,832-square-foot home.
The great room has a cathedral ceiling, a mid-century fireplace and windows on three sides, from which the new owner can look out over the pool and on to the passing ships heading in and out of Vancouver Harbour. The kitchen has updated stainless steel appliances, but the cabinets date from the early 1980s.
Harvey told the Vancouver Sun that the house “was sharply priced. We weren’t overpriced and I was thinking possibly [it would go to] $3.5 million. We didn’t really think it would be $4.1.”
The home has views from Stanley Park to Point Grey to the Straits to the Gulf and San Juan islands.
What brought such interest to the property outside the city’s real estate hot spots of British Properties and West Vancouver’s Ambleside and Dundarave areas was likely the views.
Were Mark Twain around today, he might update his saying “Buy land, they’re not making any more” to “Buy land with a view, they’re not making either any more.”
With development increasingly encroaching on views, even in the hilly lower mainland, this Bayside home has sightlines “from Stanley Park to Point Grey to the Straits to the Gulf and San Juan islands,” says Harvey, of Royal LePage Sussex.
“You can’t really gauge what people are willing to pay,” said the buyer’s agent, Shahin Behroyan of Re/Max Masters Realty. “The view properties have become quite rare.”
Listing agent Viv Harvey said the house "was sharply priced. We weren't overpriced and I was thinking possibly [it would go to] $3.5 million. We didn't really think it would be $4.1."
From downtown Vancouver, Bayside is accessed with a drive through Stanley Park, over the Lions Gate Bridge and west along the Sea-to-Sky Highway, about 30 minutes with good traffic flow. The neighbourhood is minutes from the ski hills at Cypress Mountain and the hiking trails surrounding the giant fir trees in Lighthouse Park.
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Articles in Home >Geography
A Great Series On Maps By : Graham Baylis
I have just come across a page on the BBC website that reminded me of a series they broadcast back in 2010. It was called the beauty of maps and came in four episodes. I am not sure if I saw all four, but certainly remember that it was enjoyable, if you want to know more have a look and see the details in that facinating series.
How Digital Maps Are Changing Our World By : Graham Baylis
Humans have been utilising maps for centuries, drawing what we know of the world and constantly striving to fill it in with more and more detail. Maps are one of the key tools we have when it comes to understand the world around us, locating valuable information, and generally finding our way around. Now, digital maps are really coming into their own, providing more detail than ever before.
The Namib Desert By : Stef Caster
The Namib Desert, is situated in Southwest Africa, stretches along the coast of Namibia for about 1000 miles (1600 km), and is hedged in between the Atlantic Ocean and the interior plateau.
Photos of Benguela, Angola: Jaw-dropping Pictures of the City By : Stef Caster
The Republic of Angola, once a Portuguese colony, is a country in the south central portion of Africa with Namibia in the south, Zambia on the east, the Democratic Republic of Congo in the north and Atlantic Ocean in the west.
The Issues of Becoming a Caregiver When Brain Cancer is Concerned By : brainz tumorz
Assistance packages can also aid households remain abreast of the hottest investigate that’s getting completed with regard to solutions, survivorship, and extended-phrase results for the survivors of this deadly sickness.
Help for families taking this tough journey can arrive in a wide range of types. It may well involve finding the correct medical professionals and services to treatment for their youngster, or possibly, functioning as a result of the maze of insurance varieties…
What is TN Visa? By : steven young
The TN status is a special non – immigrant status in the United States for the citizens of Mexico and Canada. TN visa is a working visa which allows the Mexicans and Canadians to work legally in the United States.
Education Abroad By : vishal shah
OIBT has a global mission to create a new class of graduates who are not only tech-savvy but are also piped in to current events.
Alberta Province Of Canada By : Janis Maddox
Alberta is one of the three Prairie Provinces in Canada. Of the three, Alberta is the highest populated and most rapidly developing province.
The “Sunflower” State- Kansas By : Fern Copeland
The State of Kansas in the United States is named after a river with the same name, which flows through it. It has also been called “Midway” or Central State because of its geographic location in the United States.
Antarctica and Its Geographic Value By : Rick Derrick
Antarctica is bigger than or Europe and comprises roughly 10% of the Earth’s land mass. With temperatures of -89 Celsius and sustained winds of over 190 miles per hour, Antactica, the landscape has a vast but forbidding beauty.
Antarctica Revealed By : John Chambers
The continent of Antarctica is truly unique, with its breathtaking beauty it still can be incredibly ruthless to anyone who tries to dominate it. It is the only continent of Earth unsoiled by the wars of man.
Types of Map Projection and Their Major Characteristics By : Ko Fai Godfrey Ko
Though a globe model of the earth is the most common version of the earth’s surface, it’s often not practical for many of our needs. That’s why maps are created for different purposes, which use map projection to depict the earth’s surface on a plane using a wide variety of scales. Digital maps also use map projections to present data on a computer screen.
Facts About Ballenger Creek – Frederick County Maryland By : LocalGoogleGuru
Ballenger Creek, Maryland is a growing community with a medium population of 15,457 as of 2007. The population is divided almost equally between men and women. There are a few more women than men living in the town; 51% to 49%, with about 2,765 people per square mile. It’s a small town in Frederick County Maryland.
The Geology and Landscape around Cardigan By : Monika Nolte
Cardigan’s hills, valleys and coastline demonstrate a diverse range of physical features that reveal its complex geological history. The area’s rocks are mostly mudstone, deposited in a deep ocean basin about 450 million years ago. Associated locally with the mudstone are beds of hard sandstone, which can be found at Poppit Sands.
The Yangtze River Delta, a Chinese El Dorado By : Tim Lyons
Always marching towards economic integration, the YRD bares the fastest economical growth, the highest FDI attractiveness. It is now recognized by the world, as one of the top 6 city strip. Moreover, with a very high income level and a large inflow of foreigners, the YRD represent China’s largest, most sophisticated consumer market; making it a compulsory transit point to anyone thinking of doing business in China.
An Overview of the Republic of Cuba By : Robert Masud
A brief overview of the beautiful island nation of Cuba.
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C and M Law Corporation has been a reputable Los Angeles personal injury attorney firm serving the city’s residents for over 45 years. People who think they do not need the services of an experienced personal injury attorney, invariably find out the hard way that they should have chosen that right lawyer in the very beginning. Regardless of the type of accident or injury, we have the experience to successfully represent you and your family. If you or someone you know has been injured through the negligence or recklessness of others, come see us. We can help get you the compensation you and your loved ones deserve. The personal injury attorney Los Angeles firm of C and M Law Corporation has won an excess of 2 Billion Dollars in settlements!
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Only Room for One at the Top: UFC’s Rise as the Sole Major Promotion
Eric Reinert
There can be only one.
In the world of major professional sports, like the world of Highlander, various leagues and promotions vie for superiority until, inevitably, only one major group remains.
Today, the vast majority of American sports fans turn only to the NFL for their professional football needs. It is, unquestionably, the top league in the sport. The same could be said about the NBA with basketball or even the WWE with pro wrestling (sports-entertainment, true, but the business model is the same).
It was not so long ago, however, that other organizations also satiated the country’s desire for top-quality competition in those sports. Remember that the first four Super Bowls were not contested by teams in the NFL, but rather by the respective champions of that league and the AFL, which operated as a direct competitor to the NFL from 1960 until 1969, when the two leagues merged. In basketball, the ABA operated with relative success from 1967 until 1976 when, like its counterpart on the gridiron, it merged with the NBA. It wasn’t until 2001 that the WWE emerged as the top destination after first establishing a national stage for pro wrestling and then eventually besting, acquiring and then closing its main competitor (WCW).
In each case, multiple elite organizations coalesced into single, dominant entities, and this is the exact situation in which the MMA community now finds itself. Last week, Zuffa officials announced that Strikeforce would be folding after a Jan. 12 event, thereby cementing the UFC as the MMA’s sole major promotion. This move should not come as a surprise to anyone, regardless of how familiar they are with the sport, and is a sign of the times as mixed martial arts moves ever deeper into mainstream consciousness.
The UFC’s establishment as MMA’s dominant player has been years in the making, but has felt like a foregone conclusion since about 2007. The UFC, after all, was the company that introduced mixed martial arts to American audiences even before the sport had a real name. (The promotion’s branding success is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that many still refer to MMA as “ultimate fighting.”) Sure, the UFC had its down years starting out. First, the company faced seemingly never-ending challenges securing broadcast deals and battling politicians. After the UFC was purchased by Zuffa in 2001, Dana White and the other UFC officials became champions for the sanctioning and regulation of the sport by state athletic commissions, which helped bring MMA out of the gutter in the minds of mainstream sports fans.
After the UFC had finally established itself as a legitimate sporting enterprise, it had to recapture and then surpass the level of attention the company was first able to generate among fight fans. By 2001, Pride Fighting Championships in Japan was unquestionably the most successful MMA promotion in the world. While the UFC was desperately trying to sell tickets to its live events, Pride FC was putting on cards in front of 40,000-person crowds of fanatical (if very, very polite) fight fans. As a result, they were able to acquire many of the world’s best fighters, which left UFC with some comparatively less prominent events.
Eventually, though, the UFC was able to once again become a major player in MMA through its well-executed promotion of fighters like Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture. After the first season of The Ultimate Fighter introduced the sport to an entirely new audience, the momentum that has led to the UFC’s current spot atop the MMA mountain got started and hasn’t stopped.
Zuffa took advantage of Pride FC’s internal turmoil and purchased the company, soon after dissolving the promotion and moving its best fighters over to the UFC. Since that time, the UFC has faced only minor competition in the form of the International Fight League, Affliction MMA, EliteXC, Bellator and Strikeforce. The first three promotions folded after a handful of events. The fourth has a deal with MTV2, but still hasn’t come close to taking a bite out the UFC’s market share. In fact, if one were to create a Venn diagram illustrating the respective fan bases of the UFC and Bellator, it would likely show a large circle labeled UFC almost completely surrounding a much smaller circle labeled Bellator.
This leaves Strikeforce as the sole remaining competitor capable of putting on star-studded events for MMA fans. The promotion had achieved a position as the UFC’s chief competitor by 2009, when it purchased the contracts from the folding EliteXC. At that point, it was able to put together some pretty high-quality events, albeit on a less frequent basis than the UFC.
Strikeforce featured such fighters as Nick Diaz, Jake Shields and Alistair Overeem, as well as former Pride champion Dan Henderson, who migrated to Strikeforce after the expiration of his UFC contract, presumably for a more attractive offer. The promotion had a partnership with Showtime, and while that network does not attract as many viewers as Fox, it was still a great opportunity to showcase MMA on television. For a little while, it looked like the UFC actually might have a legitimate competitor.
The folks at Zuffa probably sensed this as well, so what did they do? The same thing they did with Pride—they bought it.
Unlike the aftermath of its Pride acquisition, Zuffa largely maintained Strikeforce’s independence from the UFC. Some Strikeforce fighters, including the four mentioned above, were migrated over to the UFC, but many of the promotion’s mainstays continued to fight under their original banner. In fact, it wasn’t until recent months, when Strikeforce began canceling events after fighter injuries and subsequent challenges with Showtime, that many fans even called for the promotion’s closure.
Which brings us to the present day. Strikeforce’s Jan. 12 event—provided it does, in fact, take place—will feature three title fights, as well as Strikeforce heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier taking on Dion Staring, albeit in a non-title affair. The promotion is certainly going out with a bang, after which the likes of Cormier, lightweight champion Gilbert Melendez, women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey and the other bigger names in Strikeforce will move to the UFC. These additions will enable the UFC to further pack its cards with star-studded, competitive fights and, if they’re successful, these fighters probably stand to earn a decent living in the process.
This inevitable solidification of the UFC as the world’s sole major promotion is not without its negative consequences, however. While Strikeforce’s most successful and/or popular fighters will be able to continue riding the wave of their fame into the UFC, the promotion’s lesser-known fighters will likely see their contracts terminated, leaving them to toil once more in one of the many regional promotions that almost certainly cannot match the potential paydays or audience sizes offered by the UFC. These sorts of promotions will continue to serve as the UFC’s de facto minor leagues, preparing up-and-coming fighters in their earliest contests before they move to the big show.
After a mixed martial artist has worked his way up to Strikeforce, though, he’ll likely be none too happy to be bumped back down to the minors just because of a business decision. Still, professional fighting is a job that comes with few guarantees. An injury in training can ruin a fighter’s shot at stardom. An opponent can suddenly back out at the last minute. And, yes, a promotion can up and close, changing the employment conditions of so many fighters, just like that. Ultimately, the world’s best fighters will string together enough wins in these lesser-known promotions to earn a shot in the UFC, in a comparable way to how the best basketball players make their way through college or overseas competition before being picked up by an NBA team. With one less MMA promotion on television, though, fighters will have one less potential source of a bigger payday.
The other issue the UFC’s consolidation of power raises is the potential for conflict between owners and fighters that could come from the UFC being perceived as a monopoly. With one promotion now taking in the lion’s share of the world’s MMA-related expenditures, it’s likely only a matter of time before a few enterprising and brave fighters (who are not afraid to end their own UFC careers) begin whispering about organization. After all, the four major American sports—each of which has one organization at the top of the food chain—all have players’ associations. Yes, there are technically other places UFC fighters could fight if they were unhappy with their compensation, but they’re extremely unlikely to find equal pay elsewhere. The closure of Strikeforce exacerbates these circumstances, and the UFC’s legal team should already be preparing its counter-arguments.
As a private company, the UFC is not required to disclose its revenues, and we have all seen the sorts of things that success in the world’s best promotion can yield for its fighters. Because of the UFC, professional MMA fighting is actually a viable career and could even make a person rich. This certainly wasn’t the case even 20 years ago. Still, America has a long history of conflict between athletes and the people who pay them, so it’s probably only a matter of time before the UFC—now unquestionably entrenched as the top MMA promotion—faces similar battles.
Despite the potential for conflict, the powers that be at Zuffa are merely adopting the strategies of the NFL and NBA (and, yes, the WWE) in acquiring or merging with its rivals en route to becoming the sole destination for elite-level competition. It was really only a matter of time before this happened, especially as we begin to see the sport exposed to larger audiences through the UFC’s partnership with Fox.
Yes, some fighters will get the short end of the stick as a result of this development and yes, MMA fans are probably just as likely to see fighters in the courtroom sometime in the next few years as they are in the Octagon.
But if MMA is truly going to emerge as a mainstream sport in America, the UFC’s emergence as the sport’s sole major organization was inevitable.
The next few years should be interesting.
Photo: The UFC Octagon (Paul Thatcher/Fight! Magazine)
EliteXCPride Fighting ChampionshipsStrikeforceUFC
The Final Round: St-Pierre vs. Condit (Video)
UFC 154: St-Pierre vs. Condit Weigh-ins (Video)
Eric Reinert has been writing about mixed martial arts since 2010. Outside the world of caged combat, Eric has spent time as a news reporter, speechwriter, campaign strategist, tech support manager, landscaper and janitor. He lives in Madison, Wis.
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Omar Chaves Viteri
Fully self-taught painter and draftsman, Omar is also a General Practitioner who graduated in medicine in 2006 from one of the most prestigious universities in Colombia. He has participated in multiple local exhibitions in his hometown, including "Gajes del officio" Bucaramanga Santander June 2015. Additionally, in 2019, Omar participated in "El centro con las salas abiertas IX. Ojos abiertos, oídos despiertos,"a collective exhibition at the Custodio García Rovira House of Culture in his hometown Bucaramanga. Omar also participated in the project of registration and recovery of cultural heritage, took part in the illustration of the classic book of Colombian literature "La María" by the writer Jorge Isaacs, and also had the opportunity to participate in the illustration of the book "Portrait of a Dutch lover" of the Santanderean writer Karmi Kiroga in 2017. He is also co-star of the book "The Age of The Eye," a 2017 project that gathered artists from the department of Santander Colombia. He has taken part in multiple events that promote local and national art, always being faithful to the representation of masculine aesthetics in its finest way.
Omar never received a formal arts education, his curiosity and love for science and knowledge has led him to discover unique ways to combine light and use pigments as compounds, not only for their hue, the discipline inherited from his training in the scientific method, and constant and strict practice in the study and graphic representation of the male anatomy. Omar enjoys capturing men’s figures as they engage in daily life, in addition to apocalyptic, dystopian events, with overtones of horror and cyberpunk. Omar’s work expounds his love for masculinity without disguise, embedded in an experience full of culture in the limits of subversion and empowerment of the current and future homosexual man; in his own words: "In an attempt to root out the association of homosexuals with explicit sex, my boys in the most charming and natural way, tell the story of the non-stereotypical homosexual man, they give courage to homosexuals in the world, to stop hiding, to do much more than I, little or much, have achieved with my pride and lack of modesty, with the love for my guild, with my fine and humble art, teaching haters that homosexuals are not stuffed with flowers, we are flesh, spirit and soul, like everyone, full of existence and love, like everything, just stardust—a breath from heaven."
Work by This Artist
Leaving Hell Climbing Your Handsome Devils
By Omar Chaves Viteri
Too Hot for Heaven.
If you Like Meat, Eat a Cowboy
A Carnivore’s Delight.
Flowers Don’t Maketh Gay
Pick Them While Ripe.
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Photograph by Peter Pettus (Library of Congress) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
American religion, humility, and democracy
Good troublemakers
by Ruth Braunstein January 31, 2018
“How do we follow the prophets?” asked Nora, the executive director of Interfaith, a progressive, multiracial, faith-based community organizing coalition that I began studying in the wake of the Great Recession and amid deepening political disagreement about how to move forward as a country.
“How can we be prophetic voices,” she continued, “in a world that is different, fearful, and blaming?”
She was speaking to a room full of lay leaders who had gathered in a church auditorium on a Sunday afternoon for Interfaith’s quarterly leadership meeting, the theme of which was “Prophetic Voice.”
The men and women in attendance were black, white, Latino, and Arab; middle-class and low-income; Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim; and worshiped in churches, synagogues, and mosques all over the city. They had not traveled there to worship together; they had gathered to discuss how they could work together to confront the economic challenges that Americans around the country faced.
Addressing the crowd, Nora suggested that channeling the prophets meant bringing the values and symbols from their varied faith traditions into their public actions, in order to show people that “things are not hopeless. There is a different way!”
Nora’s voice then rose as she began to list prophets who had played this role: “Moses, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Dorothy Day, Raquel, Jon, Rev. Fischer, Gloria, Robert . . .” She rattled off the names of several people sitting in the crowd.
“I am mentioning some of you by name,” she noted. “There are too many to say them all. But all of us are prophets! All of us are called!” Her voice had risen to a near shout now and echoed through the large room.
Democracy, conviction, and humility
American history has been punctuated by the actions of modern prophets who have called society to account for its sins, which, they have argued, constituted a breach of Americans’ covenant with God. Some of these men and women are remembered as cranks or retrograde theocrats, while others have been enshrined as champions of democracy and human rights. Yet even those who fall in the latter camp were often viewed in their time as crazies, troublemakers, and extremists, crying out in the wilderness, speaking truth to power, however unpopular it made them. They persisted because they believed they were called to do so—by God.
Confidence in one’s convictions is necessary under such conditions. Yet this same moral righteousness can also lead people to stop listening to others, to become so confident they have all the answers that they become unwilling to admit they may be wrong. Even if these prophets privately harbored doubts about their calling, once they decided to “follow the prophets,” as Nora put it, this involved playing a role. And performing prophecy means performing certainty.
Public performances of moral certainty (like many forms of protest, religious and otherwise) stand in tension with prevailing visions of how democratic citizens should interact with one another across their differences. These visions emphasize intellectual, or epistemic, humility, embodied in practices like public debate, deliberation, and negotiation, which convey an openness to the possibility that one could learn something new by listening to people whose views differ from one’s own.
Today, as political arrogance, partisan polarization, and information tribalism threaten to engulf our public life, it is crucial that we recover the political skills, spaces, and practices that encourage greater humility. This is not only necessary to strengthen democracy; it can also be an effective strategy for achieving practical goals. Indeed, even many activists who are driven by strong moral convictions believe they can achieve more by being pragmatic rather than prophetic—they wish to “win and not just ‘witness.’”
However, we must also be mindful that the kinds of deliberative practices most closely associated with humility are best suited for interactions between individuals who view one another as social and epistemic equals. Groups who are oppressed or marginalized are rightfully distrustful of these kinds of practices, which offer the appearance of an equal playing field, but on which they are barely considered players.
To create the kinds of changes they seek, oppressed and marginalized citizens must not only find alternative ways of making their voices heard, but also of calling the very fairness of these democratic norms and institutions into doubt. This is a task to which prophetic action is well suited, as a brief look back at some exemplary American prophets illuminates.
From inside an Alabama jail cell in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. explained why he had no choice but to join the campaign of nonviolent protest that led to his arrest. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he argued that segregation “is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful.” He could not in good conscience continue to obey an unjust law.
Although Birmingham was not his hometown, King had been called there. “The prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of their home towns,” King wrote. Like these Biblical prophets, he continued, “so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.”
The white moderates to whom he addressed his letter ostensibly agreed with his goals, yet they viewed his methods as “extremist.” It would be more appropriate, they argued, to be patient, to negotiate. But waiting is only an option for those who do not suffer daily; negotiating is only an option for those who trust their counterparts will act in good faith.
King would wait no longer. Unapologetic, he embraced their “extremist” label:
Was not Jesus an extremist for love . . .Was not Amos an extremist for justice . . . And Abraham Lincoln . . . And Thomas Jefferson . . . So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?
Aligning himself with biblical and modern prophets that most Americans would be hard-pressed to reject as unsavory figures, King rejected calls for moderation and reframed extremism as a moral, even democratic, virtue.
“They say I am crazy”
Unlike King, who despite his embrace of the “extremist” label still sought to reform the American system from within, the leaders of the Catholic Worker movement called for “a complete rejection of the present social order and a nonviolent revolution to establish an order more in accord with Christian values” (Catholic Worker, May 1977). Still, in their responses to their critics, they echoed King, aligning themselves with Biblical prophets who were dismissed in their day as “crazy.”
Dramatic images of these prophets line the pages of their in-house newspapers. One cover of the Catholic Agitator (published by the Los Angeles Catholic Worker) featured a photograph of a white-bearded man looking out over an urban skyline, next to the headline “Still Crazy After All These Years”: “Many in Israel found the prophets unintelligible. Most dismissed them as fanatic dreamers who preached a naïve idealism divorced from the ambiguities of the ‘real world.’”
On the cover of the 1977 issue of the Catholic Worker in which community members celebrated the life of Peter Maurin, the movement’s lesser-known cofounder, a line from one of his “Easy Essays” was used as a banner headline: “They say that I am crazy because I refuse to be crazy the way everybody else is crazy.”
An issue of the Catholic Agitator celebrating their founder Dorothy Day’s centenary highlighted her reputation as a “troublemaker,” noting that if she were canonized she would be the “patron saint of the homeless and also people who lose their temper.”
By celebrating being “crazy” “troublemakers,” members of this movement rejected traditional (they would say “bourgeois”) visions of democratic virtue. Instead, they valorized those “fanatic dreamers” who came before them, who imagined a different kind of world, and had the confidence necessary to fight for that world even when few others shared their vision.
Valorizing prophetic action
From the civil rights movement to the Catholic Worker movement to today’s movement of faith-based community organizing, ordinary people seeking extraordinary social changes model their action after the biblical and civic prophets who have come before them. They do so by bringing stories, symbols, and values from their faith traditions into their public actions in order to show people that “Things are not hopeless. There is a different way!”
Religion, in this view, is not a set of propositional beliefs or restrictive rules; it is a set of tools for broadening society’s collective moral imagination, and for holding society accountable when it fails to live up to its own values.
While religion in the former “priestly” form is typically associated with efforts by the powers-that-be to maintain order and the status quo, religion in the latter “prophetic” form has been an essential component of historical movements for freedom and justice.
Even so, those who operate in this prophetic register typically face the kinds of accusations that King, Day, and Maurin faced—of breaching democratic norms by privileging protest over dialogue; anger over calmness; extremism over moderation; conviction over humility; in short, by not playing by the rules of the powerful.
By valorizing this kind of rule-breaking, these modern prophets not only call attention to the unjust social order, but also to the injustice of political norms that prevent dominated groups from challenging that order.
This should not suggest that humility does not have a place in their work: indeed, deep listening and relationship building are central to their organizing efforts. But so are practices that help them remain confident in their convictions, amid the crush of voices telling them they are crazy.
Note on title: Congressman John Lewis often uses the phrase “good trouble” to describe the kinds of disruptive yet nonviolent actions that were used by leaders of the civil rights movement and which he believes are still necessary today.
Images courtesy of the Catholic Agitator (Alternative Press Collection) and Catholic Worker (Alternative Press Collection), Archives & Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries, accessed with assistance from Graham Stinnett (Curator of Human Rights Collections and Alternative Press Collections).
American religioncivil rightscommunity organizingdemocracyMartin Luther King Jr.social justice
Ruth Braunstein
Ruth Braunstein is associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. During 2019-2020, Ruth is the recipient of a Louisville Institute Sabbatical Grant for Researchers, a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Religion, and a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) Public Fellow. Her research on the role of religion and culture in American political life has been published in the American Sociological Review, Contexts, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Qualitative Sociology, among other outlets. She is the author of Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy Across the Political Divide (University of California Press, 2017), based on a comparative ethnographic study of progressive faith-based community organizing and Tea Party activism, and coeditor of Religion and Progressive Activism: New Stories about Faith and Politics (NYU Press, 2017). She is currently on the TIF Editorial Board and has previously served as Editor-at-Large and Managing Editor of The Immanent Frame, and has consulted with the SSRC’s program on Religion and the Public Sphere.
Political myopia and prophetic vision
Is Democracy Slipping Away?
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Keep your cake, I’d rather be dancing
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Worst Apocalypse Ever!
So here we are a little more than a week later after those pesky Mayans made a calendar that ended (how dare they!) and we all took it to mean that the end was here. Well, I'm still waiting for this crazy train of an apocalypse to take over. Especially since it's the last day of the year. Come on, man!
Apparently it was really just a case of Y2K for the Mayans. Which shouldn't be a big deal since they never actually sold anybody a mainframe computer without enough bytes of storage to hold an entire year, but hey, here we are.
I like how many people said they knew it wouldn't happen because of the rationalism or science or some crap like that, but a much easier way to be sure is to assume that NOTHING interesting is ever happening. Face reality folks, horrible things that happen always happen in incredibly dreary and predictable ways that the world has seen a thousand times before. Not in some fascinating ways like cosmic Armageddon.
I knew it wasn't going to happen because simply put, the Mayans never really said it was going to happen in the first place. We just translated this notion that a calendar ending means the end of the world. Sure, they got killed off by conquistadors - which they really predicted so well, didn't they? But at the very least they weren't dumb enough to think that the end of a marking for days meant the world was going to end.
It's pretty obvious with the increasing frequency of these failed apocalypses that people aren't so much predicting them as they are fantasizing about them. Doomsday Preppers is all about that. All those preppers are entirely banking on that doomsday prediction to go the specific way they want it to go. It's like they hate the status quo and they don't understand how delicate and transient the current arrangement is so they just imagine it going on and on forever unless some all-encompassing grand catastrophe intervenes to make it stop.
This is all how the collective depression of all people who yearn for something different but can't articulate their problems or their desires manifests itself.
Then again, there's been a constant stream of cranks predicting the apocalypse for all of recorded history, but most of them didn't get as much attention in the days before the internet and the 24-hour news cycle. They were set aside for what they were - fucking nuts
It's really interesting to see how this notion has survived all this time. Look at John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion And The Death Of Utopia. It's a pretty interesting look at how the christian idea of an end times has survived all kinds of permutations, from communalist millenial cults to the enlightenment to of course the End of History.
Personally, I like to believe the theory that the rapture did in fact happen but that no one was virtuous so we have all been condemned to continue living in this hell of our own design.
Wouldn't that be something. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
My God, What Have I Done?
It amazes me that the year in review shit hasn't driven me fucking crazy yet. Go figure. I do want to point out one thing though.That movie was released this year...... wow
Shockingly, the company that made a movie that looked that bad with such relatively good voice acting name quality went bankrupt. It was supposed to be released in 2003. It really looks worse than that mid 90's CGI kids show about the wonderful world that exist in your computer. Reboot.
A Link To The Zelda Past
So for the longest time there has been a very big question with gamers. From the days of NES till present day on the Wii, gamers have played as Link in rescuing the princess and defeating an evil. But the whole time line of all the games has been one of the most confusing aspects of it. Though, to be fair, it is less confusing than the time line of DC comics these days.
In any event, here's a little Christmas treat. a video that explains the history and time line of the Zelda games. Enjoy;
Now it seems that everything is clear, wouldn't you say?
DC Comics - Blacking You Out with a Thought
Even though it has been a year since the new 52 kicked off, I'm still having a hell of a hard time dealing with the new world of DC comics. It just doesn't feel right. It's like going into an alternative universe. Things are the same, only they aren't. There's something twisted to it all. As if this world they created was based off a foundation of toothpicks and silly putty.
It's as if they wanted to start with a clean slate to lure new readers, only they wanted to keep a lot of the older stuff to retain the older readers. It makes very little sense now since a lot of events that needed to happen in order for those status quos to remain just never actually happened. Take for example the death of superman.
In this new 52, it's pretty heavily suggested that it never happened. It's only been referenced in Swamp Thing #1. Superman went to check on Alec Holland and mentioned that if he needed any help with the aftermath from the dead, that nobody knew more about that than superman.
But then again, that was a #1 and I think it's been well documented by now that nobody, least of all DC editorial, really knew what the fuck was in continuity when that issue was published. But without Death/Return of Superman happening, Coast City never blows up and Hal Jordan never goes on to be Parallax, which definitely still happened. Only wait, if Hal was Parallax, then he must have died and been the Spectre, too! But there's only been one Spectre and he was just created like a couple of months ago...
Yeah, you can see already how this whole New 52 time line is all fucked up. It's been over a year now and they're still not quite sure what happened and what didn't. It's really astounding. We should all be talking about how moronic DC was in all of this for not sitting down and setting what exactly happened and what didn't. They had their chance to fix all of these inconsistencies but failed to do so with the issues #0's that were released in order to clear up and recap all the big events that actually did happen.
They also screwed up big when it comes to time-lines. They condensed them down and that sure was a dumb move. Now they can't even decide what's happened in the 10 short years of Batman. And it's kind of funny for that because having Robin fly around in a speedo might have been normal in the 60's o 70's pop culture, but that is not really flying right in 2002. It's really funny that they soft retconned Nightwing's suit but the contradictions of times between issues, the references to the previous "Titans" and the veiled references to Superboy punching reality - which clearly couldn't have happened, and yet all of those things still remain.
At this point, they need a Crisis event to just clean up one year of comics.
It really wouldn't surprise me if the carpet-bombing of old continuity is starting to get some resistance from those outside the DiDio and Lee alliance. The Titans, particularly those of the New Teen variety, are sort of the cornerstone of the DCU, the promise of legacy heroes fully realized.
It's as if what they seemed to want to do with the Titans would be like Marvel wiping out the silver age X-men and then saying that while Jean and Cyclops and Beast were around, they didn't know Xavier and the X-men really started eighteen months ago with a vampire named Jubilee, a hairy teen called Logan, and a new insectoid creature called Buzz-kill.
DC shouts out that the whole purpose of the relaunch was to establish a clean starting point free from the traditional bindings of cannon which typically dissuade new readers from jumping on... That's such a bullshit excuse it's not even funny.
They may have accomplished the goal of attracting new readers, but did so only on their ride of publicity. Not their actual performance. DC didn't create a clean slate, they created a slate so ambiguous that attempts to define it are nothing but persuasive and arbitrary. As evidenced by the fact that sales are low now that we're in the thick of it. As well as how long-time writers don't even have a clue what the fuck is going on any more. Cannon is far more muddied now than it has ever been.
It's such a shame because DC was changing around and heading down a good direction before the new 52. Were some aspects and stories stale? Yeah. I'll admit that. But it is really that fucking hard to say, "hey, look. Aquaman just crawled out of the ocean and totally acts different now?" No, it's not. They essentially did that anyway, but sacrifice they had to wreck a ton of character development on characters that were working. Marvel flips characterizations on a dime and doesn't bat an eye about it. But they draw the line when it comes to rebooting the entire universe every time it happens.
Swampthing and Animal Man are the two shinny beacons to come out of this, but they're nothing that couldn't have been done without a big reboot behind them. DC needs to let the writers have a little more direction with where they want to take characters, otherwise they're not going to lead them anywhere but through a couple issue arch that means nothing.
It's all a mess and well, I'm just saying that I'd really would have preferred if they just went "It's a total reboot, nothing before ever happened" and work off that. Instead we get this quagmire that results in comic book fans and the obsessives arguing about what actually happened and what hasn't. They really missed their chance during Final Crisis - That was probably the best time to play this reboot card and they sure as hell missed it.
Though, maybe they couldn't work with Final Crisis because Morrison had the good guys not only actually rebooting the universe from scratch, but also casting out everything that was wrong with the old universe.... which was everything that DC's editorial loved and shoved to the front and center of this new 52.
And this is why we can't have good things.
A Makin' Bacon Pancakes Sort of Day
Christmas is over. It's that sort of lingering hangover of the holiday ham going on right now as we do literally nothing. Why is that? Because generally the week between Christmas and the end of the year is a whole mess of unproductiveness. Why would anyone anything anyway? In a couple of days you're going to be able to just press the restart button for the year. So hey, let yourself go. And what better way to do that than by going with the basics..
Mmm, making pancakes, you get some bacon and you put it in a pancake! Makin' paaaaancakes!
Yeah, I'm phoning it in as I allow my brain to melt with all the god damn end of the year best of list.
Scotch on the Rocks
With the Holidays in full throttle, I guess it's time to show you how you should be drinking your scotch at all those holiday get togethers. Let this man show you how you do a thing or two...
Now you're probably wondering if this dude is for reals. I mean, he does that same "throw it on the floor" thing in every single video he has... So it leaves folks wondering if he's hamming it up or if he's entirely serious about all this shit. One thing to know for certain is that the advice he's giving seems real enough.
For those of you who think it's a joke video, let me tell you - it's not a joke. It's Richard "the nose" Paterson and one of the top blenders in the industry. He's more of a PR man now because of his extroverted demeanor and antics, he blends whiskey that goes for 160 grand a bottle. He may be eccentric, but he's definitely not joking when it comes to whiskey.
On to a different topic - Rye whiskey and how it's different than malt whiskey.
Rye's more easily compared to bourbon than malt whiskey, just since the process is overall the same other than the base grain mixture. Like, a bourbon you've got the aging in new charred oak so there's the caramel and vanilla from the wood, but rye is drier and spicier compared to the sweeter corn that dominates in bourbon.
Rye and Malt whiskey are only both known as whiskey by an accident of linguistics. The difference between at least 51% rye mashbill distilled to 160 proof aged in never-before-used charred white oak barrels for 3 years or more in some barrel, maybe bourbon, maybe sherry cask, is substantial. Rye and malt whiskey are only passingly similar.
So there you go. Now you're better equipped to deal with the Holiday season.
Baby It's Still Cold Outside
Okay, once more to wrap up all the bitching about Christmas music, let's just revisit the awful of the most awful. Baby It's Cold Outside;
So as it turns out, songs about date rape are not improved by the art of comedy. I mean, I still can't believe that the line "What's in this drink?" was not a line added for the sake of parody. No sir. It's in the actual song and it's truly disturbing that no one picked up on it and just passed it off as some sort of playfulness of the time.
But even with switched gender roles it's still so disturbing.
Elf's are Dicks
You're probably wondering what elves do when Santa is out and about delivering those gifts that they were slaving away all year long making, right? Well here's a little insight...
Yeah, they could be a little bit of a dick.
X-mas Music
So here I am on Christmas day and the only thing that can come to my mind is the joy of not having to deal with Christmas music after the day is done. It really should be a capital offense to play Christmas music over speakers in the public areas. It really just makes me want to rip my ears off and put in plenty of tinsel in its place so I don't have to hear any more of it. Who wouldn't want to do that to get away from hearing timeless classics dealing with birds and the poors as well as literal date rape.
I'm pretty sure that they play Christmas carols 24/7/365 at Gitmo. Soldiers guarding the prisoners are each issued a set of noise canceling headphones and an iPod full of Slayer to avoid succumbing into the madness and torture that the inmates have to endure. But let me tell you, if I have to hear one more rendition of have yourself a merry little Christmas, I'm going to blow red, white and green chunks all over the place.
The worse is if you've ever worked retail. Working retail during Christmas is a simple road to madness. I'm thankful that I haven't had to work retail for almost a decade because, my god, that shit is just piping into the sales floor so it's never a matter of escaping that shit.
I mean, seriously, can somebody get this little fucking bastard his two front teeth so he'll stop singing about them?!
Though it's really hard to pick the single most horrendous Christmas song in the bunch, but that Grandma got run over by a reindeer is pretty awful. See, I told you I would come back to that god awful song. It's bad in every way possible. It is completely empty of anything remotely close to catchiness and is completely unfunny on all regards. But hey, at least it has actual music. "Christmas Wrapping" by the waitresses has no musicality whatsoever and yet will get stuck in my head at least five times before the new year. And for that I hate you with a passion, stupid song.
Maybe I would appreciate Christmas music a lot more if I had a to hear it because David Bowie just dropped by my house to... well, to do whatever he was doing there or something.
Occupy The North Pole - Merry Christmas
First off let's just get it out of the way, there's very little CHRIST in Christmas. The whole notion is beyond stupid and the church complaining that Xmas is being hijacked by other traditions fails to see he fact that Christmas in itself was the Church's attempt to hijack pagan festivals.
In any case, there's a war on Christmas, which is ironic that Americans are battling so hard for a socialized holiday. Because in some sense Santa Claus could just be considered a huge communist. And I don't think it's just that he makes toys for good little boys and girls and gives them out, thus equal redistribution. But think about it, his workshop has to be like a co-op. He doesn't actually run it. He just goes out and delivers the presents.
Then I think the harsh reality sets in. The elves are slaves. In fact, the more I think about it, the more sinister this whole Santa thing becomes. The elves are his slaves and Santa gets fat off Christmas cookies while the elves toil and starve in a frozen wasteland.
And what about Rudolph? I mean, nobody liked him until they actually needed him. What the hell is the deal with that? I mean, it's basically how people behave, I guess. But it's all sorts of messed up to have that in a story and nobody bats an eye in seeing what's wrong with that message?
If I may make a stretch here, but perhaps they don't like him because he has a red nose. Just let me repeat that Hollywood blacklisting bullshit once more. No one likes him because he has a RED nose. Yeah, makes you think.
In short - Santa clearly represents total commodity fetishism and Rudolph is just typical communism hating.
It makes you wonder why we even keep this commie-red story alive? Typically when the topic comes up as to why we keep pushing this notion of lying to children about Santa Claus, it's some bullshit about keeping the magic of Christmas alive. As if the only possible magic associated with receiving gifts of an unknown nature is where they're coming from. I once got a train set when I was 9, after learning the truth about Santa, and the magic was not harmed. In fact, I would not have cared if my parents told me elves made them, or if she told me that she found it in a sewer.
One of my first reactions when I found out the truth was to feel bad for my parents and parents all around. It must feel really unfair to have your kids give the credit for the nice things you're giving them to somebody else. They explained it that Santa Claus was just a marketing tool invented by Coca-Cola. It turns out they're not that wrong on that one.
You see, little buddy, Santa Claus is what we call a social construct. Which seems like the best explanation for the whole thing anyway. I tell myself that I wouldn't lie to my kids about it, but I'm sure by then the war on Christmas is going to be so dug in deep that Jesus will be delivering via UPS.
A Little Christmas Eve Night Story
With this being the eve of Christmas and all the kiddies are awaiting a fat man coming down their... well, opening to their home to give them gifts, here's a little story time.
Christmas Eve - Or As I Put it, Doctor Who Eve
Get ready for a new Doctor Who tomorrow!
Yeah, I don't look forward to some Coke invented costume freak coming down and giving me gifts. I look forward to The Doctor doing just that. Bring it on!
TIME Person of the Year - Oh For Fucks Sake
You know, TIME Magazine, I sort of gave up on you a couple of years back when you sadly named YOU(tube) the Person of the year. Yeah, sure. That little reflective mirror thing on the cover, as to make sure that anyone who was looking at the cover felt that they themselves were person of the year for contributing jack of all shit to Youtube. But it was a god damn lame duck cop out of a call.
Well, that's what I thought, but after you just released who's TIME's person of the year this year, I take it back - This one's the lame fuck around.
Why yes, let's nominate Nobel Peace Prize and multiple Grammy award winner, Time Magazine's Extra Special Person of the Year, President Barack "Unmanned Drones are the shit, yo" Obama.
Bet you didn't know that Obama won a fucking Grammy, now did you?
You just thought that it was facetiousness on my part based on his growing collection of liberal "wonderful personhood" awards that seem to be thrown at him left and right. But nope, it's actually real. He's a multiple Grammy award-winner Barack Obama. IN DA HOUSE. He got it for the spoken word version of Dreams from my father.
You have to wonder what the running time on that is. I mean, can anyone work out how many people died in Afghanistan in the time it takes him to read the entire book? I'm pretty sure it will be a large number. I can't imagine how many are from Drone attacks. You know, that highly against the rules of war/war crime worthy task of using unmanned drones... the ones that the Military had to ESPN to help analyze the vast amount of footage they were getting in.
JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va. – Can SportsCenter teach the military something about combating terrorists?
After rapidly expanding the number of drones around the world, the Air Force is now reaching out to ESPN and other experts in video analysis to keep up with the flood of footage the unmanned aircraft are transmitting.
"They're looking at anything and everything they can right now," said Air Force Col. Mike Shortsleeve, commander of a unit here that monitors drone videos.
The remote-controlled aircraft are mounted with cameras that transmit real-time video of terrorism suspects to military analysts in the USA.
Anyhow, on a side note, this is Obama's second person of the year win. The last one came in 2008 when he won the election. So having him win it again during his re-election is just really lazy. Though, truth be told, picking the American President as the biggest news maker of the year is such a softball choice. Especially the case when you already picked him last time around.
I wont even get to the crimes against humanity he has done - and I'm an Obama supporter. Amazing that I can talk like this. But seriously, shame on you, TIME magazine. Shame indeed.
A Very Christmas Aquateen
I know the feel.
I know the feel
Seasons Greetings From The NRA
First can I start by saying that we at the National Rifle Association decided to keep our silence for the last few days in the belief that recent events in Connecticut did not deserve to become a political football or exploited to advance a political agenda. But I can assure you all that we are just as shocked and appalled as anyone by this week’s crazed attack on innocent semi-automatic rifle owners everywhere.
Let me be clear: we at the Association entirely agree that these random shootings must be stopped. But we must fight fire with fire. Just ask any of our nation’s courageous firefighters.
In the wake of these headlines we have to ask: how would things have gone at, say, Fort Hood, if there had been armed guards on patrol?
Or earlier this year in New York, when nine innocent pedestrians were senselessly gunned down by police officers bravely attempting to arrest an armed man who shot nearly two people? How would things have gone, if a coordinated tactical response had resulted in more armed officers shooting the stray bullets out of the way?
This has to be the start of a national conversation.
No questions.
Excuse me. Excuse me. I've just been given to understand that during our press conference an armed man in Pennsylvania gunned down several people, including three state troopers. We can only urge lawmakers again: we need armed guards in every squad car. The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun are an unquantifiable number of good guys who can effortlessly overcome the human instinct not to kill others and have easy access to lethal weapons.
Then again, what happens if one of those guys gets shot? Did you ever think about that? We'd have to put armed guards around every armed guard. Yes, that should do it. Because you see, guns don't kill people, they kill lots of people. Like, wow. Look at how many people they seem to kill.
But it's those mentally ill that we need to worry about. Perhaps we should demonize everyone with mental illness. Maybe make some sort of national database to track them? Who knows? I'm just a lowly gun pusher.
To be honest, the whole speech they actually gave was complete and utter insanity and out of touch irrelevance. Between the "The answer is to put armed guards in every school" and the speech getting interrupted by protest banners, the whole spectacle was just one huge farce. The fact that at the same time a Pennsylvania nut jub was on a shooting spree was just the icing on this massive mountain of bullshit cake.
Like, I think people should probably have the right to own guns. But this is just stupidity. The NRA actually wants the government to crack down on the mentally ill and possession of mental illness, but hey, have even more guns in every school RIGHT.THIS.MOMENT!
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," said Wayne LaPierre, the group's chief executive officer, as he lit a cigarette and scowled menacingly, eyes fixed on a city that was filthy. Crime was everywhere, working it's way throughout the city like so much dust in a neglected place and as he thought of his .44 magnum revolver realized that he would be this city's swiffer sweeper.
Besides, we already have a national registry of people who are most likely to shoot innocent civilians. In fact, most of the time you don't even have to consult the registry at all. All you need to do is look for someone who is wearing identifying badges and/or dog tags.
The Minimum Wage Machine
I just thought I would share this really interesting piece I came across. It's called the Minimum Wage Machine.
So what is it? Well, it's as advertised;
Minimum Wage Machine (Work in Progress)
Custom electronics, change sorter, wood, plexiglas, motor, misc. hardware, pennies (approx. 15 x 19 x 72 inches)
The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 4.97 seconds, for $7.25 an hour (NY state minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine's mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box.
I really find this piece interesting. Mainly because that's what most minimum wage jobs end up being. Something that just keeps the wheels turning and even though this foundation is really important for our every day living, we treat the workers as if they're just some monkey cranking that wheel keeping the song going. The moment they stop is the moment that we stop taking care of them.
Seems pretty mean in the long run of things. Or for that matter that as a society we don't put protections in place and safety nets there to catch them before they fall... especially since they're bound to fall the moment someone else can produce it cheaper.
I Wish The Mayans Were Right
I mean, who doesn't want the world to end? Especially when you have news stories and legislation currently getting fast tracked to allow teachers in school to be allowed to carry weapons -
Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said that teachers with licenses to carry concealed handguns should have "access to weapons in their school."
Tuesday, Huffington Post counted "at least six states" where lawmakers "have outlined plans to introduce legislation in 2013 to allow teachers to carry guns into schools or require several teachers to be armed in school buildings." Those states: Florida, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Tennessee.
Today, there's word from WMBF in South Carolina that a legislator there "has prefiled a bill to allow teachers to carry guns in schools."
Yeah, that's exactly what we need, a poorly paid, terribly treated by society and full of pressure by little Timmy's parent's to get him to learn with the ability to carry a weapon. Surely this person will not eventually snap and go postal - I guess it'll then be changed to going Teacher.
Oh yeah, I dare you to try to bust up their unions and take away their health benefits after you give them the legal right to carry a gun into school. Not to mention that where the hell will the teacher put the weapon? I know when I was young I would always get into my teachers desk to get my confiscated toys.
Surely this will end well....
In any event, so what are we doing for this end of the world? Well, it seems like we're blaming the Mayans for being wrong. Which is very odd because the Mayans NEVER SAID that the world was ending. The calendar just ended. We defined meaning to all this and proclaimed it was the end of times. Not sure why we should even blame the Mayans anyway. They don't even believe in that end of the world stuff.
If anything, you should blame the Spanish for coming in and conquering. That's why the calendar production assembly line sort of, you know... stopped. So what's the first thing people want to do? Well besides act as if the zombie times are coming? Well, I guess act like the end of time is here.
4chan and reddit blew up with this stupid idea.
I dunno, it just seems kind of mean spirited given how many mentally unstable people commit suicide or kill their kids over these end of the world sort of things. I'm sure there's some doomsday prepper who bugged out last night and is in his hidden sanctuary eating MRI's.
Besides that, there's no chance of this actually working anyway. I wish it did, cause nothing would be a better way to top off 2012 than to mark the end of 4chan's lulz culture.
Welp, maybe next randomly picked end of days predicted day, I suppose.
A Doctor Who Christmas is coming...
Ah, tis the season for Christmasy things. One thing in particular is the upcoming Doctor Who Christmas special. And to prepare you for that upcoming annual wonderment, here's a little prequel with souffle girl.
And if you weren't teased enough, here's a little more to get your interest peaked and have something to look forward to with the blessed birth of lord and savior - Matt Smith
Oh goodie oh goodie oh goodie.
Amazing Spiderman #700
There was a time when I would have said that I'm glad I don't remember much of the Clone Saga. Hell, even the Maximum Carnage story line was terrible enough to forget. Then in the past few years we had some seriously stupid stuff come out. The Other, for example, taught us that Spider-man has bone claw spikes of some sort. Then we have One More Day. A story line that had Spider-man make a deal with the devil to keep his aunt alive, but he lost his marriage with Mary Jane as part of the package deal. The point of this move was to get Peter Parker back into that teenager troubles he got when the current editor at Marvel first read Spidey.
You know, the days when he would book a date on the same night with both Mary Jane and Gwen, have to do a favor for Aunt May and here comes trouble for Spider-man... all while trying to avoid Aunt May finding out his secret! Boy howdy, how is Peter going to get out of this pickle?!
And so they had their fun with that sort of story for a while and with today's release of Amazing Spider-man #700, things take a drastic turn for the far far worse. First off, there will be spoilers here. So hey, be warned. Anyhow, I don't know about you, but after 700 issues of the adventures of Spider-man, you would think that they'd want to celebrate such a milestone in a better fashion then what they did.
First off, they killed Peter Parker. Specifically Doc Ock, a long time villain of his. Even worse is they did it in what has to be the dumbest way possible. Apparently Doc and Spidey have switched brains ala trading places. Peter now being in the body of an old man about to die... well, in a shocking turn, he dies. Leaving Doc Octopus to remain in Spider-man's body. Yeah, not the birthday celebration that after 700 issues you would expect.
The ending leaves it that Spock, if we will call him that, beats the hell out of Peter Parker in Doc's body and then after he's dead proclaims that he'll be a far better spiderman than Peter ever was. He'll be a SUPERIOR SPIDERMAN! Which is what the comic book is turning into. After 700 issues, Amazing spider-man is no more. The book is starting Superior Spider-man with Spock as the character.
This in itself is fucking disturbing. How much hate do you have to hold for a character to do this to one of the biggest franchise characters of the company? How much hate do you have to have for its fans? You know what would have been a better ending? Doc Ock voluntarily switching bodies back after realizing what an incredible person Peter Park was. A reflection of the past 699 issues and realizing how great this character was. That would have made this supposed heel-face turn far more believable. But nope, all we get is "I'm TOTALLY gonna be a better Spider-man than that fucking nerd!"
I don't know how much more insulting it can be than to have it end like that - Peter Parker dead in a gutter with his loved ones celebrating his death while Doc Ock declares that he will be better than Peter. How exactly is your average reader suppose to feel okay with purchasing this book at $8?!
As a writer it just seems like a fucking mess. We're now going to have to endure 12 issues of Spock as a complete asshole Spider-man before they ham-fistedly push Peter Parker back into his body. It's even more amazing because Doc Ock as Superior Spider-man acts absolutely nothing like Peter. He acts like Doctor Octopus. It's like the other characters realize there has been a change but they do nothing in any way to address this. You would assume that she would notice something, especially since the Chameleon's tried this before. She was married to him for years and Spock seems incapable of even making a joke.
Even worse is that in the book Mary Jane is asking for a second chance at their relationship and all Spock does is call her a glorified sidekick. How in the fuck is she not picking up on that? Even worse is that after he does that, she begs him and he kisses her.
I can't wait till the feminist groups rip into the writer because he paints the picture of Mary Jane as a completely useless and welcome mat female. It's truly awful and the notion that Mary Jane gets back with "Peter Parker" now is just all levels of creepy as fuck. To the point of if Doc Ock does anything with her, it should be considered rape. So what exactly is the driving force behind all this?
The answer to all this is Dan Slott. He's found his excuse to keep writing Spider-man the way he wanted to write it for another year or two as this story drags out and sales drop. It's a big finger to the fans, but hey, his stance is if you don't like it then it's your problem and not the person making their loved characters act completely different... or, you know, having their favorite characters get murdered by their villains and take their place in their body.
Visually it's still Peter Parker with the rest of the same cast. Hell Spock knows all of Peter's memories somehow with the mind swap. It's just we're going to get a lot of arrogant attitude out of the character because Dan Slott wants it to be that way. While I know this could all be avoided if you just don't buy the book and don't listen to Dan Slott's interview or twitter feed, but then again, the dude is crazy.
Don Slott will actually go out and search for his name, the words Amazing Spider-man and even Spider-man through social media, as has been documented in many situations, and fire off at you if you disagree with him. He's just that passionate about twitter that he delves into the realm of e-stalker behavior. He's built this reputation off of it. He wants to nag at people on message boards, twitter and anywhere he can. He gets off on this shit of breaking the internet. It's rather stupid. I guess the answer is simple with this though, don't buy Spider-man books and just vote with your wallet.
Even More Shooting Ramblings
Here we are almost a week since the event and when I'm sitting down with some radio news on during the commute back home, I have to say that this amount of coverage for the shooting is utterly mind blowing. I almost feel like I want to just vomit. It's just so sickening to see all the contortions and contrivances used by for-profit news to milk as much money as possible out of the deaths of 18 children.
But hey, let's not talk about WHY this happened or HOW to prevent it in the future, that would mean there's a reason for things happening and that won't fucking stand in America's media circus. Let's just keep going on about this senseless tragedy after all. It's literally incoherent and the only reason we know it happened is because we just won't shut the fuck up about it for at least one more day.
Oh, if only they had some sort of guidance in learning how to report on this tragedy.
But nah, who needs set standards and any sort of moral ethics when you're a news journalist? It's really got to be harsh when even you wouldn't put up with that bullshit. I know I couldn't. I was, at one point, looking to join the journalism force. Man, I'm so glad that didn't pan out as I had hoped for. It's all about appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Just look at this twitter exchange and I dare you not to be completely disgusted by how far the media will go to try to get the scoop on the story;
Then again, it's not the news outlet that has me mad a lot more on this issue. And that is those fake well wishers. It's those people who loudly proclaim their sympathies over this tragedy on their facebook pages, twitter accounts and whatever else you'd see it. Mainly because those people who are outraged, saddened and otherwise stumped are the same type who will not bat an eye when its learned that Drone attacks kill far more innocent people than guilty terrorist. Though it's only when those drone attacks hits its magical target every time. So you can't really take into account those Gibberishtan people's safety. As my father put it, "no one's innocent" or some bullshit like that. What it comes down to is that the kids who died at the school were white - the towel heads in the desert are on their own.
On the other hand, maybe it was all part of some divine intervention and we're all just being judged now? It does make you wonder why the big man wasn't present.
You see, God is like a vampire and can only enter houses he's personally invited into. I mean, what an awesome God. He doesn't intervene to save kids from being shot to death solely because the teachers didn't force them to recite a prayer. Man, that God dude is a real asshole.
Then again, perhaps I'm digging the whole aspect of "there's no god in our schools, that's why there's school violence" aspect of this that keeps going around. As if it were kindergarteners reenacting Lord of the Flies instead of an adult breaking into an elementary school with a bunch of guns.
I know plenty of people who aspire to be teachers someday and currently are teachers and I can not even begin to fathom what kind of teacher would feel comfortable taking a weapon to school and then considering actually using it in the school instead of doing whatever possible step to keep the students safe. Like, what kind of teacher would go "Hey kids, stay right here and I'll be back. Gotta go cap these mother fuckers." and then Rambos the fuck out the door with bullets flying?
And thus we go on to the subject of gun control. I still believe that we first need to get rid of the stigmatization that mental illness has. Hell, just saying you went to go see your shrink will get people thinking that you're crazy. And that's really the best thing we can do? Universal access to high quality health care including mental health care, with strong enforcement of anti-discrimination regulations are what we need. Along with anti-poverty and offender re-entry programs, it would be a great step towards reducing gun violence. Banning guns, on the other hand, would not be.
I'm pretty sure you're aware of computer piracy. Getting a gun on the black market is a lot like that - it's also very easy, if you didn't know. I had a friend come home from prison and suddenly have the best idea that they would get a pistol. A couple of phone calls later and a few hours pass and sure enough - after a hundred bucks or so, they had a pistol. They later decided to get rid of it as being caught with a pistol on probation would have been an easy 10-year mandatory minimum. And for what, a security blanket. Besides, if we get rid of guns, they'll just start using knives. It's as simple as that. You can replace the tool, you just need to fix the tool user and find out why they're doing this in the first place.
A lot of this has to do with the issue that mental health in the US for people without any means has been turned into a prison system by another name. Shit, the countries biggest mental hospital is literally in the jail building in downtown Los Angeles.
The most common argument I'm seeing made is that the guns carried by teachers will work as a deterrent and never be used in schools. Ah yeah, the deterrent will surly work great on the consistently suicidal premeditated-mass-murdering demographic.
The whole notion of giving teachers guns is beyond silly that I don't even know where to start with it. How about the fact that as a kid, I broke into my teacher's desk all the time for the contra band that she took from us. Now I'll be able to find a gun in that desk? Just think, kids will somehow be breaking into the armory and suddenly they will have access to a lot of weapons.
It's fairly obvious now that the answer is to arm not only the teachers, but the students as well. But not the custodial staff, though, you understand.
But as much as teachers should be bodyguards first and educators second, students should not feel they are automatically entitled to an education if they can't navigate the mono-filament wire traps and ghost the remorseless sensor pits of the kill-drones to reach the book shelf. Look, if you didn't learn how to field-strip an AR-15 blindfolded before third grade, well I just don't know what to tell you about the shitty education you were given.
In the end all that can be said about this situation is FUCK IT, FUCK IT ALL TO HELL
Talking About a Little Pappy Whiskey
With Christmas just a couple of days away, it's perhaps no better time to get your drink on. And what better to drink than some good Bourbon. So how about we talk about my favorite- Pappy Van Winkle. Oh, the double bladed sword of delicious goodness. But it has left me wondering why it's so fucking hard to find it.
When and why did Pappy Van Winkle develop this crazy cult following? Don't get me wrong, I love the stuff. It taste amazing, but there is so many other fine bourbons out there that could take some hype off this sucker. A couple of years ago I could get this stuff on the shelf whenever I wanted. Now? Not so much.
I have to go into my bottle shop and get on a waiting list and when they do get it in, the prices are always on the higher side. Maybe it was because the 23 year old bottle, which let's be honest here, is well beyond most people's price range, was given the title "Best whiskey in the world" by some random folks a few years back. It's the same thing that happened to Westyletern.
Look, I love the stuff, but perhaps Van Winkle isn't worth getting this attention of being the best or anything. That's how you create high expectations for a drink. Not to mention I want something I'm not going to feel guilty drinking due to its rarity.
But yeah, there's some kind of crazy mystique behind Pappy that makes it so interesting to people. It's always reviewed amazingly, it's rare and it's expensive - especially for a bourbon. I bet that a lot of folks don't know that most of Pappy's stuff is actually Buffalo Trace and their Stizel-Weller days are almost all gone.
And even after I just said all that, I still want a bottle of it right now. So I guess the only thing to talk about now is maybe a proper alternative. From the press release, I'm thinking that this is very noteworthy. Woodford's 2012 Master Collection seems well worth checking out. Especially when the tasting notes and opinions coming out are very glowing.
Our Four Wood Selection is crafted from a unique batching of mature bourbon, matured in American Oak Wood, that has been finished in barrels made from Maple Wood, Sherry Wood and Port Wood.
The practice of batching together various types of finishing barrels is a less common, more exacting craft – delivering a product of exceptional complexity and smoothness.
The Oloroso Sherry barrels contribute notes of walnut and caramel; the Ruby Port barrels add rich berry fruit while the Maple Wood barrels bring in additional layers of maple syrup and baking spice. The result is a whiskey with an unsurpassed depth of fruit character that is easily savored neat or over ice.
The Four Wood Selection is available November 2012, but supplies are limited, so ask your retailer today.
But yeah, that Woodfords release sounds pretty interesting and seems to follow the trend some bourbon distillers have been doing lately in experimenting with different woods. And perhaps I should touch one more topic before the Christmas miracle happens of you getting completely shit faced....
That is the question of how long does your booze last once you open a bottle. In that, how long do you have to drink your stuff before it goes completely south?
The answer is simple. A long time. Generally speaking, they last a very long time. It's not like wine or beer were oxidization kills the liquor. If a bottle has a very small amount in it, like less than a quarter of the bottle is actually alcohol, then it's time to drink it within a couple of weeks or decant it into a smaller bottle. But the general rule is that more air surface area means more oxidation But I've had some that were there for years and weren't any less delicious.
Diluting Your Drink
With you surviving Thanksgiving, and Christmas only being a tiny bit away, it's probably a good time to talk about how you're going to get smashed in order to deal with your awful family. What better tool than alcohol for this task? For all of you who are wondering how much water one needs to add to a drink, here's your How to drink scotch guide just in time.
You basically add enough to dilute it to 30% to get the most amount of flavor out of the drink. And while it may seem a little strange, and you'd probably wonder why you're doing so, remember that a lot of aroma and flavor comes out this way. It also sort of depends on the spirit. With a 100 proof bourbon, you'd probably need just enough to calm the alcohol vapors. But if you're drinking something like cask strength, it may take up to 2 tablespoons to mellow it out. The trick here is to add just enough to open up the aromas and flavors without drowning it.
Then you should note that some whiskies will take water far better than others. The ABV of the drink really does factor into it in indication towards how much to add, but it's not a hard solid thing on how much water you should put before it just falls in on itself.
Basically, if you could smell your booze, you probably could add a little more water. Just know that you graduated from the standard Coke and Bourbon school and are now entering the world of Bourbon and ice.
Christmas' Good Feelings
Life is pretty shitty. Let's just get that out of the way. The holiday season is indeed one of those most depressing times of the year and for proper reason. It gets a lot darker sooner and the whole lack of friends and loved ones to spend it with kick in. Well, it's just bleak. So how about we turn that frown and potential blood splatter on the wall upside down and inject some cuteness into this blog post for one day..
Enjoy this series of pictures of two unlikely best of friends.
I'll let you have a moment to say the biggest Awwwww around.
Oh, Another Shooting - Let's Talk About Gun Control
Here's my problem with all this. The narrative of what exactly happened and how it happened in this latest gun shooting case was that Adam Lanza killed his mother and then took her three guns and went to the elementary school five miles away
So I have to ask, how would an improved gun control or more restrictions prevented this tragedy from occurring? His mother, an unemployed teacher probably passed every restriction and criteria met in getting those guns. I'm sure though, that on her shitty salary, even if she had a job - which she didn't, she wouldn't have been able to afford the proper mental health care that her clearly disturbed son needed.
Tightening those gun restrictions and gun control laws any tighter will not fix this issue. Hell, here's Morgan Freeman's brilliant take on what happened yesterday :
"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.
It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed
people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.
CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.
You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news."
That last part is just so spot on. Why do we even bother with jumping to gun control? They already have a five day waiting period, in most states you can't own an automatic weapon. Most of all, IT WOULDN'T HAVE CHANGED A GOD DAMN THING IN THIS SITUATION. I bet his mother was fully permitted to own and have those guns. She went through the proper channels to get the licenses that are required and unlike most guns that are used in murders, they had serial numbers and were accounted for in the system --- Yet they still were used to kill children. Why? Because someone who was clearly mentally ill got a hold of them.
There's no amount of gun control measures that could have been taken to avoid the situation that her son was potentially going to get a hold of them. Should we also do background checks on all the members of the family of the person who wants a gun? That's a waste of money. Money that could be used to that field that is very underfunded - mental health. Hell, any health for that matter. It's those crazy hobos and mentally ill folks who were kicked out into the streets and away from treatment when Reagan decided to close up the hospitals for mental illness in a method of saving money.
Mental illness should be the subject here. How this kid should have gotten helped for his demons and now society had to pay for his actions - when they could have just paid in another method of dollars and not innocent lives for available mental help/treatment. Do you honestly think that his unemployed teacher for a mother could have afforded to take him in for help? Hell, even if she was employed, the amount of benefits that your average teacher gets, as well as a complete "fuck you" in the way of a shitty pay scale means that his mental illness wouldn't have been treated anyway.
Shouldn't we worry about that more so on tightening restrictions on gun laws? I'm not even one of those right wing NRA members either, I just know from seeing the war on drugs, that if you make something harder to get, all that means is that someone is going to screw out someone else for the money to get it harder. You'll create a black market for it and that just continues the cycle of violence. Gun restrictions are tight enough as is, and again, making it more hoops to jump through wouldn't have prevented this tragedy.
So how about we curb this bullshit about making gun control a bigger thing and focus on helping those who clearly need some sort of help mentally. Hopefully that way we'll prevent this sort of thing from happening again.
Cooking Under Economic Hardship Part 6
On to part six... which is all about Ethnic supermarkets.
Seriously, do not underestimate the wonders you will find at the ethnic supermarket.
I really lucked out in having some amazing stores nearby. In one parking lot there is a Mexican market, and Indian market and an Asian market that has everything you could probably think of. Even better is that it's all on route of a bus route. Not that anyone really takes the bus system in L.A., but I'm just saying that it's a nice option.
One thing you should do is you should go into the local Chinese grocery store and buy a minced pork and dumpling skins in bulk. It'll only cost you a couple of bucks, but it'll be amazing for your weekend staying in.
You just spend an evening or two making dumplings with your buddies of your family. You'll net around 300-400 dumplings in around 2 hours on a weekend while watching a movie or just shooting the breeze. Just put them in the freezer and whenever you're hungry you just have to take a couple of them out and cook them. Cost you less than $20 for the lot and is a tasty emergency food in the event that you need it and it'll last you for months.
If for some reason you just can't handle garlic cloves for the life of you, you are better saved scavenging up your change and buy yourself a tube of anchovy paste. $5 will get you a largish amount. What you do is you get a pan and heat oil in it, brown some garlic in that son bitch and then add the anchovy paste - a littl less than 2/3 tsp, or a couple twists of the tube. you now have an excellent base for sauces of all kinds. Some people will tell you to use anchovy silvers instead, but the paste stretches further and lasts longer.
Then again, you could just plant your own food...
On till next time.
The Hobbit - For A Shorty, You're Very Long
The number one complaint I'm hearing about the hobbit right now is that people are dumbfounded in how you can take a 300 page book and turn it into three 3-hour films. My answer to that is that this has got to be the dumbest complaint about the movie ever. The audio book version is 11 hours long. That's just someone reading the book out loud. And then you have the fact that if in the book there is a like like "they fought off the golbins", that one line translates into a few minutes fighting on screen.
You need to have it long in order to cover everything - and I mean everything. Because even though The Hobbit was only 300 pages, the supplemental material in the other books explaining why the events in the Hobbit happened need to be there. Or would you rather just have Gandalf leave and come back abruptly and not follow in his adventures?
A lot of the critics are saying that the film is bloated. That it's stuffed with so much extraneous material that it often barely feels like Tolkien at all. For example, Tolkien didn't write a prologue about the events in the film, but then again he didn't write a prologue for Fellowship either. Let's be honest here,t hat was pretty great in that movie as it is in this one.
So folks complaining about the family ties of dwarfs need to relax, all of that was always part of the story as you can see from the back of Return of the King. The question to reclaim Erebor was necessary in telling the story of how the dwarves were forced out of Erebor in the first place. And since Thorin is a far bigger and prominent character in this film than he was in the book, it really does make sense to give him a push in his motives here. He's fighting to reclaim his homeland, win his birthright and avenge his forefathers before him.
And if you don't need to go into the appendices for this, all of this stuff was in the actual book of the hobbit. It's right there, pages 32-35. Thorin goes through it all ina big monologue about Erebor, Dale, Arkenstone, Smaug, Azog and Moria. It does get fleshed out after Return of the King when Tolken was revisiting The Hobbit in connecting the two, but
I think that a lot of people look at Fellowship of the Ring with some massively rose-tinted glasses. Nobody except for Frodo had any real development arcs underway by the end of that film. Legolas, Gimli, Merry and Pippin were all window dressing. Boromir and Gandalf are pretty much missing by the end and we get a very faint sense that Aragorn has some grander quest to fulfill, also he's got a chicky-pie that may or may not come back up. In all, it was a very rough film and we all still loved it when it was all said and done.
The characterizations in LOTR were pretty stiff, to be honest. Every character in LOTR is basically the same. They were all warrior kings and princes and champions saving the world from that faceless external threat and it's pretty much all there is to it. Apart from the elf-dwarf buddy film, they never really developed beyond that because they were all perfect people from the start of the fellowship. Here, on the other hand, we have what in the book was a homogenous lump of dwarves, but the film just completely has me sold that they were actual characters with reasons for being there.
Just consider this film to spending its running time like Fellowship did - in that it was used to introduce viewers to the characters and sowing the seeds for their arcs. We can all look back and see that yeah, Pippin redeems being a fuck up and Legolas and Gimli become best of buds and so forth, but there wasn't any signal that those things were coming up unless you were already familiar with the books.
This is the only questionable thing to the film, the Hobbit movies are going to be a lot of uncharted territory to roam because we have 13 dwarves that don't really go anywhere in the books, but do have to go some place character development wise in the films. Even in a two-part movie, this would have needed to be done. So perhaps a little faith would be helpful on this regard.
So far we got a lot. Of the six that did get any development, we had Thorin who is trying to reclaim his honor and lost kingdom, Balin is the sensible voice in his ear following out of love for his friend. Dwalin is the loyal soldier and badass in the field. Kili and Fili are young and idealistic, with Kili also being beardless-legolas for the ladies, and Bofur just wants the best for everyone. So far there's already a lot of character development for these fellas who in the book are just background who have names that sound similar.
Besides, if the film tosses us new stuff like Radagast's rabbit sled, who can actually complain?
I Fought The Beer Law, And the Law Won
There is a lot of places where the law is the law is the law. Not everyone likes the law, but you sort of have to follow it. Well, in some places, following the law is a tricky thing.
I live in Pennsylvania. To buy beer by the case, you must go to a distributor. A distributor can also ONLY sell cases. To buy quantities less than a case, you must go to a bottle shop, or a pizza/sandwich shop. Also, our beer is not sold in most grocery stores not named Whole Foods or Wegman's. We also cannot buy liquor and beer in the same place. At least the beer distributors and liquor stores are now allowed to open on Sundays now.
Virginia is an ABC state, so we have special state run liquor stores which are the only place to buy liquor. That said beer and wine can pretty much be sold anywhere and in whatever quantity so I'll take that. We just recently passed a law allowing breweries to sell full pints out of their tasting rooms instead of just samples, so all in all we are moving in the right direction.
Mississippi just recently (July 1), change the law that limited ABV in beer to 10.2%.
Previously is was at 6%.
Much better, but still lower than it should be.
Texas is so screwed up that I can't possibly remember them all, but:
(1) No one ships to TX, at least not legally
(2) Stores that sell beer and liquor have to close by 9pm, and stay closed all day Sunday. Grocery stores, etc., that don't sell liquor can't sell beer on Sundays until after 12.
(3) Companies that want to distribute their beer here from out of state have to purchase an expensive license to do so, which therefore means a LOT of companies don't distribute their beer here!
(4) Labeling is a huge pain in the ass for local brewers - TABC has to approve all labels, the process is extremely slow, and I know it used to be more stringent than it is now in terms of what exactly could be written on bottles.
(5) Breweries can't sell their own beer on-site: 3-tier system. So you can go to a brewery and sample their beer, but if you want to buy some, you have to then go to a store and buy it.
There's a lot more, but I'm starting to get angry just typing these.....
Bicycle Riding Cat
Now this is pretty awww inspiring. Time to have your heart grow a couple of sizes right here.
Learning To Drink Like a Man
Having Thanksgiving dinner with your family has probably pushed you to drinking heavily. Now what you need to do is learn how to deal with this new embraced hobby. For example, you may be new to scotch and whiskey drinking and wondering what you can actually afford on a budget without looking like some dirty hobo. Good news!
Good news! You can drink on a budget with your varying taste preferences! If you want some introductory level Scotch, Bourbon, Rye, I'd suggest the following. These tend to have more of a softer somewhat caramelly flavoring. This is popular among entry level whiskey drinkers who can sometimes find the heat and strength of whiskey abrasive or overpowering.
Add in that they're relatively affordable and of high quality too boot. Peated whiskey can be very polarizing and I would be hesitant to start with something of that nature.
Aberlour 12 - An alternative if budget is an issue. Less sweet but still delicious. I know a lot of people in this forum prefer it to the Three Wood.
If you want to step it up some, I would recommend going for the Green Label of Johnny Walker. You should do so quickly as it's going to be discontinued - which is a tragedy as it's probably one of the best Johnny Walker scotches. It's just amazing why they'd want to dump Green Label. It's probably one of their best and the price is actually reasonable enough to make it a buy.
It's not that Blue is bad. It's just bad at its price point. In particular, it's not better than Green, which is a fraction of the price. Maybe that's it. It's still at a price point where most people shopping today will go right to the single malt rack without look its way. The general public doesn't know what a pure/blended/vatted malt is, they just think it's the third up in the line.
Maybe Green Label was just not selling at all. Well, not anywhere outside Taiwan. As it had no sales presence at all in Europe and only slightly better popularity in the rest of Asia and the U.S. It's definitely one of my favorite scotches
So there. Now you're better equipped to handle the holidays.
Beer is Hitting The Books
Rogue brewery is a beer company that really likes to do a lot of gimmicky beers. In the past they've partnered up with Voodoo Donuts to create a maple bacon beer and they constantly have strange experimental beers like "Let's use the yeast strain we found in our head brewers beard!".
Well, it looks like they just taken it one step further into the realm of stupidity as they're planning to make a special beer in honor of Powell's Book Store's anniversary. The special ingredient? Moby Dick
Powell’s Books and Rogue Ales and Spirits, two unique Oregon businesses, have collaborated to create a beer that’s dedicated to everyone with a thirst for books and artisan craft beer – White Whale Ale.
White Whale Ale is infused with the sea-faring spirit of Moby Dick. Michael and Emily Powell took pages from a copy of the book and, along with Rogue brewmaster, John Maier, placed them into the brew kettle. Moby Dick is especially meaningful to Michael Powell, who was inspired to become a bookseller when he found a first edition of the novel in a box of books he’s purchased.
I have to wonder, is even putting printing ink into a beer all that safe?
At least Voodoo donut was at least a shot at what they were trying to emulate. I don't get the point of putting several pages of Moby Dick into a beer. It'll add nothing to the taste that you could at least say "Hey, this taste just like Moby Dick!" so it's pretty much pointless. How about, you know, going for something like Melville's opus as it's probably the single most densely symbolic work of American literature. They're just too lazy to use an actual ingredient or tailor the recipe of a beer from literature or do some research for the period it took place.
Nope! Let's just chuck some pages of a book in there. How fucking lazy. Rogue has safely taken the crown from Dogfish Head as the brewery with the dumbest gimmick beers. Though for once you will know why people describe a rogue beer as papery and cardboardy flavored.
It would be one thing if it had been done with an actual 1st edition of Moby Dick. And that's a huge MAYBE, Mainly because after some time, the chemicals used in books could break down and create a vanilla-like aroma to form. It's why old books smell so good. But chances are these pages were from the last half-century and this is going to taste like eating a ream of paper. Though let's be honest, it would have tasted bad anyway.
When it's all said and done, this is just incredibly stupid and pointless and just paints craft beer drinkers in a light that we actually tolerate this stupidity. Though, I guess I should be pleased that they aren't using a real whale's dick to brew it.
Saving Face... Book
Saving Face....Book
Many people feel that Facebook is a sort of devil's tool. Something that you sort of have to have but at the same time they make it really hard to like it. I know of a lot of people who left as soon as they started rolling out Timelines - a feature that pretty much made mapping out your entire life online possible.
In actuality, Timeline is just how they display content on your profile. It looks cool at first but it's a really difficult way to try to read someone's profile. Let alone attempting to keep things private and not completely out there about yourself and your actions is a bit of a pain in the ass.
It's too late for me to delete it. I'm too far down the rabbit hole in it, I have my entire life going back nearly 8 years on it and do most of my social planning via it. So it's kind of a stuck situation for me.
Look at myself, my facebook is and always has been under a false name and I basically untag anything that is labeled as myself and you need to go through some hoops to label pictures of me. So it's not really so bad. I have like 70 friends and my wall is basically as plain as it can be. I generally just post links to these articles I write and every now and then I get some old high school friend or random friend of friend tell me "I read all your articles, you're pretty insightful" and I'm all, hmm, I guess I have some facebook fanclub. Neato.
On the flip side, I also succeeded in making everyone who wasn't a communist red bastard loathe my post and dread my status updates on something most people enjoy.
This doesn't mean I don't get why people hate it. I mean, has Facebook even pretended that it's anything more than a giant data gathering farm for advertisers at this point? It has got to be some of the scummiest practices around, even by American standards. And yet we all just love it so. I'm not sure why America trust it so much.
It's gotten to the point that you can be turned down for a job because not having a Facebook account is seen as suspicious activity. I can't be bothered to dig up the article, but Facebook is so much of an important aspect to the hiring process, at least for particular jobs, that you won't get them if you don't have a social media profile.
Like, it's as if not having a Facebook or not using it makes you be seen as not being a "social person" or something like that. Also, if you don't have a Facebook account, that sets off red flags because Facebook is so ubiquitous that not having one must mean you did something bad to get banned, which speaks of what kind of person you are.
I sort of wish I was making this up but here we are. Lots of jobs now also like to ask for your Facebook password so they can check your shit and also if you DO have a Facebook, you better be careful about what you say because if you complain about your job or you complain about customers who make you stay literally like an hour or two after your shift is up at as a waiter and then leave a $5 tip, you can possibly get fired because of it.
While I like the aspect of using the internet to talk to people from across the country or whatever, it seems like we constantly use technology for the wrongest things possible. Especially when it's something like "social media integration" - Because really, how on earth could they ever really justify asking for your password. I'm thinking it's this article.
It basically shows that wanting to have some semblance of privacy means you're suspicious. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear - or some Orwellian stance like that. I mean, they already basically fucked you by allowing your friends the ability to share your profile with the government
A federal judge has ruled that investigators can go through your Facebook profile if one of your friends gives them permission to do so. The decision, which is part of a New York City racketeering trial, comes as courts struggle to define privacy and civil liberties in the age of social media.
In an order issued on Friday, US District Judge William Pauley III ruled that accused gangster Melvin Colon can’t rely on the Fourth Amendment to suppress Facebook evidence that led to his indictment. Colon had argued that federal investigators violated his privacy by tapping into his profile through an informant who was one of this Facebook friends.
The informant’s Facebook friendship served to open an online window onto Colon’s alleged gangster life, revealing messages he posted about violent acts and threats to rival gang members. The government used this information to obtain a search warrant for the rest of Colon’s Facebook account. The Colon information is part of a larger investigation into crack-dealing and murder in the Bronx.
Fucking hell, I have to laugh at this shit. This is the real clinchers;
Ironically, Colon’s current account suggests that the government’s ability to peruse Facebook profiles may have become even easier since the introduction of the Facebook Timeline. The feature can in some cases reveal past events and status updates to the public unless a user changes his or her privacy settings.
HAHAHAHAHA Privacy settings... HA!
Don't even bother asking if it's secure and safe if you set your Facebook to private. That is a joke in itself and Facebook can easily change that setting without your permission and most of all, without you even realizing it. They did just change everyone's email address to some generic @Facebook address, after all.
I think the best thing about Myspace, and why I miss it just a little is that the private messages had two options at the bottom of it -
Reply to Message and Remove From Friends.
made it completely easy to just delete friends and keep some sort of level of privacy from others. Be it you were going to be bombarded by stupid indie bands trying to sell their record.
Don't get me started on twitter. I can't hold myself to only 140 characters and thus I hate that program. I simply refuse to be constrained to 140 characters, we're not posting in London during the blitz with letter rationing in full swing.
Ironically enough, that post was less than 140 characters.
You have to admit, Facebook is really creepy. I constantly get recommendations friend wise that Facebook just shouldn't know about, it's ability to make connections based on information given is fucking scary good and I've been recommended to add a shit lot of people I knew in real life from college and family functions and the such despite FB not knowing what college I went to.
This is done by Facebook making "dark profiles" of people mentioned in updates and shit by other people. So if you don't have a Facebook account, but like your mom or brother or friend or something mentioned you - congratulations, you have one sitting around off the grid just waiting for you to sign up and "officially" activate it.
Then again, Facebook is literally the only way most people have to stay in touch with some of their friends and it does serve as a good information organizing platform. That said, you need to basically accept that everything you do on the internet is being watched.
So the way around all this is basically not care too much about it anymore.
Christmas Music - Running Over Grandmas and Date Raping Women
If there was ever a reason to hate Christmas music besides the fact that they start playing it on November 1st and continue to play it never ending like till the day after Christmas, it's for the messages that they lace all throughout the music that is really some terrible shit.
Don't believe me, just take a listen to this little innocent number;
I'm half expecting there to be a Lifetime movie of the week based off that situation. It's seriously date rape material all up in there. There's no other way to explain the context and even if it's just tongue and cheek innocent, it's still all sorts of fucked up in terms of mysoganistic women hating that the era seemed to just be filled with. Here's what you should have been listening to in the film;
Since that's what it summed it up as. It's a song about date rape and pushing yourself on a woman who clearly has given you every excuse in the book as to why they want to leave... but no, please stay a little longer and drink this, why don't you.
I'm not even sure what to say about this attempt to hammer in Christmas cheer...
Shake it Santa? Like.. really? We know you're gonna take it to that house.. My god, it really seems like there's a serious amount of sexual repression just laced all over that song's lyrics. It's as if it was suppose to be some regular hip hop gangsta song about some hoes, but then they decided to drop the e and add two more ho's in there.
I could easily go into the whole I saw mommy kissing Santa Clause, but I won't go there. I guess I should mention Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer. But that seems pretty simple - why would you sing about your dead grandmother. Especially when the subject matter is how she got plowed by a fat man going far too fast. Grandma was involved in a hit and run. Authorities are on full alert for a fat fuck full of cookies.
Simply put - fuck Christmas music.
The Beer Bubble And Potential Poppage.
Stone Brewery founder Greg Koch warns us about the pending brewing bubble...
“We are in a time of irrational exuberance in craft brewing,” said Greg Koch, co-founder and CEO of Stone Brewing. “We are like a Third World bus, with all these people hanging on to the roof. Sooner or later, we are going to hit a bump in the road.”
It's interesting because the majority of the article is all about how craft beer is really booming and growing out there. His concern is that the market is being over saturated. And much like any other product, once it hits a breaking point, then it's only the cream of the crop. The Stone Breweries that survive to see the next period of growth and bubble bursting.
When you think about it, during pre-prohibition, there were about 1,700 breweries in the U.S., which at the time had a population of around 100 million. So if you project that out to today's population, you'd get about 5,000 breweries. Not quite that insane amount of the first figure of the era gone by. But it's still twice the current amount. And yeah, AB and the other three major companies have the lions share of the market, but that % is coming down. It's been shown that more people are caring on who brews their beer. Perhaps this move will increase so that locals actually support their.. you know, local beer.
Nationwide there really is no bubble. Sure, in San Diego there's a ton of new breweries popping up left and right, but you go out to places like Riverside, Ca. and you'll find that it's not as insane as you would expect. We are basically working towards the way it should have been all along. Every city in the U.S. that isn't run by stone age thinkers, could easily support one brewery for every 30,000 people there. Some do even better than that, but this means we could easily have something like 10,000 breweries - depending on the size and locations of the town. If they don't expect to strike it STONE or SAM ADAMS rich, they could make a nice profit.
Factor in that there's also over double the number of wineries in the US compared to breweries and they don't have this mentality that the bubble is coming. Nor do they see that they're going out of business anytime soon. Especially with the fact that this "Irrational exuberance" is all happening during what is being considered a recession.
Yeah, some cream of the crop breweries who make great quality products will remain, the ones who make poor products and can't market themselves correctly will obviously fail, but I don't see this being like the mid-90's when the bubble burst. It's not going to be a huge plunge nor could you really call it a market bursting, just a market settling on who is successful and who isn't.
Either way, let the good beer flow and the bad just sink to the bottom like it would even without a bubble to push it along the way.
Vote Or Die
Apparently that's actually a thing. I mean, yeah, the elections have been over for more than a month, but I came across this story which happened shortly after and well, you know how the holiday season is crazy.. so here we are. Anyhow, this happened..
Wife mows down husband with car for allowing Obama to win
Holly Solomon, a pregnant Arizona woman, ran over her husband for not voting in the 2012 presidential election, according to CBS affiliate KPHO. Ms. Solomon’s husband reportedly stepped out of the car during an argument and gave his wife a dirty look, at which point the woman became enraged and chased her husband around a parking lot in their Jeep SUV.
According to the CBS affiliate, the woman was upset that her husband had failed to vote in the 2012 presidential election. The woman, the officer said, was convinced that her family wouldn’t do well under four more years of President Barack Obama.
Makes you really reconsider even saying things like you didn't vote or telling people who you voted for. Though the wife's concerns were pretty valid. She was worried and convinced that her family wouldn't do well under four more years of Obama. She didn't even have to wait for the second term to start before her family was destroyed by the Obama administration... and her car.
Just think, what goes on in the mind of a person when they think 4 more years of a democrat president? Better murder my family! Just imagine a panicked husband, hysterically explaining the electoral college while running from his crazy driver wife.
Repeal Day
Today is repeal day. It's the only time that a constitutional amendment was ratified and all because America wanted to get liquored up. It does make you wonder what exactly happened to cause prohibition in the first place. I mean, joking aside that this was all some idea of fuddy duddy house wives tired that their men, who at once were used to farmhouse ale - a low abv alcoholic drink suddenly getting introduced to hard liquor and not knowing how to deal, and thus calling for it all to be banned seems like the general consonance.
But joking aside, the temperance movement was largely born out of societies reactions to the widespread alcoholism in the 19th century. It's true that with the advancement in technology with distilling that one could produce a lot more potent liquor now at a very cheap cost. Hell, most farmers were happy they had something to do with their extra corn stocks.
Add in that with the new machines using higher temperatures and pressures made for a higher yield of alcohol per bushel of grain. So yeah, there's a lot of truth to that people used to wine and farmhouse ales suddenly got overwhelmed and didn't know how to handle their own with the new high potent drink. People also drank crazy quantities of the stuff, which lead to an uptick in domestic violence and other social ills.
This is a major reason that women were a major part of the temperance movement. Their husbands were getting hammered and then beating them and their children. The absinthe panic also gave them a boost, though the effects were extremely distorted and most of the deaths were likely caused by adulterations with poisonous compounds to provide coloring and flavoring. You won't actually go crazy, despite what Van Gogh did to his ear, by drinking it.
Hell, for a time during prohibition, our government was actually poisoning liquids that were used to mix into other drinks in making them alcoholic. House cleaners were given far more dosages of toxins to make sure that those who attempted to mix them would be in for a surprise. Many people died through that mean.
And yeah, it does seem like a bit of an extreme, some guys get too drunk, so let's just ban it completely to be safe. The classic method thinking of a panic filled society. It did actually work in our favor. What prohibition did was create a lot of new social norms. Before prohibition it was unheard of for a woman to be in a bar. So in a sense, prohibition created the whole method of taking a gal out to the bar. Dating essentially began. One could argue that this was a stepping stone for women's rights in itself.
There's that famous image that is always associated with the temperance movement. In actuality it's a staged propaganda piece and is meant to mock the movement. In reality, the temperance movement was not so much against alcohol as it was against drunken spousal and child abuse, marital rape, and violence in the street. Which were all starting to get introduced with more easy means of alcohol production.
Ironically enough, it's because of prohibition that we have organized crime. If there's one way to make something worth doing and desirable, it's to make it illegal. More serious crimes and murders happened during prohibition than you could ever imagine with just simple bar room brawls of drunks pre-prohibition.
But it should be worth noting that a lot of the temperance movement was made up of men. It was a great amount of AA sort of mentality and there's a few famouse examples that everyone associated with women's suffrage, and indeed their actions contributed, but the only way the law got passed was through the male support. Which politicians did make up.
One other cause could have been the wave of German immigrants that came with their offerings of their beer styles. The Bush's of the world were very popular, but once World War I hit, well, let's just say that Germans weren't on anyone's favorite list. In a lot of way they were treated like the Muslims of the modern day. So scapegoating them and making sure they didn't succeed was a big driving force that politicians played to gather voter sympathy as well play on their fears.
What also resulted in prohibition was NASCAR. Which is a strange tale indeed, but the need for a faster car to run your moonshine across state lines was the motivating force to racing cars that we have no today.
So raise a glass tonight in honor of the day when you could officially and legally sell and make alcohol. Because let's be honest, there was plenty of drinking being done during prohibition.
Christmas' Good Feelings Life is pretty shitty. L...
Christmas Music - Running Over Grandmas and Date R...
So Long Huell Howser, Thanks For The Gold
Puerto Rico! #51
The Walking Dead's Mid-Season Finale
A Survivalist Guide for the New Hurricane World
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Policeman rapes, impregnates 12-yr-old
A Police officer in Ekiti State Police Command, has been arrested by the command for allegedly raping and impregnating a 12-year old girl.
The suspect whose name was given as Lasisi Nurudeen Olalekan, was said to have lured the Junior Secondary School, JSS 1, student (names withheld) to a nearby bush around Textile area, Ado Ekiti sometimes last year.
The randy police officer, a corporal has been arrested on the order of the police commissioner, Mr Olayinka Balogun, following a complaint from Mrs Juliana Olajiga, a guardian to the innocent girl.
According to a petition written by Mrs Rita Ilevbare, on behalf of a non-governmental organisation which was forwarded to the State police command, the NGO had raised an alarm over the illicit action of the policeman and called on the police authority to arrest the suspect.
In the petition dated May 19, 2011, the suspect was said to have assaulted Mrs Olajiga when she confronted him over his disgaceful act.
However, the State Commissioner of Police, Mr Balogun has confirmed the reciept of the petition, disclosing that the accused person has been arrested and that a senior officer has been assigned to commence investigations into the matter.
In the petition entitled: “Sexual abuse of Miss Bimbo and assault of Mrs Juliana Olajiga by Police Officer, Lasisi Nurudeen Olalekan”, demand for arrest, investigation and prosecution”, the policeman was alleged to have deceived the victim twice and forcefully had a carnal knowledge of her, which led to her impregnation.
Mrs Olajiga, according to the petition was said to have tried for over three months to locate Olalekan to respond to the complaint from Bimbo, but to no avail .
The NGO further alleged that the victim had inflicted bodily injuries on the complainant (Mrs Olajiga) at her residence Similoluwa on May 12, 2011 when the Policeman was eventually found.
While calling for the prosecution of the suspected police officer, the organisation said, “Sir, it would interest you to note that this child, Bimbo, is a about six months pregnant, a minor, an orphan who is 12 years old
“The education and the future of such a great child has been dimmed by a man, a security agent for that matter, who for any reason, will not allow the future of his children to be tampered with. We demand that justice be done in this matter by arresting and prosecuting Olalekan if indeed is culpable”, it concluded.
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October 22/09 13:40 pm - 2010 Amgen Tour of California Host Cities Announced
Posted by Editor on 10/22/09
The host cities for the Amgen Tour of California professional cycling road race were announced this morning. Along with the overall announcement of the race, the four cyclists also revealed their intentions to participate in the fifth-annual event, considered to be America's most important and prestigious cycling race.
Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong's announcement of his intent to compete in the fifth-annual race was met with enthusiasm from race organizers and fans. After mounting an incredible comeback to professional cycling in 2009, competing in the Amgen Tour of California and other top races around the world, including finishing third in the 2009 Tour de France, Armstrong will start the 2010 season on his newly formed Team RadioShack. Returning to the Amgen Tour of California for the second consecutive year, Armstrong is expected to be a top competitor in the race.
The 2010 Amgen Tour of California will travel to 16 host cities throughout the state over the course of eight days from May 16-23. After four years of being positioned in February, the date change will allow the Tour de France-style road race to visit locations that wouldn't have been possible in February, including the very first mountain-top finish in race history.
The Amgen Tour of California will cover more than 750 miles of beautiful California terrain, beginning with the first ever visit to Nevada City, Calif., which will also be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Nevada City Classic, in which many notable riders got their start. The eight-day race will travel through some of the state's most scenic landmarks, with the overall finish taking place in title-sponsor Amgen's hometown community of Thousand Oaks.
"For the 2010 Amgen Tour of California we had the unique opportunity to move our race to a part of the year when we are almost guaranteed great weather in California," said Andrew Messick, president of AEG Sports. "This timing will help us to better showcase the beautiful features the state of California has to offer, while allowing us to travel to parts of the state that just weren't feasible in previous years."
Highlights of the route brought on by the date change and new host cities include the race's first venture into the Sierras and the Sequoia National Forest, creating a new backdrop for America's largest cycling event. Another exciting addition to the 2010 race, the first-ever mountaintop finish in Big Bear Lake, will give fans the opportunity to see each and every cyclist in a grueling battle to the Stage 6 finish line.
For the first time in the race's storied five-year history the route will travel through the city of Los Angeles. Stage 7, the individual time trial, a significant stage in the race, will take place in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. The stage will both begin and end at L.A. LIVE, the new sports and entertainment district that is home to Staples Center, Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE and much more.
With the timing of the 2010 Amgen Tour of California moved to later in the year, giving the cyclists even more time to train, the competition will be even tougher. In previous years, the race has drawn some of the world's most renowned and respected riders, such as top Tour de France competitors, World Champions and Olympic medalists that include Lance Armstrong, Tom Boonen, Oscar Freire, Paolo Bettini, Fabian Cancellara, Carlos Sastre, George Hincapie, Mark Cavendish and Andy Schleck.
"To win the Amgen Tour of California once, that was huge. To win it twice, that was almost a little bit of a surprise and almost felt like luck. But now, to have won the Amgen Tour of California three times, it's the sweetest victory of all. It's hard to describe," said Levi Leipheimer after winning the 2009 race.
Beginning with a road stage, a first for the race, the 2010 Amgen Tour of California will visit 16 host cities for official stage starts and finishes, while other cities along the route also will have the opportunity to witness the excitement of elite professional cycling. Stages for the 2010 Amgen Tour of California include:
• Stage 1: Sunday, May 16 - Nevada City to Sacramento
• Stage 2: Monday, May 17 - Davis to Santa Rosa
• Stage 3: Tuesday, May 18 - San Francisco to Santa Cruz
• Stage 4: Wednesday, May 19 - San Jose to Modesto
• Stage 5: Thursday, May 20 - Visalia to Bakersfield
• Stage 6: Friday, May 21 - Pasadena to Big Bear Lake
• Stage 7: Saturday, May 22 - Los Angeles (individual time trial)
• Stage 8: Sunday, May 23 - Thousand Oaks/Westlake Village/Agoura Hills
For further information on the 2010 Amgen Tour of California, visit www.amgentourofcalifornia.com.
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The D.A.R.E. Unit of Evergreen Park Police Department is comprised of three sworn officers. D.A.R.E., which stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, is taught at Central Middle School, Most Holy Redeemer and Queen of Martyrs in Evergreen Park.
D.A.R.E. goes beyond traditional drug abuse and violence prevention programs. It gives children the skills needed to recognize and resist the pressures that cause them to experiment with drugs or become involved in gangs or violent activities.
D.A.R.E. is universally viewed as an internationally recognized model of community policing. The United States Department of Justice has identified how DARE benefits local communities:
• D.A.R.E. “humanizes” the police; that is young people can begin to relate to officers as people
• D.A.R.E. permits students to see officers in a helping role, not just an enforcement role
• D.A.R.E. opens lines of communication between law enforcement and youth
• D.A.R.E. opens dialogue between the school, police, and parents to deal with other issues
Click here to reach the D.A.R.E. America home page
ATV / Bike Patrol
Kids Golf 2020
Vehicle Sticker
Pay Your Water
Bill Online
9418 S Kedzie Avenue, Evergreen Park, IL 60805 | Phone: 708-422-1551 | Contact Us
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D-I player without right hand 'pretty inspirational'
Jeff Goodman, Foxsports
CEDAR CITY, Utah - It was a conversation with which Dax Crum was all too familiar.
Southern Utah University coach Roger Reid had called Crum into his office. And Crum knew exactly what was coming.
"I told him he could come out for the team, but the chances of playing were very, very slim," Reid said. "In my mind, I didn't think there was any chance he'd ever play. No way."
Meet Dax Crum
Southern Utah provided us with , in which Dax Crum played 16 minutes, hit a 3-pointer and managed to make the opposition forget he was born without a right hand.
However, a half season into Reid's tenure at the school, Crum, who was born without a right hand, has forced his coach into playing him significant minutes.
The 6-foot-2 senior guard logged a career-high 16 minutes, made a 3-pointer and slowed down Missouri-Kansas City's leading scorer, Dane Brumagin, for much of the second half in a 63-60 loss earlier in the month.
"I've coached this game for a long time and they ought to build a monument of him," Reid said. "Dax is all about defying the odds and playing for the right reasons."
Crum was born without nearly his entire right hand. Just a tiny finger sticks out of his nub and is barely noticeable. Crum's parents were given the option of transplanting a toe to act as another finger, but they declined due to concerns with post-surgical rejection.
It's crazy, but many opposing players, coaches and fans are often shocked when told of Crum's handicap after watching him play or practice. UMKC sports information director James Allen was completely unaware throughout the entire game. Southern Utah assistant Ron Carling's wife had no idea after watching Crum play for nearly three weeks.
"Honestly, you can't even really tell he has a disability," said Brumagin, who is averaging 18.6 points per game. "You've got to treat him like everyone else. He's playing Division I basketball and he's a good player. He was right up there with anyone else who has guarded me this year, but he's pretty inspirational. It's amazing."
Crum, 23, was nudged into playing sports by his father, Richard, a former star at Kirtland Central in New Mexico.
"Honestly, when Dax was born, I was angry with God," Richard Crum said. "How can you send me a one-handed boy when you know my sons are going to be athletes?
"But he's taught me that you can do anything," he said. "He's changed my life in so many ways."
Richard and Valerie, who died of cancer a little more than three years ago, decided to go with shoelaces instead of taking the easy way out and buying Velcro sneakers for their son. Four-year-old Dax wasn't allowed to go to school until he was able to tie them on his own.
Once Dax figured it out, his two grandfathers were called into the room.
"Dax sat down in the middle of the floor and at the end, two old grandfathers had tears streaming down their eyes," Richard Crum said. "One of them, a World War II Navy veteran, said, 'You're my hero.'"
Dax Crum could have taken a Division I soccer scholarship, but he was determined to play D-I basketball. And he is. (Deb Hill / Special to FOXSports.com)
Not everyone was as supportive. Richard remembers one woman asking him to take his son away because Dax was scaring her daughter. Another wanted him to have Dax put his arm in his pocket. Little boys stared. Little girls squealed.
Richard and Valerie resisted hiding his handicap.
"It was an awkward situation," Richard said. "But for me to do it would have sent the wrong message."
Crum persevered, especially with his passion on the basketball court, where he earned all-star honors at BYU's camp when he was 12. However, the coach the following year hardly played Crum.
"They treated me like I was 3 years old," Crum said.
His father made certain that wasn't going to happen again. He took a teaching position at Kirtland Central and was also an assistant on the basketball team. When Dax wasn't in the high-school gym with his father, the two of them were in the nearby church working on his game.
Crum became a first-team all-state player at Kirtland Central, winning three state titles, and also starred in soccer, baseball and track. After either the second or third state crown, father and son just smirked at each other when the public address announcer asked everyone to give Crum a hand.
"The irony of it was huge," Richard Crum said. "I just nodded at Dax and he winked back at me."
Despite his success on the hardwood, there were no Division I suitors coming out of high school. He played two sports at Arizona Western Junior College while on a soccer scholarship.
Crum started the second half of his sophomore season for an Arizona Western team that was ranked No. 1 in the country and finished 31-3.
"When I first got there, it was 'good for him,'" Crum said. "Then I started taking some of their playing time and some of them weren't so happy. Nobody likes being beaten by the one-handed kid.
"There were some guys who loved me and others didn't think I deserved to be on the court," he said. "I heard guys saying, 'How good can you be? Dax took your spot.' I just let it go. I just go out and play."
After his two-year stint at Arizona Western, Crum turned down a D-I soccer scholarship at Dayton for an opportunity to play basketball as a walk-on at Southern Utah.
"I wanted to be a Division I basketball player," Crum said. "I wanted to do something that no one has done."
Crum played sparingly two seasons ago under former coach Bill Evans. He redshirted last season and wound up on the football team — as a kicker/punter who also played some cornerback.
Shortly after Reid, who spent seven seasons as the head coach at BYU from 1989-97, took the reigns, Crum decided he wanted to give it another try in his final season of eligibility.
That's when Reid did everything in his power to shoot down the idea.
"I don't blame him. Every coach I've ever had worries about the same thing," Crum said. "If I put him on the floor, are they going to take advantage of him? I wonder if I was coaching me, would I put myself in the game?"
Then Reid watched Crum outwork all of his teammates in practice.
It's a remarkable sight, how much passion and energy he displays when he's on the court. His nickname at Arizona Western was "The Pest." At Southern Utah, they've dubbed him the "Dax-inator" because of his unwavering defensive prowess.
"It's a good thing now," said Southern Utah assistant Austin Ainge, who played against Crum when he was a player at BYU. "I like it as a coach, but I hated it when he was guarding me.
"The amazing thing is he can still go right," said Ainge. "He finds a way. He's clever."
In addition to his pestering defense, Crum is somehow able to make shots with consistency. He rests the ball on his nub, uses his left hand to shoot and is a legitimate 3-point threat with a quick release. He rarely drops a pass and his teammates are unable to take the ball away from him in practice despite only having one hand to dribble the ball.
"To tell you the truth, I didn't know he had one hand for the first three days," said Southern Utah senior forward Tate Sorenson. "He handles himself pretty good and it's not just a charity case. He can play."
"He's the best perimeter defender we have," Carling said.
Crum is also extremely open and light-hearted. One time prior to a soccer game, he walked out for rock-paper-scissors, which would determine what team started the game with the ball. When both players threw out their hands, Crum tossed out his right hand and chuckled.
At times when he's dribbling the ball up the court, he'll hold up his hand with the one finger, smile and yell "Four" to call a play. Crum still gets a kick out of opposing players' reactions in the postgame handshake line.
"It's funny," Crum said.
"He's the first one to make a joke about it," Sorenson said.
The letters have come in from young children and adults. One man lost his arm in a farm accident and wanted to know how Crum does everything. Others want to know how he cuts steak or ties his shoes.
"It just takes me a little time to figure it out my way," Crum said.
Crum is married, has a 3.7 GPA and is working on his MBA. The plan is for him to go into the financial world for a while — at least long enough to support wife Ashley's medical schools bills — before he goes into coaching.
Crum, who worked three jobs until he was given a scholarship by Reid for the second semester, didn't get off the bench in eight of the team's first 13 games.
"The past three years have been rough," Crum said. "I haven't really played. I'll go into a game for one or two minutes, have a turnover and say, "Why am I doing this?'"
Crum knows the answer.
"You work for a couple years just to get a chance," Crum said. "Once you get a chance, it's like, 'Wow.' Just those 16 minutes against UMKC were worth it all to me. That's how much fun it is."
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CMU team develops a robot and drone system for mine rescues
March 30th, 2019 John Anderson
On our final day in Pittsburgh, we find ourself in a decommissioned coal mine. Just northeast of the city proper, Tour-Ed’s owners run field trips and tours during the warmer months, despite the fact that the mine’s innards run a constant 50 degrees or so, year round.
With snow still melted just beyond the entrance, a team of students from Carnegie Mellon and Oregon State University are getting a pair of robots ready for an upcoming competition. The small team is one of a dozen or so currently competing in DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge.
The multi-year SUbT competition is designed to “explore new approaches to rapidly map, navigate, search, and exploit complex underground environments, including human-made tunnel systems, urban underground, and natural cave networks.” In particular, teams are tasked with search and rescue missions in underground structures, ranging from mines to caves to subway stations.
The goal of the $2 million challenge is design a system capable of navigating complex underground terrains, in case of cave-ins or other disasters. The robots are created to go where human rescuers can’t — or, at very least, shouldn’t.
The CMU team’s solution features multiple robots, with a foul-wheeled rover and a small, hobbyist style drone taking center state. “Our system consists of ground robots that will be able to track and follow the terrain,” says CMU’s Steve Willits, who serves as an adviser on the project. “We also have an unmanned aerial vehicle consisting of a hexacopter. It’s equipped with all of instrumentation that it will need to explore various area of the mine.”
The rover uses a combination of 3D cameras and LIDAR to navigate and map the environment, while looking for humans amid the rubble. Should it find itself unable to move, due to debris, small passage ways or a manmade obstacle like stairs, the drone is designed to lift off from the rear and continue the search.
All the while, the rover drops ultra rugged WIFI repeaters off its rear like a breadcrumb trail, extending its signal in the process. Most of this is still early stages. While the team was able to demonstrate the rover and drone in action, it still hasn’t mastered a method for getting them to work in tandem.
Testing the robots will begin in September, with the Tunnel Circuit That’s followed in March 2020 by the manmade Urban Circuit and then a Cave Circuit that September. A final event will be held in September 2012.
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The Dark Histories Podcast
THE MAD GASSER OF MATTOON
S04EP03
In 1944, residents in the town of Mattoon in Illinois came under a prolonged series of attacks by a man the papers named as “The Mad Gasser” and “The Phantom Anesthetist”. Despite the witness accounts that claimed to see a man stalking around the victims houses on multiple occasions, the authorities and subsequent psychological studies chalked the whole saga up to nothing more than a case of “Mass Hysteria”, but did that diagnosis really answer every question posed by the evidence of events that ran for over two weeks, as summer faded over the small farming community, or was it just a convenient outcome for a police force with no answers to give the troubled population?
Maruna, Scott. Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the Hysteria (2003), Swamp Gas Book Co.
Evans, Hillary & Bartholomew, Robert E. Outbreak!: The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior (2009) Anomolist Books, TX, USA
Bartholomew, Robert E. Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion (2001) McFarland Publishing, USA
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The Phantom Anesthetist of Mattoon
In 1944, residents in the town of Mattoon in Illinois came under a prolonged series of attacks by a man the papers named as “The Mad Gasser” and “The Phantom Anesthetist”. Despite the witness accounts that claimed to see a man stalking around the victims houses on multiple occasions, the authorities and subsequent psychological studies chalked the whole saga up to nothing more than a case of “Mass Hysteria”, but did that diagnosis really answer every question posed by the evidence of events that ran for over two weeks, as summer faded over the small farming community, or was it just a convenient outcome for a police force with no answers to give the troubled population? This is Dark Histories, where the facts are worse than fiction.
Mattoon, 1944
Situated 100 miles to the South-East of Central Illinois, Mattoon was a small, rural, blue-collar town in 1944, dominated by farmland and a small handful of factories, the largest of which being the Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Co., which had relocated to the area 9 years earlier in 1935. Whilst the war saw many small towns boom with the influx of labour drafted in to work in the industrial sectors of the US war machine, Mattoons relatively small industry only saw moderate growth and the population remained stable at just below 16,000, even after the secondary boost from the discovery of petroleum reserves in the ground outside of the town.
1944 had been a tumultuous year for much of the US. Abroad, the war in Europe and Asia were headed towards a positive conclusion and popular sentiment was generally upbeat. The landings at Normandy had seen an offensive in France that had concluded with the liberation of Paris from the Germans and the momentum was firmly in the Allied powers favour. At home, Americans were recovering from one of the largest flu epidemics in history, followed by a particularly rough storm season throughout the spring in many areas and severe drought in others, which had caused huge losses in the farming sector. Politically, the public were gearing up to elect a President Roosevelt whose health was rapidly deteriorating for a record fourth term. The labour market was suffering from shortages of manpower and industrial strike actions, although still outpacing the German, British, Russian and Japanese output combined. The year, too, had seen the largest sedition trial in US history, with 29 American citizens, mostly right-wing oddballs, standing trial for having Nazi sympathies and charged with “conspiring to undermine the morale of the armed forces”. Despite the fact that the trial is seen as somewhat farcical now, and though the trial itself never concluded, having been brought to an abrupt end when the presiding judge passed away, the trial nevertheless worked to sow the seeds of fear and paranoia into the average population.concerning one’s neighbours, especially those seen as outside the political or social norms. This fear had been exacerbated late that summer, as press reports claimed that the Nazi’s may have been planning Gas attacks on American soil in retaliation for the D-Day landings.
In Mattoon itself, around 5% of the population still lived in homes with no electric, whilst around 50% had telephones connected to the communications grid and owned a new fandangled invention known as a refrigerator. Radio and Newspapers were still the main source of news both local and on the war and the local newspaper in Mattoon boasted a 97% readership coverage of the town for Monday to Saturday.
As the first week of September dawned, seeing the closing of what had been a mild summer in Illinois, a new, somewhat unique threat burst onto the scene in Mattoon, one that would remain as a staple in psychological studies on Mass Psychogenic Illness for decades to come.
The Mad Gasser
It was 3am, the early morning of September 1st in Mattoon, Illinois. Midnight had long passed and the streets were deserted, even the din of the local factories had fallen quiet for a few, short hours. 47 year old Urban Raef, was in bed with his wife, Pauline when he woke suddenly, feeling nauseous. Instantly, he felt something in the room was not quite right,
“There was a peculiar heavy odor in the bedroom and I at first thought it was gas,”
He rolled over in bed and woke Pauline, asking her if she might have left the gas stove turned on earlier that evening, though after waking slowly and assuring him she certainly had not, she too began feeling queasy and both herself and Raef realised that a feeling of paralysis was creeping up through their legs. The couple spent the next hour and a half being ill, until as quickly as it had developed, their feeling of sickness faded. The next morning they checked on their guests who had been sleeping in another room to see if they had smelt anything or had any sickness in the night, but when they confirmed they had not, both Raef and Pauline put it to the back of their minds. That was, at least until they read the newspaper two days later, on Saturday September 2nd. Below the large block letters on the front page that read “Yanks in Germany by Nightfall, was a second headline, not any smaller, this one hit a little closer to home, however.
“Anesthetic Prowler on Loose – Mrs Kearney and Daughter First Victims”
“A prowler who used some kind of anesthetic or gas to knock out his intended victims was on the loose in Mattoon Friday night. Mrs Kearney and her three-year-old daughter, Dorothy Ellen, were victims of the anesthetic Friday night as they slept in bed at their home, 1408 Marshall Avenue. Both had recovered today, although Mrs Kearney said that her mouth and throat remained parched and her lips burned from effects of whatever was used by the prowler who was unsuccessful in getting into the house.”
Aline Kearney went on to describe the attack and importantly for Urban Raef, she described the sensations she felt throughout, which he recognised immediately as exactly the same as the sickness and paralysis that he and his wife Pauline had felt on the Thursday night previous.
“I first noticed a sickening, sweet odor in the bedroom, but at the time, I thought that it might be from flowers outside the window. However, the odor grew stronger and I began to feel a paralysis of my legs and lower body. I grew frightened and screamed for Martha. She came into the bedroom, to which the door had been closed, and asked me what was the matter. I told her of the sensation I had, but I was unable then to move from bed.”
Martha Reedy, who had come to Mrs Kearney’s aid when she heard her scream, noticed the peculiar smell in the room as soon as she entered and rushed over to the Robertsons next door, asking them to call the police. The police showed up and joined Mr Robertson, who had been busy scouring the area around the house, but came up with no signs that anyone was lurking around and no evidence of any attempted break in. With little else that they could do, the police and Mr Robertson reassured Mrs Kearney that they didn’t see any threat of an attacker in the vicinity and left her to rest and recover from the atack. Around thirty minutes had passed and Mrs Kearney was already feeling significantly better.
Bert Kearney was a Taxi driver in the town and had been working late that night, he returned home after word got round to him from police that his wife had been attacked earlier that night. He left work early and parked up by the kerb at around half past midnight, only to see, to his horror, a tall man, wearing a fitted cap and dark clothing, standing outside his house, staring in through the window. He jumped out of his car and chased after the intruder, who had already taken off as soon as he saw Bert, but as he turned the corner of his house, the man had gone, disappeared into the night. Bert called the police for a second time, but once again, their search was in vain. No evidence could be found of an intruder and the man that Bert had chased had seemingly made a clean break. As Mrs Kearney and her daughter were now recovered from the earlier attack. The police once again left them to sleep, which, after driving over to their friends house on the other side of town to spend the night, thankfully, came quickly and lasted the couple and their children through to morning.
Urban Raef continued to read the report in the paper of the Kearney attack, which speculated the attacker had used either Chloroform, or Ether, or possibly a combination of the two and sprayed it into the sleeping victims room. It was an uneasy feeling to think that he too had suffered at the hands of the “Anesthetic Prowler”. He picked up the phone and called the police to give them his own report from the morning of the 1st. If he was worried that the police might think him a crackpot, or of creating stories out of thin air, he needn’t have been concerned. He wasn’t the only one to have called police on the morning of the second after the paper had printed their headline. Shortly after the Kearney assault, two other households had suffered similar attacks, Mr and Mrs George and Beatrice Rider had phoned the police to confirm that she too had smelt a pungent odor that had made her lightheaded and had made her children restless, whilst a further, unnamed victim living a few blocks West from the Riders had called police to report that she had awoken to the smell of a sickly, sweet odor and found her children suffering from sickness and vomiting.
Within a few hours on Saturday Morning, the “Anesthetic Prowler” had gone from a case of a strange and unique attack, to a thoroughly frightening series of attacks throughout Mattoon. Police, who originally thought the attack on Mrs Kearney had been a failed burglary when she told them she had been counting money in her home that evening and she believed that it would have been possible to have seen her in the process from the street outside, were left to scrap their early theories when none of the other attacks seemed to fit with the theory at all. Talk had already begun to spread throughout the town and as darkness crept over the horizon that Saturday night, it was an uneasy population that slept on beneath the inky, black sky.
Fortunately, the next few days peace and quiet returned to the town of Mattoon. With Labour Day falling on Monday 4th, Newspapers had an extra day out of print and as such, news of the “Anesthetic Prowler” had faded away, as talk returned to more normal daily affairs. Upon the resumption of circulation on Tuesday, however, the uneasy peace was quickly broken. The prowler had been at it again over the weekend and had made front page news, once again.
“Anesthetic Prowler Adds Victim – Mrs C. Cordes Burned; Ill Two Hours.”
Mrs Beulah Cordes and her husband Carl had returned home the previous night at around 10pm from an evening out and having parked up, they entered their home, as was their custom, through the rear entrance. Settling down in the lounge, Beulah noticed a white scrap of cloth, fluttering on the front porch through the screen door. In an act of curiosity, she walked over to it, bent down to pick it up and unfolded the cloth, which was a relatively large square. As she did so, she noticed that in the center of the rag was a damp patch and instinctively, she put the cloth to her face to sniff the unknown substance.
“When I inhaled the fumes from the cloth, I had a sensation similar to coming in contact with a strong electric current. The feeling raced down my body to my feet and then seemed to settle in my knees. It was a feeling of paralysis. My husband had to help me into the house and soon my lips were swollen and the roof of my mouth and my throat burned. I began to spit blood and my husband called a physician. It was more than two hours before I began to feel normal again.”
Meanwhile, whilst Belulah Cordes had been resting and recovering from her ordeal, Mrs Burrell was suffering under the hands of the anesthetist. At 11:15pm, just over an hour after the Cordes had returned home, Mrs Burrell had woken coughing and choking on fumes in her bedroom. She struggled from bed, collected her young infant son in her arms and ran over to her neighbours house, where she called her husband George and then the Mattoon Police to report the attack.
After Belulah Cordes’ symptoms began to subside, she decided to scout out on the porch and the area outside her house for clues as to what the intruder may have been upto. She had a suspicion that the chemical on the cloth was possibly chloroform intended to put the families dog to sleep, allowing for a robbery that was fortunately scuppered by her and her husband returning home, frightening the would be intruder away. As she combed the area out front of the house, she picked up two items which she thought might have been dropped by the intruder, a worn skeleton key and a tube of lipstick which had been almost entirely used up.
Back at the police station, Police Chief Cole sent the cloth to the Illinois State Police Laboratory to be analyzed, however, the large gap in time between recovering the cloth, sending it off to be analyzed and the actual analysis happening, which was delayed for over 60 hours, left the police feeling entirely lacking in confidence that any eventual test would yield much of a conclusion as to the chemical that may have been used. The only lead the police had had on the case was reported in the paper and it made dismal reading for any of the towns population that may have been looking for a boost in confidence with the local law enforcement. A man had been picked up shortly after the events at the Cordes house, however, he had been released after a short bout of questioning in which the man explained that he was not loitering, he was simply lost. A hideout was also vaguely mentioned that the police had decided to check out with suspicions that it may have been frequented by the anesthetist, but they found nothing to confirm or deny his presence there and quickly dismissed it as a possibility.
With little else to go on, Thomas Wright, the Mattoon Police Commissioner contacted the Illinois Department of Public Safety on the morning of Wednesday September 6th to ask for their help in solving the case. In response, the IDPS sent Superintendent Richard Piper of the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, along with his assistant Francis Berry to Mattoon to help them get to the bottom of things. Piper and Berry arrived in town the very next day, along with two FBI agents from the local Springfield branch of the bureau who had showed up in order to identify the chemical that was being used in the so-called attacks.
That night saw the police force bolstered by the first wave of vigilante volunteers, patrolling the streets with the small, official force of eight patrolmen, as women who were home alone, either through husbands away fighting in Europe or out working late shifts, began moving in to stay with friends and relatives through fear of their safety. All remained quiet on the streets and none of the police, nor vigilante citizens discovered any prowlers. Back at the police station, however, there were numerous calls coming in reporting sightings, though none were confirmed and Chief Cole later chalked many of the calls up to bouts of “nerves”. Cole wasn’t the only official to suggest that at least some of the reports may have been a result of nervous disposition. Richard Piper of the Bureau ofCriminal Identification and Investigation had also suggested that he thought that only some of the reports had any veracity, whilst many others were due to hysteria. If he felt that the hysteria needed to be controlled, however, then he had a funny way of showing it, as he then went on to tell the press that the case was the strangest in his career and that the anesthetist was a “crazed madman”.
Although the night had been quiet on the streets of Mattoon with the vigilante forces discovering little in the way of interest related to the Anesthetist, the papers next day told a different story. Whilst men had walked their beats alongside police, the Anesethist had struck several times throughout the night.
“Mad Anesthetist Strikes Again! – Visits 2 More Homes in City During Night”
“The “Anesthetic Prowler” who for a week has struck terror in the hearts of Mattoon residents, visited at least two more homes in this city Wednesday night and added two more victims, both women, to his growing list.”
“At least two more homes” was actually something of an understatement, the prowler had been awfully busy that Wednesday night. At 10PM, Laura Junken, manager at “The Big 4” restaurant was closing up and retiring to her small apartment situated at the rear of the restaurant premises. As she entered her bedroom, she noticed a smell reminiscent of what she described as “a cheap perfume” in the air and realised she had left her window cracked about four inches open, all day. She soon felt the familiar effects of the Anesthetic prowlers attacks, as her legs fell numb and paralysis crept up towards her kneecaps whilst waves of nausea washed over her in the darkness of the room. Within an hour, Glenda Henderschott, the 11 year old daughter of Mr and Mrs R. E. Henderschott had woken suddenly due to sickness. When her parents called police, they noted that just a short time prior to their daughters waking, they had spotted a suspicious prowler near their daughters window. At midnight, Mrs Ardell Spangler was next to fall victim to the gasser. She had woken to “sickly sweet” fumes in her bedroom that had bought about nausea, whilst her lips and throat burned from the gas. At 1am Fred Goble was the next to wake, feeling violently ill. He took to throwing up for the following two hours before his run in with the mad anesthetist began to fade. More interestingly, however, Freds neighbour, Robert Daniels, had actually spotted a “Tall thin man” running through his yard, from the direction of Gobles house, shortly after the attack had taken place. It didn’t end there either, before the night was over the police took further reports from Mr Danial Spohn, Mrs Codie Taylor and Miss Maxine and Frances Smith, all who had felt the effects of gas in one way or another whilst they had slept. Frances Smith was the principal in the nearby Mattoon Grade School and this was to be her first of several run ins with the mad gasser, the next of which took place the very next night, after a troubled day of gossip and panic spreading throughout the town. As she lay in her bed, along with her sister, Maxine, the anesthetist struck the Smith sisters for a second time. In their report they spoke of a “blue, smoke like vapour” came in through their window and paralysis crept up through their legs, as they lay waiting for a burglary that never came.
That Friday saw a scathing editorial in the local Mattoon daily paper, the Mattoon Journal Gazette.
“Mattoon’s Mad Anesthetist – The story of Matoons “Anesthetic Prowler” is known to one and all. It has even spread from one end of the country to the other, bringing the city a certain questionable distinction. Probably the only comfort we can get out of the whole situation is that our Police Department is now on the alert, apparently doing everything in its powers to solve the case and take into custody the guilty person. All of us join in hoping for an early success. One of the principal difficulties throughout has been that the whole matter was taken too lightly. It was easy to say, “Oh, it’s just imagination!” and shrug the whole thing off with a disdainful air. But Mrs Cordes, who suffered severe burns, couldn’t laugh about it. Neither could Mrs Kearney, who suffered complications which could have cost her very life!”
“For the past few days, most of our officers have had a serious view of the case. They now admit that it presents a real problem and are working hard to find a solution. For their present attitude, most members of the Police Force deserve commendation. As a matter of fact, their hesitancy in taking a genuine interest in the case at the start should not be considered a new reflection upon them. This is an attitude which has grown in the Police Department for several months. We suppose it is natural for the pride of policemen to be stung a bit when a crime is committed. For this reason, there has been a tendency in Mattoon Police circles recently to conceal from the public the fact that certain crimes have occured.”
“Commissioner Thomas V Wright, under the law, is supposed to be the top man of the Police Department, and we doubt if Mattoon ever had a more conscientious servant than he has been in this capacity. He is a square shooter and would like nothing better than to give the city an excellent police force. Yet we strongly suspect that his efforts have been hampered by another city official. The latter should leave the direction of the Police Department to Commissioner Wright. Policemen who continue to take direction from the other official should be discharged at once, and the entire city Commision should support commissioner Wright if he ever finds such action necessary.”
Whilst the papers editorial weighed in with its own political bent on the affair, they also received letters from readers who summed up the general feeling in the town for ordinary residents,
“We used to think things only happened to those who were out on the streets or somewhere else outside of their homes, but now there is no safety even in one’s own home with all the doors locked. There are hundreds of women here that are left at home at night, alone, while their husbands are at work and in the service. I know one service man’s wife who has a lovely home which she wanted to keep so her husband could come home to it, but since so many terrible things have happened, she is afraid to stay there with her little son. She is fortunate enough to have parents with whom to stay, but those who have nowhere else to go just live in fear each night, waiting for daylight to come.”
That evening, Richard Piper, the Superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, from the IDPS told the press in a conference,
“The perpetrator of the attacks must be mentally unbalanced but he his intelligent, possibly brilliant. The man is a nut.”
After that bombastic speech, he perhaps sought to assuage fears by reassuring the public that he probably wasn’t a peeping tom.
The attacks on Mattoon started early that Friday evening, the first being perhaps the most unusual of all and for once, appeared to lead to no victims suffering any adverse effects. Police were called to a home on DeWitt Avenue, just West from the very centre of town, when Leroy Cook, a taxicab driver had reported pulling onto the street only to smell the gas so strongly that he was forced to pull over. The odor appeared to center around the home of C. W. Driskell, but when police entered his home, they smelt no gas inside any of the rooms., though witnesses assured police they could smell it on the street outside the bedroom windows.
Two hours later, on the far reaches of Western Mattoon, a small cul-de-sac known as Westwood perched away from the lights of the main town centre. Now swallowed up by the town, in 1944 it stood at the far perimeter boundary of the town and was far out of the way from any usual foot-traffic. Genevieve Haskell, her son, Mrs Russell Bailey and her sister, Katherine Tuzzo were all staying together in the large house in the out-of-the-way neighbourhood when the gasser struck through their open window. All members of the household woke simultaneously, suffering from violent vomiting, stomach disorders and a parched mouth and throat. Later that night, the Smith residence was hit for the third time in as many nights. Frances Smith once again gave her report to the press, saying that just prior to smelling the “flower-like” gas, she heard a “strange buzzing” noise outside her window which she attributed to “the madman’s gassing apparatus.”
Things in Mattoon were nearing a frenzy level of panic, when the next day, newspaper headlines went all in, calling the attacker the “Mad Gasser”. Police were still none the wiser as to what was going on and appeared to have no suspects, whilst in a further blow to the ongoing investigations, results of the cloth analysis found by Beulah Cordes on her porch were returned from the laboratory with negative results, as evaporation of the chemical had caused nothing but an inert “reddish” coloured stain to remain by he time tests were carried out.
That Saturday and Sunday saw a flurry of attacks, despite once again, the police patrols being bolstered by a host of local farmers armed with shotguns. First came a statement from Louis Hardin who called the police to report an attack on his sister-in-law, whilst she babysat for his son. The gas had come through an open window and led to the familiar nausea and burned throats. The second attack of the night was the furthest the gasser had travelled from the centre of Mattoon by some distance, when County Sheriff Leroy Boggs was called out to a rural farmhouse house four miles South of Mattoon, owned by Stewart Scott. Scott had called the sheriff after escaping the gas with his family and houseguest to his nearest neighbours, half a mile away. When police checked the house out, they found a window screen slashed open and left in tatters. Mary and Kenneth Fitzpatrick were next. The gasser had apparently returned to central Mattoon and attacked the couple whilst they played cards into the late evening, in their North-West Mattoon home. Finally, the Gasser struck for a fourth and final time at the house of Frances and Maxine Smith, who by now, were surely becoming accustomed to the effects of the gas.
By now there were a constant group of upwards of a hundred people hanging around outside the City Hall building demanding answers from authorities and at times, chasing police cars as they left the building in order to find out what was going on for themselves. With reports in the paper suggesting upwards of 29 victims having been attacked, people were getting desperate for real, solid information concerning just what exactly it was that the police were doing, yet the police still continued to give nothing to the public for reassurance. The brightest leads seemed to be reports that a chemistry set had gone missing from Mattoon High School, which had held enough ingredients to make a quantity of Mustard Gas. As far as suspects went, police told newspapers that they were observing four Mattoon High School graduates who had recently returned from the Army, though they were not forthcoming with any more details. In order to quell fears and stop matters getting out of hand, a force of five radio fitted squad cars, each with two officers, were called in from Illinois State Police to swell the Mattoon Police ranks and patrol the downtown area of Mattoon, freeing up the home officers to patrol the residential areas of the city.
The newspapers on Monday morning, however, took a rather sharp turn-about face, when the Mattoon Journal-Gazette printed the headline, “Many Prowler Reports, Few Real.”
“Two women, one residing in the 2300 block of Champaign Avenue, the other in the 800 block of Moultrie Avenue, were taken to Memorial Hospital for treatment and examination after they told police they had been attacked by the gas. The former woman claimed the attack had occurred at her home, the other said she smelled the gas as she sat in a theater. A physician who examined both women said that he could find no evidence of a poison gas or other chemical and that in his opinion both suffered from extreme nervous tension. Both women were given sedatives and taken to their homes.”
This report prompted police Commissioner Thomas Wright to make an unprecedented move. He ordered in a public statement that from Monday onwards, anyone calling the police concerning a gas attack must submit themselves to the scrutiny of a doctors examination immediately following any official report. Furthermore, the “chasers” who were milling around the City Hall building were told that if they did not desist in their following of police squad cars, they would find themselves promptly arrested. Unsurprisingly, the headline the next day in the Journal-Gazette was, depending on how it was viewed, somewhat more positive.
“Mad Gasser Case Limited to FOur Suspects – No More Genuine Attacks of “Anesthetist Reported”
Was it the case that no more attacks had taken place, or were the victims held back from making official reports by the stigma of having to surrender to a physical examination with the very real possibility of being outed as a fraud or a hysterical fool with a nervous disposition by the following days paper? The report in the papers followed instead the four suspects that police had under observation. The police begrudgingly furnished the public with a single further detail, due to a leak that had been published in a Chicago based newspaper the day before. Keeping things as tight lipped as they could, the public statement mentioned only that two of the four suspects were amateur chemists, a hobby that was remarkably popular in the 1940s. The only attack that had happened on Monday night was apparently on a woman who had been taken to the doctor’s office after her report had been given and diagnosed with “extreme mental anguish.”
The following day, Tuesday 12th September, the papers carried a story in which the Chief of Police, Cole, called the entire Mattoon Gas attack case “a mistake from beginning to end.”
“”Local police in cooperation with the state officers, have checked and rechecked all reported cases” said Chief Cole, “and we find absolutely no evidence to support the stories that have been told. Hysteria must be blamed for such seemingly accurate statements of supposed victims. However we have foudn that large quantities of Carbon Tetrachloride are used in the war work done at the Atlas Imperial Diesel Co. plant, and that it has an odor which could be carried in all parts of the city as the wind shifts. It also leaves stains on cloth such as those found on a rag at the Cordes home.””
In contradicting statements, Chief of Police Cole seemed to be publicly stating that the entire affair was a nonsense, but even so, that the gas did exist. Further, he also seemed, rather alarmingly, to be suggesting that gas carried on the wind to all extremities of the city from a factory on 14th Street and Broadway in the center of the town and somehow concentrate itself onto a square of cloth slightly larger than an average handkerchief. To any sane reader, it was clear that the mistake was not the case of the phantom gasser, but Coles bizarre press release. Unamused by the insinuation that his factory was to blame for the Mad Gasser of Mattoon attacks, Mr Webster, the manager of the Atlas Imperial Diesel Co. factory struck back at Cole, assuring him that the very idea was a complete fabrication and utterly ridiculous. He then drafted in a State Department of Health official to file a report saying conclusively that the plant was in no way related to the gfas attacks. The only place Carbon Tetrachloride was used at all in the factory, was in fact, securely contained inside fire extinguishers. In a statement taken over the telephone from the State Departments Doctor Kronenburg, Coles theory was shot down with little fuss,
“There was no possibility of Trichlorethylene vapors getting into the outside atmosphere in any amount of concentration that would even closely approximate a toxic condition.”
In what was quickly falling into a farce, the front page of the Wednesday Journal Gazette carried a photograph of a gang of farmers carrying shotguns through the night streets of Mattoon, with the caption “Mattoon Will-o’-the-wisp”. The farmers were stated to be on the trail of the “Phantom Anesthetist” who sprayed his victims with “Gardenia Gas”. The headline stated “Police get two false alarms during night – One to quiet black cat, other for “attempted break in.”” The break in, it transpired as the papers story unfolded, was actually a case of a local doctor who had forgotten his door keys who had been caught breaking into his own home. Backtracking once again, Cole stated that the fumes may not have originated at the Atlas factory and now stated that it could have come from any one of the local factories.
Still, if Coles intent had been to make a mockery of the entire affair and divert attention away from the case, or shame those who did believe in the presence of an attacker into submission, he was having results. By midweek, the crowds surrounding City Hall had evaporated away and all the stories in the papers were suggesting the whole thing as an elaborate fraud or hoax. The Chicago Daily Chronicle spoke of normalcy returning to the city, as the local police sought to “bury the phantom gasser in a mythical cemetery.” As the week rolled on towards its conclusion, so too did the “mad Anesthetist” case reach it’s end. The squad cars drafted in to patrol downtown Mattoon were sent back, one by one, and extra patrolmen too were stood down. Eventually, the case, at least in the public eye, fell to silence and the case quietly closed, with little to no resolution.
So just what did happen in Mattoon over the two weeks in early September? Was there a Gasser, or was it all just hysteria? Despite being called one of the most bizarre cases that the authorities could recall, they in fact, would not have had to go too far back to have discovered that cases of “Mad Gassers” were not quite as uncommon as one might have imagined.
Earlier Cases of Phantom Gassers
Given the fairly extreme words of the authorities during the height of the Mad Gasser affair in Mattoon, one would be forgiven for thinking that phantom gas attacks were a rarity. In truth, you only needed to look back a matter of months before you find another case with certain similarities. In February of 1944, the small town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, not dissimilar in size and social makeup to Mattoon saw a case whereby a family escaped their house in the middle of the night after waking and smelling a “sweet smelling gas”. Their neighbours were not so fortunate, however, and the “mystery Gas” led to John and Myrtle Refford, along with their brother Charles being found dead from asphyxiation by police later that evening. Neighbours on either side of the Refford home escaped without injury and whilst there were no more attacks, the presence of “sweet smelling”, “Mystery gas” pricks ears after hearing of the Mattoon affair.
If we were to go back a further ten years, to the end of 1933, a second case is discovered to have taken part in Botetourt County, Virginia. Attacks using “sweet smelling gas” began on the evening of December 22nd 1933 in Fincastle and continued up until February of 1934, throughout various towns and villages including Troutville, Cloverdale, Howell’s Mill, Pleasantdale, Bonsack and Carvins Cove. In much the same fashion as Mattoon, the official and press approach to the goings on initially zeroed in on a crazed attacker, only to make a dramatic U-turn and claim that the whole thing had been nothing more than an elaborate series of hoaxes and hysteria. In an almost direct prelude to Mattoon, headlines read from the familiar “Mysterious Gas Attacks” whilst “Authorities Continue Efforts to FInd Party Guilty of Weird Actions.” to “”Phantom Gassers” and even included a skeptical Police Force who “doubts the genuineness of many cases, and ascribes them to hysteria.”
So were these cases all just figments of the imagination? Clearly real damage and harm was being done, but was it all simply the power of the mind and the overwhelming ability of fear and anxiety to cause physical effects on the body? Just months after the Mattoon attacks, ended, Dr Donald Johnson, at the time, a student at the University of Illinois showed up in Mattoon with an eye to carry out a study of the attacks, the results of which were published in a paper titled “The Phantom Anesthetist of Mattoon: A field study of Mass Hysteria” included within “The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology” in January of 1945. In short, the paper suggested that the vast coverage of local paper within Mattoon went some way into stirring up a level of anxiety and fear that led the population of Mattoon to suffer from a “Mental epidemic.” Johnson argued that there never was any gas from the start and that it’s existence in any capacity, was highly improbable.
“In order to produce effects of the kind reported when sprayed through a window, the gas would have to be a very potent, stable anesthetic with rapid action, and at the same time, so unstable that it would not affect others in the same room. It would have to be strong enough to produce vomiting and paralysis, and yet leave no observable after-effects. Study of a standard source on anesthetics and war gases and consultation with medical and chemical colleagues at the University of Illinois indicates that the existence of such a gas is highly improbable.“
“Chemists are Extremely skeptical of the possibility that such an extraordinary gasd could be produced by some “mad genius” working in a basement.”
After the publication of the paper, Mass Hysteria became the accepted answer to Mattoons troubles, at least for those outside of the town. With symptoms ranging from dizziness and nausea occurring in 40-45% of victims, right down to paralysis, which occured in 10%, it all appeared to fit well enough for the academics of the day to call Mattoon case closed. With contemporary academics, press and even officials publicly stating it was all just a figment of a town with an overactive imagination, that seemed to be that. Police Commissioner Thomas Wright believed that a gasser had existed, but ultimately, his final words on the case were that the whole thing had been a hysteria,
“There is no doubt that a gas maniac exists and has made a number of attacks, but many of the reported attacks are nothing more than hysteria. Fear of the gas man is entirely out of proportion to the menace of the relatively harmless gas he is spraying. The whole town is sick with hysteria.”
Proponents of the Mass Hysteria theory have over the years pointed out that until the Journal-Gazette printed it’s headline of an “Anesthetic Prowler”, there was in fact no mention, nor evidence of a person related to the attacks at all, just a sweet smell in the air. The paper simply put two and two together and came up with a story that struck a chord of fear into a population already softened to the idea of gas attacks through science fiction and further heightened by the ongoing war with Germany. If it seems absurd that Americans should be afraid of a country half way across the world, consider the bombardment of propaganda and advertisements in the papers for the not-so-subtle named “Invasion” or “Liberty Bonds” that warned readers of a “Hun Invasion” of the homeland.
Another key fact that is often pointed to was the tagline to the very first headline that read “First Victims’ ‘, suggesting that there must of course, be more to follow. Mattoon became something of a self fulfilling prophecy, cooked up by a copywriter with an overly dramatic newspaper headline. The paper built the story up and took the town into a tailspin of fear, only to tear it back down weeks later, putting an end to the entire affair just as quickly as it had started it.
And with that, the case of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon was wrapped up, only to be trotted out in psychology textbooks as a staple case for Mass Hysteria, or known more commonly today as Mass Psychogenic (or sociogenic) illness. But what of the numerous other, less accepted theories?
Other Theories of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon range from the somewhat understandable, in the case of there actually being a gasser on the loose, to the downright absurd, including multi-dimensional ape-like beings attacking residents with spray guns.
In the case for a Mad Gasser being an actual, physical attacker, there is some amount of evidence. Beulah Cordes found the rag on the porch, though the skeleton key and lipstick tube both seem like items potentially dropped or cast away by anyone. However, in at least two of the cases, window screens were slashed and torn by the supposed attacker in the process of the gassing. For those that put forward such a case, the abrupt about face turn in the media is generally considered to be a move involving a police cover-up of sorts, whereby the police, cracking under the pressure of a public needing answers, a town on the edge of rioting and a case with nothing but dead ends led officials in Mattoon to push a narrative criticising the population for stirring up a series of hoaxes or suffering from hysteria in order to cause stigma and embarrassment for anyone making police reports. The direct correlation of the fall in official reports of attacks and Chief Coles statement that any victims must submit themselves to a physical examination is something that many point to as an example of police bullying a victimised population into keeping quiet. One of the most enduring questions is just how abruptly did the attacks end in Mattoon? Was it, as the papers suggested, almost overnight, or was it simply that reports disappeared underground, discussed amongst friends and in local gossip, but no longer officially reported? The Psychology paper written by Dr Donald Johnson actually infers that victims “became critical of their imagination” leading to fewer reports to police, but this too could be flipped on its head and used against the case of hysteria. If the stigma was enough to suppress a victims imagination, then surely it was also enough to suppress a victim’s official statement to police? Furthermore, when Dr Johnson came to Mattoon, he was not shy about his reasons to undertake the study, as such, no residents were forthcoming with information for a doctor who wanted to paint the town as a collection of nervous wrecks, this lead him to being unable to interview any of the victims themselves and only able to speak to the police department.
And what of the four suspects police were monitoring? No names were ever given to the public, but in his book “The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: Dispelling the Hysteria”, author Scott Maruna suggests a local man by the name of Farley Llewellyn as the primary suspect, though frankly his theory is so abysmal and full of conjecture and cliche profiling that to waste my breath on it anymore than this would be a disservice to you listening at home.
One of the more questionable theories suggests that Mattoon was part of a wider conspiracy involving the Coatesville attacks from earlier in the year, orbiting around the central idea of a government attempting to test chemical weapons on its own population, though naturally evidence for this is non-existent. Equally as out there as Maruna’s Farley theory, or the idea of a conspiracy, is the suggestion that the gasser was an inter-dimensional ape-like humanoid creature with a spray gun, which bizarrely enough, does have its roots in a true report.placed by one Edna James, a long term resident of Mattoon who worked both as a local Innkeeper and town fortune teller. Her story follows that she woke on the night of 7th September to noises coming from her kitchen which when she went to see what was going on, led her to discover an “ape-like man, with stooped shoulders, exceedingly long arms and facial warts”, when the strange creature spotted her in the room alongside him, he let out an “unrecognizable series of grunts” and then doused her with his spray gun which caused paralysis. Several days later, she claimed to see him again casually walking across her inn lobby, though naturally, she was the only person in the room able to see the creature. When he noticed Edna looking at him, he disappeared into thin air.
Hairy ape-men aside, one of the last, often repeated and certainly more grounded theories suggests that toxic waste or pollution from the nearby factories could have been the culprit, though it was fairly well documented that at least the Atlas Diesel Engine Co. plant could be safely ruled out of that one and this theory doesn’t explain any of the witness accounts of intruders, condensed plumes of gas, nor torn window screens.
In the end, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon likely falls to just two theories, there either was an attacker, patrolling the town, gassing victims with a somewhat harmless gas for no apparent motive other than to strike fear into the population, or there was not and the entire event was cooked up by the press and ran thoroughly out of hand. The answer could also, of course, lay somewhere in the gray area between the two. Now simply a legend, the answers are frustratingly buried alongside any living memories of the attacks in Mattoon of September 1944..
© 2021 Dark HIstories. All rights reserved.
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Refusing to Extend the Seal: Court Refuses Requests to Extend Seal of Qui Tams for Informal Discovery or Settlement Negotiations
Section 3730(2), Title 31, of the False Claims Act ("FCA") provides that when a qui tam relator files an FCA complaint under seal, the case may remain under seal for "at least 60 days" while the government investigates and decides on whether or not to intervene. It is the rare case that remains under seal only 60 days, however, and in some cases, the government keeps the qui tam under seal for years, even over the objection of the relator. For example, one case in the Middle District of Florida, the Wasserman case, was filed under seal in 2004, but the government did not unseal it until 2010.
Ben Vernia at False Claims Counsel blog recently wrote about one federal district court judge in South Carolina who has given notice that the court will no longer agree to these automatic extensions of the seal for qui tams. In a recent "standing order," U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Anderson, Jr. observed that in "recent years, this court has extended the seal period, at the request of the government, on eight occasions in two actions," only to be informed by the government after all that time that it was not going to intervene in those cases.
Judge Anderson noted that the 4th Circuit observed that there are four reasons why Congress adopted the sixty-day seal period: "(1) to permit the United States to determine whether it already was investigating the fraud allegations (either criminally or civilly); (2) to permit the United States to investigate the allegations to decide whether to intervene; (3) to prevent an alleged fraudster from being tipped off about an investigation; and, (4) to protect the reputation of a defendant in that the defendant is named in a fraud action brought in the name of the United States, but the United States has not yet decided whether to intervene." Am. Civil Liberties Union v. Holder, 673 F.3d 245, 250 (4th Cir. 2011). Judge Anderson, however, noted that "none of the foregoing reasons for extending the seal period involve discovery of documents from the putative defendant or settlement negotiations." In turn, the Court observed further that the FCA's legislative history provides that "with the vast majority of cases, 60 days is an adequate amount of time to allow Government coordination, review and decision."
In light of these considerations, Judge Anderson stated that in deciding whether "good cause" exists to continue the seal after 60 days, "henceforth, the court will no longer consider informal discovery and/or settlement negotiations as sufficient grounds for extending the seal period."
If widely adopted, Judge Anderson's position would radically change FCA practice both for relators and qui tam defendants.
Posted by A. Brian Albritton at 11:22 PM
Labels: motion to extend seal, qui tam, relator, seal, sealing
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Film Forums:
General Film Forum
DEEP IN VOGUE (Dennis Keighron-Foster, Amy Watson 2019)
Thread: DEEP IN VOGUE (Dennis Keighron-Foster, Amy Watson 2019)
Chris Knipp
DENNIS KEIGHRON-FOSTER, AMY WATSON: DEEP IN VOGUE (2019)
STILL FROM DEEP IN VOGUE
A film about Northern Vogue and its people
What is vogue or voguing? An 8-minute film, "Night Visions Episode 1: The New York Vogue Scene" depicts it at the source, New York City, and explains some aspect of vogue further than this longer film, such as its "six elements": hands, spinning, the dip, floor performance, duckwalk and catwalk. There's a lot of hip-swinging and butt-wiggling, and a lot of flopping the arms back and forth and around in all directions in reverse, in unison, helicoptering, as in the 1990 Madonna song, "Vogue."
The version depicted in Deep in Vogue isn't generally as swoony and elegant as Madonna's gorgeous soft-focus black-and-white music video, which evokes pop culture icons as wide-ranging as Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin. It's campy, it's exhibitionistic, it's individualistic, it's empowering and fun, and it's often pure invention on the spur of the moment, using moves long practiced, like the "Soul Train" of seventies TV line but more provocative and crazy. It could also be a coordinated dance performance, like a group of four in Deep in Vogue dressed in orange. It developed in the Harlem ballroom scene in the sixties and then was a thing "more for the drag queens and the transsexuals." And because they were illegal they did it - as an empowering display of their inventive movement of their bodies and of their originality in creating personas and costumes - at 3 a.m., when safe from prying eyes. It grew into a wider-spread event in the eighties.
Voguing is now widely known and popular. It still thrives in New York City today as the Night Visions film shows, and its embowering, underdog quality remains, but those participating have expanded to a wider social cross section, though the LGBT community remains an essential element and so does participation of black, Latin and multiracial people of both sexes - and of fluid sexuality. All this applies also to the pursuit of vogue transplanted to England that we see depicted in Deep in Vogue (the title comes from the name of a 1989 song by Malcolm McLaren). Now the word "queer" has come into it, as shown in this new film from Manchester, where, someone says, people know better what it is to be misunderstood or downtrodden than Londoners do. "I may be not be gay but I certainly am queer!" someone exclaims. Another germane term to learn: QTIPOC people: Queer Trans Intersex People of Color. "This is a time of fluid sexuality," someone says. But white and yes, even straight people may participate - and definitely may and do come to watch and enjoy.
In the north of England, they're in the boonies; they're disadvantaged, hard hit by hard times. As we see here, the social concept and organization into "houses" with "mothers" remains the same in Manchester as in New York, because vogue is not only a platform for self-realization and liberation from constraint but very much a source of personal empoerment, a support group, and a substitute family, with parents who welcome you as your own parents have failed to do. And vogue as before and as in New York centers around competitions or balls (by "house"), always with the principle, mentioned in the New York short and the Manchester film, that the aim isn't primarily to win, though winning is enjoyable, but to have fun and express yourself.
Deep in Vogue was shot over the course of a year, leading up to the Manchester Icons Vogue Ball. It explores the roles played by LGBT issues, a shrinking welfare state, a dearth of art spaces and means of expressing yourself, as well as a commercialized gay scene and lack of safe spaces for people marked out as "different." Iet's mainly a lot of people talking, and briefly, dancing - though "voguing" sometimes seems a lot like just posing or posturing, as indicated by the opening line of Madonna's "Vogue": "Strike a pose." We meet the House of Suarez, the House of Ghetto, and others.
The fluid gender folks of Deep in Vogue, with their distinctly northern accents, show us that if you have enough style and attitude you can make a white bed sheet look good; indeed there is one dance that's done by a group of four dancers in pieces of white sheets spattered artfully with red dye.
The interviews are often collectively conducted in packs from a particular "house," showing how it's all about being mutually supportive, a family. The dancers have as many different styles and looks as LaMello Ball coming up had basketball team uniforms: it's also all about rocking your own distinctive look.
Deep in Vogue, 62 mins., debuted Mar. 2010 at BFI Flare, the London LGBT film festival, won the audience Award at Dublin's Gaze International LGBT Film Festival; it had its US East Coast premiere at New York City’s NewFest 2019 OutCinema. and also showed at a number of other LGBT and queer fests. Filmrise will release the film in North America on VOD Dec. 8, 2020.
Chris Knipp: Website; 2009 Movie 'Best Lists"; 2009 review index.
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Mexico Notebook: Interview with Laurence Salzmann
From the series "Echele Ganas" © Laurence Salzmann
Hannah Frieser, Jaime Permuth and I are collaborating to explore contemporary photography in Mexico. We're looking at trends and how they relate to traditions; events, institutions and venues; as well as pursuing conversations with curators, academics, gallerists and photographers on what's happening currently. This collaborative project will feature a variety of types of posts including interviews, book reviews, published letters, portfolios of images and more.
Hannah Frieser is a curator, photographer and book artist and former Executive Director of Light Work. Jaime Permuth is a Guatemalan photographer living and working in New York City and a Faculty Member at the School of Visual Arts.
Today we continue this series with an interview with Laurence Salzmann.
Laurence Salzmann is a native of Philadelphia who has worked as a photographer and filmmaker since the early 1960s. His projects document the lives of little known groups in America and abroad. He looks at the lives of people ranging from occupants of single room occupancy hotels in New York City to transhumant shepherds in Transylvania, residents of a Mexican village and Philadelphia Mummers. His photographic study of a nearly extinct Jewish community in Romania was published as The Last Jews of Radauti by Dial/Doubleday in 1983. His work from Cuba, La Lucha/The Struggle, and from Mexico entitled Echele Ganas: Do Your Best were both published by Blue Flower Press.
Salzmann's photographic method is deeply informed by his background in anthropology and involves long term participation in and observation of groups or events. His work illustrates how lives and events are shaped by the environments and conditions in which people live.
Other posts in this series include:
Interview with Diego Berruecos
Interview with Mariela Sancari
Q&A with Eduardo Jiménez Román
Q&A with Claudia Arechiga
Q&A with Nahatan Navarro
Contemporary Photography in Oaxaca
Q&A with Aglae Cortés
Q&A with Maria José Sesma
Interview with César Rodríguez
Q&A with Nora Gómez
Q&A with Melba Arellano
Q&A with Jorge Taboada
fototazo: You have a background in anthropology and have worked in photography and film since the 1960s. Talk with us a little about how you started.
Laurence Salzmann: I picked up my first camera a Brownie Hawkeye at age 11. I photographed things of the usual interest to an 11 year-old—the family pet cat and friends making faces. I set about to learn how to develop those films and make prints. A close family friend, Ruben Goldberg, who was a photographer at the University of Pennsylvania Anthropology Museum, showed me how to develop and print them.
I call myself a camera whisperer in that I use my camera to communicate with others. It is as if the camera speaks before I do. As a child I was shy, not given to talking too much. In fact, I still am a reticent person. My camera provided me with my voice to communicate with the world and enabled me to enter into conversations with people with whom I might not otherwise have had spoken.
Growing up in the early fifties in Philadelphia, a city that was very much marked by segregation’s practices, I became aware at an early age of the differences between cultures and classes. At that time it was Blacks, Jews and Whites. Our house was one block from the Black community. There were between us invisible lines that denoted where each group belonged.
These things curious to me as a child became points of departure for topics I was to explore with my photography later in life. For example, Face-to-Face: Encounters between Jews and Blacks and City/2. The former explored race relations, the later interactions between people in public places.
At age seventeen, a part time job in a flower shop permitted me to earn enough money to buy an Asahi Pentax camera (cost then $150.). Soon thereafter I took off hitchhiking to Mexico. My idea was to learn Spanish and make photographs. Some of the photos made then made it on to the pages of the popular photo magazines of the day like Modern and Popular Photography.
Photography has allowed me to express my feelings about life and the world around me. History and the study of cultures has informed my photographic vision. I seek to know about places before I photograph them. Serendipity has aided often in my quest to make a memorable photograph. Like my photograph of the hearse in the snow that came to define my Last Jews of Raduati series.
After fifty years the magic that I felt when I developed my first roll of 620 film is still there. The thrill of making a photograph and then printing it out even if just on a digital printer still fascinates me as much as the first time I saw my print appear in the developer bath.
f: And how about your study and work in anthropology? How has that informed your photographic practice?
LS: This is a good question and leaves much to think about.
Before photography, a prior interest of mine as a child was stamp collecting. I was a part of a group of kids I remember in junior high like at age 11-13 who traded stamps. Together we went to stamp stores and stamp meets where we met fellow collectors and learned about water marks and perforations. Now-a-days people don't even send letters or give much thought to the stamp on one if they ever send one.
Stamps brought me in contact with the larger world and excited my fancy about far away places that I was able to visit through the pictures and photos found on stamps. I also came to have five or six pen pals in countries far and wide with whom I traded stamps and learned a little bit about their country through the stories they told or the events depicted on the stamps we traded.
Stamps gave me a world perspective and an interest in people, history and geography.
Interest in far away places was also encouraged in my home in that my father had begun his medical practice in Germany prior to World War II and I had an aunt from Bucuresti, Romania, a city I was later to live in.
I played soccer on a football team, half of whose members were DP’s (Displaced Persons) from the Ukraine. My best friend was a German kid whose Dad had worked in the Soviet Union. A high school friend from the soccer team was a person I hitchhiked to Cuba with in 1960. We were to visit a high school friend who had invited us to come down and see the Cuban Revolution. Can you really see a revolution?
To that time dates my interest in Latino cultures and other cultures in general.
On Saturdays I would hang out with one of my dad's very best friends, Goldberg that I mentioned above, watching him develop pictures in the darkroom there.
When I got my first serious camera, a Kodak Pony 135 fixed lens 35mm camera made out of Bakelite, he showed me how to make available light pictures in the museum's galleries. That was my first introduction to anthropology and photography. He was a great available light photographer back in the day when ASA speeds must have been just 50. So my first pictures were in an anthropology museum. How that informs my photography will take a few more paragraphs.
From the series "Tlaxcalan Sketches" © Laurence Salzmann
Soon I had by own darkroom in a basement of my parent's house. My dad, always helpful, got a friend to give him an old Federal enlarger and various other odds and ends of photo equipment and soon I was printing photos of my own. My work then was pretty mundane and nothing much to write home about except for one picture I took of a kid in high school picking his nose that was a big hit with everyone except the kid picking his nose.
At age 15 or 16 I graduated to my first really good camera, that Asahi Pentax K [Ed: mentioned above] that was to stay with me for the next 22 years.
In my travels that began at 16 and continued through age 22 or so that camera was always with me. I used to buy Tri-X in 100 foot reels and spool it down and load my own canisters to keep costs down.
I hitchhiked all across the US and once all the way down to Costa Rica. I worked as a work-a-way on foreign flag ships and succeeded in getting Merchant Marine papers (something difficult to do), which permitted me further travel until I arrived at age 19 or so in Belgium. That was the beginning of more travel and picture taking and learning of German and French. I attended courses here and there and eventually when I returned to US two years later, I completed my college study as both a language and history major.
Photography was something I did not feel a need to study as I thought I already knew how to make photographs. Of course it would have helped had I studied it, but I was a wise guy and said to myself, "why study something you already know?" In an effort not to fight in a stupid war and kill people that I had not yet met for no good reason (turns out later I was right), I joined the Peace Corps and was sent to train for a program that would take us to Chile during the time of Frei [Eduardo Nicanor Frei Montalva, former President of Chile], just prior to the US planned coup d'etat that overthrew [Salvador] Allende.
In my training group there was an anthropologist from Columbia Univeristy. Soon I was deemed unfit for Peace Corps service because I had a beard and was considered too pro-Castro. That is how things were in our country in the 1960s. My anthropologist friend recommended I contact his professor and try to get work through him in New York City.
I got hired by a project he was involved with in studying the residents of people living in Single Room Occupancy Hotels. That, and my experience with living in a poor barrio of Juárez, Mexico during my Peace Corps training where I began my first serious project, "Luis's Family," helped make me decide that having a bit of a more formal training in anthropology would be a good idea. I sat in on some classes given by Margaret Meade who was famous for using photography in her researches in the South Pacific. I started teaching anthropologists how to use photography in their field research and eventually obtained a Master's degree in visual anthropology from Temple University that led to many other connections for me.
So formal study of the anthropology discipline brought me to have a better understanding of the concepts of what one would call today embedding oneself in a community foreign from one's own. In anthropology, it's sometimes called community participation/observation. A crucial part of course is speaking or understanding the language of the groups being studied and my earlier youthful wanderlust years had left me speaking a smattering of various languages and prepared me to some extent for learning additional ones or at least pretending to understand them even if I did not quite speak them.
I felt that both sociology and anthropology offered a way to understand diverse cultures and deepen my photographic interpretations of ways of life other than my own. I came late to video, but filmmaking was a part of my career from early on
I shot my first film shot at age 19 with a professor of English at Temple University. I told him I was an experienced cameraman so he hired me without pay to be the DP [director of photography] on a film he was making based on the poem by the famous American poet Wallace Stevens. We borrowed somebody's camera - a 16mm Bolex - and went into production. It might have been good or bad but the only time we showed that film it all fell apart at every splice because I had used the wrong tape to splice the pieces together. Over time, I honed my skills as an editor and as a cameraman and got to work on other films. Some of them are even still worth looking at including one entitled, "Eddie" that was about an Irish-American named Eddie O'Brian living in a Single Room Occupancy Hotel. It won one of the American Film Institute's first funding awards. And 45 years later it still has a punch to it.
From the series "Luis's Family" © Laurence Salzmann
That was in a way an anthropological film in that it is about a kind of sub-culture of people living in poverty in New York City in Single Room Occupancy Hotels. The homeless street people of today were once housed in such hotels.
One thing leads to the next as the great Jewish storyteller Isaac Bashevis Singer would like to say. And the next thing after a stint as a maker of documentaries about drug abuse for Encyclopedia Britannica was getting hired by Timothy Asch to be the editor of his Yanomamo films. And thereafter being hired by Alan Lomax to be editor of his films, trying to prove his theories of universal dance. All of those projects are well-known and documented either for better or worse depending on whose commentaries you are reading.
I should add that while anthropology may help to broaden my photographic documentations, I am at heart a committed photographer interested in making an image that has resonance and works.
So this just begins to open up or provide an answer to your questions.
f: How did you develop your connection to Mexico and tell us about your early photographic work there.
LS: It started at age five when my parents drove to Mexico and brought us all Mariachi customs, complete with sombrero and a serape. That is the beginning of the story. Amazing how things from childhood affect you later on in life. They had also bought a painting of a Mexican peasant in somber colors, à la Diego Rivera, which for many years graced our family's living room. I still have it.
At age 17, I set out on a cold February morning to hitchhike from Philadelphia to Mexico. I had dropped out of high school in the second part of my senior year, and wanted to improve the little Spanish I had learned in Cuba during the previous summer.
In 1966, I was invited to train for the Peace Corps at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. My training included an "in-country experience" in Mexico. Our group was taken to the city of Juárez where each of us was assigned to live with a family. Mine was a family of adobe brick makers. They lived in a barrio humilde (shantytown), outside of Juárez near the Rio Grande River. They were migrants from the state of Zacatecas. I started to photograph them. After I was "de-selected" from the Peace Corps I decided to return to Juárez to make a photographic essay about the family with whom I had stayed during my Peace Corps training.
I photographed the men making adobe bricks in primitive kilns fired by old tires; Juana, the mother, making tortillas cooked over an open fire on a comal made of clay; the children working with their father, Alvino; and Luis, the man who owned the brick yard where they toiled. I titled the finished work "Luis's Family." My photographs were dark and somber, and revealed, in the clarity of black and white images, the impoverished conditions of the family.
On my return to the United States, I continued to work on these images. The photography curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art selected a group of my photographs for inclusion in their photography collection. I made up a dummy book and showed it to Diane Arbus in New York, hoping she might suggest a publisher for them. No one was interested. In retrospect, I now understand: the photographs were too sad.
Inspired by Oscar Lewis' book Children of Sanchez, I attended a summer training program for anthropology students conducted by the University of Pittsburgh in 1969, in the state of Tlaxcala, Mexico. I was sent to the village of Santa Isabel. I set out to create a photographic ethnography of Santa Isabel. At that time, Santa Isabel's life was still very traditional. Villagers tended their milpas, small plots of land on which they raised corn, squash and beans, and built their houses with adobe bricks with red tile roofs; they made pulque, a milk-colored, alcoholic beverage from the fermented sap of the maguey plants that dotted the landscape, and which also served as fences between each family's plot of land. That summer we witnessed the Apollo moon landing on TV sets that had been newly introduced to the village – a striking contrast to the culture of the villagers, many of whom were still walking around barefoot and wearing clothing made from homespun flax. My photographs showed the traditional way of life – that was soon to change, like women washing clothes in the local stream…
At a Visual Anthropology conference in 1971, I met Ayse Gürsan, a Turkish anthropologist who was planning a trip to Mexico to study the peasant market systems of Puebla, Tlaxcala and the Oaxaca Valleys. I volunteered to be her photographer and translator. This cooperative work led to our marriage, and a long history of collaboration on other projects.
These early experiences in Mexico were the beginning of my photographic career, rooted in humanistic themes that I hoped would create paths of understanding between cultures.
f: I find it intriguing that you've gone back to create work in Mexico four decades later, work that's recently been published as the book Echele Ganas. Do you see these two projects - the first of your career and your most recent book - as comparable? What do they show us about the consistencies and changes in your photography over your career?
LS: Your question is a good one. Anything can be compared with something else and one could compare "Luis's Family" to "Echele Ganas" or for that matter my other Mexican work, "Tlaxcalan Sketches" from 1971.
Stylistically the essays are quite different from each other. "Luis's Family" was shot in 35mm black and white and is very somber in outlook. "Echele Ganas" I shot with 6x6 medium format color negative film and it is happier and less full of angst.
"Luis's Family" is a very intimate portrait of a very small group of people, ten at most. "Echele Ganas" is a portrait of a larger community and includes their celebrations and provides a wider overview of their way of life and its meaning for them. With both sets of photographs there is a closeness to the people photographed.
"Echele Ganas" was worked on over a longer period of time. I was also familiar with many of the family members [of the subjects] that had moved to Philadelphia, helping them solve problems that arose from being here.
"Luis’s Family" photographs use an overcast light whereas "Echele Ganas photographs" were made for the most in bright sunshine.
The geography of Juárez, where "Luis’s Family" is set, was bleak and flat. There are no maguey plants to delineate the landscape
Tonalpa and the other villages where I photographed for "Echele Ganas" have a greener landscape, surrounded by mountains and some still standing forests.
"Luis's Family" is more about a culture of poverty with little hope. Sort of like the dust bowl photographs of the thirties.
"Echele Ganas" tells more of a story, about its people who leave at a very early age to work in a place where, if they are lucky, they can return in five years time with enough money to build a house and start a family. Some also lose the families they had if they stay too long. [The subjects in] "Luis’s Family" in Juárez had very little hope of escaping their impoverished life.
"Luis's Family" is a photo essay by a youthful photographer just starting out. Where one hopes one's photography can still change the world. As we grow older we learn otherwise.
"Echele Ganas" is a more mature work with more details. In "Echele Ganas" I was less concerned with the poverty of the people and more concerned with the values that held them together as a community. "Echele Ganas" has a multifaceted approach, and makes use of a video narrative to allow the subjects themselves to tell their own story.
"Luis's Family" relied on a poetic essay by a writer named Thomas Paine who I had invited to work on the project with me. Tom, a former US Marine, fancied himself part inheritor of Tom Paine’s legacy (a distant relative he claimed) and [also that of] James Agee. We were both perhaps influenced by Walker Evans and Agee's book entitled, Let us Now Praise Famous Men. What young person starting out wouldn't be? Together we drove a drive-a-way car from Philadelphia to El Paso and then walked over the border to Juárez, Mexico. We slept on the floor together with the family we were documenting.
They lived next to the Rio Grande. I believe at that time Mexicans were allowed to cross the border for the day without any visas. And many did to work at jobs in El Paso.
Consistencies:
Concern for other ways of life and presenting a visual documentation of them.
Visual outlook more developed as a result of 40 years more experience working as a documentary photographer. To use an appropriate cliché, "everything is not black and white." [There are] many shades of gray in between.
I feel that sometimes a format used in photographing dictates or gives a certain look to one's photography. [In this case], a 35mm Leica format with wide-angle 28mm lens versus a medium format 6x6 camera.
f: Anything else you'd like to add Laurence?
LS: Is this before they blindfold me?
Tags: Diane Arbus, Laurence Salzmann, Mexico, Walker Evans
This is an archive of the fototazo site which was active from 2011 to 2020.
fototazo continues as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization offering workshops and photography-oriented travel experiences for groups of young, emerging photographers from Colombia
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Digging Deep Blog
Summary of Activities
Remote Roundup 2021
Geoscience BC
Geoscience BC Society’s members are its Board of Directors. The Board consists of up to 11 volunteer and 2 staff members with a variety of backgrounds and interests.
The Board is responsible for the overall governance and strategic direction of the organization, including research project budgets based on recommendations from its Technical Advisory Committees.
Joining the Geoscience BC Board
Our Nomination Committee is always open to hearing from people interested in joining our Board of Directors. If you would like to be considered for a position on our Board, please email us with a copy of your resumé and summary of the skills and experience you would bring to the Board.
Stephanie Killam, Chair of the Board
Stephanie Killam has lived in Mackenzie since 1972. She and her husband Donald have raised their two children in the community. Stephanie was the senior secretary at Mackenzie Secondary School from 1979 to her retirement in 2006.
Stephanie is committed to the community, the region and beyond, promoting initiatives which improve economic, health and educational opportunities. She is well-versed in environmental issues and the balance that is required between those concerns and the economic development and diversification of the country’s future. She continues to increase her knowledge and skills in order to ensure that as a leader and mentor she provides a balanced view for all organizations that she is associated with.
The depth of her involvement in the community, region and province is exemplified by the many Boards and Associations of which she has been or is currently a member. Politically, she was a municipal councillor for nine years and served as Mayor of Mackenzie from 2005 to 2014.
Donna Phillips, Vice Chair
Donna Phillips has over thirty years of professional experience in business with particular focus in the areas of finance, corporate planning, land negotiations, business development, government relations, stakeholder/community relations and Indigenous negotiations in the energy industry.
Ms. Phillips is the Executive Vice President, Corporate Development of Pacific Canbriam Energy Limited a company with an organic growth story now producing >40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
Prior to joining Canbriam in 2007, Donna held the position of Director and Vice President, Land at Direct Energy/Centrica Canada Ltd. She began her oil and gas career in Finance at SaskOil, following which she worked in Corporate Planning, Asset Management and Land at Wascana Energy/CanOxy (now Nexen).
Donna is actively engaged as a member of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers British Columbia Executive Policy Group and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Landmen. She is President of the Petroleum Acquisition and Divestiture Association where she has been a board member since 2006 and a board member of the Canadian Society for Unconventional Resources.
Ms. Phillips holds a Bachelor of Administration from the University of Regina and a CPA CMA certification. She also holds her ICD.D from the Institute of Corporate Directors and the Rotman School of Management.
John Milne, Treasurer
John Milne, CPA, CA, is an audit partner at KPMG LLP. Originally from Vancouver, John attended the University of British Columbia and obtained his chartered accountant designation in 2000. He is a member of KPMG’s Energy and Natural Resources practice providing audit and audit-related services to a variety of clients, comprising mainly companies in the mining industry, junior oil and gas companies, and large forestry clients. John has extensive experience with public companies operating in the resource sector and has worked at various client operations throughout BC as well as internationally. He assists companies with the accounting for complex organizational structures, financing arrangements, joint arrangements and business acquisitions, and with their Canadian and US securities filings. Since 2011, John has also acted as a mentor to UBC Sauder School of Business MBA students.
Gavin C. Dirom, President & CEO
Gavin C. Dirom has over 25 years of experience in the Canadian mineral exploration and mining industry, with a focus on government and stakeholder relations, industry advocacy, not-for-profit association management and governance, public policy development, corporate affairs and project permitting, safety, environmental management and sustainability.
As President and CEO of the Association for Mineral Exploration (AME) from 2008 to 2017, Gavin managed a number of professional staff and volunteer-based committees, provided executive leadership to AME’s Board of Directors and represented over 400 corporate and 4,000 individual members with interests in mineral exploration and development. Gavin led AME through some challenging times and was honoured with the Gold Pick award from the Kamloops Exploration Group in April 2017.
Before AME, Gavin held the role of Vice President, Environment, Health and Safety at the Mining Association of British Columbia (MABC). On behalf of MABC members, his work focus was on project permitting, health & safety, environmental management and sustainable development, including supporting the successful effort to build major infrastructure in B.C. such as the Northwest Transmission Line. Prior to MABC, Gavin served as Senior Policy Advisor with Natural Resources Canada on permitting, environmental assessment and federal regulatory process issues facing mineral exploration and mining projects in western Canada, such as Galore Creek, Red Chris and Kemess.
Gavin holds a M.Sc. degree in Environmental Management from Royal Roads University, a B.Sc. in Physical Geography and Environmental Science from the University of Victoria and he is also a registered Professional Agrologist (P.Ag.) in the Province of British Columbia. His M.Sc. thesis and hydrogeology-related research of the Lynx underground mine on Vancouver Island was undertaken with the Geological Survey of Canada. For this work, he was awarded the Jake McDonald Memorial Scholarship by the BC Technical and Research Committee on Reclamation.
Jeff Christian
Jeff Christian, Partner at the firm Lawson Lundell LLP, practicing exclusively in the energy and natural resource sectors. He represents clients before regulatory tribunals such as the BC Oil and Gas Commission, National Energy Board, and Alberta Utilities Commission. He also advises clients in regard to regulatory and legislative reform initiatives, and in regard to cross-border energy and natural resource development and litigation. He is recognized for his expertise in those sectors by Chambers Global, Lexpert, and Martindale-Hubbell, among others. He is called to the bar in BC, Alberta and Northwest Territories, and has a background in geotechnical engineering and earth sciences.
Lana Eagle
Lana Eagle is an Indigenous relations strategist and a social innovator. She guides companies to better engage and work with Indigenous communities, and to find a pathway forward through a reconciliation framework. She also works with clients to develop Indigenous engagement protocols.
Lana’s background is in banking, economic development, wealth management and mineral exploration. She was one of the first Indigenous women to chair a junior mineral exploration company.
Lana joined AME’s Aboriginal Relations Committee in 2012, where she served as Chair for six years. In 2017 she became the first Indigenous woman to be elected to the AME Board of Directors in its over 100-year history. In addition, she is a member of the Program Advisory Committee for Mining and Mineral Exploration at the BC Institute of Technology.
Lana is Co-chair of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) Diversity and Inclusion Program Advisory Committee.
Lana serves on advisory boards of B.C. Centre for Training Excellence in Mining, DPI Mining and SEF Canada, and on the Council Board for the Indigenous Business and Investment Council. Lana is a Board Co-Chair of the Central City Foundation, a non-profit that focuses its work in Vancouver’s inner city.
Lana is a sought-after speaker and lecturer on Indigenous engagement and reconciliation in Canada and on diversity and inclusion. Lana is a member of the Whitecap Dakota First Nation in Saskatchewan.
Mike Gatens
Michael Gatens is semi-retired and living in Victoria, BC. He is a Director of non-profit Geoscience BC in Vancouver, private oil and gas producer Primavera Resources in Calgary, and private consultant Mosaic Petroleum Analytics in Calgary and Bryan, TX. Mr. Gatens co-founded Unconventional Gas Resources Canada in 2007 and served as CEO until it was sold to Painted Pony in 2017. Mr. Gatens previously founded MGV Energy in 1997, which became the Canadian subsidiary of Quicksilver Resources in 2000.
Mr. Gatens was a Director of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers from 2004-2006 and 2013-2017, serving as Vice Chair and Chair in 2015-2017. He was the founding Chairman of the Canadian Society for Unconventional Gas (now Canadian Society for Unconventional Resources) from 2002-2005 and was named Honorary Member in 2006. He was awarded the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005 and received the Sproule Achievement Award for Unconventional Gas in 2006. He served on the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) International Board in 1995-1997, the Canada Region Board in 2013-2015 and was named Distinguished Member in 2000. He served on the Boards of the Petroleum Technology Alliance of Canada from 2006-2013 and the U.S. Petroleum Technology Transfer Council from 1994-2003.
From 1982 to 1997, Mr. Gatens was with the consulting firm, S.A. Holditch & Associates, Inc. in College Station, TX & Pittsburgh, PA, leaving as VP Eastern Division and Director. From 1980 to 1982 he was with Bass Enterprises Production Co. of Ft. Worth. Mr. Gatens received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University and was named a Distinguished Graduate in 2013.
Doug Konkin
A professional forester, and graduate of University of Alberta (BSc Forestry) with 34 years in forest/land management and environmental leadership, Mr. Konkin is an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Forestry, a Provincial Chief Negotiator regarding aboriginal economic agreements, and part-time community forester in his home municipality of Whistler, BC. In his role as a Deputy Minister with the BC provincial government from 2003-2013, he led forest, land and environmental public sector agencies — driven by the goal to improve resource management through building engagement, teamwork, efficiency and collaboration with all stakeholders. Mr. Konkin received the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal of Excellence in Public Administration (2013) for designing and implementing an integrated and durable approach to resource management.
Nalaine Morin
Nalaine Morin, Principal at ArrowBlade Consulting Services, is nationally recognized for her work in environmental assessment. She has led and managed the environmental review of several large resource development projects on behalf of First Nations. Her deep technical background in both mining and environmental assessment processes combined with being of Tahltan descent has enabled her to understand and to identify methods for the connection and support of both First Nation traditional knowledge and western science together in a way that bridges cultural understanding on both sides. Nalaine provides services in technical review, regulatory support, negotiations, community consultation and environmental resource management.
Nalaine has gained a national reputation for effectively managing complicated resource project issues in a cross cultural setting. Many of the innovative processes she has helped develop have been subsequently adopted for use at the Provincial level. Nalaine works with First Nations across Canada on projects as varied as mining, pipelines and highway infrastructure. In 2009, Nalaine’s expertise was recognized by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency when she was selected as a panel member for the review of a major mining project in BC.
Nalaine holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree from the University of British Columbia and a Mechanical Engineering Technology Diploma from the British Columbia Institute of Technology. She has recently acquired certification as an Environmental Professional, certified by the Canadian Environmental Certification Approvals Board. Nalaine currently resides in Leduc, Alberta.
Christine Ogryzlo
Christine Ogryzlo taps into her experience as a communicator to help bridge the gap between the minerals industry and the communities near which they operate. Christine has decades of experience as a journalist, business researcher and communications manager.
She was a producer with CBC radio for 12 years. In 1994 she established her own business research and communications company. Over the next 10 years, she chaired two committees of the Vancouver Board of Trade and served on its board of directors in 2001 and 2002. In 2004 she was on the founding committee for the Northwest Community College School of Exploration & Mining in Smithers. Christine is a director with Smithers Exploration Group, which represents the minerals industry in northern BC.
Christine is a previous director with the Association for Mineral Exploration (AME) and has served on several AME committees.
Robert Quartermain
Over his 40-year career in geology, exploration and development, working in 18 countries, Dr. Quartermain established a solid track record in building shareholder value in the field of precious metals exploration and development. He was the president of Silver Standard Resources for 25 years building it from a fledgling exploration to an operating mining company with a market capitalization of over $2 billion.
After leaving Silver Standard, Quartermain launched Pretium Resources Inc. with one of Canada’s largest IPOs in 2010. Pretivm owns the low cost high grade gold mine in Northern British Columbia.
Dr. Quartermain holds a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from the University of New Brunswick, a Master of Science degree in mineral exploration from Queen’s University and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of New Brunswick in May 2009.
Recognizing the importance of education and recruitment in the field of geology, Robert Quartermain supports his alma mater, the University of New Brunswick (UNB), through philanthropic initiatives for the Quartermain Center for Earth Sciences, the Quartermain Sports Medicine Centre, and annual Robert Quartermain Geology Scholarships.
Dr. Quartermain is a past president of the World Silver Institute, recipient of the AMEBC Murray Pezim Award for Perseverance in Mineral Exploration and the CIMM VALE Medal for Distinguished Service to the Canadian Mineral Industry.
Carlos Salas, Executive Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer
Carlos Salas is a professional geologist, with over thirty years of wide-ranging energy sector experience including; senior positions and directorships in public and private companies.
Initially schooled as a geologist specializing in ancient rivers, he began his professional career with a major oil & gas company, then as an explorationist in several ‘start-ups’ where he honed his entrepreneurial and business skills. He then went on to work at a medium-sized consultancy where he managed a large group of professionals.
In his current role of Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Geoscience BC he provides, technical leadership to initiatives promoting informed resource management decision-making through earth science.
Alan Winter
Dr. Winter is the former BC Innovation Commissioner. He has wide experience at senior levels in the technology sector and in government, including such roles as the President and CEO of Genome BC for 15 years, the founding President and CEO of the New Media Innovation Centre in Vancouver, the President of the ComDev Space Group in Ontario, and the President and CEO of MPR Teltech Ltd. in Vancouver. During his tenure as CEO, six companies were spun out of MPR, including PMC-Sierra and Sierra Wireless. Prior to MPR, Dr. Winter worked for Telesat Canada and the federal Communications Research Centre in Ottawa, where he was responsible for the satellite-aided search and rescue project (Sarsat). The international Cospas/Sarsat system continues to be instrumental in saving many lives.
He is also a director of Ontario Genomics, Oceans Network Canada, and the Victoria Hospitals Foundation. Dr. Winter has been director of over 30 organizations across Canada. On the federal side, he was Chair of the Communications Research Centre, Deputy Chair of the Council of Science and Technology Advisors (CSTA), and a member of the Expert Panel on Research Performance and Science Funding, Council of Canadian Academies.
Dr. Winter is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Astronautics and Space Institute and was a recipient of their inaugural Alouette Award. Dr. Winter received his Ph.D. from Queen’s University, Kingston and was recognized by the Queen’s alumni Legacy of Achievement.
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New Release: Monster A-Go Go DVD
– September 10, 2010Find Others: DVD, Movie, New Release, NewsGet More: Cult, Science-fiction, Synergy
In celebration of its 45th anniversary, cult film favorite Monster A-Go Go was issued in a special DVD collector’s edition on Oct. 19, 2010, from Synergy Entertainment on the Cultra Label. It carries a suggested retail price of $9.99.
Billed as, “The picture that could set our space program back at least 50 years,” when it was released theatrically in 1965 and later voted “The Worst Movie Ever” by Mystery Science Theater 3000, Monster A-Go Go is, well, deliciously bad.
Directed by Bill Rebane and Herschell Gordon Lewis and starring June Travis, Peter Thompson and Phil Morton, the science-fiction movie concerns an astronaut who’s being prepped for his galactic voyage by being injected with doses of “radiation repellent.” But, unknown to anyone else, the astronaut’s doctor begins using a version of the formula previously tested only on animals. As the mission ends and the space capsule parachutes back to Earth, it crash-lands in a field and the astronaut aboard disappears. Is there a connection between the missing man and a monster wreaking havoc in the area?
Like so many terrible movies, Monster A-Go Go is so bad that it’s good, and it’s certainly worthy of some attention at a time when there are so many movies that are so bad that they’re, er, just bad.
Special features on the DVD include the following:
commentary by director Bill Rebane
two short films: 1961’s Twist Craze and 1962’s Dance Craze
24-page booklet with a reprint of a 1965 Scary Monsters magazine
Buy or Rent Monster A-Go Go
New Releases: Crack in the World, Hannie Caulder Blu-ray
New Release: Damnation Alley Blu-ray and DVD
New Release: Attack the Block DVD and Blu-ray
DVD Release: Megaforce
Blu-ray, DVD Release: Scanners
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As foreigners leave, Singapore sees population drop for first time since 2003
This photo taken on Feb. 8, 2019, shows central Singapore's iconic promenade and skyline. Singapore's population has shrunk for the first time since 2003, according to an annual report. AFP
Singapore's population has shrunk for the first time since 2003 as travel curbs and job losses brought about by the coronavirus pandemic have pushed foreign workers from the global business hub. The overall population dropped by about 18,000 people, or 0.3%, to 5.69 million, according to an annual population report.
A sharp drop in foreigners, down 2% to 1.64 million, as well as a marginal fall in permanent residents, outweighed a modest rise in citizens, some of whom returned from overseas as the pandemic spread globally.
"These trends were largely due to COVID-19 related challenges, brought about by weak demand and travel restrictions," the report said, citing job losses in services, a sector heavily reliant on low-paid foreign labour.
As the economy faces the deepest recession in its history - an economic decline officially estimated between 5%-7% for the year - the government has been raising barriers for foreign hiring to preserve jobs for locals.
But authorities in the low-tax corporate hub, home to the Asian headquarters of many multinational companies, have also warned that a populist turn could hurt business.
"We must be careful not to give the wrong impression that we are now closing up and no longer welcoming foreigners," Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a speech earlier this month, after an election in which opposition parties criticised the government's immigration policies as too slack.
Singapore's non-resident population has more than doubled over the last 20 years, powering population growth in a city-state with one of the world's lowest birth rates.
This has prompted recurring concerns about competition for jobs and the strains on public infrastructure, which again came to the fore on the July 10 ballot, in which the ruling People's Action Party ceded a record number of seats to the opposition.
"As activities ramp up there may be a manpower shortage again down the road," said Selena Ling, head of treasury research and strategy at OCBC Bank. (Reuters)
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Joseph Loconte
Books & Scholarship
Joseph Loconte » Commentary » Huffington Post: Jesus and the Zealotry of Reza Aslan
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Huffington Post: Jesus and the Zealotry of Reza Aslan
Originally published in the Huffington Post.
Historian Jaroslav Pelikan began his insightful book, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture, with these provocative words: “Regardless of what anyone may personally think of or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost twenty centuries.” The question that immediately confronts the competent historian, of course, is why: why did a penniless, itinerant rabbi from a backwater district of the Roman Empire, executed in disgrace, exert such a powerful influence on Western civilization?
Reza Aslan’s best-selling book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, belongs to that genre of works devoted to unearthing the “real historical Jesus.” Like countless authors before him, Aslan claims to have discovered a radically different Jesus from the personality portrayed in the gospels and preached by the church for two millennia. Like his predecessors, he assumes, without any hard evidence, that the Christian community conspired to reinvent Jesus in order to meet pressing social needs. Like them, Aslan delivers an account that fails, with staggering ineptitude, to answer the question that haunts all honest minds about the legacy of the Nazarene.
In Aslan’s retelling, Jesus made no claims to divinity, nor did he interpret his life and death as the crowning act of God’s redemptive mission on earth. Rather, he writes, Jesus was “a zealous revolutionary, swept up, as all Jews of the era were, in the religious and political turmoil of first-century Palestine.” In short, Jesus was a freedom-fighter advocating violence to remove the boot of Roman rule from the neck of his fellow Jews.
Jaroslav Pelikan’s book is worth revisiting in the midst of this latest debate. He reminds us that in each age of history, scholars as well as laymen depict Jesus in ways that endorse their own cultural biases and agendas. In the Renaissance, Jesus was “the Universal Man,” the figure who inspired the humanistic revolt against traditional and medieval beliefs. In the Age of Enlightenment, Jesus was “the Teacher of Common Sense,” a moral reformer opposed to the superstition and spiritual tyranny of organized religion. Thomas Jefferson, for example, required just three evenings at the White House to bang out his own version of the life of Jesus, “abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried.” The discarded trash included just about everything Jesus said about God, eternal life, and the coming judgment.
The habit of reinterpreting the life of Jesus to support professional and partisan agendas picked up steam in the turbulent twentieth century. In the throes of the First World War, American ministers and theologians invoked his name to convert the war into a holy crusade. “This conflict is indeed a crusade. The greatest in history — the holiest,” intoned Randolph McKim from his pulpit in Washingon, D.C. “Yes, it is Christ, the King of Righteousness, who calls us to grapple in deadly strife with this unholy and blasphemous power.”
Scholars and ministers took the opposite line in the 1930s, however, having repented of their faith-based militarism. In their historical revision, Jesus was “the Prince of Peace” who endorsed utopian disarmament schemes and rejected war under any circumstances. The portrait of Jesus as Divine Diplomat was trotted out even as Nazi Germany launched its blitzkrieg throughout Europe. As late as 1941, with most of Europe under Nazi control, Rev. John Haynes Holmes spoke for many when he argued for complete disarmament: “Can anyone read Jesus’ gospel, and study his life in fulfillment of that gospel, without seeing love is a weapon more potent than the sword?” Their twenty-first-century descendants, such as Duke University’s Stanley Hauerwas, promote the same pacifist messiah, confident that Jesus categorically rejects the “war on terror” as an immoral foreign policy.
By the 1960s, leftist theologians were touting Jesus as “the Marxist Messiah.” In their “liberation theology,” Jesus championed the cause of the poor against their capitalist oppressors. As such, he endorsed violent revolution against Western-backed dictatorships, the nationalization of industry, and the collectivization of private property. “I think liberation theology’s understanding of Jesus is part of a wider 20th-century appreciation of the historical Jesus and his ministry,” says Fordham University’s Michael Lee.
Zealot likewise fits the temper of our times neatly — too neatly. Aslan’s controversial Fox News interview, about whether his Islamic background allows him to write an objective historical account of Jesus, obscures the real problem: the hubris of the professional provocateur.
Aslan has advanced his career — he is a professor of creative writing, not a historian — with self-serving criticism of the “demonization” of Islam under the Bush administration. Having fled Iran in 1979 for the United States, he interprets the 9/11 attacks as a clarion call to Muslims in the Middle East to overthrow oppressive regimes. Thus, the Arab Spring is seen as the happy fruit of that horrific event: an unequivocal march toward political freedom. “Across the board,” he told Mother Jones, “what has happened is that the regimes in the region now understand that they can no longer just ignore the will of the people.” (Aslan has less to say about the pernicious influence of radical Islamist jihad in directing the “will of the people” in Egypt, Syria, Libya and beyond.)
Thus, we encounter Jesus the Zealot for Political Liberation: the embodiment of the revolutionary motif so congenial to Aslan’s frame of mind. The problem, of course, is that textual and historical evidence to the contrary — not to mention a good dose of common sense — must be thrown overboard to support the storyline.
Jesus’ counsel to his followers, for example, about whether to submit to Roman rule — “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God” — takes on a subversive meaning. Evading the plain rendering of the Greek text in the gospels, Aslan claims that Jesus forcefully denounced the oppressive political authority of Rome, embodied in its tax system. The telling fact that none of Jesus’ disciples interpreted his words as a rallying cry for rebellion is not permitted to intrude into this fantasy narrative.
We are informed that the early Christians, desperate to avoid the persecuting wrath of Rome, sought to soften the militant themes embedded in Jesus’ message. As Aslan writes: “Thus began the long process of transforming Jesus from a revolutionary Jewish nationalist into a peaceful spiritual leader with no interest in any earthly matter.” We are asked to believe in a vast conspiracy of distortion, sustained over centuries, supported by false documents, countenanced and hushed up by church leaders.
Sound familiar? Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, at least had the decency to tell us that his work was fiction. The preaching of the early church, the collective testimony of Christian martyrs, the Christian moral code that challenged much of Roman cultural and political life — all of this lays waste to the notion that the primitive church was more concerned about its social status than its fidelity to the life and teachings of Jesus.
Aslan insists that his aim is to “purge the scriptures of their literary and theological flourishes and forge a more accurate picture of the Jesus of history.” What has been purged in this latest treatment of the life of Jesus, however, are not the flourishes, but the existential, redemptive core of the faith he founded. Other religions, including Islam, may be able to dispense with the miraculous and retain their essential meaning. Not the religion of Jesus. “The Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle,” writes C.S. Lewis, “that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him.”
No account of the historical Jesus better explains his extraordinary and enduring influence over the human story than this one.
Joseph Loconte, PhD, is an associate professor of history at The King’s College in New York City and the author of The Searchers: A Quest for Faith in the Valley of Doubt (Thomas Nelson).
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Joseph Loconte © 2021
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Kairo News Watchman
New SIC Leader Prioritises Unity
SIC Congress Elects New Executive
Darboe’s Take On Record Drug Burst
Why UDP Picks Bones With IEC
Another Move Against French Colonialism: The Eco Currency In Africa
Shocking Data: The 2 million Africans living in USA May Never Retire
Barrow, The President Who Cannot Be Trusted
Kenya’s black market baby trade: A mother’s choice
‘My Friends Abandoned Me’
in Politics — by Musa Saidykhan — May 12, 2015
President Jonathan Left In The Altar
Outgoing Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said Sunday that some of his friends deserted him shortly after he conceded defeat to his rival General Muhammadu Buhari in the March election.
Jonathan publicly conceded defeat to Buhari on March 31, a decision which was commended by local and foreign commentators and doused tension in the country.
“Some hard decisions have their own costs. No doubt about that. It is a very costly decision but I must be very ready to pay for it,” Jonathan said during a farewell church service in Abuja.
Jonathan’s public admission of defeat in the nail-biting election came more than six hours after he rang Buhari to concede, earning him widespread praise for statesmanship.
“If you take certain decisions, you should know that people close to you will even abandon you at some point. I tell people that more of my so-called friends will disappear.”
Many party faithful and erstwhile loyalists of Jonathan have either crossed over to Buhari’s All Progressives Congress or made harsh statements against Jonathan’s party or its leaders.
Jonathan said he was not surprised by the desertions or statements by his former loyalists, adding that former South African president Frederik de Klerk faced a similar situation when he decided to abolish minority rule in that country.
Jonathan said that de Klerk’s marriage to his wife, Marike, broke down after he took that decision.
“But that is the only decision that made South Africa to still be a global player. If by this time w still have minority rule in South africa, nobody would have been talking about South Africa in the present generation,” he said.
He said that ministers who served under him should brace themselves for “persecution” following his loss and his decision to concede defeat.
Buhari, a former military leader, is scheduled to be sworn into office on May 29.
Author: Musa Saidykhan
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Sporting KC hosts the Philadelphia Union in midweek matchup at Sporting Park
KANSAS CITY, KAN. ----- Sporting Kansas City will look to add to their League-leading four shutouts at home this season as they host the Philadelphia Union on Wednesday at Sporting Park.
The match is set to kick off at 7:30 p.m. CT and will be televised on KMCI's 38 The Spot and SKCTV with pregame coverage beginning at 7 p.m. CT.
A limited number of tickets are still available for the match including an exclusive $40 ticket package. The offer features a reserved seat, free drink coupon and entrance to an Art gallery on the Ivy Funds Executive Level. The Gallery will feature works from local artists who were inspired by the beautiful game and all proceeds from the event will be donated to The Victory Project and Arts KC.
Sporting Kansas City enters the match in first place in the Eastern Conference (5-2-2, 17 pts.) and is undefeated at home in 2014. Sporting KC has allowed only one goal at home this season, a 90th-minute equalizer by FC Dallas defender Matt Hedges on March 15. Sporting KC is in the midst of a 360-minute shutout streak at home dating back to Hedges' goal.
In the clubs' last meeting, Sporting KC defeated the Philadelphia Union 2-1 in the final game of the 2013 regular season. Graham Zusi and Lawrence Olum each scored for Sporting KC in the road victory, while Jack McInerney converted the lone tally for Philadelphia. McInerney was traded to Montreal last month in exchange for Montreal Impact forward Andrew Wenger.
Sporting Kansas City defeated McInerney and the Impact 3-0 at Stade Saputo last weekend. With two goals on Saturday, Dom Dwyer has now scored four goals in two matches against Montreal this season. Dwyer's six goals in 2014 are tied for fourth most in MLS.
Philadelphia are 1-5-5 in 2014 with their lone victory coming on March 15 against the New England Revolution. The Union's five draws in 2014 are third most in MLS this year.
Union midfielder Maurice Edu, who joined the MLS side on loan from Turkish Süper Lig side Bursaspor in January, was named to the U.S. Men's National Team 30-man provisional roster for the 2014 FIFA World Cup on Monday. Sporting KC's Matt Besler and Graham Zusi were also named to the roster. All three players will be available for selection on Wednesday and will join the USMNT in Palo Alto, California on Thursday.
Parking lots are accessible three hours prior to kickoff on Wednesday with gates opening at 5:30 p.m. CT. Fans can follow the match online at www.SportingKC.com/GameOn or @SKCGameday on Twitter.
Posted by Nick Sloan at 7:38 AM
Labels: Sporting Kansas City, Sports
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« Another New Author
Modern Kings »
Free Labor, Free Land, Free Men
September 2nd, 2011 - by Elise
Have you ever wondered about the origins of the Republican Party? Well, I have. I am dismayed at some of the things the Republican Party is doing, and being affiliated with the Republican Party for my entire life as a registered voter, I decided to do a little research on what it was all originally about.
Step 1 of my research took me to how the party was formed and what the original Party Platform said. The Republican Party officially began in 1856. Prior to that, the grass roots meetings first began in Wisconsin and moved quickly to Michigan. Lincoln was elected as President of the United States on the Republican Party ticket just four years later. I find it amazing that a political party could grow that much in so short a time.
The official platform as set forth at the first Republican Party Convention–in Philadelphia–was primarily an anti-slavery document. The slogan that they advertised was “Free Labor, Free Land, Free Men,” free labor meaning no slave labor, free land meaning no slave plantations, and free men meaning, well, free men. (Wikipedia: Republican Party)
The opening paragraph of the official platform established the main ideals of the new party as being anti-slavery. The Republican Party declared that they were opposed to the Missouri Compromise, opposed to the present administration’s policies (Democratic President Franklin Pierce), opposed to the expansion of slavery, in favor of admitting Kansas to the Union as a free State, and in favor of restoring the Federal Government “to the principles of Washington and Jefferson.” (Republican Platform 1856)
There were a few things that surprised me. First was this: “it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery” (ibid). I’m guessing that their feelings toward polygamy were partially tied to their ideas about Mormons. (Just a guess.)
The next thing that surprised me was that the Republican Party was eager for federal funds to build a railroad clear out to the Pacific Ocean as well as funds to improve the canal and harbor systems throughout the States.
There were very few things in the platform that hinted at the small-government ideals for which the Republican Party is known (or supposedly was once known). I’m anxious to learn just when the Republican Party began espousing those beliefs. So to summarize the original platform:
#1. NO TO SLAVERY
#2. NO TO POLYGAMY
#3. YES TO FEDERAL FUNDS FOR THE RAILROAD
#4. YES TO FEDERAL FUNDS FOR BUILDING CANALS AND SUCH
I can only confidently say that I agree with them on #1.
The next step in my research is the platform of 1872. Maybe in there I’ll find something more substantial that makes me feel like I belong in the Republican Party.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 2nd, 2011 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2 Responses to “Free Labor, Free Land, Free Men”
Interesting stuff; I can’t say I’m too surprised though. Unfortunately political parties are less about values and ideas and more about organizing voters, but the Republican party has a history of abandoning principles of liberty in favor of popular “moral” positions. I once watched a debate among several republicans seeking the party’s nomination for U.S Senate. The debate moderators asked whether the candidates believed the U.S. should continue to support Israel’s military by providing money, weapons, and training. One candidate said no, favoring non-intervention; the others each had different reasons for saying yes. The surprise came when one of the candidates said that he believed the U.S. should support and defend Israel because as a Christian nation we had to protect God’s chosen people. The crowd fervently applauded. I was baffled.
I apologize for the length of this comment, but here is Lincoln’s summary of the Republican party platform with respect to the issue of slavery, from the sixth debate he had with Stephen Douglas:
We have in this nation this element of domestic slavery. It is a matter of absolute certainty that it is a disturbing element. It is the opinion of all the great men who have expressed an opinion upon it, that it is a dangerous element. We keep up a controversy in regard to it. That controversy necessarily springs from difference of opinion; and if we can learn exactly—can reduce to the lowest elements—what this difference of opinion is, we shall perhaps be better prepared for discussing the different systems of policy that we would propose in regard to that disturbing element. I suggest that the difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong.
The Republican party think it wrong; we think it is a moral, a social, and a political wrong. We think it is a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its tendency, to say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole nation. Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far as we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in the run of time there may be some promise of an end to it. We have a due regard to the actual presence of it amongst us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and all the constitutional obligations thrown about it. I suppose that in reference both to its actual existence in the nation, and to our constitutional obligations, we have no right at all to disturb it in the States where it exists, and we profess that we have no more inclination to disturb it than we have the right to do it
We go further than that; we don’t propose to disturb it where, in one instance, we think the Constitution would permit us. We think the Constitution would permit us to disturb it in the District of Columbia. Still, we do not propose to do that, unless it should be in terms which I don’t suppose the nation is very likely soon to agree to,—the terms of making the emancipation gradual, and compensating the unwilling owners. Where we suppose we have the constitutional right, we restrain ourselves in reference to the actual existence of the institution and the difficulties thrown about it. We also oppose it as an evil, so far as it seeks to spread itself. We insist on the policy that shall restrict it to its present limits. We don’t suppose that in doing this we violate anything due to the actual presence of the institution, or anything due to the constitutional guarantees thrown around it
We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain way, upon which I ought perhaps to address you a few words. We do not propose that when Dred Scott has been decided to be a slave by the court, we, as a mob, will decide him to be free. We do not propose that, when any other one, or one thousand, shall be decided by that court to be slaves, we will in any violent way disturb the rights of property thus settled; but we nevertheless do oppose that decision as a political rule which shall be binding on the voter to vote for nobody who thinks it wrong, which shall be binding on the members of Congress or the President to favor no measure that does, not actually concur with the principles of that decision. We do not propose to be bound by it as a political rule in that way, because we think it lays the foundation, not merely of enlarging and spreading out what we consider an evil, but it lays the foundation for spreading that evil into the States themselves. We propose so resisting it as to have it reversed if we can, and a new judicial rule established upon this subject. I will add this, that if there be any man who does not believe that slavery is wrong in the three aspects which I have mentioned, or in any one of them, that man is misplaced, and ought to leave us. While, on the other hand, if there be any man in the Republican party who is impatient over the necessity springing from its actual presence, and is impatient of the constitutional guarantees thrown around it, and would act in disregard of these, he too is misplaced, standing with us. He will find his place somewhere else; for we have a due regard, so far as we are capable of understanding them, for all these things. This, gentlemen, as well as I can give it, is a plain statement of our principles in their enormity.
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Extra TVUN
OPED: UN moratorium on the death penalty
By Mohammed Bedjaoui Reprint | | Print |
Nov 16 2012 (IPS) - *Mohammed Bedjaoui, Commissioner, International Commission against the Death Penalty
We live in a turbulent world, in which humanity faces many challenges, and too often hope seems in short supply. But on one particular social issue – set to be high on the international community’s agenda over forthcoming weeks – real progress is being made and further positive change is possible.
That issue is capital punishment. Across humanity’s sprawling and diverse global community, there is a growing and deepening recognition that this abhorrent practice has no place in modern and effective justice systems.
This week the United Nation’s Social, Humanitarian Cultural Affairs Committee, more commonly known as the UN’s Third Committee, will debate and vote on a resolution calling for a global moratorium on the death penalty. Following this, the resolution will be tabled at the 67th UN General Assembly in December.
If successful, the resolution – although, as with all such UN resolutions, not legally binding – will send a powerful political and moral message to the minority of countries still clinging to capital punishment that it is time to turn away from this cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.
It is hard to overstate progress on this issue. A watershed moment came five years ago when, in December 2007, the UN’s 62nd General Assembly first adopted a resolution calling for a universal moratorium on the death penalty, with a view to abolition. It was a historic victory for justice, achieved despite a tense behind-the-scenes saga of political attempts to weaken or even destroy the resolution.
The achievement was reinforced by two further UN General Assembly resolutions, in Decembers 2008 and 2010. On each occasion, the vote supporting the call for a moratorium gathered strength: rising from 104 votes to 106 and then 109, while those states voting negatively fell from 54 to 46 to 41.
These groundbreaking developments are important because the death penalty is a toxic and destructive punishment that causes untold injustice and suffering. Clearly, it is cruel and a violation of the right to life. Clearly too, execution is irrevocable and there is no appeal from the grave.
Yet capital punishment is also deeply and fundamentally flawed. Executions do not deliver public safety or deter violent crime – instead they endorse violence, sometimes fueling cycles of violence and retribution. It is no surprise the states that have abolished the death penalty often have lower murder rates than those that have yet to do so.
The death penalty is also frequently used in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner, sometimes for political reasons and sometimes after unfair trials – or even after confessions extracted under torture or duress.
So it is welcome to see the UN’s inspiring resolutions being accompanied by a global trend towards abolition that has gathered pace dramatically in recent years.
As recently as the late 1970s, only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Today, abolitionist nations are the overwhelming majority. More than two-thirds of nations, over 150 countries according to the UN, have now rejected the death penalty or do not carry out executions. In 2011, only 21 out of 198 countries carried out executions: a drop of more than a third over the last decade.
Nevertheless, there is no room for complacency, and the forthcoming UN vote for a global moratorium is a key opportunity for nations to take a stand against this ultimate denial of human rights.
There are hopes that several nations that previously voted negatively or abstained will have the foresight and political courage to vote positively on this occasion. In Africa, Asia and the Greater Caribbean there are countries that have not carried out executions for years – sometimes for decades. Some of these countries also take legal and humanitarian action to protect their citizens from the death penalty in third countries.
It is to be hoped that such states will also support this year’s UN resolution, and that they will seize the opportunity to strengthen respect for the ‘right to life’. By supporting the call for a global moratorium on the death penalty, they can take a bold step towards ensuring better, fairer justice around the world. Future generations will wonder why we waited so long.
*Mohammed Bedjaoui is a Commissioner of the International Commission against the Death Penalty – an independent body led by a group of high-profile Commissioners from across the world. Mr Bedjaoui is former Foreign Minister of Algeria (2005-2007), and Judge, International Court of Justice (1982-2001). See www.icomdp.org
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New Study Suggests Polynesians and South Americans Met around 1200 CE
A new study published in Nature used DNA analysis to determine that South Americans and Polynesians made contact around 1200 CE and had children together. Alexander Ioannidis of Stanford led a team analyzing DNA from French Polynesia and South America, and they found indigenous South American DNA in Polynesia. Although Ioannidis believes that first contact likely happened when Polynesians reached South America, the evidence of Colombian DNA in Polynesia implies that the Americans sailed westward and landed in Polynesia, perhaps getting stranded there. According to Ioannidis, the evidence suggests a single contact event, since all of the Colombian DNA seems to derive from the same source (the Zenu people) at the same time.
New Journal Article Claims Younger Dryas Comet Destroyed Ancient Syrian Village
This week, my 70-something aunt said that she and my uncle weren’t concerned about coronavirus or the precautions in place to prevent its spread because she believes it is a Democratic Party hoax to take down Donald Trump after impeachment failed. She thinks the whole world is conspiring to fake the disease to hurt Trump. My father told me that a friend of his said his ex-wife has the same belief. As my aunt and uncle aged, they moved steadily to the right, going from blue collar Democrats who proudly framed photos of themselves with Clintons in the 1990s to staunch Republicans after 9/11 and becoming die-hard Trump supporters in 2016 thanks to a combination of nationalism, xenophobia, and cultural anxieties. So that’s where we are as a country. Regular Fox News consumers have developed bizarre ideas about what the network had called the “Virus Impeachment Scam” until late last week, and now there’s no good way to undo it.
Ken Ham Complains PBS Documentary Focuses Too Much on Stupid Parts of Ark Encounter and Creationism
This week, creationist Ken Ham threw a fit over a 2019 documentary, We Believe in Dinosaurs, which aired this month on PBS as part of the Independent Lens series. He accused the documentary of being biased against creationism because it depicted, accurately, the appearance of dinosaurs in Ham’s “Ark Encounter” recreation of Noah’s Ark in Kentucky. “It turned out to be an agenda-driven propaganda piece focusing on dinosaurs and the Ark Encounter, where dinosaurs represent only a tiny fraction of the exhibits at the Ark,” Ham wrote. That’s a bit like complaining that histories of Germany always mention that Hitler fellow even though he was only in power for 12 years.
Steven Pinker Says Historians "Historicize Everything" and Hate Science
For a few minutes, I thought I would write a lengthy analysis of Steven Pinker’s recent Twitter rant in which the Harvard psychologist and popular writer alleges that historians of science are biased against science and are actively working to destroy science’s claim to objectivity by forcing people to read about the history of science rather than its conclusions.
Do We Need a New Academic Field of "Progress Studies"?
Before we begin today, let’s briefly discuss the ratings for the final episode of America Unearthed. The season finale pulled in 454,000 viewers, about on par with the season’s average, but losing 80,000 viewers from the rerun of Expedition Unknown that served as its lead-in. As of this writing, the Travel Channel had not announced whether it would cancel or renew the series. I’d have a hard time justifying renewing a show that brings in fewer viewers than a rerun, but the show does well on streaming services, which might make it a more attractive purchase. We’ll have to wait and see.
Andrew Collins Suggests Denisovans Built "Monuments" Associated with Atlantis
At the American Association of Physical Anthropology Conference in Cleveland last week, a team of researchers presented evidence that humans in Papua New Guinea may have interbred with a population of Denisovans as recently as 15,000 years ago, citing genetic evidence that genomes they tested contained evidence of two separate infusions of Denisovan DNA. The first came around 50,000 years ago. The second occurred sometime after, and the researchers suspect it occurred around 15,000 years ago. The scientists, led by Murray Cox of the Massey University in New Zealand, also said that the Denisovans living on the mainland in southeast Asia were as genetically different from the better-known Siberian Denisovans as they were from Neanderthals.
Study: Flat Earthers Believe Because of YouTube Conspiracy Videos
Due to prior commitments this week, some of my blog posts are going to be a bit on the short side. Today I want to discuss a recent presentation discussing the results of interviews with Flat Earth believers at two conferences in 2017 and 2018. Speaking Sunday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting, researchers who spoke with more thirty attendees placed the blame squarely on YouTube for creating a community of Flat Earth believers and providing the means for Flat Earth leaders to propagandize a credulous audience. An article in the Guardian summarized their findings:
Micah Hanks Asks If American Science Is Uniquely Hostile to Anomalies
I spent a big chunk of my writing time yesterday at the doctor’s office waiting to be diagnosed with a viral sinus infection, presumably the same one my son picked up at his toddler play group a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, the congestion and coughing had gotten quite bad and I had to try to do something about it. Unfortunately, the doctor said that there is almost nothing that can be done other than the usual treatments for cold-like symptoms. It has made it hard to focus and concentrate, which has made me something less than enthusiastic about writing.
Review of "Our Cosmic Ancestry" by Chandra Wickramasinghe et al.
Our Cosmic Ancestry in the Stars: The Panspermia Revolution and the Origins of Humanity
Chandra Wickramasinghe, Kamala Wickramasinghe, and Gensuke Tokoro | May 2019 | Bear & Company | 144 pages | ISBN: 978-1591433286 | $14.00
The idea that life on Earth originated in the stars is an old one, dating back in some sense to the Greeks, and pursued in earnest by a number of twentieth century scientists. It is a distinct possibility, although one for which evidence is currently lacking. In recent years, Chandra Wickramasinghe has pursued this line of thought in extreme and absurd directions, writing a number of books making very broad claims that panspermia isn’t just real but that viruses from space continue to infect and direct the development of Earth life even today. He has taken these claims to Ancient Aliens, where he recently appeared. In reading the new book he cowrote with Kamala Wickramasinghe and Gensuke Tokoro, Our Cosmic Ancestry in the Stars, I expected to read about these things, but I did not expect to read what was basically a New Age manifesto about how capitalism is the fault of evil demon viruses from space or a call to adopt a Buddhist-inflected form of communism as the one true scientific lifestyle.
Massimo Pigliucci Takes on Michael Shermer's Limited View of Moral Philosophy
Last week, Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine published a column in Scientific American describing his view of moral philosophy, arguing against a heavily simplified form of utilitarianism and in favor of natural rights theory. This, in turn, garnered a response from philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, who pointed out Shermer’s gross oversimplification of the complexities of philosophy, and Shermer responded on Twitter by claiming to already know and understand the aspects of philosophy that Piglucci pointed out, but without explaining why he chose to ignore two centuries of philosophical development in order to rail against a version of utilitarianism that went out of fashion in the 1830s.
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The Greyhound Shuffle: Sun Down, then Bounce Back
I have the worst breed of dog.
The kind that takes selfies in portrait mode.
It's called an Italian Greyhound, and it is a nightmare beast whose very existence spits in God's eye.
Don't get me wrong. I love my "iggy." I love him like a son. He's an attractive, gentle, affectionate dog and a lovely companion. It's not his fault he was put into the frail, skeletal body of a joke breed that has no right to exist.
A bit about Italian greyhounds, before I begin speaking about my own specifically. The smallest breed of sight hound, this breed is a couple thousand years ago. They are called "Italian" not because they originated in Italy, but because of their popularity during the Italian Renaissance, when you might recall seeing various paintings and tapestries of noble women in elaborate, frilly dresses holding one of these bug-eyed gargoyles. They were bred by clever Turkish traders who figured out that Italian noblewomen were gah-gah over these dogs and would pay top dollar for puppies. (There's some debate about their origin, as we've seen primitive sighthounds at sites like Pompeii. However, it seems like the modern Italian greyhound has a genetic origin further east than Italy, and the "original" sighthounds of the Mediterranean have been lost.)
The reason for the dogs' popularity was simple. Sight hounds were a symbol of nobility... for men. For women in the 16th century, your options were rather limited by your gender, especially if you were someone important. But one thing you could always opt for was as a nurturer, caregiver, and/or bearer of children. And what better way to express your maternal prowness than with a dog that was literally designed to emulate the helpless, pathetic, baby-like need for attention?
Catherine the Great loved iggies like Queen Elizabeth loves Corgis.
Italian greyhounds are one of the few breeds truly bred solely for companionship. They were never made to hunt, race, or be useful in any discernible way. What they're great at is being affectionate, and to be honest, they're sort of annoying when you get right down to it, because they are demanding of affection. They will cuddle you whether you want to cuddle them or not, and because they are so pointy, their snuggling comes with a lot of sharp edges. They're all elbows.
The funny thing about dog breeds is that people who are really into breeds don't like to speak poorly of them. So there are few Italian greyhound enthusiasts who will tell you the honest truth about this breed, which is that they are mind-bogglingly stupid and resplendent with health problems. Their teeth are a nightmare and they are difficult, if not impossible, to house train. Their spindly little frames and bird-like bones are eager to break, and their voices are shrill and sharp and unpleasant.
The lifespan according to the AKC is about 13 years, but the average lifespan is actually about 9, because a quarter of these dogs die from accidents, which, if you're an Italian greyhound, can be something as seemingly innocuous as jumping off the couch and breaking a leg.
Why, then, would anyone want one of these creatures?
Well, they're cute.
Not necessarily this one.
Make no mistake, they are really cute. Their buggy eyes, their body shape and weight, their human-like mannerisms were all designed to evoke a fierce desire to protect. They are the dog equivalent of a cuckoo egg; even the most rational of humans can't help but feel a deep, instinctual, material desire to protect these little baby imposters. And they get cold so they have to wear clothes. And their skin, paper-thin and overly warm, is as soft as velvet. So there are definite pros to this dog. None that I would consider a big enough boon to justify the continued breeding of them. Frankly, if not for human meddling with the natural order of things, their obvious inbreeding and terrible genetic problems should have wiped them out centuries ago.
But although I think we should allow the breed itself to die out, I also think that the individuals who exist currently should be taken care of, and that brings me to Carlisle.
Enjoy this rare photo of Carlisle in good health.
All that follow are a hell of a lot less flattering.
Carlisle has been with me for 11 (going on 12) years, and according to my brother-in-law, he has both the frailty and yet the surprising robustness of Mr. Burns. Also according to my brother-in-law he has "Three Stooges Syndrome," the same condition as Mr. Burns.
But we've finally hit "the big one." In California, "the big one" refers to the earthquake that will someday plunge us into the Pacific ocean. Here in my house, "the big one" refers to the seizure that will finally do Carlisle in.
It started a few weeks ago, when Andrew observed that Carlisle had lost weight. This was true. At his biggest, Carlisle was 12 pounds, but he had begun to get skinnier. Sight hounds aren't a dog with a lot of weight to lose and, within a month, Carlisle had begun to look emaciated beyond reason, as if he'd made a political mistake in North Korea and been sent to one of those camps. (This isn't a joke; this is both how he looks and how things work in North Korea, and someone really ought to do something about the latter.)
It was something we had partially overlooked because it was a gradual, and also because, in the "cold" months, Carlisle, like most Italian greyhounds, wears fleece sweaters to keep himself warm. But at a certain point his weight loss became so obvious that we had to take him into the vet. That, and he had stopped eating, further concerning us.
This is after he regained a pound.
I have more graphic images but honestly they're too sad.
A general rule for dog owners: you should be able to see, but not count, the ribs.
There, they diagnosed him with the usual handful of disorders but could offer no solution as to why he had lost so much weight. A blood test revealed his albumin levels were in the garbage. Albumin is a blood component your liver makes that helps blood maintain its viscosity; without it, blood gets thin and watery, and can leak out of your veins.
This explained it when, a few days post-vet, Carlisle began throwing up blood. Weak from hunger, he staggered around the house, his back end barely holding him up. It was hard to tell how much of his condition was muscle loss and how much was motor control loss; Carlisle's epilepsy has always made him wobbly, but now, he needed a box to step up onto the couch and bed. Jumping was out of the question.
It seemed like it was time to say good-bye. But, as has happened before, Carlisle simply didn't die.
He's alive in this photo, I swear.
He slept for a week, getting up only when we roused him, usually to try to entice him with food: chicken nuggets, scrambled egg, Pop-Tarts. (The Pop-Tarts were a bigger hit than the chicken, for some reason.) (Maybe the colorful grey sprinkles on top?)
And then, suddenly, he got better.
Relatively.
He spends most of his time sitting like this, eyes unfocused and tongue hanging out.
There's no rhyme or reason to how Carlisle operates. Every few years, he teeters on the edge of death, and then comes back with a sleepy innocence that implies he has no clue what just happened or why everyone seems so upset.
"The greyhound shuffle is not just a dance, 'k? ...it's a state of unrest."
Now, I will say his bounce-back wasn't entirely 100%. It wasn't even 50%. He only gained back one pound and he's still underweight. His balance is atrocious and he still needs his box. His tongue hangs out the side of his mouth now, and his general functioning seems slower and... well... worse. But he's alive.
The "greyhound shuffle" is steps back, then steps forward, but never quite as far forward as he initially was. Carlisle has been back-and-forthing for over a decade on the precipice of death, sort of in the same way he'll go back-and-forth as he tries to figure out how to jump onto the couch. (Solution: he never gets there. He gets caught in a neurological loop and keeps up the repetitive behavior until another dog attacks him, at which point the humans intervene to muzzle the other dog and help him up.)
We're happy he's "better" (a relative, not accurate, term) but also emotionally wrung out. With a baby on the way, Carlisle picked a bad time to start yet another slide into the grave. We don't have as much money, time, or energy as we normally would. I would argue the emotional cost is the worst. But none of them are inexpensive.
The most important thing, to us, is that he's not in pain. He doesn't seem to be. He seems relatively happy, all things considered, and we're trying to give him a peaceful transition. But it's a slow one and it's hard to watch. Especially as his motor control and mobility get worse and worse.
The moral of this story, of course, is not to get a fancy dog, because purebred does not mean "healthy," nor "smart," nor "trainable." Carlisle has been staggering around the house in diapers for weeks with his tongue hanging out and his clothes loosely draped over his boney frame while the Seamus the mutt, who is two years older and was found in a dumpster, runs circles around him.
I love my dog. I just don't love what he is.
A beautiful fucking disaster.
Hang in there, little guy.
Update on the In-Laws: A Serving of Piping Hot Tea
Why I Fucking Hate Yelp
The Strange Case of Louie, Louie (and the Profanit...
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National Practice
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Health Information Privacy & Security
Malware Attack Exposes Security Flaws, Leads to $150,000 HIPAA Breach Settlement
Stanton J. Stock
On Monday, December 8th, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of Civil Rights (OCR), issued a bulletin about its $150,000 settlement with Anchorage Community Mental Health Services (ACMHS), relating to potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Security Rule. OCR’s bulletin is available here. The settlement agreement is available here.
The HIPAA Breach Notification Rule, 45 CFR §§ 164.400-414, requires HIPAA covered entities to provide notification to HHS following a breach of unsecured protected health information. After notification is provided, OCR investigates whether covered entities complied with the applicable provisions of the Privacy and Security Rules. If OCR identifies violations, it may pursue a civil money penalty in the amount of $100-$50,000 per violation, up to a maximum penalty of $1.5 million for identical violations. In determining the appropriate amount of a penalty, OCR will consider several factors, including the nature and extent of the violation, the nature and extent of resulting harm, the covered entity’s history of compliance, and the covered entity’s financial condition.
ACMHS is a five-facility, nonprofit organization providing behavioral health care services in Anchorage, Alaska. On March 2, 2012, ACMHS reported a breach of unsecured electronic protected health information (ePHI) affecting 2,743 individuals. The breach occurred over the span of approximately two weeks, from December 20, 2011, through January 4, 2012. The breach was caused by malware that had been installed on a desktop computer.
OCR initiated an investigation and alleged that ACMHS violated HIPAA’s Security Rule in at least three ways. First, OCR alleged that ACMHS failed to conduct an accurate and thorough assessment of the potential risks to the confidentiality and availability of its ePHI, in violation of 45 C.F.R. § 164.308(a)(1)(ii)(A). OCR provides a Security Rule Risk Assessment Tool, which is available here. Second, although ACMHS adopted sample policies and procedures requiring the implementation of security measures, OCR alleged ACMHS altogether failed to implement its policies and procedures, in violation of 45 C.F.R. § 164.308(a)(1)(ii)(B). Third, OCR alleged ACMHS failed to implement basic technical security measures to guard against a breach, including ensuring that adequate firewalls were in place and that information technology resources were both supported and regularly updated with available patches. The bulletin describes these measures as part of a “common sense approach to assessing and addressing the risks to ePHI on a regular basis[.]”
ACMHS complied with OCR’s investigation and ultimately agreed to settle the alleged violations for a total civil monetary penalty of $150,000. In addition to the penalty, the settlement agreement includes a corrective action plan and requires ACMHS to report on the state of its compliance to OCR for two years.
The settlement highlights an important issue for HIPAA covered entities. As the health care industry rapidly transitions towards technology-based care, proper compliance requires frequently assessing ePHI security risks and updating protective measures. It is not enough to simply adopt model security policies and procedures. Policies and procedures must be effectively implemented, periodically renewed and updated as necessary to address new threats and changes in the organization's operations and structure.
Hooper, Lundy & Bookman assists clients with federal and state medical-privacy law compliance, including assessing and addressing security risks and responding to breaches of privacy.
For more information, please contact: In San Francisco, Steve Phillips or Paul Smith at 415.875.8500; in Los Angeles, Hope Levy-Biehl or Amy Joseph at 310.551.8111; in San Diego, Jennifer Hansen or Stanton Stock at 619.744.7300; and in Washington, D.C., Kelly Carroll. 202.580.7700.
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2021 Plenary Speakers
Documenting and Measuring Spiritual Care
Chaplain Documentation in the ICU
Brittany Lee, MD(s), Duke University
Farr Curlin, MD, Duke University
Philip Choi, MD, Duke University
Addressing a patient’s spiritual concerns is widely embraced as central to holistic care, emphasized by a shift from the biopsychosocial model to the biopsychosociospiritual model. Spiritual care is particularly salient in the intensive care unit (ICU), as addressing spirituality is more important to patients with more severe illness. Additionally, patients’ and their families’ spiritual beliefs are known to affect their end-of-life care decisions. Hospital based chaplains are trained both to conduct spiritual assessments and to help with clinical decision-making.
Although the role of the hospital chaplain is still debated, many have argued in recent years that the work of chaplains should become more evidence-based. Similarly, leaders in the field have emphasized documentation of chaplain visits to allow multidisciplinary review of the spiritual assessment and plan. However, the format of chaplain documentation remains variable, even within single institutions. Despite widespread support for chaplains addressing spiritual concerns in the ICU, chaplains’ activities in this setting – and the documentation of such activities – have not been adequately studied.
This study seeks to characterize chaplain documentation in the ICU. We examined all chaplain notes in the medical record for all patients admitted to the adult ICUs of a major medical center in the southeastern United States over a six month period. At this institution, chaplain notes consist of a close-ended checklist and an optional entry of free-text. This study focused on the free-text from those chaplain notes that included such an entry. Each text entry was coded and analyzed for emergent themes through an iterative process of qualitative textual analysis. The analysis focused on what chaplains document doing during the patient encounter, clinical information, the setting, the patient’s story, and comments about the spiritual plan.
Several themes emerged from this analysis. Among them, we found that chaplains often use code language, such as “facilitated expressions of lament” or “compassionate presence,” to recapitulate interventions already documented in the checklist of ministry interventions. Second, chaplains’ notes focused much on describing the setting, such as who was present in the patient’s room. Few notes provided any information about the patient or their family that was not otherwise accessible by members of the healthcare team. In particular, few notes described the patient’s story or any spiritual dimensions of the patient’s experience.
This study of chaplain notes in the ICU suggests that recent emphasis on evidence-based practice of chaplains may be leading, at least in the medical center we studied, to a shift in chaplains’ documentation towards reduced, mechanical language insufficient in illuminating patients’ individual stories.
The Assessment and Relevance of a Child’s Spiritual Formation and Religious Identity in the Diagnosis and Management of Mental Illness
Theodote K. Pontikes, MD, Loyola University
The spiritual dimension of a child’s psyche has been recognized as contributory to character formation, as well as to cognitive and moral development. However, it is an area that has traditionally been under-researched. In assessing risk and protective factors regarding the predisposition and precipitants to mental illness, an understanding of a child’s evolving religious identity can be an important and meaningful variable in diagnostic clarification that informs treatment planning towards building resilience and optimizing a child’s overall developmental trajectory. The exploration of a child’s premorbid worldview should include an examination of the entire family system’s religious beliefs, both in theory and practice, and their impact on daily functioning. The purpose of this paper is to review approaches of researching the formation of religious identity from an interdisciplinary perspective and to understand, via case examples, the application and implications of this research in clinical practice, towards supporting a child’s development of a meaningful, integrated sense of self. The stage progression of faith and identity from infancy to adolescence will be discussed, with a comparative review of similarities and differences among religious traditions. The role and influence of the psychiatrist’s respective faith tradition and identity, as well as the management of any transference and/or counter-transference issues will be examined. A discussion of barriers to assessing the role of religious identity in the diagnosis and management of mental illness in children and the potential adverse consequences will also be addressed. Lastly, the inclusion of religious institutions and professionals as a resource in the healing process of children with mental illness will be considered.
Clinical Applications of the Meaning Systems Interview
Stuart Nelson, MA, Institute for Spirituality and Health
Interactions between patients and physicians regarding religious and spiritual matters have been found to increase quality of care and patient satisfaction, particularly at the end of life. While patients report the desire to engage in religious and spiritual (R/S) discussions with their physicians, physicians report that worries about intrusiveness, manipulation, and cultural competency often prevent them from taking such steps. Several spiritual assessments, including the popular FICA and HOPE models, have been promoted as means to address these concerns, to varying degrees of success.
This paper introduces the Meaning Systems Interview (MSI) as a means to bolster the scope and utility of existing assessments so that physicians (and other caregivers) are able to feel more equipped to initiate R/S discussions and to deal with them responsibly as they arise. These efforts move towards an answer to “How should particular spiritual and religious needs of patients be addressed and by whom?”
To create MSI, a research team (UC Santa Barbara) modified and infused James Fowler’s Faith Development Interview with language compatible with Ann Taves’ Building Blocks Approach for the study of religions, which is rooted in cognitive linguistics, psychology of religion, and the comparative history of religions. The result is an interdisciplinary, cross-culturally stable means for understanding and evaluating systems of meaning within or without the context of religious traditions.
Originally, MSI was created to evaluate meaning-system narratives that had been both recorded and preserved historically and elicited clinically and ethnographically. The team that created the interview asked: How can we gather data (analyze narratives) in a more systematic way that will allow us to:
Examine what scholars place under the heading of “religion” and “spirituality” as broadly conceived as possible and without worrying about whether we capture “too much”
in a way that is workable (translatable) across times and cultures
and amenable to both humanistic (qualitative) and scientific (quantitative) modes of analysis?
In settings such as urban hospitals where interviewees may have mental health concerns, a history of emotional and physical trauma, or other medical circumstances, systems of meaning vary from traditional to highly unusual. It is in these circumstances that an interdisciplinary, cross culturally stable tool such as MSI seems ideal.
The interview has been tested both formally and informally over the last two years in diverse contexts, yielding encouraging results that speak to its efficacy as an assessment. Most recently, MSI was used as the foundation for a spiritual care initiative at The Women’s Home, a non-profit organization that guides at-risk clients through an 18-month comprehensive recovery program addressing both physical and mental health. Though the population was extremely diverse with regards to religious and spiritual outlooks, the interview allowed for a genuine conversation to take place between care providers and clients in a group context.
In summary, this paper covers the need for and creation of MSI, as well as its implementation and future directions in clinical contexts.
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Franklin Graham Denies He's Homophobic: 'I Don't Bash Homosexuals'
During an appearance on Fox News, social conservative Franklin Graham, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, denied he's homophobic.
Graham has been criticized for forcing workers and volunteers at the makeshift field hospital his non-profit Samaritan's Purse has set up in New York's Central Park to sign a statement of faith which denies the existence of transgender people, rejects same-sex marriage, and states that the “unrighteous” will go to hell. The field hospital is treating victims of the coronavirus pandemic as New York City hospitals reach capacity.
Appearing on The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham asked with an incredulous look on her face, “Why are you being attacked for building a field hospital? What's going on?”
“We have a statement of faith, Laura,” Graham answered. “We believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. And that’s – that goes back to the beginning of time to the first man and woman that God created. And this is our standard, and so for people that we hire – we are a Christian organization.”
“We are a religious organization, so we want to hire people of like mind, and we have a statement of faith that we require our employees to sign. And in that is ‘a marriage is between a man and a woman’ and this is very offensive to some people and the gay community.”
(Related: Franklin Graham prepared to have his head “chopped off” for opposing gay rights.)
“And listen, I’m not homophobic, and I’m certainly not going around bashing people because they may be homosexual. I believe that God loves all of us. He created us all, but we also are sinners, and our sins separate us from God. And I want people to know how they can have a relationship with God, and that’s through faith in his son Jesus Christ.”
“So, I don’t bash homosexuals. I want homosexuals to know the truth, that God does love them,” he added.
Graham, though, is vocally opposed to LGBT rights. Last year, he criticized former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg for being gay, saying that he should repent. He has said that bathroom bills are needed to protect children and women from people who identify as transgender. And he has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for signing a law that prohibits “gay propaganda,” saying that it protects children from being exploited by the “gay and lesbian agenda.”
(Related: Franklin Graham's UK tour in doubt as venues cancel over preacher's anti-LGBT views.)
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Gallery : www.visitwallpapers.com Keyword Album: film
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PARENTWELL
Life’s a Poodle
Home » General Interest » The Power of Positive Thinking
General Interest, Parenting
By Esther Entin
Jan 19 2012, 2:04 PM ET
New research shows why coaches, teachers, parents, and other role models should consider modeling how to look on the bright side: it provides both emotional and physical benefits.
The power of positive thinking is touted in the popular press and the therapist’s office. Most adults understand that the way we think about a situation can change the way we experience it. But what about children? When and how do they learn about the connection between thoughts, feelings, and experiences?
Research has shown that this awareness evolves in early childhood and matures over many years. When children are three to four years old, they can identify emotions that occur in many typical situations. They know that birthday parties are happy times and scoldings are not. By the time they are five to six years old they have an increased awareness of the connection between thinking and feeling. By age seven many children understand that people can interpret the same situation in different ways.
A recent study investigated whether the developmental changes that take place between ages five to 10 would affect children’s knowledge of the effects of thinking positively, and whether this would in turn affect a child’s emotional response to a situation.
Ninety children were divided into three age groups: five- and six-, seven- and eight-, and nine- and 10-year-old kids. They were introduced to three pairs of characters who experienced a typically positive situation (getting a new pet), a negative situation (breaking an arm), and a neutral situation (meeting a new teacher).
One character within each pair had a positive thought that framed the event in a positive light, and one had a negative thought that framed the event in a negative light. For example, one character with a broken arm thought about having his friends sign his cast, while the other thought about how uncomfortable the cast was going to be.
The children were asked to report on each character’s feelings: How does the character feel right now? Why does the character feel that way? They were also asked to explain why one character felt better than or the same as another character. The children’s explanations were categorized as situation explanations, meaning that the situation caused the emotion, or mental state explanations, meaning that the characters’ thoughts, desires, or preferences were the reasons that the character felt an emotion.
Children in every age group predicted characters’ thinking positive as opposed to negative thoughts would have different emotions even though both characters experienced the same objective event, according to the study. The eight- to ten-year-old kids were more aware that reframing events either positively or negatively could affect a person’s emotional experience, but all the children, regardless of age, seemed to believe that when events were negative, thinking positively was not enough to make a person feel good.
“The strongest predictor of children’s knowledge about the benefits of positive thinking — besides age — was not the child’s own level of hope and optimism, but their parents,'” said Christi Bamford, assistant professor of psychology at Jacksonville University, who led the study when she was at the University of California, Davis.
The findings point to parents’ role in helping children learn how to use positive thinking to feel better when things get tough. Bamford notes: “…[P]arents should consider modeling how to look on the bright side.”
The researchers concluded that children as young as five years old had begun to develop the skills to understand how positive and negative reframing could change a person’s response to a situation. They suggest that training children to recognize the benefits of positive thinking and disadvantages of negative thinking may not only help children feel better emotionally during stressful life circumstances, but may also provide health benefits by decreasing the physical toll of stress. Parents, teachers, coaches, and others who teach and care for children can model positive reframing for children to help them learn this valuable life skill.
This article originally appeared on TheDoctorWillSeeYouNow.com, an Atlantic partner site.
benefits of positive thinkingchild's emotional responseemotional experienceoptimismpower of positive thinking
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Tomorrow, Today/
Tomorrow, Today
Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie - March 2014
Prompted by this news piece today about the Roman irrigation system discovered on the site by the archaeology team we've been working with I thought I would post a bit more on the process that led us to Tomorrow, Today our big fat cob project we're currently recruiting for!
We have now been have been working as the artists in residence on the new NWC development site for almost a year and it has been a really fascinating chance to work alongside the archaeologists and become involved with the site in a very hands-on way. As we were part of the 'first wave' of artists to be appointed we felt quite keenly that we've been given a unique chance to look back at the history of site, to record its present condition and to try and imagine the future part of the city about to be built.
At the beginning of our residency we joined the team actually digging on site, this was a very muddy, extremely cold week but one we wouldn't have missed for the world! It gave us a chance to think about all these aspects of the project whilst engaged in a very literal way with the physical place. We were completely engaged with the process of the archaeology and caught up by the enthusiasm and expertise that surrounded us on the rather windswept moon-like landscape we were digging. Somehow the archaeologists were able to transport themselves (and us) back in time and really imagine how this part of Cambridge may have previously been 100's of years ago. Meanwhile in spite of lots of fly throughs, models and talks we seemed to be finding it very difficult to imagine what these muddy fields might look like even 5 years into the future.
This experience on the dig in many ways generated both of the projects we're now exploring - Prospection and Tomorrow, Today. Prospection is a proposal for a very long term repeated survey of the new site and tries to 'forward face' the on-going creation of an archive for the place. Tomorrow, Today engages with the present nature of the site, and the current unique archaeological access to the past that been revealed through the dig.
The work will be a large-scale (circa 80m in diameter), outdoor, sculptural model of the future development - which places scale replicas of all the planned streets and buildings right next to the archaeological dig on site. This 'model village of the future' will be hand-built on location using 'cob', a traditional, ecologically-sustainable material made primarily from the earth excavated in situ by the archaeologists. The artwork will remain in place for at least a year, before being buried beneath this new part of Cambridge for future archaeologists to discover!
We're very keen for others to enjoy the experience we've had on the site and so the project offers a unique opportunity to be part of building this sculpture. We are seeking individual members of the public, and formal or informal groups of adults who would like to learn the traditional craft of cob building and to use these skills to help construct the model during its 6-week build, working with the UK's leading cob experts. Each participant will be expected to commit 5 consecutive week days to the project, which will include expert training in cob, in-person guidance from us and hands-on practice creating the model itself. Facilities, tools, parking and refreshments will all be provided.
Participants should be 18 years of age or older, and aware that whilst cob building is a safe and easy-to-learn skill, taking part in the project does require a reasonable degree of physical stamina and is regrettably not suitable for participants with limited mobility.
Interested people and groups are encouraged to register their interest as early as possible - from now until Monday 31st March. Contact cob 'at' somewhere.org.uk for more info.
Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie
Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie met while studying at Edinburgh College of Art and have collaborated as artists since 1995. In 2001 they formed the multi-disciplinary organisation Somewhere that produces ambitious and challenging projects directly engaging with audiences as well as producing films.
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Thoughts About DSM-5 and Neurodevelopmental Disorders
It was just delivered in the mail, my brand new copy of the DSM-5. After all the reviews and discussion, I don’t think there are surprises about what’s in it, so much as questions. Some questions are potentially life changing, like: “How will the changes impact diagnosis rates?”, and “Will support services change for those previously diagnosed?” (A pressing concern for the Asperger’s community.) Other questions are less crucial, but still important to many, like: “For how many years will people use terms like Asperger’s and ADD?” (Considering that ADD, as opposed to ADHD, wasn’t even in the 1994 version, my guess is these terms will be used for a long time, especially since Europe will still use the term Asperger’s. Still, I renamed my earlier incarnation of this blog from Coach for Asperger’s as soon as I heard what the APA was planning. Other terms were already working their way out of common usage, like Intellectual Disability replacing Mental Retardation, so the DSM-5 will just move things along.)
The new DSM-5 does more than just update the mental disorder map, it seismically shifts the landscape, with ripples that impact treatments, services, insurance, and education. As an example, the new category of Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder is a vast unknown to clinicians like me, since I can’t predict how often I’ll see clients with that diagnosis, nor if it will be used extensively to re-diagnose those who no longer fit into other categories. Helen Tager-Flusberg, in the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative special report on the DSM- 5, wrote an interesting review of the history of Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder from a research perspective, while John Elder Robison, on his Psychology Today blog, takes his straight-forward and practical analysis and discusses the issue that “we need to make a decision about what services will support people with the new diagnosis. Otherwise we risk doing that population a great disservice – giving them a diagnosis that leaves them nowhere, with no indicated services or therapy.”
Simon Baron-Cohen also raises the issue of services for those with SCD, but in general praises the new DSM for its combination of social and communication symptoms into one category, as well as the addition of severity levels and intellectual impairment specifiers for autism. Within the same special report, Ari Ne’eman talks about the advantages of merging Asperger’s, PDD-NOS and Autism Spectrum, and how they could result in more school and Medicaid services for those formerly identified with Asperger’s.
But far beyond these practical matters, are people: individuals, families, couples, from supportive self advocacy groups, like ASAN and GRASP, to parents support groups in so many communities, and even to how a wife thinks about her own husband’s emotional processing. Personal stories will be different, because of the words written in a 947 page book. How will the new DSM-5 impact you?
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The Most Bizarre Rituals in Human History
Posted by By Limoge
From: http://itthing.com/
Warning: Some of the images in this post cannot be unseen. If you are someone who is offended, scared or grossed out by images that are of graphic nature, we strongly recommend you do not proceed.
Murder, eating dead bodies, self-castration…the making of a horror movie? No, these are just some examples of strange rituals practiced around the world. Although most of these have ceased, some of these rather gruesome rituals are still being practiced in third world countries. And after reading through some of these, you’ll be quite glad you live in the modern world.
Masai Spitting
Among the Masai tribesmen of East Central Africa, spitting is considered an act of respect and friendship. A newborn Masai child is spit upon by friends and relatives wishing to give the child good luck. Masai tribesmen spit at each other when they meet, just as we say “Hello,” and spit again to say “Good-bye.” When two Masai make a trade in business, they spit at each other to seal the bargain. Gee, I hate to see how these people date each other!
Yanomamo Ash Eating
Located in Venezuela and Brazil, the Yanomamo tribe forbids keeping any part of the body of a deceased person. When a person dies, the body is cremated and the crushed bones are added to the ashes. The ashes are then given to the family and must be eaten.
Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual. Human sacrifice has been practiced in various cultures throughout history with the Mayans and the Aztecs being most notorious for their ritual killings. Victims were typically ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods, the spirits or the deceased. Victims ranged from prisoners to infants to Vestal Virgins who suffered such fates as burning, beheading and being buried alive.
While this practice has become less common in developing worlds, it is actually still being practiced in the least developed areas of the world where traditional beliefs still persist. (Note to self: before I go on my next vacation I must thoroughly research just where these countries are so that I don’t become some tribesman next dinner.)
Seppuku
Seppuku (or as it’s commonly known “harakiri”) is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. As part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies (and likely suffer torture), as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offenses, or performed for other reasons that had brought shame to them.
The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade, traditionally a tanto, into the abdomen and moving the blade from left to right in a slicing motion. The samurai’s attendant would then perform daki-kubi, a cut in which the warrior was all but decapitated.
Dueling
As practiced from the 11th to 20th centuries in Western societies, a duel is an engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons (usually a sword or pistols). The duel usually developed out of the desire of one party (the challenger) to redress a perceived insult to his honor. The goal of the duel was not so much to kill the opponent as to gain “satisfaction,” i.e., to restore one’s honor by demonstrating a willingness to risk one’s life for it. To decline a challenge was often equated to defeat by forfeiture, and sometimes regarded as dishonorable.
A eunuch is simply a man who has been castrated. Typically the man was castrated in order to perform a specific social function, as was common in many societies of the past. In ancient China castration was both a traditional punishment (and a means of gaining employment in the Imperial service. At the end of the Ming Dynasty there were 70,000 eunuchs in the Imperial palace. The value of such employment—certain eunuchs gained immense power that may have superseded that of the prime ministers—was such that self-castration had to be made illegal. Eunuchs castrated before puberty were also valued and trained in several cultures for their exceptional voices, which retained a childlike and other-worldly flexibility and treble pitch. Such eunuchs were known as castrati.
A concubine is generally a woman in an ongoing, matrimonial-like relationship with a man, whom she cannot marry for a specific reason. The reason may be because she is of lower social rank than the man or because the man is already married. Generally, only men of high economic and social status have concubines. Many historical rulers maintained concubines as well as wives. As concubines, these women have limited rights of support from the men, and while their offspring were publically acknowleldged as the man’s children, they were however, deemed having lower social status than the children born by the official wife or wives.
Foot binding was a custom practiced on young girls and women for approximately one thousand years in China, beginning in the 10th century and ending in the first half of 20th century. Multiple theories attempt to explain the origin of foot binding: from the desire to emulate the naturally tiny feet of a favored concubine of a prince, to a story of an empress who had club-like feet, which became viewed as a desirable fashion.
Yet whatever the reason for it, the process is nothing short of barbaric. First, each foot would be soaked in a warm mixture of herbs and animal blood. This concoction caused any necrotised flesh to fall off. Then her toenails were cut back as far as possible to prevent ingrowth and subsequent infections. To prepare her for what was to come next the girl’s feet were delicately massaged. Silk or cotton bandages, ten feet long and two inches wide, were prepared by soaking in the same blood and herb mix as before. Each of the toes were then broken and wrapped in the wet bandages, which would constrict when drying, and pulled tightly downwards toward the heel.
There may have been deep cuts made in the sole to facilitate this. Needless to say feet binding could lead to serious infections, possibly gangrene, and was generally painful for life. Thankfully the ban on foot binding was enacted by the Japanese government in 1915 and the prohibition remains in effect today.
What a lovely word for such a gruesome practice! Sati is a religious funeral practice among some Hindu communities in which a recently widowed Hindu woman either voluntarily or by use of force and coercion throws herself on her husband’s funeral pyre in oder to commit suicide. The act of sati was supposed to take place voluntarily, and from the existing accounts, most of them were indeed voluntary. The act may have been expected of widows in some communities. The extent to which any social pressures or expectations should be considered as compulsion has been the matter of much debate in modern times. It is frequently stated that a widow could expect little of life after her husband’s death, especially if she was childless. However, there were also instances where the wish of the widow to commit sati was not welcomed by others, and where efforts were made to prevent the death. Thankfully, this practice is now considered rare and has been outlawed in India since 1829.
Self Mummification
Of all the bizarre rituals, this one has to be one of the most horrific! The procedure of self mummification is exactly what it sounds like (and much more tortorous!) For three years the Buddhist monks or priests who performed this ritual would eat a special diet consisting only of nuts and seeds, while taking part in a regimen of rigorous physical activity that stripped them of their body fat.
They then ate only bark and roots for another three years and began drinking a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, normally used to lacquer bowls. This caused vomiting and a rapid loss of bodily fluids, and most importantly, it killed off any maggots that might cause the body to decay after death.
Finally, a self-mummifying monk would lock himself in a stone tomb barely larger than his body, where he would not move from the lotus position. His only connection to the outside world was an air tube and a bell. Each day he rang a bell to let those outside know that he was still alive.
When the bell stopped ringing, the tube was removed and the tomb sealed for all eternity. To date, between only 16 and 24 such mummifications have been discovered.
Tibetan Sky Burial
Sky burial or ritual dissection was once a common funerary practice in Tibet wherein a human corpse is cut in specific locations and placed on a mountaintop, exposing it to the elements or the mahabhuta and animals – especially to birds of prey. To Tibetans, many of whom adhere to Buddhism, their belief is in the rebirth of soul. Therefore to them, there is no need to preserve the body, as it is now an empty vessel.
Birds are encouraged eat it, or nature may let it decompose. So the function of the sky burial is simply the disposal of the remains. The preparation of the body for this ritual is fairly simple and yet, rather gruesome: the flesh is stripped from the body with the bones being broken up with sledgehammers and then fed to vultures.
While Communist China outlawed this practice in the 1960s, it was legalized again in the 1980s and is still being practiced today.
Posted by gjblass at 3:00 PM 0 comments
Labels: Bizarre, Human Evolution
6 Sports That Required Hallucinogens to Invent
Posted by Dan
From: http://www.highestfive.com/
Some of the most popular sports in the world are based around fairly basic principals. Using a specific part of your body, move a ball to a specific location while stopping opponents and their body parts from doing the same. Sometimes you must use a stick, and sometimes the ball is a puck. However, throw a handful of magic mushrooms into the mix and suddenly the ball is a toilet on skis. The following are some really bizarre sports that really make you wonder “wtf were people smoking when they came up with them?”
Octopush
Octopush, or underwater hockey was invented in Portsmouth, England by diver Alan Blake back in 1954. Equipped with diving masks, snorkels, fins, swim caps and a glove, players use their “pushers” to push the lead “squid” into the 3-meter “gulleys” on each end of the swimming pool.
Cheese Rolling
There aren’t many foods in this world I would risk breaking every bone in my body to chase down a hill. For Double Gloucester cheese however, I would make an exception.
The event is a 200-year old tradition, taking place annually at Cooper’s Hill in Brockworth, a small village near Gloucester England. Due to the amount of injuries sustained over the years, the official event was cancelled in 2010. That did not stop 500 people, locals and cheese-rolling enthusiasts from around the world from showing up anyways, firing up some unofficial cheese races of their own.
Chess Boxing
You know that feeling, when your chess opponent defeats your queen with a stupid pawn, and you wish you could just flip the board and punch them in the face?
To fully understand the subtle intricacies of this brain/brawn hybrid, we can always look to the Wu-tang Clan.
Outhouse Racing
The Holy Crapper, the Wee Wee Tee Pee, the Flamingo Flusher and the Shot and Squat Saloon are so much more than just hilarious nicknames for your dog. They were the most recent entries to Mackintaw Michigan’s annual winter outhouse race. The rules are simple: build an outhouse, mount it on skis, get unbelievably hammered, and run the crap outta those race toilets!
Binocular Soccer
Not an official sport, but it really, really should be. I also feel that not enough referees wear bunny helmets
While most countries use objects like pucks or balls for their sports, things are a little more intense in south-central Asia. Buzkashi, the ancient and national sport of Afghanistan, takes place on horseback, and instead of the friendly ball they use the corpse of a headless goat.
For more decapitated goat action you can watch it here, Rambo style.
Labels: Dangerous Sports, Extreme Sports, Hallucinogenic Drugs, Hallucinogens, SPORTS
Instant Spray-On “Clothing in a Can” Redefines Fast Fashion
by Bridgette Meinhold
Clothing that shoots out of an aerosol can may sound like science fiction, but one Spanish designer-with-a-PhD has managed to pull off the world’s first spray-on garments that can be removed, washed, worn again, or dissolved to make new ones. Manel Torres, a former student of the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, took 15 minutes to spray a skintight T-shirt on a male model at a demonstration on Thursday, in advance of his Science in Style spray-on fashion show this week.
CAN-DO FASHION
Torres started toying with sprayable clothing 10 years ago, after he saw people playing with silly string at a wedding. After perfecting a formula with the help of Paul Luckham, a professor of particle technology at Imperial, Torres patented his Fabrican technology with the goal of not only creating bespoke clothing quickly and inexpensively, but also to provide new applications for the medical, transport, and chemical industries.
Spray-on fabric could also provide new applications for the medical and chemical industries
One possibility, according to Luckham, is pre-sterilized gauze for accident victims. “The spray-on fabric may be produced and kept in a sterilised can,” he tells the Guardian, “which could be perfect for providing spray-on bandages without applying any pressure for soothing burnt skin, or delivering medicines directly to a wound.”
CLOTHING ON DEMAND
Torres and Luckham mixed fibers from milled-down old textiles with a polymer, then added a solvent that would evaporate before the spray hit a surface and solidified. The resultant fabric feels almost like suede, but you can alter its hand by changing its fiber content from say, wool to linen.
The fabric is formed by the cross-linking of fibers, much like felted wool, so no finishing is required.
Because the fabric is formed by the cross-linking of fibers, much like felted wool, no weaving or finishing is required. Plus, the high-pressure spray dries within minutes, and if the material rips or doesn’t fit right, it can be dissolved and reworked into new garments.
Although Fabrican isn’t ready to be commercialized just yet, the possibilities are staggering, from Lady Gaga’s latest eccentric ensemble to spray-on upholstery for cars and homes. Just one downside: The fabric when it meets the skin is very cold, so if you’re planning on donning the ultimate skinny jean or curve-cleaving swimsuit, you’d best brace yourself.
+ Fabrican
[Via Guardian]
Posted by gjblass at 12:49 PM 0 comments
Labels: 3D Art, Body Paint, Clothes, Fashion, New Technologies, Woman Fashion
Walmart Adding Thin-Film Solar Panels On 20-30 More Stores
From: http://www.treehugger.com/
photo: Walmart
In continued efforts to deploy more renewable energy at its stores, Walmart announced today that it will be installing solar panels at an additional 20-30 of its stores in California and Arizona, opting at most of the locations to install thin-film solar panels rather than traditional crystalline panels.
Rather than owning the panels outright, Walmart has contracted with SolarCity, which will design, install, maintain and actually own the solar power systems, with Walmart benefitting from the total estimated 22.5 million kWh of electricity produced. At each location the panels are expected to provide 20-30% of the total energy needs of the store.
Currently, Walmart has 31 solar power installations at locations in California and Hawaii.
In its press release, Walmart touted the benefits of thin-film panels over traditional ones:
Thin film solar panels look similar to the traditional crystalline panels, but require fewer raw materials to manufacture, resulting in a smaller environmental impact over its life cycle. The Walmart projects are using both copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) and cadmium telluride thin film. The company's large scale on-site installation of CIGS could help further the development of this technology and bring it to market quicker, while use of cadmium telluride thin film could help make the case for other businesses to adopt the technology for on-site commercial use.
Buying Power Not Panels Can Reduce Risks
One thing to note: Walmart has been expanding renewable energy usage at its stores for a while now, so the announcement itself, while good, isn't entirely groundbreaking. What is worth paying attention to as a green trend, applicable to homeowners as well as businesses, is that even with it's huge size Walmart chose to have a third-party operate the solar power system, thereby eliminating some of the financial and technical risk of adding solar power, while still benefitting both practically and from a public-image perspective from using renewable energy.
Labels: alternative energy, solar energy, solar panel, Solar panels, solarpanels, Wal-Mart Stores
Absolutely stunning photos from Kluchevskoy Eruption
From: http://zuzutop.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanoes_of_Kamchatka
The snowy peaks blazing sun with fire.
Volcanic eruption Kluchevskoy: hell underfoot
Acid Lake.
Photos source
Labels: russia, Volcano
Israel Dead Sea
From: http://www.getintravel.com/israel-dead-sea/
The Dead Sea is a salt lake bordering Israel and the West Bank to the west, and Jordan to the east. Its surface and shores are 422 metres (1,385 ft) below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth’s surface on dry land. The Dead Sea is 378 m (1,240 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. It is also one of the world’s saltiest bodies of water, with 33.7% salinity. Only Lake Assal (Djibouti), Garabogazköl and some hypersaline lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica (such as Don Juan Pond) have a higher salinity. It is 8.6 times more salty than the ocean.[3] This salinity makes for a harsh environment where animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is 67 kilometres (42 mi) long and 18 kilometres (11 mi) wide at its widest point. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.
The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. Biblically, it was a place of refuge for King David. It was one of the world’s first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers. People also use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics and herbal sachets.
The sea has a density of 1.24kg/L, making swimming difficult.
Labels: Dead, Israel, salt lakes
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New Wine In Old Bottles: The Greenest Way To Drink
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Last updated by Lewis Howes at August 24 2010 .
Tag Archives | Ron Shapiro
How to Become General Manager of a Major League Baseball Team
Written by Lewis Howes in Sports Jobs
I connected with Mark Shapiro two years ago at the Princeton Sports Symposium, and had a great time getting to know more about his professional career in Major League Baseball. He came from humble upbringings, but through his hard work and perseverance, he worked his way up to become the Vice President and General Manager of the Cleveland Indians and was recently promoted to become team president for the club next season. Mark’s journey has been an inspiring one and his rags-to-riches story has something that we can all take away in our own journey to success in the sports world.
Continue Reading 16
Get A Job In The Sports Industry Without Being “in” The Industry
Ron Shapiro sheds his light on how he because one of the most influential figures in sports… and it wasn’t because he initially wanted to work in sports. Thanks right. You don’t have to set out with a ton of work experience “in” the sports industry. You can be an expert at a certain skill…
Break Into The Sports Industry In Six Simple Weeks
Eric Mangini, Ron Shapiro, and Mark Shapiro all found their own unique way into the Sports Industry, but no one direction is the correct route for breaking into the sports world. How badly do you want to work in the Sports Industry? What if I told you taking a six week long class may…
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A new UK immigration policy to work for all
There are some terrific new ideas coming out of the Brexit camp on immigration. The vast majority of people support immigration, but not uncontrolled immigration. We should be filled with enthusiasm about a new, fair, and sane immigration agenda for Britain
A fairer route into Britain
Matthew Ellery
On 18 August 2016 07:11
After all the name-calling, debates and mudslinging, eventually Brexit will be delivered, despite what some fully paid-up members of the establishment think.
On June 23, the people of the UK voted for control -- by a majority of over 1 million. Control over their laws, control over government spending, and control over their borders.
All three of these pledges must be delivered if Prime Minister Theresa May wants “Brexit to mean Brexit”, as she says she does. The immigration pledge in particular was one which raised passions on both sides. David Goodhart, writing for Policy Exchange, has written a useful document this month, which will be analysed in this piece on how Brexit can deliver control over our borders.
Goodhart argues that if this pledge regarding migration is not delivered upon, a narrative about the establishment dismissing the concerns of the people could take hold. This could lead us down a path in which the destination is unimaginable.
However, we are at a critical juncture, where we are able to create an immigration policy which does deliver on the promises made, while allowing business and society to flourish.
There are many practical suggestions in Goodhart’s report. He suggests a work permit system to replace the EU’s rules on freedom of movement of people. This would require the UK to leave the European Economic Area (the single market) and instead pursue a free trade deal.
Free movement of people is not necessary for trade -- in fact the entire point of free trade is for people from other countries to buy and sell goods and services. If those people move to your country, it could, in a certain sense, be said to defeat the entire objective.
Some services may require the free movement of people, but certainly not at the current rate and where necessary it could be accommodated by the work permit system. We would also expect these numbers to decrease with the creation of new technologies such as Skype, making travel unnecessary to conduct business in the modern age.
We must also think not only of the UK, but of the countries people are moving from. When large numbers of people leave, it causes brain drains of the cream of the crop moving to different countries for higher wages. This deprives poorer countries of individuals on which time and money has been spent developing expertise, only to lose their benefit once they are qualified.
It also deprives them of hard-working people and huge numbers of their working-age population. This results in negative economic as well as social problems.
Some have suggested the Brexit vote was simply about immigration and the benefits paid to them, therefore another deal about ‘emergency brakes’ for benefits would be sufficient. It was not, and it will not be. The ‘emergency brake’ was trivial when it was first suggested, and it is laughable now.
Goodhart suggests the UK should revert to treating EU citizens who do not have citizenship or residency in the UK in the same way as non-EU citizens are currently treated. They, of course, are subject to a work permit system.
However, this would only be possible once the UK has formally left the EU. This system is an employer-sponsorship points-based system, and as a result virtually all non-EU migrants are skilled. Flexibility is built in with the ability to vary the number of points allocated, depending on the need in the country at the time.
According to Goodhart, if the current non-EU rules were applied to EU citizens currently working in the UK, only 15 percent of the 1.6 million EU employees here now would qualify. He also argues these requirements must be phased in over several years to prevent major disruption, and would require an overhaul of the existing work permit system through investment to make it more efficient, preventing huge backlogs of work permit applications.
A fair immigration system outside the EU
Chaos and glaring contradiction from Brussels on immigration
Obama gets Europe wrong again. Why doesn't he allow free immigration from Mexico and Cuba then?
Italy, the badante, immigration, and the elderly
Goodhart believes this overhaul should be conducted by a new Department of State for Immigration and Integration. Many Whitehall departments are already incredibly large, inflexible and resistant to change, and this new department could give this important issue the attention it deserves. Additionally, the department would have a minister devoted to this policy area, rather than a junior whose influence is close to nil.
The implementation of these policies would treat migrants from wherever they come from in exactly the same way. This would be non-discriminatory, rather than the overly generous system for citizens of the EU at the expense of those who do not come from an EU Member State. The current EU system is morally repugnant, and the sooner it is binned the better.
These policies are merely one strand of a two-track approach. The second strand in Goodhart’s opinion would be to increase the employability of British citizens by giving them appropriate training, facilitating the development of new skills. This training could be paid for through a National Insurance levy on new migrants.
Once these policies are implemented there should be less dependence on migrant labour. However, this would only be relevant to skilled labour. In relation to unskilled work -- some of which is too low-paid to entice UK citizens. As a result, unskilled labour is currently imported to fill the gap.
The answer to this is not to increase migration, but increased efficiency of the relevant companies, perhaps through automation. This could be encouraged by giving tax breaks for those investing in machinery, something which would pay the country back in the long term as profits increase, resulting in higher tax revenue.
Goodhart also suggests a Scandinavian-style population register for all residents, allocating each individual with a unique person number. This would allow the authorities to track who comes in and out of the country, for once giving the people of this country reliable statistics and an ability to shift resources to where they are needed.
These types of policy ideas are even more urgent now, with the migration crisis constantly worsening. We have heard reports of 25,000 people arriving in Italy in the month of July alone. This is an increase of 12 percent on last July’s figures, as Italy is becoming the new entry point into Europe, rather than Greece.
The migrant crisis is now in its third year and showing no signs of relenting. The lack of borders within the EU’s Schengen area compounds this problem making apprehension of those who are illegally in the country even more difficult.
Turkey has been destabilised further over recent months, putting the deal to halt migrants at risk. The EU has now been threatened by Turkey to allow visa-free access to Turkish citizens by October, or be prepared to face hundreds of thousands of migrants currently prevented entry due to the current agreement.
It is clear that uncontrolled immigration hurts low wage workers in this country. On August 16, the Resolution Foundation released a report which claimed professions such as electricians and plumbers are among those whose wages are on average 2.1 percent lower due to mass immigration.
This equates to £436.80 a year, because of the numbers and the undercutting of wages. The report however attempted to claim Brexit would make things worse, as the economy would be hit. However, this claim is without substance as there is no proof our economy is weakening.
The vast majority of people support immigration, but not uncontrolled immigration. We voted leave and now it is time to take back control of our borders. The people who voted for Brexit are the people who have been ignored by the establishment for years and years, and are the ones most impacted by it.
Surely the establishment cannot ignore the people again. To do so would be a monumental error.
Matthew Ellery is a Research Executive at Get Britain Out
illegal immigration, Minister for immigration, UK immigration, and UKIP immigration policy
The European Crisis (and American Future?) of too many over-compensated bureaucrats
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Locations of over 300 Castles
Charles (VI, King of France 1380-1422)
Born 1338 Born At
Died 1422 Buried At
Father Charles (V, King of France 1364 - 1380) Mother Joan (of Bourbon)
Born 1338 /
Died 1422 /
lso known as 'the Mad' or 'the Fool', Charles was King of France from 1380 until 1422. He suffered from bouts of madness during his life.
Henry V - The Hundred Years War (click here)
Charles (V, King of France 1364 - 1380)
Joan (of Bourbon)
Isabella (of France, Wife of Richard II)
Charles (VII, King of France 1422-1461)
Catherine (of Valois)
Louis (I, Duke of Orleans)
Family Tree Details
Father: Charles (V, King of France 1364 - 1380) (b.1338 - d.1380)
Mother: Joan (of Bourbon)
Show Graphical Tree
Charles (VI, King of France 1380-1422) (b.1338 - d.1422)
+Isabeau (of Bavaria) (b.1370? - d.1435)
= Isabella (of France, Wife of Richard II) (b.1389 - d.1409)
| +Richard (II, King of England 1377-1399) (b.1367 - d.1400)
= Charles (VII, King of France 1422-1461) (b.1403 - d.1461)
| +Marie (of Anjou)
| = Louis (XI, King of France 1461-1483)
| +Margaret (Stewart) ( - d.1445)
= Catherine (of Valois) (b.1401 - d.1437)
+Henry (V, King of England 1413-1422) (b.1387 - d.1422)
| = Henry (VI, King of England 1422-1461, 1470-1471) (b.1421 - d.1471)
| +Margaret (of Anjou) (b.1429 - d.1482)
| = Edward (of Lancaster, Prince of Wales) (b.1453 - d.1471)
+Tudor, Owen (b.1400 - d.1461)
= Tudor, Edmund (Earl of Richmond) ( - d.1456)
| +Beaufort, Lady Margaret (b.1441 - d.1509)
| = Henry (VII, King of England 1485-1509) (b.1457 - d.1509)
= Tudor, Jasper (Earl of Pembroke) (b.1431? - d.1496)
= Thomas (Westminster Monk)
= Isabella (of France, Wife of Richard II) (b.1389 - d.1409)
| +Richard (II, King of England 1377-1399) (b.1367 - d.1400)
= Charles (VII, King of France 1422-1461) (b.1403 - d.1461)
| +Marie (of Anjou)
| = Louis (XI, King of France 1461-1483)
| +Margaret (Stewart) ( - d.1445)
= Catherine (of Valois) (b.1401 - d.1437)
| = Henry (VI, King of England 1422-1461, 1470-1471) (b.1421 - d.1471)
| +Margaret (of Anjou) (b.1429 - d.1482)
| = Edward (of Lancaster, Prince of Wales) (b.1453 - d.1471)
= Tudor, Edmund (Earl of Richmond) ( - d.1456)
| +Beaufort, Lady Margaret (b.1441 - d.1509)
| = Henry (VII, King of England 1485-1509) (b.1457 - d.1509)
= Tudor, Jasper (Earl of Pembroke) (b.1431? - d.1496)
= Thomas (Westminster Monk)
Isabeau (of Bavaria)
Henry (V, King of England 1413-1422)
Henry (VI, King of England 1422-1461, 1470-1471)
A .. Z List of Medieval People
1380 (Age: 42yrs)
Death of Charles V and accession of Charles VI
Charles V, King of France, died and was succeeded by his son Charles as King Charles VI, of France.
Richard II marries Isabella of Valois
The marriage of King Richard II and the seven or eight year-old Isabella of Valois took place at Calais. Isabella was the daughter of Charles VI, King of France and Isabeau of Bavaria. Richard was near thirty years old but the marriage went ahead because it was part of a peace treaty between the English and French Kings.
Henry sends ambassadors to France
King Henry attempted to build an alliance with John, the Duke of Burgundy who was involved in a power struggle with the Armagnacs for control of France. John was acting as regent due to the poor mental health of the French king, Charles VI. Henry sent an embassy to Paris to discuss terms.
Henry claims French territories
In 1414 France was in the midst of a civil war between the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. While Charles VI, the French king, had joined the Armagnacs, Henry V, the English King, saw an opportunity to reclaim lost lands in France and came in on the side of the Burgundians. Henry's plan was to invade France but he needed a good reason. He gave the French king a list of demands including the French throne, the restoration of the Angevin empire and the hand of the French king's daughter in marriage. If the demands were not be met Henry would go to war. Henry could claim the French throne through a claim first made by his great-grandfather Edward III that started the Hundred Years War.||In August of 1415, invasion plans were completed and Henry's army met at Portchester Castle where they boarded ships to take them across the English Channel to France.
Treaty of Troyes
In the Treaty of Troyes King Charles VI of France agreed that after his death King Henry V of England and his heirs would become the rulers of France. It was also agreed that the French king's daughter, Catherine of Valois would marry Henry.
Henry marries
The marriage of King Henry V and Catherine, the daughter of Charles VI king of France, took place and sealed the Treaty of Troyes.
Charles VI of France dies
Charles VI of France died and was buried in the Saint Denis Basilica. Henry VI of England was proclaimed king of France and John Duke of Bedford was appointed regent.
3D Virtual Reconstructions
Transport yourself back up to a thousand years and explore historical buildings as they may have appeared in the past. Built using the popular game development tool Unity 3D, these reconstructions will run in the most of the popular web browsers on your desktop or laptop computer.
Medieval People
Kings and Queens of England
Selection of references used:
1. Peter Potter, Data Donation
2. Paul de Rapin-Thoyras, The History of England, Volume 5
Explore the White Tower
Explore all four floors of the White Tower at the Tower of London using the Unity 3d game engine.
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NASA spacecraft New Horizons nears Pluto after 9-year trip
It’s going to have another show-time for Pluto as US space agency NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has covered a distance of three billion miles and now it is approaching the end of its journey of nine years to Pluto.
As NASA’s this mission is humanity’s first trip to Pluto, the scientists are eagerly awaiting to explore the heavenly body and understand more about the farthest known body of our solar system.
On Sunday, the spacecraft will commence clicking the rare pictures of the mysterious, unexplored, icy world that was once deemed a planet.
Pluto has always remained the only planet in our solar system that is yet to be explored. When New Horizons departed from our life supporting planet Earth, Pluto used to enjoy the planet status, the ninth member in the solar system lineup. Seven months later, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) stripped the tag of planethood from Pluto, putting it under the category of dwarf planet. However, it was later known as, plutoid.
New Horizons spacecraft is still over 100 million miles from Pluto, the astronomers behind the project said.
According to the scientists, the photographs captured by New Horizons will offer greater understanding about the plutoid. The first picture is expected to reveal little more than bright dots. The images captures against star fields are believed to help scientists measure the remaining distance and help in keeping the baby grand piano-sized rover on track for a July flyby.
“New Horizons has been a mission of delayed gratification in many respects, and it’s finally happening now. It’s going to be a sprint for the next seven months, basically, to the finish line. We can’t wait to turn Pluto into a real world, instead of just a little pixelated blob,” said Hal Weaver, project scientist from Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University.
The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral in January 2006 at a cost of USD 700 million. It awoke from its last hibernation in December last year. According to the flight controllers, they have spent greater energy in the past several weeks in preparing the spacecraft for the final but most important leg of its nine-year-old journey.
Filed Under: Technology & Research Tagged With: Earth, International Astronomical Union, NASA, NASA Pluto trip, New Horizons spacecraft, Pluto, plutoid, US space agency
Giant asteroid 2004 BL86 to pass Earth on Monday; poses no threat
US space agency NASA said that Monday’s sky will offer another unique event when a giant mountain-sized asteroid will past Earth, making the closest pass by such a massive space rock until 2027. But the scientists have refuted all the fears of danger for the Earth dwellers.
Nearly 1,800 feet (550 meters) wide asteroid, named 2004 BL86, will be passing within 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) of Earth on Monday (January 26). The distance between the massive space rock and our planet is approximately thrice the distance between Earth and the moon.
According to NASA scientists, the flyby offers a rare opportunity to have a good look at a near-Earth asteroid. In this regard, the astronomers have planned to study 2004 BL86 in order to pinpoint its orbit, understand about its surface and also look for its available moons. The main idea is to keep a close watch on the movement of the asteroid with the help of the 1,000-foot (305 m) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the 230-foot (70 m) dish-shaped Goldstone antenna at Deep Space Network at NASA in California. These radio dishes will beam microwave signals at the fast-moving asteroid that will then bounce off the target rock and return to our planet.
Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the Goldstone observations of the asteroid, said, “For objects that get this close, that are this large, the radar observations are really analogous to a spacecraft flyby in terms of the caliber of the data that we can get.”
Benner is a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The space experts believe the resulting black-and-white images can bring out unprecedented revelations about the asteroids and this giant one in particular.
According to the scientists, the foremost task would be to nail the location of the space rock in space and time in order to better understand the object’s orbit and its future movement.
Benner postulates such an experiment will help in benefiting the commercial companies that are looking forward to carrying a mission and mine asteroids in the future.
Declining possibility of any threat by 2004 BL86 to the Earth for the foreseeable future, Benner said keeping eyes closed on the asteroid would be a good idea.
The scientists are expecting to obtain resolutions as fine as 13 feet (4 m) per pixel. The images of 2004 BL86 at such a resolution could reveal minute details of the space rock.
“It’s expected to be one of the best radar-imaging targets of this calendar year,” Benner said.
The Goldstone antenna will be monitoring the asteroid’s movement for five to six hours most nights between January 27 and February 1. On the other hand, the Arecibo Observatory will be tracking 2004 BL86 on Tuesday night (January 27). Scientists said its radar is not completely steerable and the asteroid will be zipping through the sky at 2 degrees per hour.
Filed Under: Technology & Research Tagged With: Arecibo Observatory, asteroid 2004 BL86, Deep Space Network, Earth, Goldstone antenna, Lance Benner, NASA
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Legendary Rush Drummer Neil Peart Dead at Age 67
Legendary Rush drummer Neil Peart has died at the age of 67 on Jan. 7 after battling brain cancer.
Rolling Stone confirmed the drummer's death with a representative for the band and Peart family spokesperson Elliot Mintz stated that the drummer was fighting brain cancer for the last three years.
Peart joined the Canadian progressive rock trio in 1974 following the release of the band's self-titled debut album. In addition to serving as the group's drummer ever since, he was also the chief lyricist within Rush.
Loudwire extends our condolences to Peart's family as well as his Rush bandmates Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson.
Peart was born on Sept. 12, 1952 in Ontario, Canada and went on to join Rush at the age of 22, making his debut with the band on their 1975 album Fly By Night. He immediately made an impact on the group, as evidencing by his raucous style heard on the title track. He'd eventually drift away from this thundering hard rock style, which was very much in vein of Led Zeppelin's John Bonham and The Who's Keith Moon, who, at that point, had represented the apex of wild-man rock drumming.
Pulling in outside influences such as jazz, Peart's style became increasingly more progressive, as did Rush's sound by 1976 when they released the epic 2112, which opened with the 20-minute title track which featured seven movements.
This episodic style would come to dominate their ensuing '70s records, tempering these brainy pieces with shorter, more traditional styled songs that demonstrated Rush were adept at composing incredibly complex pieces as well as more straight-ahead rock songs.
While Geddy Lee doubled as bassist and singer, it was Peart's words — which touched on everything from science fiction to fantasy to philosophy — that he was singing. These thought-provoking lyrics doubled down on Rush's highly progressive edge, cementing themselves as one of prog rock's penultimate artists.
Even when Rush's sound gained more commercial appeal during the '80s, Peart's intensely progressive style remained unswayed, which was the secret sauce to the band's sound — they were able to appeal to the musical elite and those tuning into the radio in search of easily digestible hit songs.
In total, he played on 18 of Rush's 19 studio albums, the last being Clockwork Angels, which was released in 2012.
Following Rush's "R40" tour celebrating the band's 40th anniversary, Peart announced his retirement from the band in 2015. Lifeson announced Rush's dissolution three years later.
Neil Peart's influence on modern drumming in all aspects of heavy music can never be understated and his name will forever be synonymous with the title of "legend."
Rest in peace, Neil Peart.
Rockers We've Lost in 2020
Source: Legendary Rush Drummer Neil Peart Dead at Age 67
Filed Under: Neil Peart, rush
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1-2-3 SPORTS!
Tommy likes sports. Phil likes sports. Here are our favorite stories from the week.
1-2-3 Sports! Special Edition: STATE-BOUND
On the Force or the Tag
Phil Lang
Week of June 28, 2019
Posted on June 28, 2019 by deadmanshatmusic
Sorry we missed you last week, we were too busy boppin’ at the College World Series in Omaha. But we hope you enjoyed TOB’s story on our trip to the U.S. Open. Now, get out there and enjoy the summer.
The Generalist from Lakefield, MN
I’m back in Minnesota this week. Every year prior, I’d be back home helping my dad get everything ready for our Fourth of July trip up to the lake, but this year – in many ways – is different. For one, the family is not heading up to the lake but over to Keller Golf Course just off of Highway 61 to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. In a month from now, my big family will all head out west to San Francisco for my wedding. And third, my friend is an NBA Champion who gets a Patrick Reusse column written about her in the friggin’ Star Tribune!
(For Bay Area folks, this would be like Ray Ratto writing a column about your college buddy)
I’m filling up my Honey Bunches of Oats, about to enjoy the simple pleasures of a cup of coffee, a bowl of cereal, and the sports page on a quiet morning. Reusse’s column is off to the side of the main sports story of the day about the guy who looks after the dirt at the horse track. The headline is non-specific -“Quiet, confident and top of her game” – but I see that Resch name right in the first sentence: “A conversation with Jim Resch quickly revealed the strength of his roots in southwest Minnesota.”
I know a Jim Resch from southwest Minnesota. Hell, Natalie and I were having a beer with Teresa’s dad, Jim, not a month ago at the bar Local Edition just off of Market Street in San Francisco. That’s because Teresa, my college roommate, invited Natalie and me to party after an NBA finals game between the Toronto Raptors and Golden State Warriors. Teresa is the vice president for basketball operations and player development for the Raptors. We all know how the Finals went for Toronto. Now, T-Resch as I know her, is getting her due in her home state with big column in the sports page.
The column is vintage Reusse. It charts Resch’s path to her role as a NBA executive, and how she truly is a pioneer for women in a professional sports league. Teresa’s path started in Lakefield, playing basketball, starring on a state championship volleyball team, and earlier in life winning a champions trophy when she showed Spartinia, the ewe lamb, at the Minnesota State Fair in 1994.
It talks about her time at Augie, where we met, and where Teresa became an All Conference volleyball player in the NCC, the now defunct North Central Conference. I’ll never forget when that team her freshman year made it to the national championship match that was being played at Augie. We were sure they were going to win. The Elman was packed, and then we saw the Hawaii Pacific team come onto the court. They were all huge, adult women from Hawaii and South America. We didn’t need to see more than a couple points to know how the season would end for Teresa and her teammates.
Reusse then details how Teresa took an internship at the NCC office, where she was given from the league commissioner: “There’s plenty of opportunities arriving for women in sports organizations. If you want that, go to grad school and get an MBA with a sports connection.”
So Teresa did what she always done – she worked her ass off and wasn’t afraid to take a chance on something new somewhere new. She earned an MBA in St. Thomas, Florida, took a bunch of unpaid internships and was eventually hired to work in the NBA League office. Teresa’s ascent to her current role isn’t as straight of a line as you might think from there, but now you can see how she got where she is today.
So I’m reading this column about my friend (who better be coming to my wedding – RSVP, TResch!), and of course I’m pretty damn proud, but I am also surprised to learn something from my friend…through a quote of hers in the paper.
The job has evolved in six years. It’s tricky even to describe it. There’s a new book called Range, and it’s about generalists – people who do more than one thing, several things, for a business, for an organization. I’m one of those. My job is to try to ensure that everybody that touches the Toronto Raptors can compete in a championship organization.
Such a surreal moment that I will never forget. And I will never forget how hard she worked for this success.
I texted T as I was reading the story. Her response: “Big question is did the photo of Spartinia make it?!”
Teresa or someone in her family sent Patrick Reusse a photo of a lamb for this story, and that is so excellent.
Of course that would be T’s first question.
No, the photo of Spartinia didn’t make it, Teresa. They went with this one instead:
You’re living good when you get to watch your friends and family accomplish great things. With my parents 50th and Teresa’s story in the local paper, I’m living really good these days. – PAL
Source: “Quiet, Confident and Top of Her Game”, Patrick Reusse, StarTribune (06/27/19)
How to Manage a No-No
This is really cool. Giants manager and soon-to-be Hall of Famer is retiring after this season. Bochy has had a hell of a career, including 3 World Series wins and a fourth World Series appearance. He’s also managed a bunch of no-hitters, and one perfect game. In this article, Boch reflects on those games, and the near-misses. You won’t be surprised to learn that Bochy manages differently if a no-hitter is in play.
There is no way to account for a bad hop or a bloop, but time and again, Bochy has tried to increase the pitcher’s odds, even if it’s just an incremental gain. Bochy’s plan in those games is pretty simple. If the game is close, as it was with Peavy in New York, he might try to squeeze an extra at-bat out of his best hitters. But most of the historic games for Bochy’s Giants have not been close through the middle innings, and he repeatedly has looked for an edge.
“Ultimately you’re there to win the game, but you’re also there to help the pitcher if he’s got a legitimate chance to pitch a no-hitter,” Bochy said. “That’s kind of what you prepare for as you look down your bench. You ask, ‘What is my best defense?’ “
His biggest regret, though, was a change he didn’t make, in a game where Jake Peavy took a perfect game into the 7th inning:
Peavy was perfect through six, but Mets starter Jacob deGrom hadn’t allowed a hit, either. When left fielder Michael Morse grounded out to end the top of the seventh, Bochy thought about putting in Gregor Blanco to shore up the outfield defense for Peavy’s run at history. Instead, Bochy decided to try for one more inning out of his powerful No. 5 hitter.
Daniel Murphy came up in the bottom of the inning and lined a ball to left. Morse initially broke in and to his right before going back on the ball, and by the time he tried to reach his glove up, it was too late. Murphy cruised into second with a double.
“I couldn’t believe I didn’t do it,” Bochy said. “I thought about it, and sure enough, the ball was hit there, and the baseball gods punished me. That’s what I’m always conscious of, to help the pitcher out. I gambled there, and it got me.”
Bochy has gone to great lengths to not unnerve a pitcher. During Matt Cain’s perfect game in 2012, he wanted to get a reliever loose, just in case. But he didn’t want Cain to see him warming up in those on-field bullpens, so he had Shane Loux warmup in the batting cage behind the dugout instead. When Cain got to two outs in the 9th, Loux threw down his glove and ran to the dugout to prepare for the celebration.
This was just a really good article, interviewing a master of his craft. Enjoy! -TOB
Source: “How Bruce Bochy’s Managerial Genius Manifested in Giants’ No-Hitter Bids”, Alex Pavlovic, NBC Sports (06/13/2019)
PAL: It’s great to hear a manager prioritize the opportunity of a guy doing one of the coolest things – throw a no-hitter in a big league game – over pitch count or even a reliever getting ready in the bullpen. It also reminds my how asinine it was for the Dodger to remove a pitcher from a regular season game when he had a no-no going. Unforgivable.
Baseball’s On The Clock
The current collective bargaining agreement between players and owners in MLB runs through 2021, but talks are already beginning. The New York Times’ Tyler Kepner summarizes the urgency centers on the union’s belief that “[Y]ounger players are rarely paid what they are worth, while veterans are now in much less demand, leading to lower salaries for what were once their prime earning years.” M.L.B., while making no promise to a change prior to the current C.B.A. expiring, is willing to sit and listen.
I think there’s a whole lot more at stake leading into 2021, and I think the players and the league know it. I think baseball, by far my favorite sport, is in trouble.
We’ve conceded it’s a local sport years ago, but I bet the viewing numbers locally are fading. We focus on the money regional sports networks generate for MLB teams (either through contracts or ownership), but I’m curious how many people are actually watching regular season games consistently. Here’s a story from FanGraphs from last year that does a deep dive around attendance, viewing, and growth.
Home runs are boring. Big Mac and Sammy may have brought baseball back with the long ball in ‘98, and it was cool for the first 10 years I watched Baseball Tonight, but it takes something truly special for a home run to get me going. Home runs are up over 17% year-over-year, and MLB is on pace to break the single-season record for home runs by over 450 home runs. Strikeouts are up. Walks are up. Home runs, strikeouts, walks – they get pitchers and hitters paid, and they are so boring to watch. Dan Patrick nailed it earlier this week – there’s no movement in baseball because of the adoption of the three true outcomes. I have no doubt the math proves this to be the best approach over a long season, but I don’t care about watching the pursuit of these outcomes for 3-4 hours, much less all season long. I don’t know what the solution is, but I sure love to watch an organization try to combat this trend with crazy speed, defense, and something crazy like a bullpen full of ambidextrous pitchers.
Contracts are too long. Mike Trout might be the best player in my lifetime, and I’ve watched the Angels center fielder play less that 10 times in his 7+ years. The Angels are medium at best, again, and again this dude’s going to win an MVP in obscurity. He’s very likely staying in Anaheim for the next 12 years, earning over $35MM a year until 2031. I would do the same, of course, but Trout on a .500 team on the West Coast sucks for everyone but Angels fans.
Look at the NBA right now. Player movement sparks interest on a national level. Baseball should cap contract lengths at 5 years, and young players should be eligible for free agency 4 years after they are drafted (assuming they sign). This will both allow for players to move from team to team, and prevent teams from holding young, exciting players in the minors to hold off free agency for another year.
So it’s good MLB and the union are starting chats now. They have time, they have a lot to figure out, and I hope they think outside the box for the long-term health of the game. We’ll need a lot more than two roided out ball players hitting home runs to bring the fans back if there’s a work stoppage in 2021. – PAL
Source: “M.L.B. and Players’ Union Set to Begin Early Labor Talks”, Tyler Kepner, The New York Times (6/17/19)
TOB: I’m less concerned about the home run/strikeout stuff – the game is constantly changing, and it’s clear they have changed the ball, once again, to further increase home run rate. The balls are slightly larger, the seams are lower, the leather is smoother, and the ball is rounder. It amazes me when a successful organization cannot help but tinker. It reminds me of when the NBA tried to introduce a new ball, and the players nearly revolted.
But I am concerned about the contract stuff. The system is so screwed up right now. Minor leaguers should be paid a living wage, and as Phil said, you shouldn’t have to wait seven years after you hit the bigs to hit free agency – especially for any player who went to college, your best days are behind you by the time you get there. And, as Phil notes, teams have gotten smarter and don’t want to pay the aging vets for past performance. So what’s the solution?
One idea I like is giving everyone a mid-level base salary, and then using a stat like WAR to pay players large bonuses after the year. I’m sure the vets would balk – but if you produce, you get paid. If you don’t, you still get paid, but you’re not getting $30M to hit .220. Ahem, Bryce.
The NBA Toys With Major Schedule Change, But Will Fans Pay the Price?
It was reported this week that the NBA is considering major changes to its schedule, which has been 82-games since the beginnings of the league. Any changes would not take place until the 2022-23 season, but the changes are radical, as far as sports leagues, which change at a glacial pace, go. The discussion reportedly included reducing as few as a handful of games, up to a reduction down to 58 games, where each team hosts every other team once.
The proposed reductions could allow the NBA to include some proposed tournaments. One such proposal a mid-season cup tournament (styled after European tournaments like the FA Cup, an English soccer tournament among not just the Premiere League teams, but all teams down to division 10). Another proposal is a postseason play-in tournament, where teams the bottom teams in each league play a single-elimination tournament for the last 1-2 playoff spots, but also retain the opportunity to remain in the lottery, even if they win. I’m not sure I get the point of the midseason cup, unless we allow the G-League or perhaps even professional club teams from Europe to compete. But fans clamoring for this are going to pay the price.
I think it’s clear the season is too long. It’s so long, and a reduction is player friendly. But a season reduction is not fan-friendly. I realize that the Warriors ticket prices are the highest in the league. But they are simply not affordable. It costs $100 just to get in the door, and that was at Oracle. It will get even worse next year when they move to their new arena. So what do you think will happen when they reduce the availability of their product? It’s simple economics. The prices will go up. I imagine teams will universally raise season ticket prices, and that, plus product scarcity, will cause the secondary market to soar. Fans all across the country will get priced out. And that sucks.
But that’s not the only way fans will pay. As someone who cares about NBA history, I am concerned with how this will completely change the record books. No one will ever touch Kareem’s (or LeBron’s if he gets there) career scoring record. No one will come close to 73 wins. No one will come close to Curry’s career 3-pointers made record. We will have to start a new record book, and I think we will lose a lot of the league’s history when that happens.
I am not generally a person who thinks we should do something the same way because that’s the way we’ve always done it. And I think these new ideas are fun. But I do hope the NBA thinks of all the ways this will affect the fan… hahaha. Hahahaha. Sorry. What the hell was I thinking? Of course they won’t. -TOB
Source: “Sources: NBA Talks Fewer Games, In-Season Event”, Kevin Arnowitz, ESPN (06/26/2019)
This little guy refused to throw out the first pitch until he was on the mound. 🤣😂 pic.twitter.com/X4VsnV0Zpx
— Matt Lisle (@CoachLisle) June 16, 2019
Tweet of the Week:
Saban back to the drawing board motvating his guys. Refuses to lose to Clemson again https://t.co/xOMaTuMYcY
— PFTCommenter (@PFTCommenter) June 18, 2019
PAL Song of the Week: Looking Glass – “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)
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with Krista Tippett
Krista Tippett
Groundbreaking Peabody Award-winning conversation about the big questions of meaning — spiritual inquiry, science, social healing, and the arts. Each week a new discovery about the immensity of our lives. Hosted by 1440 Multiversity faculty member Krista Tippett. New conversations every Thursday, with occasional extras.
Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, a New York Times bestselling author, and a National Humanities Medalist. She was the 2019 Mimi and Peter E. Haas Distinguished Visitor at Stanford University.
Krista grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, and became a journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin. She then lived in Spain and England before seeking a Master of Divinity at Yale University in the mid-1990s.
Emerging from that, she saw a black hole where intelligent public conversation about the religious, spiritual, and moral aspects of human life might be. She pitched and piloted her idea for several years before launching Speaking of Faith — later On Being — as a weekly national public radio show in 2003. In 2014, the year after she took On Being into independent production, President Obama awarded Krista the National Humanities Medal at the White House for “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence. On the air and in print, Ms. Tippett avoids easy answers, embracing complexity and inviting people of every background to join her conversation about faith, ethics, and moral wisdom.”
Krista has two grown children. She is at work on a new book, Letters to a Young Citizen. Her previous books are Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living(2016); Einstein’s God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit (2010); and Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters and How To Talk About It (2007).
Categories: Live Well, Love Well, Wonder Well
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Roxette Singer Marie Fredriksson Dies at 61
By lulu Dec 11, 2019
Roxette singer Marie Fredriksson passed away Monday at the age of 61 after a 17-year battle with cancer,USA Today reports. Along with bandmate Per Gessle, Fredriksson formed the pop duo in 1986, and made the charts with uber-'80s hits like "Listen to Your Heart," "The Look" and Pretty Woman's "It Must Have Been Love." In a statement on the band's website, Gessle wrote, "Thanks for painting my black and white songs in the most beautiful (colors). You were the most wonderful friend for over 40 years."
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Maximum Pressure on Iran Still Isn’t Working
By Paul R. Pillar | LobeLog | April 2, 2019
Almost a year after President Trump reneged on U.S. commitments in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal, there is not the slightest sign that this move is achieving the declared objective of Iran crawling back to the negotiating table to negotiate a “better deal.” Tehran instead has been exuding perseverance and hardline resistance. The most recent high-level Iranian statement, a speech by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei marking the Persian new year, was full of recalcitrance. Khamenei’s themes included self-sufficiency and boosting Iran’s defense capabilities.
It is not surprising that determined opponents of the JCPOA—the most vocal of whom are determined opponents of any agreement with Iran—have been trying hard to spin this situation to make it look as if something positive is being accomplished. Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, for example, suggests that the new year’s speech was “not the confident Khamenei of days past” and that the speech indicated that “the Trump administration has had considerable success convincing Khamenei that the pressure will continue, and that Iran cannot count on outlasting U.S. hostility.”
It also is not surprising that when The New York Times ran a story by Ben Hubbard, reporting from Beirut, about the financial strains that Hezbollah and other Iranian clients are feeling, columnist Bret Stephens jumped into action. “Heavens to Betsy,” Stephens exclaimed in a column in the next day’s Times, arguing that this must mean President Barack Obama was wrong when he said sanctions relief “wouldn’t make much difference in terms of Iran’s capacity to make mischief in the Middle East.”
Actually, Obama was right. The fallacy that Stephens, and others who defend the Trump administration’s re-imposition of nuclear sanctions, are promoting is that making life more difficult, costly, or painful for someone else somehow advances U.S. interests—at least if the U.S. government sufficiently hates whoever that someone else is. That would be true only if schadenfreude were a U.S. national interest, which it isn’t. Pain infliction serves U.S. interests only if it changes the targeted country’s behavior in a desired direction, by either limiting its capabilities or inducing it to change its policies. Regarding Iran over the past year, this is not happening.
It’s Not All About the Money
Most of Hubbard’s article—the part Stephens doesn’t mention—describes how and why Iran and its clients are not changing their policies and operations despite the financial pinch. The reporter notes that the client groups “are relatively inexpensive, remain ideologically committed to Iran’s agenda and can promote it through local politics in ways that the United States struggles to thwart.” Many of the groups “have income streams that give them some financial independence.” That certainly is true of Lebanese Hezbollah, which also benefits from having achieved broad acceptance as a political actor. Hubbard recalls how much pushback Secretary of State Mike Pompeo received on this point when he recently met with senior Lebanese officials. Foreign Minister Gibran Basil, standing next to Pompeo at a subsequent public appearance, said, “From our side, for sure, we reiterated that Hezbollah is a Lebanese party, not terrorist. Its deputies are elected by the Lebanese people with great popular support.”
The article mentions that, to the extent Iran is scaling back militia operations in Syria, this may be due less to financial reasons than to the fact that Iran’s ally Bashar al-Assad has largely won the war. In Iraq, financial stringency has led Iran not to curtail involvement but instead to seek stronger economic ties with its next-door neighbor. Militias that Iran sponsored “are now paid by the Iraq government, giving Iran leverage in Iraqi politics at little cost to itself.”
Hubbard quotes an anonymous Hezbollah fighter as saying that a financial pinch would not push members away from the organization. “You’re not in Hezbollah for the money,” he said. Something similar could be said about Iran in the Middle East. Iran’s activity in the region is shaped not by the money but instead by Tehran’s perception of what is in Iran’s security interests.
None of this should be surprising. Hubbard notes that “recent history suggests that financial pressure on Iran does not necessarily lead to military cutbacks.” As multiple independent studies have concluded, that also is true of the recent and not-so-recent history of Iran’s overall activity in the Middle East, including activity that the United States finds objectionable.
Continued Iranian Compliance with the JCPOA
Stephens tries to milk another supposed accomplishment out of the administration’s pressure campaign by pointing to the fact that Iran is still observing its obligations under the JCPOA despite the United States having reneged on its own commitments. While acknowledging that Iran outwaiting Trump has something to do with this, Stephens also says the Iranian compliance “suggests an edge of fear in Tehran’s calculations. The U.S. can still impose a great deal more pain on the Islamic Republic if it chooses to do so.”
Reflect first on the irony of an anti-JCPOA voice like Stephens pointing to Iran’s continued rigorous observance of its obligations under the JCPOA—the terms of which Stephens and other opponents have been excoriating for three years—as a supposed accomplishment of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign. Reflect further on how much Iran’s compliance with those obligations undermines opponents’ rhetoric about how Iran supposedly has been hell-bent on getting nuclear weapons, with the JCPOA just a way-station where it gets an economic fillip. If that really were Iran’s intention all along—and given that it is not now getting the fillip—Iran would have renounced the JCPOA as soon as the United States reneged.
Think also about what sort of diplomacy Stephens’s suggestion implies: that the way to get another state to stick to agreed terms is not to stick to them oneself but instead to renege and then to threaten something worse. That would be a bizarre brand of diplomacy, to put it mildly, and one that neither the United States nor anyone else could use to get much business done.
“Tehran’s calculations” are unlikely to be anything like what Stephens suggests they are. The Trump administration, through both its actions and its rhetoric, has given Iranian leaders ample reason to conclude that the administration is determined to punish Iran as much as possible no matter what Iran does. Any hesitation within the administration not to push the sanctions pedal all the way to the metal appears to be a reaction not to Iranian restraint but instead to economic concerns about how elimination of waivers for importing Iranian oil would affect the world oil market and ultimately the price of gasoline at the pump.
Iranian Patience Not Unlimited
Iran’s continued compliance with the JCPOA despite U.S. reneging definitely involves an Iranian decision to outwait Trump. This is partly, but not solely, a matter of some Democratic presidential candidates, as Stephens correctly notes, stating their intention if elected to bring the United States back into compliance with the agreement. Iran is making its decisions about nuclear policy within a larger context in which not Iran, but instead the United States under Trump, is the isolated actor. It is not just Iran but all the non-U.S. parties to the JCPOA that are committed to its preservation. So is the larger world community, as expressed in the unanimously adopted United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231.
Iran may continue to outwait Trump, despite not getting the economic relief it bargained for, until the end of the current U.S. presidential term. Politics inside Tehran probably would make it impossible to wait any longer. This is where the 2020 U.S. presidential election comes into play. Former Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, when asked about this subject recently, replied, “My sense right now is that this Iranian regime would like to try and wait out the Trump administration. But if the president was elected to a second term, then their interest in doing that probably goes out the window.”
If that happens, the damage from the pressure campaign will not be limited to the consequences that Stephens ignores, such as how economic warfare against Iran has become economic warfare against Western allies and has contributed to the poisoning of U.S. relations with them. The damage will include a new Iranian nuclear crisis that was totally avoidable if only the administration had not embarked on its destructive course a year ago.
April 23, 2019 - Posted by aletho | Economics, Wars for Israel | Hezbollah, Lebanon, New York Times, Sanctions against Iran, United States
American arrogance(at the direction of Israel, and it’s Powerful agents within the USA Government) is the major problem in the World today.
The USA makes it’s decisions in favour of Israel(and against its own interests) and against the interests of the American people.
Wake up, America.
Comment by Brian Harry | April 23, 2019 | Reply
Chill Anarchist on Childless Aussie vegans gettin…
Survivors of Ireland’s mother-and-baby homes accuse govt of whitewashing ‘illegal’ vaccine trials on children January 17, 2021
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Category Archives: Enlightenment
Methodising by Accounts and Other Dreams of Enlightenment – or, A Life in an Early Age of Big Data
“We have taken the liberty to add to this manual, a kind of classic legislative tablet, or memorandum. It will serve for private use, by methodising the most interesting points of the legislature. You may help your memory and do good, if you can thereby shew the necessity of filling the blanks in the assembly with a due portion of the classic information and assistance requisite for the business of the day: sometimes you will find you have too few commercial men, or too few agriculturalists, and often too few LIBERAL AMERICANS, who may embrace correct views for the interest of the whole of the union…” [More]
With that introduction, Samuel Blodget Jr. introduced his readers (in 1806) to the first Congressional scorecard:
Source: Samuel Blodget Jr., Economica: A Statistical Manual for the United States of America (Washington, D.C., 1806) from hathitrust.org
Although, really, it’s more an account book than a scorecard. Blodget hoped to rationalize his nation’s government by teaching its leading thinkers to figure like merchants, and keep proper accounts. Moreover, Blodget believed in numbers’ almost mystical power to open minds. After presenting a table comparing the nation’s population, state income, size, and militia strength to that of other nations, he mused on the benefits of looking at such extensive tables: “the mere habit of contemplating subjects of magnitude, will help to cure local prejudices.”[More] He dreamed of a nation led by universalists, unburdened by prejudice or interest—all driven by and committed to data (the Big Data of the day). It was a big dream.
But Samuel Blodget, Jr. knew how to dream big dreams. His contemporaries had a word for his type: a “projector.” An epithet as well as an honorific, it translates roughly to “entrepreneur,” although projectors’ goals did not have to end in a company, as modern usage assumes. Blodget’s dreams touched the worlds of government, of education, and of finance. Threaded between these dreams ran twin cords of commerce and Enlightenment.
Born in 1755 in Woburn, Massachusetts to a prominent New England projector (whose projects ranged from milling to potash manufacture to fur and lumber trade to canal building), Blodget came of age at the dawn of the American Revolution and in 1775 joined the rebellion, where he eventually joined General George Washington’s staff (while his father sold cloth from his mills to the rebels). He lasted three years before the strain forced him out of the service. But those three years stirred him as much as a philosopher as they did stoke his patriotic fervor (and kindle his abiding adoration of General Washington.)
As Blodget told the story, he overheard a conversation in October of 1775 between Washington, General Nathanael Greene, and others encamped at Cambridge, MA. As they lamented the sorry state of the local seminary—a small affair we know as Harvard—amidst the deprivations of war, Greene offered a promise of hope: once the war was over, the nation would found a university “at which the youth of all the world might be proud to receive instruction.” Washington replied “Young man you are a prophet!” according to Blodget, before explaining that the site of such a university should be a new federal city at the falls of the Potomac. “From this time on,” wrote Blodget years later, “any chart [map] of North America, was in luck, if it escaped the tracing, by penciled lines, a great road from the Pacific to Laboradore, by the falls of Potomac; and also radii for the governmental main roads, from the center to every part of the union.”[More] Even as his other interests demanded attention, Blodget aimed to bring this overheard prophecy to fruition.
The young veteran made a sizable fortune in the next decade through the so-called East India Trade, although he doesn’t appear to have ever made it to China himself. He did travel to Europe twice—at the Hague he began designing the National University in earnest, a work that continued when he visited Oxford. He also found the time to sit (prance?) for John Trumbull, garbed as a revolutionary rifleman.
Portrait of Captain Samuel Blodget in Rifle Dress, by John Trumbull. Source: The Athenaeum.
In 1791, Blodget put his money where his projections were. He invested a magnificent sum[1] in lands in and around the future federal city of Washington. Of the 3,000 house lots he purchased, Blodget granted half (every other lot) to the US government. Once the government built up the city or sold its plots, his plots would gain substantially in value. In this object he found company with a handful of other land speculators—a species in abundance in Early America, where speculation preceded baseball as the national pastime, at least for those with any wealth. But Blodget and his peers’ colossal speculation turned sour as Congress dithered over whether to finance the city’s construction— Blodget blamed congressional divisions for simultaneously embarrassing him financially and frustrating his dream of a federal city and he vented quite a bit of spleen over “party spirit” in his later writings.
While Blodget struggled to put together the pieces of his Washington ventures, he hoped for better fortunes in northern financial adventures. He launched in quick succession two “Tontines,” a form of lottery-cum-stock institution/instrument that sold shares (graded crudely with a life table such that the older paid less and the younger more), aggregated capital for commercial or charitable activities, and then paid its accumulated assets off to all those who survived in 21 years. Blodget’s first Boston Tontine aggregated $2 million in capital, but lost a bid for incorporation— revolutionary elites worried about a “Tontine Gentry” gaining too much economic and cultural power. It did manage to incorporate later as a state bank. Blodget’s second effort, launched in Philadelphia and then extended to Boston with his partner—the appropriately named Ebenezer Hazard—had trouble attracting enough investors, but left in its wake another new endeavor: the Insurance Company of North America—the first general insurance company in the US and, as Hannah Farber of Berkeley recently argued at the Huntington’s Capitalizing on Finance conference, a lightening rod for controversy over the proper role of corporations in early American life.
Amidst all these trials and activities, Blodget launched one more project, one designed to rationalize legislation and reform the political system that had already so frequently troubled him. He began informally, distributing his thoughts on political economy and his compellations of government census data among Washington friends, many of whom sat in Congress. In 1806, unable to subsidize a free newsletter, he published Economica: A Statistical Manual for the United States of America, promising that any profits would go to the national university. The book opened with an epigraph from Aristotle: “The legislature ought to make the people happy.” Blodget thought that Congress could achieve that goal if it applied the rules and rationality of commercial arithmetic to the practice of governance. In that faith, he trod a path worn by absolutists like Louis XIV’s minister Colbert and more liberal monarchists like William Petty and other British proponents of “Political Arithmetick.” Achieving such a goal in a republican government meant cultivating widely the habits of keeping accounts and thinking with numbers, a realization that fueled broader efforts to teach arithmetic in America as a means of teaching reason. That explains all the blank pages and empty forms in Blodget’s text, left “to be filled with a pen, with the result of future years.” [More] Blodget led a life suffused with numbers and committed to keeping accounts of data—he dreamed that his country would follow.
The War of 1812 struck Blodget hard on several fronts. The Insurance Company of North America, primarily a marine insurer, struggled to adapt to the dangers posed to shippers by the on-going Napoleonic wars and America’s fight with Britain. And the British invasion of Washington D.C. added insult to Blodget’s financial injury in that city. He died in April of 1814, his fortunes so battered (perhaps even to the point of bankruptcy) that he failed to leave the bequest for a national university that had so long been his dream. (In 1806, Blodget prepared a plea to Congress to donate to the National University a sum equivalent to the losses he sustained in his Washington speculations—and in working as the agent of the city’s superintendents. His arguments failed to loose Congress’s purse-strings.)
The United States never founded a national university. But even as Blodget failed personally, his other projects survived him. The Insurance Company of North America and Economica lived on, each in its own way a manifestation of Blodget’s enlightenment dreams acted out in the idiom of commerce.
My thanks to Hannah Farber, who knows more about Blodget than anyone else, for her comments and suggestions.
More Reading:
On Blodget’s early life and family, see:
Lorin Blodget, “Samuel Blodget, Jr.,” in Horace Wemyss Smith, Life and Correspondence of the Rev. William Smith, D.D. (Philadelphia: Ferguson Bros. & Co., 1880), vol. II, 514-519.
“Biography of Honorable Samuel Blodget,” The Farmer’s Monthly Visitor (Manchester, NH) 12, no. 6 (June 1852) 161-164 [paywall].
For more on the “Tontine Gentry” and the fascinating interlinkages between struggles for cultural and economic power in early national Boston and Philadelphia, see Heather S. Nathans, “Forging a Powerful Engine: Building Theaters and Elites in Post-Revolutionary Boston and Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania History 66, (1999): 113-143, esp. 121-123 [paywall].
On the Universal Tontine and the Insurance Company of North America, see:
A History of the Insurance Company of North America of Philadelphia: The Oldest Fire and Marine Insurance Company in America (Philadelphia: Press of Review Publishing and Printing Company, 1885), 9-12.
Marquis James, Biography of a Business, 1792-1942: Insurance Company of North America (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1942), 11-14.
On commercial arithmetic as a mode of teaching reason or managing a monarchy, see:
Jacob Soll, “From Note-Taking to Data Banks: Personal and Institutional Information Management in Early Modern Europe,” Intellectual History Review 20, no. 3 (2010), 355-375.
Patricia Cline Cohen, A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (New York: Routledge, 1999), 130-138.
Julian Hoppit, “Political Arithmetic in Eighteenth-Century England,” Economic History Review 49, no. 3 (1996): 516-540.
On the repeated failures to found a national university, see A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957), chapters 1-3.
[1] Blodget paid over $100,000 — which works out to $2.5 million in 2012 dollars in terms of spending power or $7.9 billion 2012 dollars as a percentage of total GDP. I calculated these figures using the invaluable “MeasuringWorth” calculator: http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/
This entry was posted in Big Data, Dan, Enlightenment, history of capitalism, HOS/STS in US History/American Studies, Samuel Blodget on September 18, 2013 by americanscience.
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EO: The two paths ahead
Posted on March 4, 2020 by David Brussat
Proposal to rebuild Penn Station in its original design. (Jeff Stikeman/National Civic Art Society)
The draft executive order that is stirring within the Trump administration is forcing classicists in the field of architecture to choose one of two paths forward. The path that goes through the E.O., if it is not already throttled in its cradle, will give a boost to beauty in federal buildings, and open the way to challenge the dominant architectural culture. If this path is blocked, the status quo of modern architecture and its dominance in the field will continue for decades, possibly centuries.
Modernists, whose control of the establishment is threatened by the E.O., recognize the danger to their interests and are fighting it tooth and nail. Curiously, some classicists and traditionalists have taken up cudgels against their own liberation from modernism’s hegemony. They are undermining the unity needed to prevail on behalf of beauty.
Perhaps the most extreme example is the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. The ICAA’s opposition was predictable, since the board that runs it from New York City sliced “advocacy” from its mission statement a year or so ago. No longer may chapters support or oppose relevant developments under the ICAA imprimatur, not even in their own regions. We are muzzled.
Why am I still in this organization, anyway? Why does it even exist?
The ICAA should don its thinking cap and consider the two alternative paths facing classical architecture.
The executive order, if signed by Trump, would represent an unexpected but powerful intervention in a hopeless situation – virtually a deus ex machina that offers traditional architecture a path to recapture its dominance in the field, which lasted many centuries until modern architects ousted tradition from the establishment after World War II for no good reason.
The chief architect of the General Services Administration recently resigned, and for the E.O. to be effective, the president must appoint a sympathetic replacement, and he, in turn, must replace or neutralize holdover GSA officials and managers who refuse to abide by the new dispensation. If that does not happen, the E.O. will be a dead letter.
If it does happen, the GSA will snap its fingers and battalions of fake Parthenons will begin marching down Washington’s broad avenues.
Only kidding.
If the E.O. is signed and classicists at the GSA are able to put it into practice, replacing the virtual mandate in favor of modern architecture in effect since 1962, federal courthouses, post offices, office buildings, monuments and other projects designed to please rather than to offend will begin to rise in the city of Pierre L’Enfant and in cities and towns around the country.
With each newly announced traditional project, in or out of Washington, modernist architecture critics will howl, and each time they do, the average member of the public will recognize how totally ridiculous are the modernist claims that classical architecture is “not of our time” or “copying the past” or “fascist.” They will judge the new buildings by their actual appearance. (As if the average person is stupid enough to believe that a building or its style is responsible for what takes place under its roof!)
Each building that rises up against the backdrop of this “discussion” will help to confirm the public’s natural preference for buildings that look like what they are supposed to be.
The executive order’s provisions would force federal officials to bring the public into the design process from which they’d previously been excluded. The modernist mandate from 1962, written by U.S. senator-to-be Daniel Patrick Moynihan, reads in part as follows:
Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government, and not vice versa. … The advice of distinguished architects ought to, as a rule, be sought prior to the award of important design contracts.
Nothing in there about the public! During the decades since 1962, the built environment has been substantially degraded by modern architecture in and out of Washington. Modernists like to insist that the public is not interested in architecture. In fact, architecture is not interested in the public. Dismay at buildings that spurn conventional ideas of beauty, and the public’s exclusion from the process by which these junkyard dogs arise, has caused the public to tune out the built environment as a defense mechanism against the ennui of experiencing modern architecture – in part because individuals know that they can do nothing about it. That will change.
And once they are included in decisions regarding federal architecture they will expect to be included in local decisions about public architecture, and, at last, private architecture. This will force developers to pay more attention to public taste, and to facilitate the public’s involvement in the development process – because the public votes for the politicians who get money from developers and influence what and how they can build projects.
Once this process gets under way, the architecture profession and its firms will be forced to diversify their stylistic offerings to clients, private and public. That will force architecture schools to broaden their curricula to include classical coursework. It is not widely known that today there is only one [1] major architecture school that offers a classical curriculum: the University of Notre Dame. This will change.
Because classical architecture proudly uses ornament to embellish buildings, the changes described above will reform the largely monolithic character of the architectural profession. A revival will follow in jobs for artists, artisans and other makers creating decoration to replace the blank abstractions of modernism – a tepid sterility which fosters illness, anomie, and a tolerance among citizens for treatment as cogs in the machinery of society.
Because the public has a better (and more sophisticated) sense of taste than most design professionals marinated in modernism, public involvement in their cities’ development process will lead to more attractive buildings, and eventually to a greater affection for government buildings, and maybe, perhaps, respect for government itself.
The late Sir Roger Scruton wrote in The Classical Vernacular (1994) that the classically designed street “is humanly proportioned, safe, gregarious, and quietly vigilant, [and] constantly reminds the pedestrian that he is not alone, that he is in a world of human encounter, and that he must match the good manners of the [street] that guides him.”
The producer of the Star Wars films, George Lucas, reflected at least a subconscious recognition of this phenomenon when he created traditional habitats for his good guys and modernist habitats (such as the Death Star) for his evil characters. So maybe, in the end, classical architecture will help America avoid the authoritarian future predicted by so many elite thinkers. (I ended my last post on this subject, “Parsing classical creativity,” with the hope that classicism could prevent authoritarianism, and then a joke: “But don’t tell that to President Trump!”)
To top off this litany of almost certain results from adopting “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again” as U.S. policy – no more a “top-down mandate” than its predecessor – it would make America beautiful again.
Okay. So what if classicists refuse to unify behind the proposed E.O. and it dies for lack of support even among a large swath of classicism’s advocates?
The status quo would prevail, certainly for decades, possibly for centuries. Today, classicists mainly seek to advance by placing more classical classes – not coursework, let alone curricula – in more modernist architecture schools. Recently, classicists breathed a huge sigh of relief that Notre Dame hired a traditional architect/urbanist, Stefanos Polyzoides, as dean of its school of architecture. It became classicist only a few decades ago after a palace coup at the school, and that could be reversed, theoretically, at any time, even though Notre Dame’s is the only program whose graduates can count on getting a job in architecture right after graduation. Meanwhile, Catholic University, in D.C., is looking for a new dean of architecture amid some doubt, apparently, that a classicist will be hired or that the new slate of classical coursework at the school will even survive. Not too long ago, the Boston Architecture College addressed funding issues by simply ousting its minimalist classical program, and even refused to let the ICAA exhibit in its lobby. If the E.O. goes down, more of this is what classicists can expect.
If the E.O. dies, so will hope that classicism can expand upon the slow but steady growth it has seen over the past two or three decades. Today, the classical revival is based mainly on rich people who, like most people, tend to prefer classical or traditional styles over modernist styles. Whether they hire quality designers or otherwise, they hire classical architects to build their mansions. The wealthy have been the source of most classical commissions for decades, but the public doesn’t get to see the work. The ongoing debate between classicism and modernism (which modernists absurdly claim is over) may be said to have begun with ICAA founder Henry Hope Reed’s 1959 book The Golden City, and was given a boost, at least in Britain, by Prince Charles’s 1984 attack on the carbuncles of modernism. By killing off the E.O., modern architecture will retain the whip hand. New traditional architecture that the public can see, such as civic buildings, will remain rare. Such new buildings are important. They teach the public that traditional architecture is not lost to the past but is an equally valid vision of the future.
I’ve placed considerable stock in the recent proposal to rebuild Penn Station using the 1910 design of Charles Follen McKim. It would feature the sort of mechanical upgrading that has been a tradition of architecture for centuries. This is a tradition that most modernists pretend not to be aware of, as if new Georgian houses need to be fitted, still, with lightning rods on the roof and outhouses in the back yard. Anyway, the Penn Station plan, which is already a long shot under the current modernist regime, seems the most obvious prospect for erecting a major traditional building that millions of citizens will see, offering the possibility of a classical revival reminiscent of the City Beautiful movement sparked by the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, in Chicago. The new World Trade Center at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan might have had a classically designed rebuild – a traditional proposal was offered by the firm of Franck Lohsen McCrery – but the rules called for “architecture of its time.” Yale just erected two beautiful new residential campuses in the Collegiate Gothic style (designed by Robert A.M. Stern’s robust firm), but how many non-Yalies travel to New Haven to see it?
So, short of some other kind of deus ex machina, what sort of possibilities will arise over the next decades to stoke the dreams of Americans who want their country to be beautiful again? Hope springs eternal, but the options are few and very difficult to imagine. Yes, the federal government is working to extend a set of rail platforms from Penn Station into the old historic post office next door (emblazoned with the motto “Neither snow nor rain … “). It was also designed by McKim, Mead & White, and is now known as Moynihan Train Hall after the creator of the modernist mandate under which America has groaned since 1962. As senator, Moynihan often went to bat for Amtrak funding. The station that bears his name is lovely, but it is certainly not new classicism, not the role model needed to give the classical revival a boost.
If the Trump administration were to back the plan for a MM&W rebuild of Penn Station, would leading classicists oppose it because of its connection to Trump? I hope not. And if not, then why do so many of classicism’s leading lights oppose the E.O.? There is no plausible reason.
Speaking of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, what did he think of his handiwork in writing the 1962 GSA principles mandating ugly federal buildings? Here’s what he had to say in 1970, just eight years later:
Twentieth-century America has seen a steady, persistent decline in the visual and emotional power of its public buildings, and this has been accompanied by a not less persistent decline in the authority of the public order.
This entry was posted in Architecture and tagged classical architecture, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Donald Trump, General Services Administration, Henry Hope Reed, ICAA, Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again, McKim Mead & White, Modern Architecture, National Civic Art Society, Penn Station, Sir Roger Scruton, Washington DC, World's Columbian Exposition. Bookmark the permalink.
19 Responses to EO: The two paths ahead
Pingback: Readings on the exec. order | Architecture Here and There
Mike DiLauro says:
I suppose that this is really appropro of nothing but in planning a trip to Italy in the fall where we will be travelling primarily by train that the Milan Centrale Station is evocative of the old Penn Station and in some respects is even more spectacular. How did that station survive and prosper with what appear to be frequent modernizations while ours did not? Some answers are obvious (greater respect and understanding of culture and the arts; heavier reliance on train travel) but I’m thinking that some are not. Thoughts?
Mike, there is a very interesting 2001 essay by Theodore Dalrymple called “The Uses of Corruption” about the differences between Britain and Italy. He argues that Italy has become more prosperous than Britain in recent decades because its system of corruption facilitates getting things done whereas Britain’s relative absence of corruption, and nosy Parker officialdom, slows things down. It’s much more complicated than that, but he places preservation into the context of his argument, and I think the phenomenon of Italy’s respect for its past factors into that, and it may be what saved that train station. Here’s a link to my discussion of Dalrymple’s essay, which contains a link to the essay. Highly worth reading!
https://architecturehereandthere.com/2018/01/12/the-uses-of-preservation/
The Impractical Architect says:
Dear David, this is a great summing up as the dust settles.
Outside of the US we are watching agog to see what happens next. FYI here are links to 2 recent radio interviews on the same subject that I found on the tunein app. In the past when I have searched for classical architecture on this app, there would have been nothing found. So at the very least this potential EO has put a spotlight on the subject.
Below are the links I mentioned
Listen to Why Classical Architecture Matters on TuneIn
http://tun.in/tjBwqZ
Listen to Make America Classical Again: Executive Order to Mandate Federal Architecture Style on TuneIn
http://tun.in/tjCDiX
Thanks for sending, Hugh. It does raise one’s spirits to know that people are thinking about this topic. But it’s depressing how poorly the second one expresses the ideas behind the EO. I am listening to the one expressly on the EO, but have not yet listened to “Why Classical Architecture Matters.” I hope it is better. I think people are reasonably sophisticated in their taste for buildings, but decades of propaganda have stripped people of the ability to express simple truths about architecture. They just don’t have the words for it anymore.
The interview featuring Catesby Leigh is a lot better I thought, but it’s still interesting to hear this topic being discussed by new voices. I think it helps a lot to get the message out of the echo chamber that we can sometimes get stuck in. Sometimes hearing modernists discussing traditionalism can be most illuminating! 😂
Yes, Catesby is always worth listening to. I had already received that podcast and read the City Journal essay on which it is based. Illuminating is a good word for it.
George Ranalli says:
You might want to see the film Motherless Brooklyn. It contains a CGI recreation of the interior of Penn Station! It’s really something to see as if it was still there!!
https://untappedcities.com/2019/10/02/how-the-lost-penn-station-was-recreated-for-the-movie-motherless-brooklyn/
Best George
Confidential Message Sent by George Ranalli
George, thanks for letting me know about this. I viewed the trailer. Is it a good movie? How much time is spent in or out of Penn Station?
Have you seen that wonderful video that stitches together film clips of scenes in Penn Station from a couple dozen old movies? It’s more than worth a look. You can search for my post that links to it on my blog.
One caveat about the idea of letting citizens decide on public architecture. The selection process should be a community wide decision, not a committee. Reason is, such “art ” committees tend to be peopled mostly with”artists” and art history majors, both groups invariably kindly disposed towards the modernist project. Decisions about public art and architecture should be in the hands of the general public, not miseducated elites.
That is a very, very valid point, Milton, which I thought I’d made clearly enough in speaking of how the development process would change in cities and towns. Thank you for further clarifying the point.
realfinishes says:
David, I think you’re stating openly what many others have been concerned about privately. Our institutions that have acted as repositories and stewards of the traditional and Classical knowledge are on shaky ground. The INTBAU USA chapter has been inactive since its founding. It looks as though Notre Dame School of Architecture has been granted a reprieve yet as you point out The Institute of Classical Architecture has withdrawn significantly from Henry Hope Reed’s core mission of education, advocacy, and commitment to the civic realm. However imperfectly conceived or subject to criticism the E.O may be at least the NCAS is doing something.
In my opinion the need is making itself readily apparent for a new institution with two principal functions. The first esoteric function is as a college of fellows that acts as both guardian and transmitter of the Classical tradition through scholarship and education. The second related, though distinct exoteric function is advocacy. I envisage an institution not concerned with awards or tours, neither dependent for their existence on fancy dinners and cocktail parties, nor subject to the whims of university or government politics. A foundation so built to endure and navigate our civilisation through the next century of challenges much like the material counterparts of the buildings we so much admire.
Funny you should mention fancy dinners and cocktail parties, Patrick. I’ve voiced that complaint at meetings of our New England chapter, on whose board I sit. The national claims that it wants to avoid advocacy in order to avoid lawsuits, but nothing we were planning (and our chapter is leading the opposition to banning advocacy) would seem to be unprotected as free speech by the First Amendment. I think they just don’t want any awkward moments at their fancy parties.
I agree that an organization such as you describe is necessary. I think, but am not certain, that one is being contemplated by someone we both know, and I will say more offline.
LazyReader says:
While the destruction of penn station is tragic, it was not a case of it outliving it’s usefullness, When they built it; it was under assumption they would put a tower above it in it’s later years, the bottom would function as a station, and Lobby, the tower would serve as office space. Unfortunately as NYC enters fiscal oblivion rebuilding a train station as it was is not a wise use of spending priorities no matter the aesthetic. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in a heap of financial trouble. It is more than $40 billion in debt; it has a $60 billion maintenance backlog; plus it has more than $20 billion in unfunded health care obligations. The debt and unfunded pension and health care obligations should be found in the consolidated financial statements that most transit agencies post on their web sites. Maintenance backlogs are harder to find as government agencies don’t want to admit they’ve been neglecting their physical infrastructure. The bottom line is that rail transit is extremely expensive and the city should have replaced the subway with rubber tire metro years ago.
Rebuilding Penn Station, I would support in spirit, but the cost of the structure, building in New York City, something that massive would push 3-4 Billion dollars. Read Bent Flyvbjerg’s Oxford University book “The Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management”. 90% of all megaprojects go overbudget; to the tune often 30% average or more.
1: Megaprojects are inherently risky due to complexity and long time horizons
2: Projects are often led by inexperienced planners who keep changing over the course of the project
3: Decision making involves many actors and stakeholders with conflicting interests
4: Technologies and designs are often non-standard, which not only makes projects more difficult but persuades managers that their projects are unique and so they don’t learn from others’ experiences;
5: People often commit to projects at an early stage leaving alternative analyses weak or absent;
6: Large sums of money lead to rent-seeking behavior and optimism bias;
7: Project scope is likely to change significantly over time;
8: Projects are particularly vulnerable to black swans;
9: Planners rarely account for complexity and black swans, which is why projects go over budget and under perform;
10: As a result, misinformation about benefits, costs, and risks is the norm throughout project development.
If someone has grandiose plans to make something with their own money and resources on the line……..who cares if it fails. When government has the same ambitions, Watch your wallet. Truly, there’s but one lesson you should learn about megaprojects, and that is: for the most part; Don’t do them. This is especially true for governments. Everything they build costs more.
Many of those are valid points, Lazy, but if the federal government backs it with funding, and private sources raise money by redeveloping, with air rights, the area immediately surrounding the station, then perhaps some of those debts and maintenance deficiencies can be rolled back by the (seemingly) inevitable gold rush sparked by making New York great again. It is possible. Calatrava’s extravagance cost $4 billion but there was no spinoff. And, first, the city and state will need new maximum leaders. Plus, NYC already has “rubber-tire metro” known as buses.
The bottom line is that rail transit is extremely expensive. While proposals to reign in spending; like fix union work rules and possible cuts or privitization among other things is worthwhile, it is not going to free up enough money for MTA to solve its $60 billion maintenance backlog while also repaying its $40 billion debt.
Those subways are contained entirely within New York City. They were built by New York City. They are owned by New York City. I don’t think the state and federal taxpayer should bear the burden for repair, let alone paying for a carbon copy of personal nostalgia. What happened Penn Station while tragic was a byproduct of then evolving transportation technologies, the Jet and the arrival of the Interstate. Even in it’s heyday Penn Station was very expensive to maintain, a 150 foot high cavernous space of marble and travertine, you built a palace and it costs what a palace cost for upkeep.
If the city can’t exist without its subways, and it refuses to pay to maintain it’s subways they own, then maybe the answer is that it shouldn’t exist, at least not with two million jobs located in seven square miles on Manhattan. The island would de-densify and jobs might migrate elsewhere making manhattan slightly more affordable; a less congested, less expensive place to live.
I reiterate, Lazy, that you have valid points. There are always many reasons to be against something and many to be for it, and they may not weigh equally in the balance. But, either way, they do not always reflect reality, which is always very much more complex and difficult to know. So I will continue to support rebuilding Penn Station as it was originally designed if the will and a way can be found. (Someday someone is going to use this comment against me!)
I will support it too, in spirit. I just don’t see the need to rebuild a transit station when the transit lines they accommodate are in a state of financial mismanagement and physical disrepair and thus require more immediate attention.
DB reply: I guess there is no “need,” but a rebuild would be profoundly helpful to NYC and the nation (and the world) because it would (absent the EO) jumpstart a classical revival, if anything can.
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Christian Living: Modern Slavery – The Unheard Cries
Mention the word “slavery” and what comes to mind? Probably Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Or perhaps the long struggle of men and women such as William Wilberforce to end Britain’s transatlantic slave trade in 1807.
Unfortunately, the systematic abuse of human persons bought and sold for the profits of their service—legal and otherwise—is still very much with us. Consider these facts:
There are 27 million human beings trapped in some form of human trafficking or cruel and abusive labor practices today, half of them children under the age of 18.
800,000 human beings are bought, sold or forced across international boundaries for exploitative purposes every year.
Unscrupulous child labor “employers” abuse an estimated 126 million children around the world.
In the United States, attorneys from the Department of Justice have prosecuted “slave trade” activities in 91 cities and in nearly every state.
Between 1998 and 2000, more than 50,000 women and children from Latvia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Thailand, China, Russia and Mexico were brought into the United States to work as sex slaves.1
These shocking facts fly in the face of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1956 UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. Slavery has morphed, learning to fly under the radar, but the misery it creates is unchanged. People in poor or war-torn countries are often lured with fake visas and passes into a foreign country by an unscrupulous “employer” who controls them through propaganda, mental or physical abuse or the threat of being handed over to the authorities.
Modern slaves are not invisible. They could be as close as the back room of your favorite restaurant or the construction site you pass every day.
In August 1995, Californians were shocked to learn of 72 garment workers held for seven years in a roach-infested apartment complex behind a wire fence in a thriving suburb of metropolitan Los Angeles. The workers, mostly women from Thailand, were promised high-paying sewing jobs in the United States. On arrival their passports were confiscated and they were forced to work 16-hour shifts for 70 cents an hour in a suburban garage with no ventilation and behind shuttered windows. The slaveholders established a commissary where a bar of soap sold for $20 and a bag of rice for $10. There was seemingly no escape.
New definitions/old problems
Thanks to an alert citizenry, the Southern California case made the headlines and became a case study in modern slavery—working under mental or physical threats and/or abuse, dehumanization, physical constraint and restriction. Today “bonded labor” is quite common in the twilight zone of human misery. This refers to hapless individuals being conned into taking loans, perhaps to pay for medicine for a sick child. People sign on to pay the debt and never get out of servitude for the price of food and shelter. David Batstone estimates there are at least 15 million bonded slaves in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
The world refugee crisis has made the problem worse. European Union agents find themselves awash in the flood of 120,000 women and children trafficked from Africa or the former Soviet Union. Ninety percent end up coerced into Europe’s proliferating sex industry. Handsome profits are made from unpaid servitude, perhaps as much as $9.5 billion each year.
It is reminiscent of the words of Ecclesiastes: “I saw the tears of the oppressed—and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors—and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive” (Ecclesiastes 4:1-2).
The good news is that concerned voices—Christian and otherwise—are beginning to rise up against these abuses. Modern-day abolitionists have been active in everything from starting micro-enterprises to creating sustainable jobs for ex-slaves or discreetly researching overseas projects connected to their companies, suppliers or subcontractors. Some businesses have been persuaded by anti-slavery advocates to formally pledge zero tolerance for human trafficking and to enhance or institute anti-slavery laws.
David Arkless of Manpower, the world’s largest private employer, is one of them. He was so shocked by the extent of modern-day exploitation that he launched a one-man campaign to get the world’s top corporations to sign the Athens Declaration against human trafficking.
To get started in this humanitarian outreach, contact www.antislavery.org, the world’s oldest international human rights organization. Christian groups involved include the Salvation Army (www.salvationarmy.org), Sojourners (www.sojo.net) and various agencies of World Vision (www.worldvision.org).
With the help of these and other groups, Christians can organize, advertise the problem, set up a booth in the back of the church, write letters, and make some noise in their communities.
Sometimes we read history and sometimes we are called on to make history. Our choices will be noted by future generations, just as Christians today are inspired by the Wilberforces and abolitionists who went before them. The words of Christ are a call to action: “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). May we answer the call! •
1 Sources: David Batstone, Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It; Kevin Bales, Disposable People; John McKay et al., A History of World Societies: Volume B, pages 610-611.
Author: Curtis May and Neil Earle
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Tag: F-89 Scorpion
XF-87 Blackhawk
Development of the XF-87 began at Curtiss-Wright in 1946, it would eventually be intended to be an all-weather interceptor. The Blackhawk was developed from an earlier ground attack, tactical bomber design, the XA-43. The Blackhawk was a response to the initial specification for a jet-powered night fighter, capable of speeds up to 530 mph, issued by the US Army Air Force in August 1945.
A number of companies responded including Bell Aircraft, Consolidated-Vultee, Douglas Aircraft, Northrop, Goodyear and Curtiss-Wright. The US Army Air Force down-selected Northrop’s design – then known as the N-24 and the Curtiss-Wright design- known as the Model 29A.
Curtiss-Wright XF-87 (US Air Force)
The XP-87 had a two-man crew seated side-by-side and was powered by two pairs of Westinghouse XJ34-WE-7 turbojet engines mounted on the wings. In comparison to the sleeker Northrop design, the Blackhawk was a slightly larger, bulkier and heavier aircraft with a straight wing profile. The XJ34-WE-7 turbojets only provided 12,000 lbf and Curtiss-Wright’s test pilot B. Lee Miller described performance in initial tests as sluggish. The Blackhawk’s armament was to consist of four 20mm cannons mounted in a nose turret.
The US Army Air Force designated the Curtiss-Wright jet the XP-87, while Northrop’s N-24 became the XP-89 and full-scale models of both were ordered.
The Curtis XP-87 (Curtiss-Wright, courtesy of Mark Lane)
In June 1948 the newly formed US Air Force re-designated fighters from P to F and the XP-87 became the XF-87 when prototypes were ordered. The XF-87 made its first flight in March 1948. During subsequent flight evaluations in October 1948, the Northrop XF-89 was found to be faster than the XF-87 and the US Navy’s XF3D (Douglas F3D Skyknight). While the Blackhawk was a capable and generally satisfactory aircraft it was deemed to be underpowered. It also reportedly suffered from buffeting at relatively slow speeds.
Walter Tydon’s patent for the Blackhawk’s landing gear (US Patent Office)
Evaluators disliked the Northrop and reportedly favoured the XF-87, however, one evaluating pilot likened its handling to a medium Bomber. An improved faster and more powerful Blackhawk was planned with J47 engines from General Electric. The fate of a second prototype is unclear and sources conflict. Most sources state that the XF-87 never had its armament fitted, however, photographic evidence clearly shows an aircraft, not with a turret, but with four nose mounted guns. This aircraft may be one of the airworthy prototypes or it could be a full-scale mock up built to show the USAAF during the selection process.
Despite the trials favouring the XF-89, the USAF initially ordered 57 F-87A fighters and 30 RF-87A reconnaissance aircraft from Curtiss-Wright in June 1948. Curtis-Wright and the USAF began a publicity campaign to unveil the new fighter, even appearing on the cover of an August edition of Aviation Week and in numerous other aviation publications, but the orders were abruptly cancelled in October 1948 and the USAF moved forward the development of the Northrop XF-89 instead. Check out our video on the F-89 Scorpion linked above.
The ‘F-87’ Blackhawk on the cover of Aviation Week (courtesy of Mark Lane)
The reason for this reversal of the decision is unclear. Only minor faults had been identified during testing and the more powerful J47 engines would have greatly increased the Blackhawk’s speed. The official reason for the cancellation was reportedly a disagreement on the price of a redesigned wing profile. According to his memoir, Walter Tydon, Curtiss-Wright’s chief engineer at the time, believed that some bad blood between Curtiss-Wright’s management and the then-President Harry S. Truman may have led the F-87 contract to be cancelled. Truman was Senator for Missouri from 1935 to 1945 and during that time Tydon believed he had come into conflict with the Curtiss-Wright’s management, perhaps regarding the company’s factory in St. Louis. Without substantial archival research it is difficult to verify either the official reason or Tydon’s theory.
Another potential reason for the cancellation was raised during the Congressional Hearings regarding the B-36 Program, Congressman Charles B. Deane noted that both Curtiss-Wright and Northrop had been informed that “unless they agreed to merge with Consolidated Vultee, business would be bad for them.” The testimony before the hearing notes that Curtiss-Wright were unenthusiastic about a potential merger and this might have been why the F-87 contract was cancelled. The Secretary of the Air Force denied this, however, stating that the cancellation was the result of “operating difficulties with the experimental model of the F-87, plus increasingly satisfactory operating data on competitive all-weather fighters.”
The XF-87 Blackhawk taking off (courtesy of Mark Lane)
Sadly, the prototype XF-87 Blackhawk’s was reportedly scrapped and photographs and footage of the initial flight testing of the Blackhawk is all we have left. The loss of the interceptor contract to Northrop led to the end of Curtiss-Wright’s aircraft production, with the Blackhawk being their last fighter design.
Special thanks to Mark Lane, the grandson of Walter Tydon, Curtiss-Wright’s chief engineer, for taking the time to discuss the Blackhawk and his grandfather’s role in its design.
If you enjoyed the video and this article please consider supporting our work here. We have some great perks available for Patreon Supporters. You can also support us via one-time donations here.
Saga of the P-40 and Curtiss Airplane Division: Its Rise and Demise, W. Tydon
Newest Fighter In the Skies, Aviation Week, 2 Aug. 1948
Ad featured in Army & Navy Journal, Vol. 85, No. 40, 7 Aug. 1948 (source)
Ad featured in Air Force, Vo.31, No.9, Sept. 1948 (source)
‘Investigation of the B-36 Bomber Program’, US Congressional Hearing, Aug.-Oct. 1949, (source)
Curtiss Aircraft, 1907-1947, P.M. Bowers (1987)
American Attack Aircraft Since 1926, E.R. Johnson (2008)
The Big Book of X-Bombers & X-Fighters: USAF Jet-Powered Experimental Aircraft and Their Propulsive Systems, S. Pace (2016)
Curtiss-Wright Aeroplane Factory, Missouri, National Register of Historic Places, US National Park Service (2016) (source)
Posted on October 18, 2020 October 17, 2020 by TABPosted in Blog, Patents, Photos, VideoTagged Aviation, Aviation History, Cold War, Curtiss-Wright, Curtiss-Wright XF-87, Documentary, F-87, F-89, F-89 Scorpion, History, History Documentary, Jets, Matt, Military aviation, Military Aviation History, Military History, US Air Force, USAF, XA-43, XF-87, XF-87 Blackhawk, XP-87. Leave a comment
The Battle of Palmdale – WW2 Drone Hellcat vs F-89 Scorpion Jet Interceptors
The Battle of Palmdale is one of those historic events that could easily spawn clickbait titles: US Navy vs US Air Force, Drone vs Manned Fighter, Runaway WW2 fighter vs Rocket-armed Jet Interceptor. None of these would be a lie!
Artists impression of the ‘battle’ (Pageant magazine, 1957)
On 16th August, 1956 a US Navy Grumman F6F-5K Hellcat a target drone went rouge over California and the USAF scrambled a pair of Northrop F-89 Scorpions to shoot it down. The F-89s failed to down the Hellcat but did manage to start a serious wildfire.
Posted on October 14, 2020 October 14, 2020 by TABPosted in VideoTagged Aviation, Aviation History, Battle of Palmdale, Cold War, Documentary, Drone, Drones, F-89, F-89 Scorpion, F6F Hellcat, F6F-5K, F89, Fighter Jet, Grumman Hellcat, History, Interceptor, Jet interceptor, Matt, Military, Military aviation, Military History, Northrop, Northrop F-89, Northrop F-89 Scorpion, Palmdale, UAV, US Air Force, US Naval Air Station Point Mugu, US Navy, USAF. Leave a comment
Northrop F-89 Scorpion
The Northrop F-89 Scorpion is perhaps one of the lesser known American jet interceptors of the 1950s. To put the F-89 into some context its development began in 1948, intended to be an all-weather interceptor, its stable mates included the F-86 Sabre and the F-84 Thunderjet. The F-89 made its first flight in August 1948 and entered service two years later.
In August 1945 the US Army Air Force released a specification for a new jet-powered night fighter with a speed of up to 530 mph. Jack Northrop began work on a swept wing design which went on to be evaluated with entries from Bell Aircraft, Consolidated-Vultee, Douglas Aircraft, Goodyear and Curtiss-Wright. The US Army Air Force down-selected Northrop’s design – then known as the N-24 and the Curtiss-Wright XP-87 Blackhawk.
XF-89 Scorpion Testing at Edwards Air Force Base (USAF/US National Archives)
The Curtiss-Wright XP-87 was a slightly larger, slightly heavier aircraft with its two-man crew seated side-by-side. It was powered by two pairs of Westinghouse XJ34-WE-7 turbojet engines mounted on the wings. In comparison the Northrop design was slimmer, with sept wings and had its two Allison J35 turbojet engines buried low in its fuselage to reduce drag.
The N-24 was designated the XP-89 by the US Army Air Force and a full-scale model was ordered. Aerodynamic testing found that the swept wing was unstable in low speed and a straight, narrow profile was developed and the horizontal stabilizer and cockpit configuration was redesigned.
In 1948 the newly formed US Air Force re-designated fighters from P to F and the XP-89 became the XF-89 when prototypes were ordered. During subsequent flight evaluations the XF-89 was found to be faster than the XF-87 and the US Navy’s XF3D (Douglas F3D Skyknight). Evaluators disliked the Northrop and criticised its cockpit layout, however, the USAF moved forward with its development and scrapped the XF-87.
F-89B at Eglin Air Force Base. Note the external vibration dampeners on the horizontal stabiliser and the 6 cannons in the nose (USAF)
Testing with a second prototype continued and the engines were upgraded with a more powerful Allison J33-A-21 fitted with an afterburner, while concerns about ease of maintenance were answered by having the whole engine capable of lowering out of the fuselage. The XF-89 suffered a number of crashes during testing with a fatal crash on the 22nd February 1950, which killed flight test engineer Arthur Turton when flutter, or vibrations, in the elevator caused the tail of the aircraft to sheer off. The geometry of the rear fuselage and engine exhaust were found to be the cause and were redesigned.
F-89 firing its 2.75in ‘Mighty Mouse’ Mk 4/Mk 40 Folding-Fin Aerial Rockets (USAF/US National Archives)
Despite the fatal crash the aircraft’s flaws were addressed and production of the XF-89 was greenlit in January 1949, with a contract for 48 F-89s, worth just over $39 million, awarded in May 1949.
The F-89’s armament varied considerably during its service life. Originally it had been intended for the night fighter to have a turret with four forward-firing cannons and another 2 cannon turret firing aft. This was abandoned and the first F-89As had six forward-firing 20mm cannons and the ability to mount rocket pods carrying 16 5in rockets.
Formation of three rocket-armed F-89Ds of the 59th Fighter Squadron (USAF/US National Archives)
The F-89A was quickly superseded by the B which had the same armaments but improved avionics. The F-89D entered service in October 1954, the D abandoned the cannons and instead had two rocket pods mounting a total of 104 smaller 2.75in ‘Mighty Mouse’ Mk 4/Mk 40 Folding-Fin Aerial Rockets.
Entering service in 1956 the F-89H was equipped with large wingtip pods that could externally carry three GAR-1/2 Falcon missiles each with 21 Mighty Mouse rockets internally. Delays refining the Hughes E-9 fire-control system meant that by the time the H entered service it was outclassed by newer, faster supersonic fighters like the F-100 Super Sabre, F-101 Voodoo and interceptors like the F-102 Delta Dagger and the F-104 Starfighter.
F-89J test firing an AIR-2 Genie tactical nuclear air-to-air rocket. The photograph was captured at the moment of firing during Test Shot John, Operation Plumbbob, 19 July, 1957 (National Nuclear Security Administration)
The F-89J, introduced in 1957, refitted the F-89D with underwing hardpoints for two MB-1 Genie nuclear armed rockets and four Falcon missiles. The J could also carry either the standard F-89D rocket/fuel pod or pure fuel tanks. 350 Js were converted from F-89Ds.
An F-89J has the distinction of being the only aircraft to fire a live MB-1 Genie during Operation Plumbbob (nuclear weapons tests) in July 1957. The MB-1 (later the AIR-2) was an air to air rocket with a 6 mile range and a 1.5 kiloton W25 nuclear warhead. It was ostensibly a tactical nuclear weapon designed to take on Soviet strategic bomber formations.
The USAF began to retire the F-89H in 1959 as more supersonic interceptors entered service and the refitted Js also began to be replaced the same year but remained in Air National Guard service for another decade.
Flight of F-89s (USAF/US National Archives)
The F-89 is definitely a striking aircraft and a substantial number were built, 1,050 in total but they remain one of the lesser known early Cold War jet fighters. The F-89 featured in our video is an H and is on display at the Hill Aerospace Museum.
Military Aircraft of the Cold War, J. Winchester (2012)
Flying American Combat Aircraft: The Cold War, R. Higham (2005)
Early US Jet Fighters: Proposals, Projects and Prototypes, Tony Buttler (2013)
Archival footage and imagery courtesy of the USAF, the US National Archives and the San Diego Air and Space Museum.
Posted on October 11, 2020 October 16, 2020 by TABPosted in Blog, VideoTagged AIR-2 Genie, Aviation, Aviation History, Cold War, F-89 Scorpion, F89, History, Interceptor, Jet Fighter, Matt, MB-1 Genie, Northrop F-89, Northrop N-24, Nuclear Weapons, Operation Plumbbob, Tactical Nuclear Weapons, USAF. 1 Comment
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Barnes & Noble not giving up on Nook tablets after all
Nook design wasn't the problem—it was management, says new CEO.
Jon Brodkin - Aug 20, 2013 4:11 pm UTC
The Nook HD.
Two months ago, Barnes & Noble announced that it will stop manufacturing Nook tablets itself and instead seek partnerships with third-party manufacturers to build a co-branded line of tablets.
The company is rethinking its stance, however, perhaps as a result of a change at the top. Last month, CEO William Lynch resigned and Michael Huseby was appointed president of the company and CEO of Nook Media. Huseby provided an optimistic outlook on the future of Nook tablets in a Q1 2014 earnings press release today.
“The company intends to continue to design and develop cutting-edge Nook black and white and color devices," Huseby said. "We will continue to offer our award-winning line of Nook products, including Nook Simple Touch, Nook Simple Touch with Glow Light, Nook HD, and Nook HD+ at the best values in the marketplace. At least one new Nook device will be released for the coming holiday season and further products are in development. All Nook devices will continue to be backed by world-class pre- and post-sales support in Barnes & Noble stores, as well as ongoing software upgrades and improvements to the digital bookstore service.”
Barnes & Noble also announced a new Nook Video app for the Nook Tablet and Nook Color yesterday, along with apps for iOS, Android, and Roku.
While the statement in the press release was rather vague, Huseby acknowledged in an earnings call that the company is making a significant shift in direction.
"Some kind of wholesale outsourcing of our color device business is neither appropriate nor is it smart for the company," he said. Barnes & Noble could still expand upon partnerships for components like displays and chips, but it intends to maintain control over the design of devices.
The Nook design team is a small one that doesn't contribute much to Barnes & Noble's expenses, and "they don't deserve to have their jobs outsourced to somebody else," he said.
"The device isn't the problem," he said. "The problem is the decisions that were made by management, quite frankly, in terms of the demand forecast based on what was thought to be good information.
"If we want to be in the content business, we need to be in the device business no matter how they're produced," he also said. "We think our people can produce better devices than anyone else."
Barnes & Noble reported quarterly revenues of $1.3 billion, down 8.5 percent year over year, and a loss of $8.9 million, up from $5.8 million a year ago.
The Nook business, including hardware and digital content, reported revenue of $153 million, down 20.2 percent year over year. That includes device and accessories sales of $84 million, down 23.1 percent. Total Nook losses for the quarter were $55 million.
araemoArs Scholae Palatinae
They shot themselves in the foot with the very public and widely reported "No more nooks" announcement. Even my not-terribly-tech-savvy GF is reminding people not to buy Nooks, because they're dead in the water now, and you won't have support in the near future. Getting people to believe otherwise so quickly is not likely.
Jon Brodkin Jon is Ars Technica's senior IT reporter, covering the FCC and broadband, telecommunications, tech policy, and more.
Email jon.brodkin@arstechnica.com // Twitter @JBrodkin
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Wrecking Crew Gets Wide Release March 13
Finally, after years of waiting, The Wrecking Crew, a truly great musical documentary, is being released in theaters on March 13.
The Wrecking Crew may have been the greatest band there ever was, and yet it was never really a band at all, writes Ron Wells.
For this Wrecking Crew was the name given to the fantastic studio musicians living and working in Los Angeles in the the 1960’s when rock and roll was really beginning to take off. The songs they worked on are an iPod full of hits that is the sound track for everyone who grew up during this period, or even for those who grew up much later and have still heard the music played on radio, television, or even YouTube.
The musicians’ names are little known except to those in the music industry, but they should all be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, if not have their faces faces sculpted into the hillside by the Hollywood Sign. For Earl Palmer, Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye, Plas Johnson, and Tommy Tedesco, among a whole host of others were instrumental in launching some of the greatest pop and rock songs ever recorded.
“Monday, Monday,” “Good Vibrations,” “The Beat Goes On,” “Along Comes Mary,” and countless other rock songs, as well as commercial and film themes, are only a few of the hundreds of songs which are mentioned or played in this documentary. It’s like listening to the best jukebox money can buy.
The film has won many many film festival awards in the last four years, but it could not be released widely until all of the money was raised to pay for the rights to the music.
Read the rest of Ron Wells review here from last year.
The list of theaters can be seen here: http://www.magpictures.com/thewreckingcrew/
This is a don’t miss for music lovers.
← ACLU Sues NSA; Books Tackle Surveillance
6th Annual Wild and Scenic Film Festival →
asksusantaylor permalink
Yes! This one is opening in my small town this weekend! We don’t always get the cream of the crop films, at least not right off the bat. Looking forward to this one.
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Gregory G. Yup
Shareholder, CPA
Upon graduation from the University of Nevada, Reno with a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting, Greg began his professional career in 1985 with the (then) Big Ten accounting firm of Grant Thornton. He has been in public accounting his entire professional career, and with Ashley Quinn, CPAs since 1994. His areas of specialization include Federal and multi-state taxation of individuals and their businesses.
Greg’s professional affiliations include memberships in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and the Nevada Society of Certified Public Accountants. He is fluent in Cantonese.
Greg is a Reno native, and his family has been an active part of northern Nevada’s community for over sixty years. Due to his family’s prominent history, Greg’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Yup, were featured on the cover of Nevada Bell’s northern Nevada 1995 telephone directory. Greg lives in Reno with his wife, Michelle, and two children. He enjoys traveling, bowling, tennis and spending quality time with his family.
George W. Ashley
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Tammy S. Love
Clifford A. Foster
Derek R. Vaughan
Jin Kim
Kevin L. Brown
Pavlina Tsaryk
Jeffrey A. Simons
Rhonda L. Bohn
Patrick R. Hinojosa
Marques M. Casarez
Alycia E. Wilkinson
Shonnie Carter
Holly R. Scheufler
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Charles Manson's death prompts reaction from victims' advocates
By Miriam Hernandez
CULVER CITY, Calif. (KABC) -- Nearly 50 years have passed since the two nights of shocking violence that came to be known as the Manson family murders. But for the families of Charles Manson's victims, the suffering never really ended.
If Manson's name were never mentioned again, victims' advocates say they would be very happy.
For 49 years the cult leader has attracted followers. After his death Sunday at 83, the people who speak out for victims say "No more."
"Charles Manson is a disgust and he's dead," Rosemary Moreau said Monday at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, where victims Sharon Tate and her unborn son are buried. "That's why I'm here."
In South Los Angeles, LaWanda Hawkins of the group Justice for Homicide Victims also spoke out.
"I was like, thank God," she said. "Right on. He finally left here. We don't have to worry about him anymore."
Hawkins said Tate's mother sparked the movement that Hawkins carries on today - to be ever mindful that the pain does not ebb, even if Manson is dead.
"If it wasn't for Doris Tate, a lot of people like me would've never had victims' rights or anything," Hawkins said.
Nine people were murdered by the Manson family, including one victim whose remains were not discovered until eight years after the carnage.
Manson "was certainly a cult leader," said Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Deputy District Attorneys. "If anything, we need to understand his level of psychopathy and manipulation, so we can recognize it in the future."
los angelesobituarycharles mansonserial killer
Charles Manson dies at 83
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Report: Dr Fauci Backed Wuhan Lab Doing ‘Crazy’ Coronavirus Research
Newsweek has highlighted that the Chinese Scientists who were said to have been doing ‘crazy’ things with coronavirus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, were funded by the White House senior health advisor Dr Anthony Fauci just last year.
The report notes that in 2019 Fauci, as head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), backed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding commitment of $3.7 million for a further six years of research on bat coronaviruses in the Chinese lab.
The report also noted that the research outline included manipulating viruses in the lab in order to gauge the potential for infection in humans.
The funding, which has now been halted by the Trump administration, was in addition to the previous $3.7 million provided to the Chinese lab between 2014-2019.
Therefore, a total of $7.4 million had been provided for the Chinese coronavirus research, according to the report.
According to Rutgers University infectious disease expert Richard Ebright, the description of the research indicates that experiments were being carried out that would “enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering.”
Ebright, has previously said that a lab leak causing the pandemic cannot be ruled out until it is properly investigated.
In addition, a world renowned Russian microbiologist claimed last week that the novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic was the result of Wuhan scientists doing “absolutely crazy things” in their lab.
The Newsweek report notes that over 200 scientists called for the work going on in the Wuhan lab, as well as other Chinese facilities to be halted, specifically warning that it “increased the likelihood that a pandemic would occur through a laboratory accident.”
However, Dr. Fauci defended the research, writing in the Washington Post on December 30, 2011 “[D]etermining the molecular Achilles’ heel of these viruses can allow scientists to identify novel antiviral drug targets that could be used to prevent infection in those at risk or to better treat those who become infected.”
The report notes that while the research was temporarily impeded due to such concerns in 2014, it began again in 2017 after secret reviews were conducted by the NIH.
Last year, the research again came under criticism from scientists.
“We have serious doubts about whether these experiments should be conducted at all,” wrote Tom Inglesby of Johns Hopkins University and Marc Lipsitch of Harvard. “[W]ith deliberations kept behind closed doors, none of us will have the opportunity to understand how the government arrived at these decisions or to judge the rigor and integrity of that process.”
Newsweek says that Dr. Fauci did not respond to requests for comment, however the NIH responded with a statement that said “Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic…. scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory.”
Original source: https://summit.news/2020/04/30/report-dr-fauci-backed-wuhan-lab-doing-crazy-coronavirus-research/
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Jodi Ettenberg: The Road to Getting Better
Video From 2018 Shows Chinese Scientists Working On Coronavirus In Wuhan Lab
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Home ► Discussions
The US leaves the "Open Skies" treaty
Is arms control in Europe no longer of interest?
With one of the unconventional decisions that made him famous, Donald Trump decided, alone without informing Congress, that the United States will exit the "Open Skies" treaty, that is the international agreement in which 34 countries participate and which allows mutual control of the level of armaments through the agreed overflight of planes with certain electro-optical sensors as well as radar for the detection and recording of the position and relevance of military bases.
Entered into force in 1992, "Open Skies" (not to be confused with an airspace management program of the same name) has so far allowed an intense exchange of inspection visits through overflights (paid by the countries that perform them) which have committed most of the European Nations and the United States on the one hand and the Russian Federation on the other one.
The "casus belli" was yet another refusal made by the Russian Federation to the request of the other countries to fly over the areas where a complex military exercise of their armed forces was taking place.
The Western analysts' doubt is that the Russian Federation has vetoed it (foreseen in some situations by the treaty) to prevent the findings of "Open Skies" aircraft, combined with other intelligence information, from providing too precise a picture of the forces and the disposition of the federation's operating complexes. But for a doubt nobody breaks a treaty and not even for many doubts because history has shown that the alternative to treaties and diplomatic discussions risks being one.
From the historical point of view, the exit by the United States is at least singular if we consider that already at the end of the 1950s General Eisenhower, as President of the United States, had launched the idea of an "Open Skies" treaty that would allow the two superpowers to control their level of weaponry in a reciprocal way by flying over aircraft equipped with special instruments.
Set aside for many years, the idea of mutually agreed flights was back in vogue with the collapse of the Soviet system as an important complement to other treaties for the control of conventional arms in Europe.
From a technical point of view, implementing the treaty -AVIONEWS writes it- was not so simple.
Each Nation had to prepare its own plane, generally a medium-long range aircraft, a military transport or a commercial airplane, suitably adapted with the integration on board of a series of sensors that allowed shooting in the field of the visible but also of the infrared and, in the case of American aircraft, also with sophisticated radar sensors.
Once ready, the planes were viewed by teams of experts from other countries who had to agree on their compliance with the treaty.
Only subsequently each aircraft was able to be used constantly in the overflights of particular sections of the countries of interest.
However, the results were remarkable, all the participants always said they were satisfied with the information received and in the event of disputes, these were quickly resolved within the treaty.
It should not be forgotten that "Open Skies" has contributed to overseeing the enormous mass of armaments that the collapse of the USSR has left around in half of Europe. Deposits full of explosives and armaments of all kinds that could take the wrong paths.
A significant result of the detailed work of those who drafted the treaty at its inception, but also of those who with periodic meetings at the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) in Vienna faced implementation difficulties and they always solved them through mediation. Lastly, "Open Skies" flights on many occasions have also made it possible to collect useful information for environmental control in Europe.
Precisely because of this general climate of collaboration that has just been rippled by the opposition on one side or the other, no one expected this disruptive decision by the United States that risks, as analysts say, having serious repercussions on the other arms control treaties in Europe and the rest of the world.
From an exquisitely operational point of view, the United States had equipped itself with two OC-135 aircraft, derived from the B-707, on which sensors and a series of consoles had been installed which allowed long-haul flights to cover each time an important part of the Russian Federation. To manage the treaty, of which it was the first signatory, Italy had structured a special office managed by personnel of the Armed Forces, in particular the Air Force, based on the Rome-Ciampino airport that provides the inspectors.
The exit of the United States -an Italian diplomat told to AVIONEWS- risks undermining the entire system, making it unstable and therefore ready for further abandonments.
Even in the US, the ratings on this surprise move by Trump are extremely different: on the one hand, it is emphasized that the Russian Federation has used "Open Skies" flights to accumulate valuable information to be able to attack vital US objectives in case of need and of their allies.
On the other, he complains that the decision was taken in an absolutely autocratic and illegal way because President Trump should have informed the Congress well in advance of his intent.
The more extreme fringes of the Republican party naturally supported Trump's decision by stressing that on a couple of occasions the Russian government had deliberately avoided "Open Skies" checks by preventing flights on the border of Georgia, a place of bloody conflict and on one of the largest military exercises of the federation preventing " transparency which is the primary objective of the treaty".
In an extreme attempt at mediation, the NATO secretary general, Stoltenberg, also intervened, who perhaps unintentionally hinted that Trump's should be read as a provocation (not the first certainly Ed) and in an official Alliance meeting asked the Russian government to restore the smooth functioning of the treaty, that is, to allow the required overflights, suggesting that if this happens, the United States could reconsider its position.
Meanwhile, as the first result of the political decision to abandon "Open Skies", the US has stopped the process of modernizing the two Boeing planes, an extremely limited economy, which could -AVIONEWS underlines it- have far-reaching political and diplomatic consequences.
red - 1229879
AerospaceOnly silence from PM Conte and Minister Gualtieri about Profumo's problems
Sentence on Leonardo's CEO is a risk for company reputation
It is called reputationin the Anglo-Saxon economic world which now considers it a fundamental asset for the evaluation of a company. And today in Leonardo, led by Alessandro Profumo (sentenced in first... more
Civil aviation50 years ago the second Italian raid Rome-Tokyo by a tourism plane
La lunga trasvolata di 19 mila km compiuta in 26 tappe e 90 ore di volo
On November 15, 1970, one month after its departure from Rome-Urbe city airport, the SIAI-Marchetti S-205 single piston engine four seater aircraft, piloted by Mario Panvini Rosati (1935-1997) landed in... more
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The world is settling into a new normal for everyday life amid the coronavirus pandemic: online school classes, intermittent Zoom outages, museums that will only allow about a quarter of their usual visitors.
More than 800,000 people worldwide have perished from the virus and more than 23.5 million have contracted it, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University—figures experts say understate the true toll due to limited testing, missed mild cases and other factors.
Older people and those with underlying health conditions appear to be the most vulnerable. However, there’s uncertainty about long-term effects and what impact millions of school children around the globe returning to classrooms might have on the virus’ spread.
A significant red flag emerged in Hong Kong, where scientists say they have the first evidence of someone being reinfected with the virus that causes COVID-19. The case raises alarm bells, suggesting that surviving an infection does not provide lifelong immunity.
Just in time for back-to-school, the World Health Organization has updated its guidance for mask-wearing by children, notably saying those 6 to 11 years old should wear them to fight the coronavirus, but that it depends on local factors and other criteria.
Kids under 6 years old should not wear masks, WHO says, while those over 12 should wear them just like adults should, notably in cases where physical distancing cannot be ensured and in areas of high transmission rates.
The recommendations expanded upon previous WHO guidance that children under the age of 12 were not considered as likely to spread the virus as much as adults. Children in general do face less severe symptoms than adults, with the elderly the most vulnerable to severe infection.
ZOOM OUTAGES
The popular video conferencing tool, Zoom, experienced partial outages during the first day of school for thousands of students who are relying on the technology to connect with educators.
Technical issues occurred across the U.S., with the most reports on the East Coast, as well as in Europe, according to downdetector.com, which monitors self-reported outages. The disruptions lasted about 90 minutes, according to the company.
Grade schools, high schools and universities are relying on Zoom and competing technologies like Microsoft Teams to learn remotely, and reduce the chance of infection during the pandemic.
Zoom Video Communications became a familiar tool to millions of new users after the spread of COVID-19 made face-to-face meetings risky. It now has about 300 million users.
An entire fourth grade class in Mississippi has been quarantined after a student and more than half of a school’s fourth grade teachers tested positive for coronavirus, just a few weeks after beginning the school year.
Lafayette County School District Superintendent Adam Pugh said the district notified the families of more than 200 fourth grade students at Lafayette Upper Elementary School to quarantine for two weeks.
“We don’t have enough staff to cover our entire fourth grade class in-person, so we had to send everybody home, to do virtual lessons,” he said.
Museums across New York and gyms in some parts of the state outside of New York City are being allowed to reopen as coronavirus restrictions are cautiously eased.
Under guidelines announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, museums must keep visitors to no more than 25% occupancy and must use timed ticketing. New York City museums that will open over the next few weeks include the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Aug. 29 and the American Museum of Natural History on Sept. 9.
Cuomo said gyms and fitness centers could open at 33% capacity starting Monday, but New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city’s gyms would stay closed until at least Sept. 2.
Cultural institutions and gyms across the state have been closed since March when nonessential businesses were forced to shut down to stop the virus’ spread. New York was the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak during the spring but has so far succeeded in staving off a second wave of infections.
HONG KONG MAN REINFECTED
Scientists say they have the first evidence of someone being reinfected with the virus that causes COVID-19. Genetic tests revealed that a 33-year-old man returning to Hong Kong from a trip to Spain in mid-August had a different strain of the coronavirus than the one he’d previously been infected with in March, said Dr. Kelvin Kai-Wang To, the microbiologist who led the work.
The man had mild symptoms the first time and none the second time; his more recent infection was detected through screening and testing at the Hong Kong airport.
“It shows that some people do not have lifelong immunity” to the virus if they’ve already had it, To said. “We don’t know how many people can get reinfected. There are probably more out there.”
Millions of Mexican school children returned to classes using a system that cobbles together online classes, instruction broadcast on television and radio programming but no in-person classes as of yet.
The Mexican government enlisted the country’s largest private television companies to dedicate channels to school programming around the clock. Education officials developed schedules giving students at each level multiple opportunities to watch their classes.
Education Secretary Esteban Moctezuma said officials decided to rely on television because it has a far greater penetration that the internet.
A spike in coronavirus cases in Danbury, Connecticut, has led Western Connecticut State University to temporarily move all classes online and bar students from returning to residence halls for at least two weeks.
Nearly 900 students were expected to begin moving into dorms on Sunday, but school President John Clark announced the new restrictions on Saturday. About 60 students who moved in early are being told to stay on campus for the next two weeks, and commuting students must stay off campus.
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Research Assistant, Save Our Chinatown Committee
I was asked by my later adviser to join this project, which hoped to chronicle the history of Riverside’s Chinatown and its residents through archives and oral history. For four months, I visited the National Archives and Records Administration location in Perris, Calif., where I combed through at least fifty boxes of records pertaining to the Chinese Exclusion Act, from a time span of the 1880s to the 1930s. In these records contained interviews conducted with immigration officials and Chinese Americans and immigrants, photographs of the intervierwees, immigration documents, and amazing stories of how the act impacted Asian Americans and immigration to the United States. I was also involved in cultural events, such as the Chinese New Year banquets, Ching Ming Festival, and the Moon Festival, and preservation legislation. SOCC’s ultimate goal is to create a heritage park on the site of the former Chinatown, using the research unearthed at NARA.
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