The full dataset viewer is not available (click to read why). Only showing a preview of the rows.
The dataset generation failed
Error code: DatasetGenerationError
Exception: ArrowInvalid
Message: JSON parse error: Missing a closing quotation mark in string. in row 101
Traceback: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 153, in _generate_tables
df = pd.read_json(f, dtype_backend="pyarrow")
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 815, in read_json
return json_reader.read()
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1025, in read
obj = self._get_object_parser(self.data)
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1051, in _get_object_parser
obj = FrameParser(json, **kwargs).parse()
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1187, in parse
self._parse()
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1403, in _parse
ujson_loads(json, precise_float=self.precise_float), dtype=None
ValueError: Trailing data
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1997, in _prepare_split_single
for _, table in generator:
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 156, in _generate_tables
raise e
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 130, in _generate_tables
pa_table = paj.read_json(
File "pyarrow/_json.pyx", line 308, in pyarrow._json.read_json
File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 154, in pyarrow.lib.pyarrow_internal_check_status
File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 91, in pyarrow.lib.check_status
pyarrow.lib.ArrowInvalid: JSON parse error: Missing a closing quotation mark in string. in row 101
The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/src/services/worker/src/worker/job_runners/config/parquet_and_info.py", line 1529, in compute_config_parquet_and_info_response
parquet_operations = convert_to_parquet(builder)
File "/src/services/worker/src/worker/job_runners/config/parquet_and_info.py", line 1154, in convert_to_parquet
builder.download_and_prepare(
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1029, in download_and_prepare
self._download_and_prepare(
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1124, in _download_and_prepare
self._prepare_split(split_generator, **prepare_split_kwargs)
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1884, in _prepare_split
for job_id, done, content in self._prepare_split_single(
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 2040, in _prepare_split_single
raise DatasetGenerationError("An error occurred while generating the dataset") from e
datasets.exceptions.DatasetGenerationError: An error occurred while generating the datasetNeed help to make the dataset viewer work? Make sure to review how to configure the dataset viewer, and open a discussion for direct support.
pred_label
string | pred_label_prob
float64 | wiki_prob
float64 | text
string | source
string |
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__wiki
| 0.675118
| 0.675118
|
The Real Athlete Blog
Keyword: John Stockstill
Interview with a Sports Professional: John Stockstill, Baltimore Orioles’ Director of Player Personnel
by Matthew Allinson 10-05-2012 08:01 PM Interview with a Sports Professional
The Baltimore Orioles (93-69) will be playing in its first postseason game in 15 years in the American League wild-card matchup against the Texas Rangers on Friday night. Amidst the Orioles’ magical run, we have the good fortune of sharing an interview with John Stockstill, who is the Director of Player Personnel for the Baltimore Orioles.
In his current role with the Orioles, Stockstill oversees the day-to-day operation of the Minor League system and utilizes his scouting background to procure talent for the organization at the Major League level. In his seventh year with the team, Stockstill has also served as the club’s Director of Player Development and Director of International Scouting.
Prior to joining the Orioles organization, Stockstill had spent his entire professional baseball career—as a Minor League player, scout, and front office executive—with the Chicago Cubs.
Stockstill provided Access Athletes with a rare look into the inner workings of the MLB’s most resurgent franchise. In his candid responses, he openly discusses the challenges that professional baseball players face as they advance through the farm system and transition to the Majors.
Access Athletes: What kind of career assistance do you provide for your Minor League players while they’re still in the farm system?
John Stockstill: Yeah, it’s difficult, the point you bring up. Different players are from different backgrounds, and then, different players have different financial situations. So baseball is kind of a rare sport because you have about, on average 40-45 new players [coming] into a system every year, of which a few make a lot of money, and most of them do not. In general, you’ll have people that have great off-season programs, which they set up themselves. They’ll pay strength and conditioning guys on their own. And then there are other guys who can’t afford to do that.
So one thing baseball has evolved into for every club in the last several years is that most clubs have full-time trainers throughout their systems, and then strength and conditioning guys, nutritionists—all those kinds of things to help them while they’re with the club.
In the off-season it’s a little different; you try to give them a plan. We have different coaches give them a plan, trainers, etc., but sometimes those will conflict with the outside sports training. It is very common in today’s game for a lot of players to have their own personal trainer, their own hitting coach, and their own specialty coaches throughout the off-season.
AA: I don’t know if you’re familiar with the NFL’s off-field resources, but they have a multi-faceted player development/engagement program that includes player assistance services, continuing education, internships for career development, and education on the financial aspects, among other things. Does the MLB offer anything similar to that for its players?
Stockstill: Well, nothing as advanced as that. Thirty years ago they would pay a bonus for your education, then it became “x” amount of dollars, and then it was maxed out at about $3,500 per semester. And then probably about 15 to 20 years ago, they started paying whatever educational costs for players. Most every club will provide some sort of educational opportunities for the players, especially those from Latin America and other countries. Teachers that help with language and things like that. But I would venture to say nothing as extensive as what you’re describing in the NFL.
AA: So it’s more on an ad hoc basis at the club level?
Stockstill: It is, but it’s also very much what the club wants to afford.
Sadly enough, in a lot of sports, the last dollar spent is in the area you’re talking about. We have a saying in scouting, “Nobody’s paying to watch us scout.” You know, it’s all about the athlete generally at the Major League level, or acquiring the athlete and then trying to get him to that Major League level. We have 9 Minor League clubs, and virtually 290 Minor League players. So when you’re talking about a football club, you’re probably under 100 total athletes. So for a club like ours, we are in the neighborhood of 300-330 total athletes employed by the Orioles. What I’m saying is that there’s a tendency that there wouldn’t be a high dollar spent on the off-season and off-field situations.
AA: A saying that comes to mind is that you have to “invest in the product.” As you know baseball doesn’t have as many off-field issues as some of the other professional sports, but I think it’s still essential to assist players both on and off the field.
Stockstill: Yeah, I think it’s very important, but what you’re hitting on is kind of a change in the structure. You can go back 40-50 years and baseball is a great game, because whenever it was invented, it’s basically [still] the same game. The same length to first base, the same dimensions. A lot of the other sports have changed a lot of things. Having said that, it’s amazing [that] the people do the same thing in baseball they did 50 years ago, 60 years ago. It is a 6-7 month sport. The Major Leagues is more—7-8 months—but there are a lot of players that are adapted to a year-round schedule. That’s where the strength and conditioning comes in, that’s where the mental part of the game [comes in], the total package of coaching that you wonder when some club is going to make that investment. That investment would mean several million additional dollars to provide that for all the players on a year-round basis.
AA: From your experience, what are some of the biggest issues players have in making the transition to the Majors?
Stockstill: Well, specifically, we’re talking about young kids—the first thing is the bat. …You can watch a kid hit all he wants to in high school with an aluminum bat and then there’s no guarantee that he’s ever going to adapt to the wooden bat. A wooden bat is about an 8” surface, of which 5.5” is where the sweet spot is. An aluminum bat is better now than it was 10 years ago. They’ve taken some of the juice out of it, but you can still hit the rubber part of the bat and hit it out of the ballpark. The bats today are simply going to shatter in pro ball. So the type of adjustment for any player is getting adjusted to a wooden bat.
AA: What about managing their money, the off-field demands, and dealing with the media? What are some of the biggest issues players have in adapting to the new pressures brought on by the Major League level?
Stockstill: It all the depends on the background that they come from, because the first thing they have to do is start it at a low level. If you’re signed out of high school, you’re going to go to rookie ball, or some version of rookie ball. The toughest thing for players to understand, no matter how great their parents think they were, or their coaches, is that it’s 5-8 years to the big leagues. For the phenoms, [even if] you rush up there, it’s still 3, 4, or 5 years. Occasionally you’ll see that high school guy get there at the 3rd year, maybe the 4th year, but for the most part, it’s 5-8 years if they ever get there. And then, there are injuries, there are all kinds of things. I’m not up on all the exact numbers right now, but in general, it’s probably about 90% of the players who sign a contract never spend a day in the big leagues. So their pressures are… It’s actually a reversal. It’s that they’re heroes inside, but then they have to come home for 4, 5, 6 years, and [they] still have never spent a day in the big leagues.
AA: It’s weathering the storm to get there.
Stockstill: Well, it’s weathering the storm, it’s weathering life, it’s weathering how your body matures. Your scouts look for certain body types that will get through ages 19, 20, and 21 in good condition. That’s why the overall makeup is so important. Is the player going to work his way through the down times, or is he just going to give up? Especially the kids today, you get a million dollars, and in most communities that sets you up for life if you take care of your money. So in 4-5 years, if they’re not doing well, there’s a danger that they leave the game.
AA: What are some of the life skills seminars and workshops you offer the players once they get to the Major Leagues, if there are any?
Stockstill: Yeah, I can give you an example. We’ve had a form of instructional meetings in Baltimore where we would bring in the media training, we bring in nutritionists, and we go through virtually every aspect of what they’re going to go through over the next 5-8 years, and especially once they get to the big leagues. Then when you’re down in the lower levels, you’re really talking about 20 or 30 fans. Some of these kids came from southern Texas football where they might have 50,000 fans at a football game. Then they sign a contract and go to rookie ball and are playing in front of 12 fans. So they have to be trained in not only how to get along with the media, but also how to answer properly and go forward. We tend to use the strength and conditioning guys and the medical trainers to talk to a lot of the players about a lot of the issues for health. And then, like in general it doesn’t happen as far as sitting down with every player, but most players have a plan going into the off-season. Probably 10% of your players are going to have some sort of weight problem, eating issue, or just health [issue] in general that’s going to cause them to come to spring training out of shape in some aspect.
AA: While player development/engagement representatives for leagues such as the NBA and NFL specifically administer the programs for their players, is it safe to say that the ‘norm’ for a Major League Director of Player Development is mainly focused on developing the talent within your Minor League system?
Stockstill: That’s exactly right. The Farm Director, or the Player Development Director, is in charge of, in a nutshell, determining who the players are by virtue of a lot of scouts and a lot of opinions, and then what development is applied to those players. So, yeah I think you’re going to see a big difference in our sport, as compared to the NFL.
Our version of player development is physical. It’s getting [players] ready to play in the big leagues, or what is it going to take to get them to be able to hit a ball, to get them to be able to throw strikes, all that. But it is also the psychological part, the mental part, the whole off-season program too. The player can come in and eat his way out of the game. It’s the most common mistake there is. The next thing you know he’s gained 30 lbs., or the body changed, things like that. So I think there is a similarity. I’m trying to think of a good way to say this. It falls under what you’re responsible for but not what you do.
AA: You brought up some of the mental game and the sports psychology. I read the SI article “A Light in the Darkness,” in which the author, Pablo Torre, quoted Dr. David McDuff [an experienced sports psychiatrist and mental skills trainer who has worked as the senior team assistance physician for the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens since 1996]. According to the article, in recent years, the MLB has seen a surge of players being placed on the DL for emotional disorders. Can you describe your interaction with the team psychologist Dr. McDuff and the club’s EAP framework in mental prevention and intervention?
Stockstill: I would probably turn you over to Tripp Norton [Director of Baseball Administration for the Baltimore Orioles] on that. We do go through a certain process when a player needs help. I won’t talk much about that. But at the same time, I’ll give you an example.
When a high school player signs, he’s played maybe 20-25 games in the spring, and he might play 30 or 40 in the summer. His first full year in MLB, he’s going to play 144 [games], plus spring training, plus something in the fall. So he’ll go close to 200 games. The first thing they do is wear down physically. Once they start to physically wear down, they mentally wear down. … You’re trying to look at a 5-year projection, to where in their 3rd or 4th year they physically get stronger, they mentally get ready for that 162-game season at the Major League level, and that 162 comes after 35 in spring training.
AA: Do you think the Orioles have a progressive approach to the sports psychology facet of the game?
Stockstill: I think we’re improving. I can tell you that it has not been a strong suit here in the past. Just being honest with you, it’s generally tied into the budget. But, I believe that that is changing.
AA: Why do you think the statistics of professional athletes going broke or getting divorced are so high?
Stockstill: I’ll tell you about baseball. Baseball is the toughest game to play, and you better want it more than anything else in the world or you’re not going to play in the big leagues. And 90% of them don’t to begin with! They’re so focused, and that’s what they want to do, that it’s a stress on any secondary part of life.
AA: So when you’re a baseball player, everything else is pretty much secondary to the sport?
Stockstill: Again, I’m not saying it should be; I’m saying that that is the athlete’s focus. I started playing when I was 1 ½ years old. I spent my whole life to get where I got to, and I didn’t get to the big leagues. So it’s interesting, but as I get older, the number of people that you run into that are doctors and lawyers that would kill to be able to play one day of professional baseball, but they don’t understand that it took the guy 20 years to play professional baseball.
The point is you can go to law school if you have a certain level of intelligence and eventually pass the bar. But to be a professional athlete and to hit a baseball coming 95-mph with consistency, it’s something that you can either do or you can’t. God [either] gave you a certain talent, or he didn’t. So it’s a combination of God-given along with what you get with all of that ability. So that comes back to your last question. A lot of athletes weren’t given a lot of money early in life. Imagine at 18... Right now these signing bonuses for first-rounders are millions. So when you get that kind of money—I don’t know, at 18 I didn’t get that kind of money, so I don’t know what I would’ve done with it—but it’s not a surprise that there’s a lot of people who lose their money.
AA: What advice would you give to younger players to more effectively deal with both the transition and the pressures of playing in the Majors?
Stockstill: Well the first thing we try to do with the kids is have them understand it’s their career. We’re all, by nature, excuse makers. We want to blame someone else. So the first thing, at either 18 or 21, I tell them to ask the question, “What are you ‘gonna’ do about it?" If you can’t open September and you didn’t get to play, are you going to go to the Dominican Republic and play winter ball and be a better player, or are you just going to complain?
We tend to say, “Oh wow, this guy got 500 at bats and I only got 300 at bats.” Well good, what are you going to do about it? So you’re the guy that gets 500 bats next year? Anything that happens to you along the way, you’ve got to overcome it. Now one of the things that I do, which I’ve got a very good job, I get to go in and turn the player around. I respect the fact that the player that gets sent out of the big leagues is upset, rightfully so. He wants to be in the big leagues. And a lot of times it’s simply a numbers game where the guy that gets sent out might be out-hitting the guy that’s stayed up there. So we’re in the people management business, and the sooner you can get them turned back around and headed back to the big leagues in a positive way, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing in all aspects of the game. We try to get them to realize that they have to turn themselves around, and then they have to find out “where am I headed wrong here? I have to get back myself.”
AA: Basically, you empower your players?
Stockstill: You don’t empower them but you try to get everyone else to empower them, and it doesn’t always work. The mental makeup of a lot of players, or coaches, or administrators is to blame someone else rather than to look at “Hey, here are the holes in my situation.” Now that may have been multiplied by other factors, but here are the six things I could’ve done to keep myself out of that slump. So you can go higher. The best hitter in the history of the game could be the hitting coach and if the player himself can’t get himself out of the slump, he’s going to have problems.
AA: What does the process of cutting a player entail?
Stockstill: Well, it’s tough, but in baseball it’s two things. You get the player that has had a long career, who has been playing for 7-9 years, that you didn’t have to cut. Then there’s the other player that got a chance to play, but really only got one year. … Let’s say he signed out of college and he got to play one summer and hit .250, but what he needed to do was hit .310 and do a lot of things. It’s almost like a champion boxer—you got to knock the champion out. So the player that only gets 1 or 2 years is always tougher because they legitimately feel like they didn’t get the opportunity.
AA: Right, they didn’t get a fair shake.
Stockstill: But the player that plays 5, 6, 7 years, don’t get me wrong, they’re not happy either, but at least they know what they did or didn’t do. Every player believes he’s a big leaguer. That’s what’s great about the game. I never go into any conversation not understanding that this guy thinks he should’ve played in the big leagues and we should’ve done something different to get him to the big leagues. The main thing, if you just look at the numbers, the person that you feel sorry for is the person that makes the statement that “we treat them all the same.” Everyone knows that’s not accurate. You may try and you may mean well, but the guy that gets $7 million dollars isn’t getting treated the same way as the guy hitting a buck fifty (.150) in rookie ball. That just isn’t the case.
I always look back at Michael Jordan, and it was great that he played baseball, but had he been a normal player he would have gone to rookie ball, then he would have went to Birmingham and played AA. There are players who hit .320 and never get to AA. So don’t tell us they’re all treated the same, and the players know that.
AA: Right, so it’s just a defense mechanism?
Stockstill: Right, it’s a defense mechanism. “Just give me that same shot.” You know, some players, you can look back at their careers where a guy goes up at age 19 and he hits .300 for 3 or 4 months and every player in that organization says, “Okay, just give me that same chance. Why was he handpicked in order to be able to do that?” So, chances are not equal is what I’m saying.
AA: What post-athletic career transition services or programs are offered to the players who are cut or are retiring?
Stockstill: From the club, I would say… I can’t say none. I would say advice for the most part.
Emi K. Ryan assisted in editing this article.
Published 10-05-2012 © 2021 Access Athletes, LLC
Keywords: Baltimore Orioles, Director of Player Personnel, Dr. David McDuff, EAP Framework, Emotional Disorders, John Stockstill, Major League Baseball, Minor Leagues, MLB, NFL Player Engagement, Pablo Torre, Player Development
Read Disclaimer ›
Malik Allen: Finding Post-Career Success With inRecruit (March 29)
For Sports In America, Authentic Hero Status Is Just A Perspective Shift Away, But Let’s Not Wait Too Long! (October 26)
Pro Football Hall of Famer and Entrepreneur Darrell Green Is Blazing New Trails with WalkFitHealth Nation (September 8)
8 Tips For Professional Athletes to Achieve Financial Security (August 20)
Momma Always Knows Best: The Money Mindset (August 11)
For Heaven's Sake, It Is Time to Include Positive News (July 28)
LaVar Arrington Imparts His Wisdom on NFL Rookies: "Don't Lose Focus" (July 27)
Are Videogame Manufacturers Permitted to Use Your Image for their Own Monetary Benefit, Without Your Consent? Well, it depends… (June 22)
The National Letter of Intent Program and Student-Athlete Post-Agreement Options (June 11)
Enter The PLAN and The McCombs Athlete Entrepreneurship Initiative: NFL Players can now get real help with changing careers (June 9)
Tony Gonzalez Q&A: His NFL Career, Family & Life After Sports
"tony is and always will be an "... – chris
High School/Collegiate Athlete’s Guide to Professional Soccer Combines
"One place where players hoping"... – Sam Fairhurst
Malik Allen: Finding Post-Career Success With inRecruit
"Enjoyed the article! Going to"... – Mario Rigolio
"great article guys. hard work"... – paul wintergerst
Pro Football Hall of Famer and Entrepreneur Darrell Green Is Blazing New Trails with WalkFitHealth Nation
"I do not know how to make it h"... – Rev. William D. Burton
Sports Nutrition Tips: 5 Basic Fueling Strategies
"These tips are invaluable! I a"... – Alexi Davenport
Carole Beckford Q&A: Sports Ambassador for Jamaica and Publicist for Usain Bolt
"Please tune in to Falmouth Com"... – Ras Astor Black
Hints and Tips from the Soccer Agent to the Aspiring Young Pro Player
"i would like to be in contact "... – singa
Access Athletes Launches The E-Guide For Professional Athletes: Unlock Your True Potential
"This is a great example of a r"... – Athlete Connections
Athlete Chat: Baltimore Ravens Center Matt Birk
"We have recently been reading "... – bruce
125220 Views, posted 09-08-2013
Xtreme Procision, LaVar Arrington's Movement to Create the Next Generation of Football Players
How to Train to be in NFL Linebacker Shape?
Why Is My Trademark Limited?
99536 Views, posted 02-12-2012
For Heaven's Sake, It Is Time to Include Positive News
Can the Players' Associations do more?
LaVar Arrington Imparts His Wisdom on NFL Rookies: "Don't Lose Focus"
An Olympian's Perspective: Team USA Cyclist Lauren Tamayo's Ride to the London 2012 Olympics
12 comments, posted 01-03-2010
Zing Nutrition Bars: They are Deliciously Different
Education is Key for Pro Athletes
Brian Kelly & The Job Change Challenge
9 comments, posted 12-29-2009
The Road to the NBA
Featured Category Archives
AA Site Updates (3)
Amateurism (11)
Ask The Expert (6)
Athlete Advice (2)
Athlete Interviews (54)
Athlete Weekly Rundown (52)
Guest Contributors (9)
Interview with a Sports Professional (23)
Lessons for Athletes (3)
Life After Sports (30)
Monthly Podcast (1)
Sports Business Review (6)
Trusted Athlete Educator (41)
Other Category Archives
Athlete Career Development (133)
Athlete Relocation (3)
Athlete Representation (18)
Athlete Services (27)
Crisis Management (35)
Human Relations (62)
Image Branding (58)
Injury & Rehabilitation (9)
Insightful Player (4)
Sports Business (25)
Sports Psychology (81)
Become a Sponsor ›
Shop Faith Apparel today! "Have Faith Dream Big"
Advertise Your Link Here ›
© 2021 Access Athletes, LLC.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line4
|
__label__cc
| 0.612191
| 0.387809
|
Admission ›
Call for Application for 2021 ›
Call for Application for PhD Studentships
Update on Covid-19 for incoming students
Update on the Financial Aid
PhD studentships are available for the doctoral program in Cognitive Science at Central European University (CEU).
The Department of Cognitive Science at CEU invites applications for doctoral student positions starting in September 2021. This is a research-based training program in human cognition with social cognition, learning and perception as core themes. Research topics include communication, cooperation, computational neuroscience, cultural transmission, developmental social cognition, embodied cognition, joint action, problem solving, sensory and statistical learning, social cognitive neuroscience, social learning, strategic decision making, visual cognition and visual psychophysics.
Students will follow courses in cognitive anthropology, cognitive psychology, computational cognition, linguistics, philosophy of mind, traditional and Bayesian statistics and visual perception and learning. In addition, they will receive practical research training in the laboratories of the members of this new department.
Applicants to the program are expected to hold an internationally recognized Master’s or comparable degree in the disciplines that constitute cognitive science. A comparable degree in social sciences, humanities, or other disciplines will also be considered in case of an excellent academic record. In exceptional cases, students who only hold a Bachelor degree could also be admitted to the program. Admission to the program is decided on the basis of the academic record of the applicant, a written research proposal, and interviews with at least two faculty members. For the CEU PU Admissions Policy, see Annex 1.2.2.
As part of their application package, applicants must submit the following materials as general CEU PU requirements:
The completed Online Application Form 2021/2022
A curriculum vitae or resume, including a list of publications, if any
Proof of English proficiency (see CEU PU Admissions Policy in Annex 1.2.2 for accepted language tests and minimum scores) Applicants need to submit a language test score by the relevant application deadline. Make sure to do the test and get the result by the time you apply!
Two letters of Recommendations: Referees receive a link to the reference form AFTER the applicant submits the application.
Academic records - please consult `How to apply, point 3.`
A research proposal of 1000 to 2000 words. The research proposal should include the research questions, aims and objectives of a research project that is related to the ongoing work in the department. The proposal should situate the project in the context of the existing literature, be clear as to the expected academic contribution, and outline possible appropriate analytical frameworks and methodologies. Note that, if admitted, students will not be expected to pursue the research project as it is outlined in the proposal (though it may form the basis of their doctoral work). The submitted research proposal will be used during the application process to assess the applicant's understanding of what doing research in cognitive science entails.
CEU PU charges a one-time application fee of EUR 30 for each candidate irrespective of the number of programs applied to in the given admissions cycle. The application fee is non-refundable and cannot be waived, but it can be paid by a third party. The fee must be paid by bank card via the online application form when the first application is submitted in the given admission cycle.
Doctoral students so far have had MA or MSc from diverse fields, including Cognitive Science, Linguistics, Evolutionary and Behavioral Ecology, Cognitive and Behavioral Neurosciences, Psychology, Physics, Engineering, Neuroscience.
We encourage applicants to consult the website and approach appropriate members of the faculty in advance in order to check the suitability of their research plans.
February 1, 2021 (23:59, Central European Time)
Application deadline for PhD applications. All applications must be complete with relevant standard test scores (TOEFL, IELTS, etc.).
Applications are submitted to all doctoral programs. Following an initial review by the Admissions Office, applications are either passed on for academic evaluation or rejected for formal reasons.
Individual interviews may take place, either by Skype or telephone.
April 6, 2021 onwards
Admissions Office enters decisions and sends out acceptance offers (including financial aid) to successful doctoral applicants.
Each decision is made by an academic selection committee within the given program on the basis of the candidate's past academic achievement, strength of recommendations, English language competency, intellectual merit, work experience (if applicable), expectations of the program, future plans, and general compatibility with the goals of the academic unit.
Application information about the candidates (including test results) is confidential and only available to the candidates concerned.
For information on financial aid please see: https://www.ceu.edu/admissions/funding-fees/finaid-applicants/phd
***Frequently Asked Questions about Admissions
***2021-22 Brocchure
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line7
|
__label__cc
| 0.649259
| 0.350741
|
AUP Portal Login
D4H Portal Login
News Center > News Archive >
Auxiliarist, Citadel Alum Featured with Rutgers Governmental Accounting Program
posted Jun 20, 2010, 4:33 PM by Unknown user [ updated Jun 20, 2010, 5:07 PM by Andrew Welch ]
[The following was published at www.rutgers.edu. The article features Julian Keaton, graduate of The Citadel from before the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary detachment was formed there, but now a USCG Auxiliarist as well as a contract specialist for the IRS while pursuing a graduate degree in governmental accounting by distance learning from Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick.]
Distance Learning That Adds Up
Like the 19th-century pioneers who established the famous cattle trails of old Texas, Julian Keaton is a trailblazer, enrolled in the nation’s first and only master’s in governmental accounting program, offered 100 percent online and available exclusively through Rutgers. Without setting foot on a Rutgers campus, Julian Keaton will take two and a half years to earn his degree.
For Keaton, a contract specialist for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), choosing Rutgers was a pretty straightforward decision. He appreciates the convenience of learning “asynchronously”—studying at times that fit his schedule and are least disruptive to his work life—and that he also ends up with a degree from Rutgers.
“Having grown up in the Northeast, I was familiar with Rutgers’ reputation for academic excellence,” Keaton notes. “In my search for a graduate accounting program, I saw that the business school offered one that focused on governmental accounting. This was the perfect choice considering my desire to make my career in the federal government … The fact that this program can be completed via distance learning ultimately enables me to focus on establishing my career while attending a prestigious institution like Rutgers.”
Keaton, who takes two courses per semester, has a self-styled system for getting through his assignments. “Balancing a full-time job and graduate school can be challenging,” he says. “During the week I focus on the readings and begin working on the assignments. I use my time on the weekends to finish the assignments … And whenever I have a question, my professors are quick to respond to my emails.”
Working toward a Rutgers degree in Dallas doesn’t mean Keaton is isolated from fellow students. Through a discussion web tool, students “are required to respond to questions each week that the professor assigns. This provides a great forum for all of us to think critically regarding the week’s topic. We all have different backgrounds, and it’s interesting to learn about the experiences of others.”
The discussions are lively, as Americans increasingly focus on responsible government. “The federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars in acquisitions every year, so accountability and transparency are absolutely expectations of the American people,” says Keaton, adding, “I have sworn to uphold these principles.”
WATCHING THE GOVERNMENT'S DOLLARS
If you had to describe the ideal background for someone whose duty it is to watch the government’s dollars, you would have a hard time topping Keaton’s résumé: he is an Eagle Scout, a graduate of The Citadel with a BS in business administration, a proud member of the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, and already has earned a master’s degree in public administration and criminal justice.
“My work relates to purchasing goods and services requested by various business units of the IRS, from furniture to IT products to security services,” says Keaton. “Anything that is purchased for departments of a federal agency must be approved and signed by a warranted contracting officer in a procurement office such as mine.” Keaton, who is pursuing Federal Acquisition Certification in Contracting (FAC-C) to become a warranted contracting officer, will sit for the CPA exam upon completing his Rutgers degree.
Contact Us Link to Us Website Policies National Help Desk Accessibility FOIA Plug Ins
U.S. Coast Guard U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary U.S. Department of Homeland Security USA.gov
Copyright ©2000-2011 United States Coast Guard. All Rights Reserved.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line10
|
__label__cc
| 0.58961
| 0.41039
|
The Promoters
Barack Obama's half brother, George, has witnessed friends being executed in cold blood by the Kenyan police force. Faced with spiralling violent crime rates, officers say they have no choice but to kill.
�I�ve seen friends being shot for practically no reason,� says George Obama. His half brother is the current US president, yet George still lives on the edge of one the most violent and deprived slums in Africa.
The first police officer to go on the record about these killings was murdered within weeks. Two lawyers who helped a UN rapporteur to compile a damning report on extra-judicial-killings in Kenya were gunned down days after the rapporteur left. Now, for the first time since these individuals were forever silenced, three Nairobi cops talk exclusively to Clover Films.
Extra judicial killings are a problem common to many developing countries with extreme wealth divides. Never before, however, have the police given their side of the story in such depth. They argue eloquently that they are providing a vitally important service for a society that is near to collapse. Without their killings, they insist, there would be anarchy because the judicial system is so corrupt. They say they�re promoting criminals to a better place, where they will be judged by God.
On the other side of the tracks, we meet the victims: the masked gangsters who say they must either steal or starve; the man who has lost two of his brothers to police bullets; a mother who swears through her tears that her son was innocent. We follow a local journalist as he documents stories of mob violence and gang warfare. And, shadowing two investigators from a human rights NGO as they investigate the latest killings, we hear from traumatised witnesses, and follow the victim�s family to the scene of his murder.
The Promoters is not yet available to buy as it is currently in production.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line18
|
__label__cc
| 0.659009
| 0.340991
|
The Persecution and Torture of Falun Dafa Practitioners in Qiqihar City
In the spring of 2003, Falun Dafa practitioners Zhang Shuzhe and An Jingtao, from Qiqihar City, Helongjiang Province were unjustly sentenced to four years in the Harbin Female Prison.
The Political and Public Security Division of the Tiefeng District Police Bureau and the Xingongdi Police Station arrested practitioner Fan Hongdong illegally in September 2001. The police of the Tiefeng Prison Police Team tortured her brutally with all kinds of torture instruments, including shocking her genitals with electric batons. After she was tortured beyond recognition she was sent to the Second Detention Center in the city. At the end of 2002, she was unjustly sentenced to ten years in prison. In the spring of 2003, Ms. Fan was sent to Tailai Prison for further torture. She is currently doing hard labor in the rice fields.
Practitioners Duan Xiuying, Zhou Cuilian and Jia Guilan from Qiqihar City, were arrested by agents from the Wenhua Street Police Station in the Jianhua district and are now detained in the Second Detention Center.
The prison telephone: 86-452-2711511
Telephone of 6-10 Office, Police Station, and Police Bureau: 86-452-2712993.
In March 2003, police officers and the director of the Xinjiang Street Police Station in the Jianhua District of Qiqihar City ransacked the houses of Falun Dafa practitioners who still remained determined, and extorted money from them. They also claimed that they could beat Falun Dafa practitioners to death without taking any responsibility. (They could not beat criminal offenders but they could beat Falun Dafa practitioners.)
Category: Accounts of Persecution
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line24
|
__label__cc
| 0.516606
| 0.483394
|
Tibetan monk rare interview on torture and ill-treatment
Tibetan monk forced into hiding after giving compelling and rare interview on torture and ill-treatment
“I was beaten continuously for two days with nothing to eat nor a drop of water to drink…..The second time, I was unconscious for six days at the hospital, unable to open my eyes or speak a word……they lied to my family members by telling them that they had not beaten me; they also made me put down my thumbprint… on a document that said I was not tortured”
“Monks who spoke to some reporters were beaten with batons and had their legs broken; on some, they used electric batons on their heads and in their mouths – the electric baton affected their brains and some have become disabled….sort of insane….Now our main hope is that the international media and the United Nations investigators come to Tibet and check on the real situation.”
Tibetan monk, Jigme. Excerpts from full testimony which is reproduced in full below
Free Tibet has learned that a Tibetan monk who spoke to a foreign journalist on 12 September, and who posted an extremely detailed first-hand account of how he was tortured in March on YouTube (1), has been forced into hiding amid well-founded fears for his safety.
According to a highly reliable source, Chinese authorities from the Gannan State Security Bureau (SSB) and Public Security Bureau (PSB) in the Amdo region of Tibet (Ch: Gansu) launched a wide-sweeping man-hunt (2) for the monk in September following publication of the interview by the Associated Press on September 14(3) and the posting of his video account on YouTube.
The monk, Jigme Gyatso, 42, from Labrang monastery in the Amdo region of Tibet (Ch: Gansu), has provided wide-ranging, detailed and powerful testimony on the YouTube posting. (An English translation posted on Tibetan poet Woeser’s blog is provided below.) The testimony ranges well beyond the torture he suffered: it includes a cogent critique of Chinese government policies since the Tibetan protests started in March and the effects of such policies on the Tibetan people.
In the testimony Jigme describes not only how he was arbitrarily detained but how Tibetans have been indiscriminately targeted for detention:
“There is no differentiation on the basis of one’s actions or age….Monks as young as fourteen and fifteen and as old as sixty and seventy years old were arrested. No difference is made whether they are involved in protests or not.”
In describing his own experience, and that of other monks, Jigme builds a picture of Chinese soldiers and police treating detained Tibetans inhumanely and with impunity:
“A young soldier pointed an automatic rifle at me and said in Chinese: this is made to kill you Ahlos [a derogatory term used by some Chinese when addressing Tibetans]. You make one move and I will definitely kill you with this gun. I will throw your corpse in the trash and nobody will ever know”.
“We had no clothes on our back nor shoes on our feet. Two monks would be tied together and put in the vehicle to be driven away. They are thrown in the vehicle like you would throw logs of wood. Even if some of them had their heads injured, and for some, their hands broken…….The reason why we were so severely beaten is soley because we are Tibetan.”
As Jigme goes on to point out, such inhuman treatment of Tibetans has been carried out by state officials with no regard for supposed safeguards and theoretical legal oversight under the Chinese constitution. Referring to the soldier who held a gun to his head, Jigme observes:
“I was not terrified by the gun pointed at my head, but [by] thinking that this man is not only a soldier or security personnel, but also a law enforcement officer”.
Jigme highlights similar discrepancies between theoretical legal protection for Tibetans under the constitution, and failure to implement such safeguards – or even contempt shown for such safeguards – on the ground:
“When we asked why they are beating us, they reply that ‘you people cannot understand Chinese language and mock us’. My question is: in the Charter and Constitution of the People’s Republic of China it is enshrined that, in the regional areas of different nationalities, the language of that particular nationality is to be used….Then why is it that, in the Tibetan areas, instead of using Tibetan language, Tibetans are not only verbally abused as “animals” and “fools” but are physically beaten just because he does not understand Chinese”.
Jigme’s testimony relating to beatings, torture, arbitrary detention and indiscriminate targeting of Tibetans on the basis of their nationality is broadly consistent with testimony from other monks and nuns, as reported by Free Tibet and other credible human rights groups.
Director of Free Tibet, Stephanie Brigden, said:
“This brave man has been turned into a fugitive by the Chinese government for daring to tell the world what happened to him. In order to verify the serious issues he raises, world leaders must support Jigme’s call by putting pressure on the Chinese authorities to allow UN investigators and the foreign media into Tibet.”
For further information: Matt Whitticase tel: +44 (0)20 7324 4605 / +44 (0)7515 788456
Anne Holmes tel: +44 (0)20 7324 4605 / +44 (0)7798 666658
Notes to Editor:
(1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?vGZLIKmInP24. The YouTube posting is taken from a video interview Jigme gave to Voice of America (VOA). The posting is in Tibetan but an English translation of Jigme’s account has now been posted on the blog of the well-known Tibetan poet, Woeser: http://woeser.middle-way.net/2008/09/blog-post_7346.html. The full English translation from Woeser’s blog is reproduced below.
(2) The source told Free Tibet that on the day after Jigme spoke to the Associated Press he was in his room at Labrang monastery when there was a knock at the door. Worried that he would be arrested, Jigme climbed on to the roof and escaped. 15 officials, some in police uniform, forced their way into the room. The officials were from the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture State Security Bureau (SSB) and Public Security Bureau (PSB) (Ch province: Gansu) according to the source. They searched the room thoroughly but found nothing. Free Tibet has further learned that several police cars were seen at Labrang monastery that night and that on September 19 police interrogated the monks at Labrang, demanding to know the whereabouts of Jigme. Police then questioned Jigme’s parents on 20 September. The police threatened that if the family refused to reveal his whereabouts, and Jigme was subsequently caught, Jigme would receive a more severe penalty. The family did not provide any information to the police.
(3) The AP report of its telephone interview with Jigme can be read at: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5giC5O5VbQ0i1kfspRBW4diuGgdWQD936IQ701
A Voice from Tibet: VOA Tibetan service exclusive video interview:
VENERABLE JIGME, A MONK FROM LABRANG MONASTERY IN GANSU PROVINCE SPEAKS ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCE FOLLOWING THE WIDESPREAD PROTESTS THAT ERUPTED THROUGHOUT THE TIBETAN AREAS OF CHINA IN MARCH/APRIL 2008.
[This translation of the 20 minute statement is accurate in content but is not a direct translation of every single phrase, word, and figure of speech. References to the identity of Chinese security and detention apparatuses are translated from colloquial Tibetan
and may not be technically accurate.]
This year, on the 15th day of the second Tibetan month (March 22, 2008), after the assembly was over at the monastery, I went to the market. There I sat at the side of a taxi-stand and got a shoe repaired. As I was returning to the monastery, I received a call on my mobile phone. I looked at the phone, but there was no number visible. Suddenly a white vehicle appeared, and stopped in front of me. Four soldiers arrested me and dragged me into the vehicle. When I looked back, I saw a nun. I shouted "Ani! Ani! (nun, nun!) several times and made sure she saw me getting arrested. Once in the vehicle, they covered my head with a black cloth and handcuffed me. Then with guns pointed to my head, and my body pressed down, they took me to the armed police guest house.
The guest house is at the back of the local police station. There they removed the cloth covering my head but kept the handcuff. Afterwards, they searched my body and took my phone, wallet and everything. I was put on a chair with my hands tied at the back. A
young soldier pointed an automatic rifle at me and said in Chinese, "This is made to kill you, Ahlos (derogatory term used for Tibetans by some Chinese). You make one move, and I will definitely shoot and kill you with this gun. I will throw your corpse in the trash
and nobody will ever know", When I heard this, I was not terrified by the gun pointed at my head but thinking that this man is not only a soldier or security personnel, but also a law enforcement officer; however, here he is pointing a gun at an ordinary citizen and uttering such words……. made me very sad…. as if my heart was shattered into two pieces.
This is the case of a powerful nationality harassing and oppressing a small nationality, a big nation making weapons to kill a small nationality; if they are doing such things at the lower levels, there is no need to say that they are doing worse things to us at
higher levels. The way they oppress and murder Tibetans, and can utter such words while pointing with guns, stunned me. By telling us that Tibetans could be killed and our dead body dumped in the trash and that nobody would know - We are not even treated like dogs and pigs. If other people's dogs and pigs are killed, there will be somebody to claim them. Then why won't Tibetans be claimed after death? We are ordered not to claim our fellow Tibetan's body even after death. At that time, I realized that there is no racial equality.
During the detention, one of the many questions they asked me were, "Did the Dalai Lama instigate you? Did the Dalai Lama ask you to carry out this looting, burning and destruction?". "How do you view the Dalai Lama? "As for me, I am a follower of Buddhism. The Dalai Lama is like my life, heart and soul. In that I am not alone. For all the six million Tibetans, the Dalai Lama is their spiritual refuge in this life as well as the next. The Dalai Lama is widely respected for his tremendous efforts made towards world peace. He is the champion of world peace. He has established a path of non-violence. I totally reject their accusation that the Dalai Lama has master minded acts of looting, burning and destruction. The Dalai Lama can never such things. Even an ordinary monk like myself cannot urge anybody to burn, loot and destroy.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama is like the soul of the six million Tibetans. There is no way we can be parted from Him. As a Tibetan monk, historically, we have a teacher-disciple relationship. We must maintain this relationship. We have unwavering faith in the Dalai Lama. This was what I answered to the question of how I view the Dalai Lama.
After keeping us at the detention center for a few days, they took us to the jail. At the prison, the soldiers commanding us in Chinese 'one, two, three', as some of us could not understand Chinese, they scolded us - they would call us "animals', 'fools', and beat us with batons. When we asked why they are beating us, they reply that you people cannot understand Chinese language and mock us. My question is: In the Charter and Constitution of the People's Republic of China, it is enshrined that, in the regional areas of different nationalities, the language of that particular nationality is to be used and that the regional nationality must be given the right to govern. Then why is that, in the Tibetan areas, instead of using Tibetan language, Tibetans are not only verbally abused as "animals" and "fools" but are physically beaten just because he does not understand the Chinese language?
There is no differentiation on the basis of one's actions or age. For instance, monks as young as fourteen and fifteen and as old as sixty and seventy year old were arrested. No difference is made whether they are involved in protests or not. We had no clothes on
our back nor shoes on our feet. Two monks would be tied together and put in the vehicle to be driven away. They are thrown in the vehicle like you would throw logs of wood. Even if some of them had their heads injured, and for some, their hands broken, they were all taken to the prison. Relatives or friends were not allowed to bring food, clothing or beddings. We had to huddle together to bear the cold. The reason why we were so severely beaten is solely because we are Tibetans. For that we feel extremely sad.
We were taken to a prison in Kachu (Linxia in Chinese). All the prisoners there were Chinese and Muslim Chinese. We were the only Tibetan prisoners. Everyday, we had to remove urine and excrement barefooted, and wash the floors. At the prison, we were forced to take off our monk's robes and put on clothes of layman. I am a Buddhist monk and it is humiliating to disrobe and put on a layman's clothes, and to be handcuffed and taken away, barefooted, in a vehicle. In the prison, the condition was very poor - There
was not enough to eat or drink and nothing to wear. There wasn't even a towel to clean the face.
I was kept there for one month during which time I was handcuffed in one position for many days and nights. During interrogations, I was accused of having contacts outside: with the Dalai Lama, Samdhong Rinpoche, and Ajia Rinpoche, and that I have to
acknowledge that I have these outside contacts. Likewise, I was told that I have contacts inside with scholars and teachers. "You have been involved in activities and have led organizations. You have made calls to many outside provinces. What have you achieved
from those? Where did you print the Tibetan flags? How many flags did you print? How many members are there in your group?", and "you have no choice but to accept these crimes". They would hang me up for several hours with my hands tied to a rope….. hanging from the ceiling and my feet above the ground. Then they would beat me on my
face, chest, and back, with the full force of their fists. Finally, on one occasion, I had lost consciousness and was taken to a hospital. After I regained consciousness at the hospital, I was once again taken back to prison where they continued the practice of hanging me from the ceiling and beating me. As a result, I again lost conscious and then taken to the hospital a second time. Once I was beaten continuously for two days with nothing to eat nor a drop of water to drink. I suffered from pains on my abdomen and chest. The second time, I was unconscious for six days at the hospital, unable to open my eyes or speak a word.
In the end, when I was on the verge of dying, they handed me over to my family. At my release, my detainers lied to the provincial authorities by telling them that that they had not beaten me. Also, they lied to my family members by telling them that they had not beaten me; they also made me put down my thumbprint (as a signature) on a document that said that I was not tortured. I had to stay for about twenty days at a hospital and spent twenty thousand Chinese yuan to get treatment.
On my return to the monastery, friends told me that 180 monks had been arrested. The monks had done nothing wrong. Our senior monk and the official lama (teacher) too were arrested. They were made to stand on the tip of their toes at night, and were beaten with the butts of guns on their back. The Chinese took pictures with their mobile phones as they were beating the monks on their necks.
I also found out that during the police and soldiers raiding the monastery, they stole religious statues, money, personal belongings and even foodstuff from the monastery and monks' private residences. It is apparent that the real looters and murderers are
these soldiers of Chinese Communist Party. They engage in illegal acts and we are the ones who are arrested, beaten and tortured and killed.
Also, we are accused of aligning with the Dalai clique and instigating riots among the public. If there is real racial equality, freedom of expression and freedom of religion, then why are we not allowed to respect the figure for whom we have faith in our heart of hearts? Right in front of our eyes, they stamp with their feet on the picture of the Precious One (The Dalai Lama), break the picture frames with butts of guns, shred the pictures into pieces and burn them in the fire. We, being Tibetans and Buddhists, when we see the picture of our object of refuge being trodden under foot, and torn into pieces, we view these as irreparable acts. When Tibetans break a few windowpanes, they say that such acts caused hundreds of millions of yuan worth of damage. How do you measure the damage caused to our hearts by seeing our most revered One's picture trampled under foot? The Chinese leadership says that the goal is to achieve a armonious society, but at the same time continue to vilify the Dalai Lama, a figure that all Tibetans respect and honor as their spiritual head…..how can we begin to feel harmony when our values are denigrated and trodden on.
Monks are being beaten off and on all during this period . Not only that, monks who spoke to some reporters were beaten with batons and had their legs broken; on some, they used electric batons on their heads and in their mouths - the electric baton affected their brains and some have become disabled… sort of insane. We endured such torture. Now our main hope is that the International media and the United Nations' investigators come to Tibet and check on the real situation and then report on it after they assess their findings. This is our main hope.
The Chinese are telling us that Tibetans have done illegal things and are arresting and beating us, and even killing many people. Many people have fled to the mountains and dare not return to their homes and families. It will help if the world media see these
things and report about them.
The Dalai Lama did not instigate us to do anything. His Holiness did not tell us to fight for independence. His Holiness never said anything of this sort. Many of us support the Dalai Lama's middle way approach and the process of solving Tibet's issue through peaceful dialogue. But we are sad about being extremely oppressed today. Today, I, as a witness to truth, am telling through the media, the story of Tibetans killed, undergoing torture in prisons, and about the countless who have been forced to flee to the mountains and are too afraid to return to their homes, so that the media can truthfully report on these situations. This is my hope.
Officers from the security office and secret service as well as task teams have visited my room in the monastery, and are keeping close watch on me. Even now here is one man purposely watching me. I am not allowed to go out, nor am I allowed to make phone calls. I am with a thick copy of the Chinese constitution to study; I am ordered to write a confession. Only that I am not physically in a prison, but have no freedom whatsoever.
These days there are series of actions taken on us, not just in Labrang, not just in Amdo, but in Kham and central Tibet too. Many Tibetans are being killed, many oppressed and arrested. We heard that more than 200 Tibetans were killed and several thousand arrested. Still the beatings and arrests have not stopped. For us, access to news is blocked; we are not allowed to watch news or put up a satellite dish nor are we allowed to listen/watch news from the United States and other foreign countries. We are ordered to watch and listen to domestic broadcasts. We are told not to listen to foreigners nor to talk to them. As such, where is the freedom of expression? Where is the freedom of religion?
Tibetan people are undergoing all kinds of suffering. For me personally, I am a Buddhist monk at Labrang monastery. I was one of those arrested this year. I said these to the face of my captors: if you kill me, then that will be the end of it. But if am able to
go outside and get the opportunity, I will talk about the torture I went through; I will tell the people of the world as a truthful witness, about the sufferings undergone by friends and report these to the media.
Even when I was released, I was told not to tell that I was beaten; I was warned not to contact anyone outside. But I cannot just keep shut about the tortures I went through, or the suffering borne by friends. This is also my reason for telling you this today. Still there is a harsh crackdown taking place in Tibetan areas and restrictions on the movement of Tibetans.
These days, the authorities tell us to support the Olympic Games, but Tibetans around here are not even allowed to travel to Lanzhou, let alone go to Beijing to watch and support the games. We are not even allowed to go outside our own areas. Because of the Olympics, even all traditional festivals, celebrations and religious rituals have been banned.
There is military presence in every place. In the barn belonging to our monastery, they have made effigies out of straw and dressed them in Tibetan robes. The Chinese soldiers use them for doing bayonet practice. It seems that their enemy are the Tibetan people and the robe-wearing monks. Not all arrested Tibetans were involved in protests. Why are they stabbing their bayonets on the effigy with Tibetan dress as their military exercise? It is not just monks who are suffering as a result of the Chinese viewing Tibetans as their enemy…..even Tibetan staff members, students and the ordinary Tibetans…. all are suffering. This big government, big country, and big nationality is using weapons, tanks and cannons on a small, humble people such as the Tibetans. Thousands of soldiers are surrounding us. 'Kill the Tibetans who are disobedient', they
ordered.
In this 21st century, the people of the world are walking on the path to world peace. The peace-loving people and the supporters of truth should expose China for blocking the media and restricting reporters from seeing what is going on inside Tibet. I would like the world's Press, the United Nations and human rights organizations to pay attention and find a solution to the current dire situation for the Tibetan people. You can pressure China to conduct meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama's representatives for a mutually beneficial solution to the Tibet-China issue. It is the hope and wish of the Tibetans inside Tibet to invite the Dalai Lama to Tibet. The Chinese Communist Party has stated that stability and unity are important goals for the nation. Now if both the Dalai Lama and the CCP work together to solve the Tibet-China issue through dialogue for the mutual benefit of both the Chinese and Tibetans, there is no reason why genuine and long lasting peace, stability and unity cannot be achieved.
Matt Whitticase
FREE TIBET CAMPAIGN
28 Charles Square
London N1 6HT
Mob: +44 (0)7515 788 456
Posted by Giovanni at 16:29
Olympics campaign report - SF Team Tibet
Dalai Lama says he won't be used as excuse by Chin...
English Translation of HHDL's statement at TCV, Oc...
Dalai Lama says he is loosing faith on talks with ...
A Cry for Help from High in the Mountains
From a university student in Tibet
CTA's Response to Chinese Gov't Allegations
A Tibetan AIDS activist disappears in Tibet
Tibetan monk rare interview on torture and ill-tre...
Tibet at a Crossroads - Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, Speci...
New impressive blog on Tibet
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line27
|
__label__cc
| 0.679644
| 0.320356
|
7 Music Business Predictions For 2010
Here are my 7 music business predictions for 2010, as posted on my Music 3.0 blog.
I'm not sure if many of you know, but I've separated the music business postings from this blog and they're now being posted exclusively on Music 3.0. Anything that has to do with music creation, production or technology will remain on this blog.
Happy New Year and thanks for reading everyone!!
Labels: 7 music business predictions, Music 3.0
6 Predictions For The Musical Instrument/Pro Audio Business For 2010
Here's the fun part of the year coming to a close, when we can do some crystal ball gazing, take a couple of seances, dream a couple of dreams and make some semi-educated guesses regarding the happenings of the coming year. Sprinkle in a little inside knowledge here and a rumor or two there and you have the 6 predictions for the MI/pro audio business for 2010.
1) Pro Tools goes native and abandons their processor cards. Let's face it, computers are getting faster every day and are already plenty fast enough to handle just about anything a DAW can throw at them, so why must a user pay big money to buy a processor card? Avid agrees as the Pro Tools hardware approaches it's natural end-of-life, but what will that mean for them over the long haul? Such a decision could open up a can of worms for Avid (Digidesign) though, as it also opens the door for the next new DAW kid on the block. Remember how the Sony 3348 was a must-have for every commercial studio and within 6 months was a boat anchor? Could happen here too, but not this year.
2) Two well-known manufacturers will be no more. It's been pretty amazing that there has been so few manufacturer fatalities during the last year considering the state of the economy. That won't continue however, as a number of very well-known companies currently stand on the brink and it won't take much to push them over. Look for at least two of them to be bought, merged or closed.
3) A well-known retailer will contract. The year was already savage, but the Holiday season was particularly unkind to a major retailer, who will be forced to drop any planned expansion and begin to close under-performing stores.
4) Retailers delete duplicate items. Show me just about any musical instrument or recording item out there and I'll show you at least a dozen manufacturers that make one. While excess choice was always a bit of a burden for a retailer, now it's a downright millstone around their cash register's neck. Look for retailers to cut back on the number of items they carry, and look for many boutique manufacturers to suffer and die as a result.
5) A new class of hardware will be introduced. Thinking outside the box is not a trait that the current MI/Pro Audio business possesses to any great degree, but one company has managed to plow some fertile ground with a new look to an old process. Look for it's debut in the new year.
6) The 5th Beatle gets a new job. This last point only indirectly affects the MI/Pro Audio business but it's worth pointing out. It used to be that the silent member of a band was their manager, producer or engineer, but the new 5th Beatle is their webmaster. With social media playing such a large roll in just about any size act's marketing and promotion, the person with the most online smarts might be even more important than a rhythm guitar player who doesn't sing (as long as he's not the songwriter). The new 5th Beatle is one less person around a band that would buy the gear that the industry sells (except for the computer and accessories, of course).
Can't wait until the end of next year to see how many of these came true, but I bet my batting average will be pretty good.
Labels: 6 predictions, Avid, Pro Tools
4 Significant Moments In Music And Recording - 2009
Even though 2009 was a difficult year for just about everyone, it did have some interesting moments in the music and recording world. Most years are purely evolutionary gear-wise, but we had a couple of clear innovations this year that make it special. Let's take a look at a couple of highlights and a couple of lowlights from 2009:
Celemony Melodyne Version 2 with DNA - What more can I say than "Wow!" The ability to digitally move notes around within a chord in a sample? Are you kidding me? This is a monster innovation that producers and engineers will forensically use all the time when they get their hands on it. Here's the video:
The JamHub - Another innovation that's more on the level of the average musician, JamHub (also called "the silent rehearsal studio") allows the members of a band to silently practice without bothering anyone. It's a neighbors dream! Here's a really short video that explains everything:
Manny's Music Closes - After 74 years, the venerable Manny's Music on 48th street in Manhattan closed. Once the country's most famous music store, it was closed by parent company Sam Ash to make way for a larger Sam Ash guitar store. Another piece of music history fades away.
Digidesign Becomes Avid - We knew it was coming because they've been owned by Avid for a while, but it was still a bit of a shock when Digi was merged into Avid. Winter NAMM 2010 should be interesting to see if Digi's name still remains on their Pro Tools products.
Labels: JamHub, Manny's Music, Melodyne
12 Major Changes To Recording In The 2000's
I got to thinking about the many changes that came about in the recording business during the 2000's the other day - some of it good, some of it bad, most of it significant. Here are what I consider to be the 12 major changes to recording in the 2000's, in no particular order.
1) Pro Tools Standardization - As the decade started, Pro Tools was was already creeping into the major studios, but every year since it has become more and more entrenched as the standard audio capture format for any professional application. Sure, there are a lot of other great DAWs, but none of them have the traction of Pro Tools. In any professional situation, from music to radio to film and television post, this is the DAW that you're going to have to use as we move into 2010 - until something better comes along (no, I don't have a clue).
2) The Downfall of Commercial Studios - When I moved to Los Angeles in 1980, there were more than 250 "24 track" commercial studios in town. Many of them were multi-room facilities and they all were teaming with business. As we move into 2010, there are fewer commercial studios than ever before thanks to cuts in recording budgets, the ease of setting up a home studio, and the fact that studio rates have remained about the same since the 80's while overhead has risen dramatically.
One of the sad byproducts of this is the fact that the apprentice system that existed and taught so many great engineers has pretty much fallen by the wayside. With only a few commercial studios left, it's only the lucky few that get to sit behind a great engineer and learn something new every day. That's good for me since more people buy my books, but it's not a great thing for the industry at large.
3) The Rise of Software and Fall of Hardware - Once upon a time, every studio needed a pretty good amount of outboard gear to be able to record and, especially, mix a record. It would be nothing for a studio to spend in excess of $100k for outboard EQ's, compressors, effects devices and reverbs that they absolutely needed to have in order to attract independent engineers and producers and make a competitive record. During the 2000's we saw a shift away from outboard hardware boxes to software plug-ins that do the same thing, only cheaper and easier. At the beginning of the decade, most pro engineers complained about "the sound" of plug-ins that emulated their favorite outboard device, and for the most part, they were right. It didn't quite measure up. Now that major computer horsepower is so inexpensive and programmers are better at what they do, the difference in sound quality between the plug-in and the real thing is no longer an issue even with the old-schoolers.
One of the big reasons why software plugs have caught on is price. Why buy a rack of Neve 1073's at $2500 a piece when you can buy a UAD card that can give you a hundred of them for half the price of just one? Sure, you don't get the mic preamp and and you can't track with them, but if you don't record more than a couple channels at a time anyway, it's hardly a problem.
Even in live sound there's been a shift as the industry changes to a digital signal path. There'll always be a market for outboard gear, especially for tracking, but the days of large expenditures for hardware are over.
4) The Fall Of Rental Companies - It used to be that renting gear was one of the secret cash-cows of the business. Every town had at least one major rental company (New York, LA and Nashville had 4 or 5) and many engineers and producers made extra dough on their projects by renting their pricier gear back as an extra. Thanks to the rise in software plug-ins, the need for that expensive hardware has dropped drastically. And even when it is rented, the length of the sessions has decreased to such a degree that what used to be a three or four week rental might now take only three or four days. As a result, a lot of the major rental companies have either gone under or cut back drastically, the minor ones don't exist anymore, and it's rare that an engineer will even think about renting the gear back to a project as he's just thankful for the job.
5) Mixing In The Box (Who Needs A Recording Console?) - As the 2000's came around the corner, you would never even consider doing a project without a recording console, and for sure, you'd never open a studio unless you had a Neve, SSL, API or the like. Today, vintage recording consoles that regularly went for $250k plus and didn't depreciate much can now be had for $50k or less with the seller feeling extremely pleased that he even found a buyer. With so little tracking with live musicians being done these days (see Loop-based Music) and the increased power of the DAW, why buy a recording console at all?
DAW's offer so many features these days that a competent engineer can make a great sounding record in a way that couldn't be done in 2000. The sound is good, the plug-ins are great and plentiful, the automation and recall are better than on any console, you're no longer limited to a certain size control room by the size of a desk, and inexpensive controllers are plentiful. It's no wonder that even the old-schoolers have finally acquiesced to "mixing in the box."
6) Less Money Going Around - CD sales are way down and as a result, so are recording budgets. Where once a $100k budget was considered bottom of the barrel when budgets for even non-superstar acts were beyond $500k, we now live in a world of $40 and 50k budgets. No money - no big studio, no rentals, no hardware purchases. It's all tied together. Superstar acts still get a blank check, but there are fewer and fewer of these acts. The future of the recording budget is here - get used to $40k or even less.
7) Sample and Loop-based Music - Once upon a time, all music started with real musicians tracked live. That all changed in the 2000's. Programs like Acid and Ableton Live made it easy to make some great music without ever seeing a real musician. Loop libraries gave you access to just about every kind of sound and mood that you could think of, and samples of every type of instrument became more realistic. Suddenly, you didn't need a studio, you didn't need a tracking room, you didn't need a player - all you needed was a laptop, some software and a set of headphones. Television and film composers no longer needed an orchestra, keyboard players could record great guitar and bass parts without the players, and no one needed a drummer if you had BFD or a similar program. It changed the music world, although not so much for the better, I'm afraid.
8) The Rise of Alternative Markets - Some markets thrived during the 2000's. The church market became a saviour for many audio gear companies as churches installed bigger and better sound systems, recorded their services and even broadcast them on television or the web. The sound system install market flourished as commercial building projects popped up everywhere. While this was truly a bright spot for many companies in recent years, the recession has brought these markets to a resounding halt. The worse may be yet to come, unfortunately.
9) The Rise of the Home Studio - It's now possible to have a studio on your laptop that's much more powerful than anything The Beatle's ever had to work with for less than a thousand dollars. Home recording is within reach of anyone that wants to do it, and everybody does. This has been both good and bad. It's brought about Music 3.0, where an artist is no longer bound by the marketing, distribution and sales system of the record labels, but the filter that the label provided and the help of the many professionals along the way had it's advantages too. Just because you have your own studio doesn't mean you know how to use it. As a result, we have fewer real professionals than ever before who are making less money than ever before - and more and more people making their own music at home. It hasn't resulted in better music so far.
10) The Influx of Chinese Gear - Audio and music gear is better than ever before on average. It's really difficult to find what would be considered a "bad" piece of gear these days (I remember the old Kent guitars with the bowed necks when I was growing up - those were bad), and it's cheaper than ever as well, all thanks to those hard-working Chinese near slave-laborers. Just about every gear company does the same thing these days - design the piece here, manufacture it in China, and sell it as cheaply as possible against a dozen other manufacturers with the same product and idea. The problem is that while all the gear is good, not much of it is really great. That's why we have more boutique gear manufacturers than ever. I wonder how they all survive?
11) The Failure of the Hi-Res Formats - In the beginning of the 2000's, the great hope for the industry and audio pros alike was the hi-res SACD and DVD-A formats. The trouble was, the public looked at these formats and yawned. It's difficult to hear hi-quality audio when your sound system is worse than what you could find in the typical college dorm room in 1970. Bad presentation, bad marketing, and no consumer interest all equal format death.
12) Change in Consumer Buying Habits - We all know this one. CD sales down, digital sales up, piracy still high. It's the reason for most of the items on this list. We'll cover this point more later in the week on my Music 3.0 blog.
Labels: 12 major changes in recording, Pro Tools
Dan Fogelberg - Same Old Auld Lang Syne
Here's my favorite song about Christmas - the late Dan Fogelberg's Same Old Auld Lang Syne. I posted this last year too, but the song means as much to me now as it did then, so he it is again.
What I love best about this live version is how well Dan treats his backing musicians at the end. He shows love and respect, as all artists should.
Merry Christmas everyone, and thanks a lot for reading!!
Labels: Dan Fogelberg, Same old auld lang syne
Springsteen - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
Here's my favorite Christmas song - "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" by Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band. This is one of earliest versions (and one of the best, in my opinion) from the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey in 1978. Forgive the brief commercial and the black and white, but it is vintage after all.
In 1976, Bruce and many of the E-Streeters would come listen to my band The Other Side at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park. This was during the period when he was under injunction from his former manager so he wasn't allowed to perform. He was a nice guy then, and when I met him again some 25 years later in California (in Studio B of Front Page Studios and again back stage at one of his concerts) just as nice. He's a real down to earth guy, despite his massive success.
I don't think I really appreciated Bruce though, until I saw him on the Charlie Rose's PBS show maybe four or five years ago. During the show, he performed "Born In The USA" with just him on a 12 string, but he played it the way you'd expect an old bluesman to play it. As blues legend Willie Dixon once told me, "The Blues are the facts of life", and Bruce was telling it like it should be told. I was convinced at that point that he was on the level of any of our musical national treasures.
Again, ignore the brief commercials and don't let the marginal video get in the way of some great music. Below you'll also find that great Charlie Rose performance of "Born In The USA."
Labels: Bruce Springsteen, Charlie Rose, Stone Pony, Willie Dixon
The 6 Elements of a Great Mix
In a previous post we discussed the attributes of an amateur mix, so now is a good time to discuss the 6 elements of a great mix.
Most great mixers think in three dimensions. They think “Tall, Deep and Wide”, which means they make sure that all the frequencies are represented, the mix has depth, and finally has some stereo dimension as well.
The “Tall” dimension (which is called “Frequency Range”) is the result of knowing what sounds correct as a result of having a reference point. This reference point can come from being an assistant engineer and listening to what other first engineers do, or simply by comparing your mix to some CD’s, records or files that you’re very familiar with and consider to be of high fidelity.
Essentially, what you’re trying to accomplish is to make sure that all the frequencies of the mix are properly represented. Usually that means that all of the sparkly, tinkly highs and fat, powerful lows are there. Sometimes some mids need to be cut or other frequencies need to be added, but regardless of what you add or subtract, Clarity of each instrument is what you aim for. Again, experience with elements that sound good really helps as a reference point.
The Effects or “Deep” dimension is achieved by introducing new ambience elements into the mix. This is usually done with reverbs and delays (and offshoots like flanging and chorusing) but room mics, overheads and even leakage play an equally big part as well.
The panning or “Wide” dimension achieved by placing a sound element in a sound field in such a way as to make a more interesting soundscape, and so that each element is heard more clearly.
Every piece of modern music, meaning Rock, Pop, R and B, Rap, Country, New Age, Swing, Drum and Bass, Trance and every other genre having a strong backbeat, has six main elements to a great mix. They are:
Balance - the volume level relationship between musical elements
Frequency Range - having all frequencies properly represented
Panorama - every musical element is well-placed in the soundfield
Dimension - added ambience to a musical element
Dynamics - controlling the volume envelope of a track or instrument, and
Interest - making the mix special
Most neophyte mixers have only four or five of these when doing a mix, but all of these elements MUST be present for a GREAT mix, as they are all equally important. You can read about these six elements in more detail in The Mixing Engineer's Handbook.
Labels: elements of a great mix, The Mixing Engineer's Handbook
Fastest Guitar Player In The World?
Speed is something that most novice guitar players strive for as they think that pure dexterity makes them a better player. That's not exactly true (listen to Joe Walsh or David Gilmore are great examples), since the faster you play, usually the less passion and soul you play with.
That being said, here's an interesting video by guitarist Tiago Della Vega playing the classic song “Flight Of The Bumble Bee” by Nikolay Rimsky Korsakov. Tiago plays at tempos that gradually ramp up to 320 bpm, which is totally outrageous.
I still prefer Joe Walsh, but this is a great performance.
World Record Guitar Speed 2008 Tiago Della Vega - Amazing videos are here
Labels: David Gilmore, Joe Walsh
The Making Of Pink Floyd's "Money"
Here's an excellent video on the making of Pink Floyd's "Money." There are lot of great things illustrated here:
1) Old fashioned tape loops. Yes, in the days before digital, this is how it was done (I get nostalgic looking at the MCI 4 track).
2) Track layering. You can hear how there's usually a lot more going on in a record than what you think.
3) The use of of effects. Effects are used to place a track in an artificial acoustic space and you can hear how it works very well here.
Labels: Pink Floyd, tape loops, track layering
2 Defining Moments For A Modern Guitar Player - Part 2
Yesterday I looked at the first of what I considered the 2 defining moments for a modern guitar player. These are moments when the light goes on and player's skill set takes a big turn towards what's required by a professional musician.
Just as yesterday, this post is an excerpt from the band improvement book "How To Make Your Band Sound Great," but was prompted after finding a couple of guitar pedal sites that I liked. Unfortunately, I didn't mention the site that really inspired me yesterday and that's GuitarPedalReview.com. As I stated then, I've become more of a purest after my defining moments and generally don't use pedals at all (especially when there are so many cool high quality effects in the studio), but I totally understand that they're integral to a player's sound (especially delays and modulation). Plus, I do like the proliferation of good pedal sites.
Here's the 2nd excerpt and defining moment:
Defining Moment #2 - When you learn to play clean without the help of distortion or sustain.
This might sound like the same thing as number 1, but it’s not. Playing with distortion is fun but the sustain gives you a false sense of security. The problem is that it can also cover up a lot of mistakes and technique problems that you might have. Distortion and artificial sustain can give you a false sense of your ability and the way to get around that is to learn to play completely clean. Yes, you might not like what you hear at first, but with some practice you’ll find that it’ll make you a much better player because now you can hear all the nuances that you’re either doing well, or need work on that you just can’t hear through the distortion. Remember back in Chapter 1 when we talked about your influences? Remember how we talked about how important the nuances in the playing were? This is the way you learn and refine them in your playing. If you can sound great clean, you’ll sound even better dirty!
Expanding on the above, playing with fewer effects and less distortion helps your band in another big way - it’s a lot easier for you to fit into the mix. The more effects (reverb, delay, chorus, flange, vibrato, etc) and distortion that you use, the harder it is for the audience to discern exactly what you’re playing. This means that the sound of the band turns into a mushy din instead of an exciting mix of instruments greater than its parts.
I’m not saying to stop using your pedals. I’m saying that you should use them with discretion. You don’t need to use them on every song, and you usually need a lot less of them than you think too!
When you’re playing live, if you think of your set as a record or CD (meaning a group of songs released at the same time that are designed to fit together), you’ll notice that the guitar sounds change a lot from song to song. In the studio, this means using different guitars, different amps, different effects - all in the name of keeping the sound fresh. While it’s impractical to do this to that extreme when playing live, you can still do some subtle things toward this end like using different pickup combinations, using different effects in different songs, or different amp settings if your amp will allow you to do it. But once again, the word is discretion. A little goes a long way!
Labels: Band improvement, guitar pedals
2 Defining Moments For A Modern Guitar Player
I'm not much of a guitar pedal guy anymore. I used to have more than a human could possibly use all over floor when I was a kid playing in clubs (in the days before pedal boards), but I eventually learned that I sounded a lot better without most of them. That being said, I recently came across a couple of pedal sites that I liked - the Guitar Pedal Blog and Pedal Heaven. They got me thinking about my pedal experiences so I thought it might be a good time to post this excerpt from the band improvement book "How To Make Your Band Sound Great" regarding what I believe to be the two defining moments for a modern guitar player.
From personal experience, I have found that there are two defining moments in an electric guitar player’s career that turns his mindset from that of an amateur to one of a professional. What I’m going to tell you might be hard to take because it might go against your idea of what sounds good and is fun to play, but believe me that it will help you in the long run.
Defining Moment #1 - The day you hear that the sound can be bigger without pedals or anything in between your guitar and amp.
Yes, it’s true. Most of those sounds that you’ve been hearing on recordings (especially on classic 60’s and 70’s recordings) have been a guitar plugged straight into amp with no pedals (or one at most) in between. What gives it that big sound is the type of amp and the fact that it’s turned up pretty high, if not to max!
Let me tell you about when this moment happened to me. I was jamming in a garage with slide guitarist extraordinaire Gerry Groom and bass player Paul ILL (my co-writer on The Studio Musician's Handbook) and a drummer. Gerry was a protege of Duane Allman (of the famous Allman Brothers Band) and was so close to Duane that he willed Gerry his beloved Les Paul when he died. The guy really had some amazing chops and a lot of experience and was once dubbed by Jimi Hendrix’ former manager “The next great American guitar player”. I was no pup either, as I was playing about 15 years at the time and had a couple of major label record deals (back when they actually meant something) under my belt.
Gerry plugged his 1960 Les Paul Black Beauty into his 1964 Fender black-faced Super Reverb and the sound was glorious. Lots of sustain with some really good sounding overdrive. I plugged my 1981 Strat into a small rack (which was popular to have at the time) of distortion devices, chorus units, EQ’s and noise gates which then went into a fabulous 1977 Marshall JMP 100 watt half-stack. While Gerry’s guitar sang with richness and as much sustain has he wanted, mine sounded thin and buzzy, although just as loud. After about a half-hour of jamming, Gerry looked at me and said, “Why do you even use that crap (meaning my rack gear)? You’d sound a lot better without it.” I loved my pedals and rack gear and the way it made me sound while I played by myself, but I had to admit that his rig sounded better than mine by a mile. He had the sound I kept trying to get by using all the pedals and rack gear, but he got it by using none of it!
I unplugged everything and when straight into the amp, turned it up and………..Wow!! It really did sound better once I tweaked the amp’s controls a bit. It was a little shocked about how high I had to turn the amp up to get the sound, but it really was the sound I heard on countless records that I’d been trying to achieve. It was that simple.
But it did take a new technique to learn how to control the amp. I couldn’t just jump on a pedal to get enough volume to go from rhythm to lead any more, I had to do it with the volume control on the guitar. And much to my amazement, it was easy! You turn down the volume control and the sound cleans up and you automatically get some highs in your sound, giving you some nice rhythm definition. No longer were my rhythm parts heavy handed and too full. Now they were always just right. This was my moment of clarity.
Granted, it really depends on the amp. Most amps (like the ones described in Chapter 1) will work well, but a few won’t. That’s one of the reasons that guitar players much prefer tube over solid state amps. They have the right sound when you turn them up while solid state, for the most part, just doesn’t. Likewise, if the amp has too much power, you just might never be able to turn it up where you need to in order to get the right sound, especially if you play in small venues. That’s why a 50 watt amp is a lot more versatile than a 100, because you just can’t drive a 100 to where it needs to go without your audience wearing hearing protectors like you see on an airport flight line.
Now I’m not saying to throw away all your distortion and overdrive pedals because they certainly have their place, but get the sound from the amp first, then add your pedals. If you can’t make the guitar sound great plugged directly into the amp, then consider an amp that will get you where you want to go.
Tomorrow - Defining Moment #2
Labels: Band improvement, guitar pedals, Paul Ill, Studio Musician's Handbook
7 Tips For Keeping Your Voice Healthy
Since the vocalist is the only musician who can not put their instrument away in a protective case after the gig or rehearsal, it’s important to take very good care of it. Eventually every singer has some vocal trouble, and if you’re not careful, it can really lead to long term damage. That’s why it’s important for a singer to learn to be especially aware of the need to take care of himself. Here's an excerpt from the band improvement book How To Make Your Band Sound Great with 7 tips to help vocalists keep their voices healthy and ready to sing at every gig and recording session.
1 - Aside from being sick, the number one cause of vocal problems is not getting enough sleep. When you’re tired, all the parts of your body needed to support your vocal cords tend to weaken a bit, which leads improper breathing and thus throat problems shortly after you begin to sing. Get as much sleep as you can (preferably seven or eight hours) the night before a gig, or at least take a nap on the day of the gig so you can feel somewhat refreshed.
2 - The next thing is to avoid milk (and any dairy products for that matter) from three to six hours before you sing. Anything with milk in it will cause an excess production of phlegm around your vocal chords, so that’s a definite no-no. The old remedy of milk and honey for a rough throat is very soothing after the gig, but not before!
3 - If you are hungry before a gig, don’t be afraid to eat, but just eat until you’re satisfied and don't stuff yourself with a seven course meal. Try not to eat in the last hour before your performance in order to avoid that excess phlegm again. If you do feel phlegmy, you’ll have the strongest temptation to clear your throat (which can be harmful) immediately after eating, but waiting an hour is usually enough time for your meal to settle.
4 - And speaking of clearing your throat, there are some that say that you should never try to clear your throat because it can cause some damage, but it’s usually necessary because excess mucous inhibits really inhibits your singing. The trick is to find a way to clear your throat without irritating it and the best way is to do a gentle "whispered cough" and then swallow and repeat. If this doesn't work, you need to deal with the excess mucous production. Squeeze a 1/4 of a lemon into a tall glass of water and sip over a period of about twenty minutes. This should cut through a lot of the excess mucous.
5 - Other things to avoid are alcohol, tea (despite popular belief), coffee, cola and anything else with caffeine, since these actually have a dehydrating effect, which is quite the opposite of what you really need.
6 - One thing you should do is drink lots and lots of water (ideally two to three quarts a day - the more the better) because a dry throat leads to a sore throat. If you live in an arid climate like Arizona, sleep with a humidifier next to your bed and try to warm up your voice in the shower. The moisture can be an incredible help for your voice. Also, learn to breathe in through your nose as much as possible. This will help moisten the air before it reaches your vocal cords.
7 - Finally, some singers swear by Entertainer’s Secret, a spray mixture that lubricates the vocal cords and was developed by an ear, nose and throat specialist.
Posted by Bobby Owsinski at 10:23 PM 2 comments:
Labels: entertainer's secret, vocal problems
Recording Session Etiquette - Part Three
In the third and last part of recording session etiquette, we take a look at what should happen when the session ends. As with parts one and two, this list is a partial excerpt from The Studio Musician's Handbook.
It’s perfectly natural to develop relationships with people you meet on sessions, but make sure you don’t ruffle any feathers in your noble efforts to make new friends or create more work for yourself. You want to get called back for the next session and you want the team you just worked with to refer you for more work.
After your tracks are completed and you’ve basked in compliments during playback, let whoever hired you or your point of contact know how much you enjoyed the experience and how much you’d like to come back again.
Remember to honor rank and be careful to defer to established relationships. If you just finished a synthesizer overdub for a producer but his engineer got you the gig, your best bet is thank the engineer for the referral at a time when the producer is present. Then let them both know you are available for more work. You’ll quickly develop a keen sense of when it’s cool to hang out or if you should quickly be on your way.
Be careful not to be overly friendly with the staff. This can be misinterpreted and come back at you later if you make someone feel the least bit uncomfortable.
Be careful about making unsolicited referrals for your friends. A general rule of thumb is only refer someone when you’re asked to recommend a player or singer for work. If you’re good at what you do and act professionally, producers, artists, contractors, engineers and managers will inevitably ask you for recommendations and then you’ll have ample opportunity to create your own ”A Team”.
Fast friends and strong bonds can be made amongst recording musicians. Often a sense of “family” prevails and often it’s perfectly appropriate to hang out and socialize after sessions. Recording musicians often end up touring or doing media promo dates with artists for whom they’ve made records, and lifetime bonds can be formed. Just remember to acknowledge the individual(s) who create these opportunities.
Follow these pointers and the ones from the first two posts and you'll always be perceived as a professional, which can go a long way to getting you more work. Make no mistake, you need talent to make it in the recording business, but talent alone will get you nowhere unless people like working with you.
Labels: recording session etiquette, Studio Musician's Handbook
Session Etiquette - Part Two
Knowing the proper etiquette while recording is almost as important as doing your gig. If you make people uncomfortable or do something that's considered out of place and chances are that you won't be asked back.
In recording session etiquette part two, we'll look at the way everyone expects you to act during the session. Once again, these are points taken from The Studio Musician's Handbook, but most of them apply to just about everyone on a session.
If there’s creative dialogue with the artist, songwriter, producer or engineer, make sure that your opinions are wanted and warranted before you offer them.
Be careful about musical references. You may think that the track you’re working on is great because it reminds you of Dusty Springfield’s classic “Son of a Preacher Man” only to find out upon your mention of it that it’s on the artist’s “Ten Most Overrated Songs” list.
Whether you’re on your own or part of an ensemble, focus on your work first. If you have input for other players, make sure it’s warranted and you can actually help them out. Players often tweak each other’s parts or help one another to understand a written passage, remember a song’s form, or get a sound.
Remember – always defer to whoever is in charge. That person is usually the producer, but you may be receiving guidance or input from a musical director, the artist, or the engineer.
Keep an open mind. Greet suggestions with willingness and always respond positively. If you’re receiving input from more than one source and they contradict one another, diplomatically point that out and let them resolve it.
And don’t forget – if you can’t keep your cell phone outside the studio, TURN IT OFF (not just on vibrate - that’s a distraction too).
Put away the magazines, computers, iPhones, and anything else that can be a distraction. The last thing a producer wants to see is you updating your Facebook status in between takes!
If you need time to check your messages or Facebook, make sure you ask first. Most sessions have timed or natural breaks when you can meet you individual needs, but be sure to always ask if you wish to leave the recording environment while there’s work being done, even if you’re not directly involved at that moment.
Your behavior should always be positive, and you should strive to be “present for the moment.”
There’s a time and a place for everything, but sometimes cajoling, goofing around or humor doesn’t belong at a session. Then on another day with the same people, the session may be all about the gags and laughs. Studio pro’s know how to “go with the flow” and are experts at reading people and situations.
If people are conversing, treat the session like any other workplace and try to avoid potential conversational “hot spots”: politics, religion, family and money.
Everyone likes a good conversation and a funny joke, but it’s best not to risk being misinterpreted or misperceived as offensive.
Earn and honor rank. That means if there are players on the session with more professional or personal history with the artist or producer than you have accumulated, let them lead. Everyone benefits when everyone gets along and knows their place.
Always wait until the job is done before you ask the powers that be if they are open to your creativity. It’s appropriate to do so before you offer your ideas. Always ask first if they are open to your input. If so, and you hear it in your imagination, let them know.
Tomorrow - Session Etiquette Part Three
Session Etiquette - Part One
The way you act at a session many times counts for so much more than your performance. If you make anyone uncomfortable in the slightest way, you can bet that you probably won't be asked back, so being aware of proper studio etiquette is extremely important.
Studio etiquette applies to before, during and after a session as well. In part one, we'll look at what's expected before the red light is turned on.
These points come from The Studio Musician's Handbook, but most apply to everyone connected with a recording session as well as the musicians.
Before the session begins:
On any session, always know who your point of contact is.
ALWAYS SHOW UP EARLY. To be early is to be on time. To be on time is to be late. To be late is almost like not showing up at all! If the downbeat is for 2PM, show up at least a half-hour early at 1:30!
Let the powers that be know you’ve arrived. Make your presence known at a session as soon you roll up on the studio property. If you’re there and no one knows it, you can cause the session to start late if you’re hanging out in the lounge instead of the studio while everyone is waiting for you because they’re unaware that you’ve already arrived.
Load your gear in quickly and quietly. Accept help with this if it’s offered. If it’s your first time there, introduce yourself to those you make contact with, and find out what the plan for the session is.
You may be immediately welcomed in the studio or control room, or you may not. You may be asked to wait in the lounge instead. While you’re waiting, use those people skills and find out what’s going on. Be friendly and respectful but don’t be overly formal.
After you’re set up and ready to play, keep your warm-ups and noodling to an absolute minimum. Get your sound and follow the producer’s or engineer’s direction “to the t”. If you’re playing an electric instrument, it’s totally cool to turn your volume all the way down and do your warm-ups.
If there are headphones in use, try putting them on with the volume all the way down (studio headphones are capable of being loud enough to cause hearing damage, so don’t hurt yourself), and slowly turn them up to see what’s happening with the mix. If there are other people in the room, you might want to “keep one ear on, one ear off” until recording begins in case someone talks to you. Always keep your focus on the music and what’s right here, right now.
Part 2 next post - Etiquette during the session.
Rolling Stone's Albums Of The Decade
Rolling Stone magazine just released their Top 100 albums of the decade. As with any subjective list like this, there's always reason to debate the choices, but they're still pretty interesting to look at.
My first thought after looking over the list is, "It was a pretty creatively barren period."
Here are the the top 20 albums, but you can find the entire top 100 here.
1 | Radiohead: Kid A
2 | The Strokes: Is This It
3 | Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
4 | Jay-Z: The Blueprint
5 | The White Stripes: Elephant
6 | Arcade Fire: Funeral
7 | Eminem: The Marshal Mathers LP
8 | Bob Dylan: Modern Times
9 | M.I.A.: Kala
10 | Kanye West: The College Dropout
11 | Bob Dylan: Love and Theft
12 | LCD Soundsystem: Sound of Silver
13 | U2: All That You Can't Leave Behind
14 | Jay-Z: The Black Album
15 | Bruce Springsteen: The Rising
16 | OutKast: Stankonia
17 | Beck: Sea Change
18 | MGMT: Oracular Spectacular
19 | Amy Winehouse: Back to Black
20 | The White Stripes: White Blood Cells
Posted by Bobby Owsinski at 11:46 AM 1 comment:
Labels: albums of the decade, Rolling Stone
I don't know how long the following video will stay online since it seems to be a lift from a BBC documentary on recording The Beatles, but it's a wonder to listen to while you can. The video is just the audio portion of "Something" off the Abbey Road album and it's a great study in how a hit was put together using only an 8 track tape recorder.
First of all, the sounds are wonderful, even though you only hear them through the monitor mix (especially the strings). Second, listen to how all the parts fit so well together. A few of them, like the guitar through the Leslie speaker and piano in the bridge, only play for a short time in a turnaround but they make a huge impact in the arrangement. The vocal double in the chorus is a trick still used today on perhaps the majority of records.
It's a great song that's become a standard, a beautiful arrangement, and great recording that's stood the test of time.
Labels: Abbey Road, Something, the beatles
The Real Reason Why Apple Bought LaLa
It's not exactly what you think.
Does "cloud computing" (see the picture on the left) ring a bell?
Check out the Music 3.0 blog for the story.
Labels: cloud computing, Lala, Music 3.0
The Greatest Selling Record Of All Time
What's the best selling record of all time? No, it's not Thriller by Michael Jackson (reported numbers are said to be inflated so it's difficult to even tell how many copies it's sold). It's"White Christmas" by Bing Crosby and written by songwriting legend Irving Berlin. The single is said to have sold over 50 million copies alone with the album putting total sales over 100 million.
Recorded in 1942 just after the World War II started and debuted in the movie "Holiday Inn" with Crosby and Fred Astaire, it's widely held that the war actually had a lot to do with the song gaining popularity. Since millions of troops were overseas and longing for family, the song brought a little bit of comfort and the feel of home. From that point, it's become ingrained in our consciousness as a standard that's played constantly (over and over and over again) throughout the holiday season.
There's a lot that's interesting about songwriter Irving Berlin, He was self-taught and could only play using the black keys of F#. Because he was self taught, he also frequently wrote with unusual cadences, and many times never bothered with a song bridge, which was contrary to the times. Still, the song has outlived hundreds of competitors over time with more introduced every year. Despite all the famous songs that Berlin wrote that everyone somehow knows, ("Alexander's Ragtime Band,""Easter Parade," "There's No Business Like Show Business," "God Bless America."), White Christmas will be the one he's best remembered for.
So if you really want to make your mark as a songwriter, write a holiday song.
Labels: greatest selling record, Irving Berlin, white christmas
Gear Hits of the Noughties
Kevin Becka, the tech editor at Mix Magazine, recently wrote an interesting post entitled "Top 20 Gear Hits of the Noughties" that was pretty cool, so I thought I'd reprint some of them that I thought significant with some comments (in italics). If you following the links, you'll get more info from Kevin on the product.
Pro Tools HD – Digidesign’s 2002 hardware upgrade brought high resolution audio to the industry’s top DAW. Yes, this version truly made a difference in that there were a lot of questions regarding the sound quality of Pro Tools until HD came out. None now, it's the standard!
Apple Logic Pro – After the purchase of Steinberg, Apple puts its stamp on this popular music production tool making it a contender for top affordable native DAW. Don't know about Logic Pro as a game changer per se, but the fact that you can get great performance from a native (using only the host computer without the aid of additional processing cards) DAW certainly is.
Celemony Melodyne – The only competition for the ubiquitous Auto Tune app brought us a new way to correct pitch. The latest version of Melodyne is nothing short of amazing, providing some great forensic tools not usually associated with pitch correction.
JBL LSR6328P monitors – Once the studio monitoring champ, JBL made a solid bid for the title again with these great sounding speakers. Don't know how much of a game changer they are, but they're my choice and the ones I use every day.
Royer SF24 – Royer provided an easy way to record with ribbon mics in stereo without having the gain and impedance issues of a passive ribbon. Of all the new mics on the market today, one of the few that have become true recording standards have come from Royer.
Plugins – Many companies defined this category in the noughties including Waves, Sonnox, Focusrite, McDSP, Bomb Factory, TL Audio,SoundToys, PSP, URS, IK Multimedia, brainworx, Universal Audio,iZotope and more. Just as Pro Tools HD changed the way we thought about the sound of a DAW, the same can be said for the latest generation of plug-ins. No one even compares the sound to hardware anymore.
Digidesign VENUE and ICON – Digidesign went from 0 to 60 in record time with their live sound and studio consoles. Absolutely true. They became a real player in sound reinforcement seemingly overnight.
Now that the industry has made the conversion from hardware to software, more and more we see products that are evolutionary instead of revolutionary. I think a good case can be made for some of the above to be put in the revolutionary category. Wonder how many we'll see in the 10's?
Labels: Kevin Becka, Mix Magazine, Pro Tools HD, Royer SF24, Top 20 Gear Hits
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" Backing Track
Here's the backing track to Nirvana's 90's hit "Smells Like Teen Spirit". This was the song that launched a whole new musical trend so it's significant from an historical perspective, but it's also a great example of dynamics and how a song is taken to another level by a great drummer. This video contains all the tracks except guitars so it's another perfect example of rhythm section production to study.
As famous jazz drummer Buddy Rich once said (most likely referring to himself), "You can't have a great band without a great drummer," and he was certainly right. EVERY great band has a great drummer and to be even more precise, the perfect drummer for the band. Dave Grohl was certainly the right guy to hold down the drum chair for Nirvana, and this track proves it. The drum track is punchy, in-time, dynamic and aggressive.
Speaking of dynamics, that was one of Nirvana's strong points and Teen Spirit is the perfect example. Listen to how the tension is built by going from the steady but less intense verse to the fury of the chorus. If you want to learn how to play dynamically, that's how it's done.
There's no picture on this video other than the album cover, but the audio's well worth a listen.
Labels: Buddy Rich, Dave Grohl, Nirvana, Smells like teen spirit
Live Band Karaoke
One of my oldest friends, studio bassist and co-writer of The Studio Musician's Handbook - Paul ILL, just returned from a trip to Atlanta where he saw what appears to be the latest rage on the East Coast - live band karaoke.
In case the term doesn't sink in, it means a real live band invites members of the audience up to sing a song of their choice. The band charges $5 for the privilege and if you tip, you move to the head of the line. It sure beats singing to a machine and it must be a real thrill for the vocal participants to feel the energy of a band.
Apparently this is the hot new thing for club bands, and karaoke bands are now popping up all over the country. Although my club gigging days are way behind me, I think it's a really clever idea. It's a new way for a band to draw an audience, a great way to keep that audience involved, and a new way for the band to make some needed money in these days of fewer and fewer gigs. If I were playing in clubs again (perish the thought), it's something I'd definitely consider. You could even expand beyond just singers to have audience members sub for all members of the band, so you sort of get a little bit of a live "Rock Band" game as well.
Just do a search for "live band karaoke" and watch what you get.
Labels: karaoke bands, live band karaoke, Studio Musician's Handbook
Analyzing The "Sweet Child Of Mine" Backing Track
In keeping with the theme of this week so far, here's the backing track for the hit "Sweet Child of Mine" from Guns n' Roses. I'm not sure that this is the real GnR track (you can never tell what the source is on Youtube), but it's still a pretty good analysis of how it was put together. You'll hear the drums, bass, 2 rhythm guitars left and right and the lead vocals.
A couple of interesting things here. First the whole drum kit has a load of reverb on it, a lot more than you hear on most rock songs. Second is the effected bass, which has a chorus on it - again unusual for a rock song (any song really). It's also worth noting when the rhythm guitar on the right comes in on the choruses and bridge to change things up a bit and give the song some additional power.
It's also interesting to hear a small bass rhythm flub about half-way through the first verse, and the punches on the vocals (if it's really GnR, it was done on tape - no unlimited tracks) during the choruses.
Labels: backing track, guns n' roses, Sweet Child of Mine
Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody - The Multitrack
I've always been a big fan of listening to multitracks of hit songs as a learning experience. It's so much fun to hear just how perfect or imperfect the tracks are. Until recently, these multitracks were pretty difficult to find unless you already knew the band or artist, or their producer or engineer, and they were kind enough to let you play with them.
But everything has changed now with YouTube, where you can find a wide variety of dissected material. It's been suggested that a lot of this comes from a guy who works for the vault company that houses many of these master multitrack tapes for the major labels, but who really knows (I'm sure the label's business affairs sure would like to know)? The fact of the matter is that so many songs are now available for our dissected listening pleasure, and any student of record production should take advantage of them.
Here's a great example of one of the most sophisticated hit songs ever made - Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. This video gives you a look at all 44 tracks to provide a great idea of how the song (especially the vocals) is layered.
Listen to how in-tune all the vocals are (a tribute to Freddie and the band) and how tight everything is in the days way before Beat Detective and digital editing. Sure there are a couple of things that a sharp ear will detect, but you'd probably leave those in today anyway because the feel is so good.
The only thing better than listening to this video is having the tracks to play with yourself, but you'll have to find that on your own.
Labels: Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
The Value Of Fewer Tracks - The Making Of The Beatles "Come Together"
I'm pleased to say that I started my recording career in the era of limited tracks. As a young working musician, I owned one of the first 4 track Dokoder tape recorders. My first professional productions (and where I really learned the craft) came on a 16 channel MCI console and a Scully 8 track recorder. It was a big deal when I finally graduated to 24 track recording on major label projects.
While having limited tracks to work with might seem primitive compared to today's unlimited digital tracks, it was really a blessing in disguise. Fewer tracks means that decisions have to be made during the recording process. If there's a sound or part that you think you like, you have to commit to it NOW, rather that leave it to be sorted out later during mixing. That sort of forced decision making leads to more efficient, quicker recording, and the ability to trust your first creative instincts (which we often overlook when we have too many choices).
Again, that approach seems to be creatively limited, but some of the greatest music of our time was made that way. All of the timeless music by The Beatles and all their contemporaries were done with 8 tracks or less. Here's a great example of how "Come Together" came together, starting from a 4 track tape then finished on 8 track.
Labels: Come Together, Scully 8 track, the beatles
5 More Lists
Everyone says that lists are really popular on the Web and it's really true. Yesterday's post of some previous lists that we've posted over the last year was a smashing success, so here are a few more. Back to business on Monday.
5 Reasons Why Trade Shows Are Obsolete - You know they are and hate them as much as I do. But did you ever think exactly why?
20 Most Popular Facebook Artists - From earlier in the year so it's probably changed a bit, but still an interesting look.
5 Reasons To Hate The Live Nation/Ticketmaster Merger - Some of the predictions did not come to pass, but a lot has to do with the flagging economy and the general decline of the concert business in general.
10 Pieces Of Technology That I Hate - Just reread the article and still hate everything there except the last one, since I've learned how to love and respect social media.
Top Ten Websites - This is from January of 09 so it'll be interesting to see how it's changed in a month or so.
Labels: 10 pieces of technology I hate, top 10 websites, trade shows obsolete
A Review Of The Best Lists
Happy Thanksgiving to those readers who celebrate it. I thought it would be a good time to review some of the past posts that feature lists. Here are five of the most popular.
5 Lies Indie Musician's Tell Themselves - Who else can you believe if you can't believe yourself first?
5 Criteria For Video Stardom - It takes more than a camera, a nice smile and a Youtube account.
9 All-Time Bad Tech Predictions - Even smart people can be way off base sometimes.
5 Reasons For Bad Concert Videos - Can't watch concert videos because they make your head spin? Here's why.
5 Reasons Why Concerts Sound So Bad - Was the concert you just left a jumbled mess of incoherent audio? The reasons might surprise you.
Labels: 5 lies indie musicians tell themselves, bad concert videos, Bad tech predictions
The Overlooked Recording Variables
Most recording engineers (both those learning and experienced) place way too much stock in the kind of gear they're using. It seems like if the gear is not vintage, a name brand or high priced, it's automatically shunned, but the major variables that go into making a good recording always lie in other places than the gear itself.
Here’s a list of recording variables that you must be aware of when recording just about anything. While you can’t really quantify exactly how much each variable contributes to the way something ultimately sounds because each situation, even within the same project, is unique, you can generally break it down to something like this:
The Player and the instrument contributes about 50% to the overall sound. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less – but always the greatest portion. You can prove this to yourself. Get a player who’s not yet that accomplished and record him with his equipment. Chances are it will sound pretty mediocre. Then get a great player to come in and play on the same equipment. You’ll be shocked how good the gear suddenly sounds. It’s not as dramatic going the other way around sometimes, but you can definitely hear the difference when a mediocre player goes from mediocre equipment to finely tuned studio gear. When I was the musical director for former Rolling Stone's guitar player Mick Taylor for a tour (here's a nice picture of us on the left), Mick didn’t travel with any gear, preferring to use whatever his fans could provide him at each town. He frequently played with some really big stinking heaps of crap gear, but every night he still sounded just like “Mick Taylor.” The gear never mattered.
The Room contributes about 20% to the overall sound. Even on close-miked instruments, the room is far more responsible for the final sound than many engineers realize.
The Mic Position contributes about 20% to the overall sound. Placement is really your acoustic EQ and is responsible for the instrument’s blend in the track.
The Mic Choice contributes about 10% to the overall sound. This is the last little bit that takes a good sound and makes it great.
Therefore, if something doesn't sound right, there are a lot of things to consider changing before you even think about twisting an EQ knob. Try the following in this order:
Change the source, if possible (the instrument and/or amplifier you are miking)
Change the mic placement
Change the placement of the instrument in the room
Change the mic
Change the mic preamplifier
Change the amount of compression and/or limiting (from none to a lot)
Change the room (the actual room you are recording in)
Change the player
Come back and try it another day
Posted by Bobby Owsinski at 10:26 AM 3 comments:
Labels: Mick Taylor, recording variables, Rolling Stone's guitar player
Frank Zappa And The Black Page
As we were finishing guitar overdubs on the latest Snew album last night, we were talking about musicianship and I was reminded of another Frank Zappa story. Frank was a historic stickler for great musicianship, but if you didn't play with heart and have a great natural feel, that didn't work for him either. But more than anything else, Frank hated anyone with an attitude.
Frank was looking for a piano player, but he needed someone who was a particularly great reader. Steve DeFuria (his then Synclavier programmer and now VP of Corporate Strategy at Line6, and one of my oldest friends) and I knew a piano player from our Berklee days who just moved out to Los Angeles, and we gave Mr. Piano a hearty recommendation. Frank once again cautioned us that he "had to be a great reader" and we told him that Mr. Piano was a former Berklee teacher and could read a fly running across a page. Trouble was that Mr. Piano had a bit of a superiority attitude, which we assumed he would tone down in the presence of someone so esteemed as Frank Zappa.
Just to be sure that Mr. Piano had a fair chance at the reading part of the audition, Frank gave him 2 pieces of music to work on a week before the audition was to take place. One of these pieces is called "The Black Page" which was pretty dense with notes and a real challenge to play. Challenge enough that Mr. Piano kind of gave up learning it as precisely as needed and decided he was good enough to wing it during the audition instead. Fatal mistake #1
When the audition started Mr. Piano gave Frank a little of his natural superiority attitude - fatal mistake #2! Frank's acerbic side reared up and about 4 bars into The Black Page he stopped Mr. Piano as said, "Can you play the song backwards?" Mr. Piano now starts to sweat a little bit as he realizes that he's in for more than he expected.
After about another 4 bars of playing Frank stops him again and says, "Can you switch hands so that the right hand is playing the bass clef and the left hand is playing the treble?" Mr. Piano is now really obviously nervous since he's way deep in unfamiliar waters (Frank Zappa's natural environment), his playing is completely inverted, plus he's still attempting to play the song backwards (from end to finish). As a result, his attitude comes back to earth in a sudden crash, just where Frank wants it.
After another rather limp 4 bars Frank comes in for the death blow. "Can you play the song without using your thumbs?" Now Mr. Piano is a quivering mass of jelly and can't even get a bar through when he stops and says to Frank, "That's impossible. No one can play it this way!" To which Frank replies, "You're a pretty good player, but you're not that good. I know 3 drummers who can play this with no problem."
And with that, Mr. Piano player was on his way, his ego definitely in a different place than when the day started.
But to show the other side of Zappa's love for musicians, Frank was playing a gig at the Cobo Arena in Detroit when one of the janitors came into the green room with a guitar before the gig. "I just have to do this," the janitor said with an "Ah, Shucks" kind of attitude. Frank gave him the go sign and Mr. Janitor did a couple of songs. Frank thanked him and asked for his card. The band chuckled, thinking that would be the last time it would touch Franks's eyes, but six months later Mr. Janitor Ike Willis was on an airplane out to Los Angeles to sing on a record with the esteemed Mr. Zappa. And he sang on almost every record Frank made until the end.
Labels: Black Page, Frank Zappa, Ike Willis
Music 3.0 Book Released
My latest book "Music 3.0 - A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age" has just been released and is currently available in book and music stores and online.
Although we've touched on some of the issues here in recent posts (the book was actually born from a post here about Guns n' Roses almost a year ago), I've decided that the subject needs a blog of its own. Therefore I'm devoting an entire new blog to the subject called appropriately "Music 3.0", that will cover more of the business side of the music business. This blog will cover more of the production and music side of things from here on.
Music 3.0 is an aggregation of concepts on the new music business that I’ve been following for some time. These concepts include Seth Godin's "Tribes", The Theory of 1000, Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail", and "The Economics of Free" among others. The book looks at how these concepts pertain to the marketing and distribution in the business right now.
It also contains the guiding insights of some of the music industry’s brightest minds about where the industry has been, where it is now, and where it’s going (see tomorrow's post on the Music 3.0 blog for a list). With so much information currently available, I wanted to do what I do best - collect it, organize it, and present it in a way that hopefully everyone can understand.
I'm really proud of this book, and I hope that its readers find it as helpful as some of my other books.
Labels: Music 3.0, Seth Godin, the Long Tail
Horned Audio Territory
Now for something completely different.
Acousticians have known since even before the beginning of speaker design that horn loaded speakers are the most efficient way to amplify audio That's because, unlike most of the cone loaded speakers that we're used to, horns are very directional and don't waste energy pointing sounds in a direction other than where the audience is seated. Who cares if the spider on the ceiling is hearing a playback as well as you are?
While horn-loaded speakers come in and out of style, they're always with us in some form. The latest foray into horned audio territory for the home is the La Grande Castine speakers (pictured left), designed by the French company Musique Concrete (can't find a website for them). Their large size and acoustic shape allow them to deliver sound in the 108dB range with a mere 3 watt amplifier. Now that's efficiency! They'll cost you though - about $100,000 per pair.
While we see speakers like the La Grande Constine occasionally used in the home (not that often because they tend to be on the large size), horn-loaded speakers are usually found in a professional setting. The reason why horn-loaded speakers have such a place in our sonic history is the fact that when film's first changed to "talkies" in the 20's, amplifiers were in their infancy and only rated around 5 watts at best (by comparison, today's theater amps are usually over 1000 for just the woofers in a large theater system). In order to cover the entire theater with sound, the speakers had to be the most efficient possible, which is why horn-loaded ones were chosen. Altec was the leader at the time (although RCA made the first ones) with their "Voice of the Theater" line (pictured left).
Usually you'd find a set of three of these speakers set behind the screen. The bigger the theater, the larger the speaker. In fact, in many large theaters that project Sony's SDDS format films, you'll find an array of five sets, although they'll probably be from JBL since Altec has regrettably left this area of the business some time ago.
When I was a kid in a few of my first bands, we used a pair of Altec A7 speakers (pictured left) in our PA system and always got raves for how great they sounded (the speakers sounded better than the band sometimes). Altec has now reissued the venerable A7, but at a $4000 per speaker price, which is totally ridiculous. They were good, but not that good, and there are a lot better choices available today for a lot less money than an old A7.
Probably the most widely revered and sought after horn-loaded speaker is the oldest - the RCA "Ubangi," which was used in the original theater sound systems until about the 60's and latter utilized as the primary piece of Allen Sides famed studio monitors of the 80's and 90's. Since almost all theaters that used these have either closed or upgraded to newer gear long ago. If you have any pictures of a Ubangi, please send it along.
I'm not sure how this post became the brief history of horn-loaded speakers (very, very brief), but it sure was fun, and I didn't even get into some of my very favorites. We'll leave that for a future post.
Labels: horn-loaded speakers, La Grande Castine, RCA Ubangi, Voice of the Theater
The Copyright Time Bomb
If you are a record label or publishing exec, you knew this day was coming. Still few made plans for what would happen when some of the provisions of the U.S Copyright Act of 1976 came due until now.
What's the problem? Only that the act gives authors or their heirs the ability to terminate copyright grants, which means that the lucrative catalog income (the only major income stream for some record labels these days) could come to a crashing halt.
So why does a law passed way back in 1976 strike fear into the hearts of industry execs today? Under the Copyright Act, if an artist or author sold a copyright before 1978, they or their heirs can take it back 56 years later. But if the artist or author sold the copyright during or after 1978, they can terminate that grant after only 35 years. That means that record labels could lose any sound recording copyright they purchased in 1978 beginning in 2013. For music from 1953 and before, those grants can already be terminated.
Many superstar acts (including the powerhouse The Eagles) are already preparing termination notices that they intend to file by the end of the year, according to Law.com (there's a five year window in which you can file notices). While superstar acts may be better off going it alone without a record label since many already have distribution infrastructure in place, many B and C level acts will probably just renegotiate for a better deal and leave their copyrights in place, which is what the labels are hoping for. Still, it's going to cut into their income stream big time, just when they can least afford it.
The Copyright Act isn't just about music though, it covers any type of copyright, so every facet of the entertainment industry will be affected. But the entertainment lawyers are already smiling since their big payday is just beginning. If you ever wanted to go to law school, now is the time.
Labels: copyright act, Copyright Act of 1976, The Eagles
6 Predictions For The Musical Instrument/Pro Audio...
2 Defining Moments For A Modern Guitar Player - Pa...
The Value Of Fewer Tracks - The Making Of The Beat...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line28
|
__label__wiki
| 0.868505
| 0.868505
|
Biography – CORNISH, ELLEN GERTRUDE (Knights) – Volume XVI (1931-1940) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography
DCB/DBC News
Biography of the Day
d. 20 Jan. 1830 on the Buffalo Creek Reservation (Buffalo), N.Y.
Responsible Government
Sir John A. Macdonald
From the Red River Settlement to Manitoba (1812–70)
The Fenians
Women in the DCB/DBC
Winning the Right to Vote
The Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences of 1864
Introductory Essays of the DCB/DBC
The Acadians
Exploring the Explorers
Canada’s Wartime Prime Ministers
CORNISH, ELLEN GERTRUDE (Knights) (she signed most of her literary work Gertrude Cornish Knight), author, journalist, and pageant producer; b. 11 Jan. 1877 in Sandwich (Windsor), Ont., youngest of the five children of John Cornish and Louisa Overton; m. 27 April 1898 Frederick Thomas Knights in Winnipeg, and they had two sons and one daughter; d. 11 Jan. 1933 in Windsor and was buried in Riverside Cemetery, Port Arthur (Thunder Bay), Ont.
In 1882 Ellen Gertrude Cornish’s father, John, a bailiff at Sandwich, relocated his family to Winnipeg, where his brother, the controversial Francis Evans Cornish*, had been the first mayor. John would serve as city bailiff for several years. As early as 1884–85, Gertie and her brother Francis (Frank) Evans were attracting special mention for their recitations at the Baptist Sunday school and at children’s socials sponsored by the Blue Ribbon Society, a branch of the Gospel Temperance Movement. She went on to recite at gatherings of the Loyal Temperance Legion, the children’s branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and, as a young woman, at the Royal Templars of Temperance, Progress Council No.2, where her future husband, Frederick Knights, would play a guitar selection on one occasion in 1895. By 1892 Gertie was composing her own verse and dialogues for social and temperance fund-raising concerts. Sixteen of her best compositions were made available as a booklet by the Trades and Labor Council in 1894. Her work earned a commendation from Lieutenant Governor Sir John Christian Schultz*. The autobiographical story “Betty, or winning him over” reflects aspects of Gertrude’s childhood. It recounts the tale of Betty, a girl who moves from Walkerville (Windsor), Ont., to Winnipeg. Her father becomes “a slave to strong drink,” reducing his prosperous household to poverty. A Sunday-school teacher encourages her to give a recitation for the Christmas festival, which brings her great pleasure. If this account is based on the author’s early years, it explains much about Gertrude’s passion for temperance, and for writing poems and plays in which young people might find solace.
About five years after marrying Fred Knights, who was a locomotive foreman for the Canadian Northern Railway, Gertrude, with her husband and their children, moved to Dauphin and later to Edmonton. In July 1908 Fred was transferred to Port Arthur, a rapidly growing grain and freight trans-shipment port. Gertrude volunteered as a Sunday-school teacher and leader of the youth mission band at Trinity Methodist Church. By 1909 she was training boys and girls in recitations and drills for the medal contests of the West Algoma branch of the WCTU. She became superintendent of juvenile medal contests a year later, and subsequently the branch’s recording secretary and president. She was also an influential founding member of the West Algoma Equal Suffrage Association and the local chapter of the Women’s Canadian Club.
From late 1910 until April 1911 Gertrude, using the pseudonym Miss Helper, edited the women’s page for Port Arthur’s Daily News. This employment brought her into the Twin Cities branch of the Canadian Women’s Press Club [see Catherine Ferguson*; Katherine Angelina Hughes*], the locus of the Lakehead’s literary women, and led to her creation of a Saturday children’s column, which she signed Mrs F. or Mrs F. S. Knight and which ran from January 1911 until June 1914. Both features gave her a means for advancing her views on parenting, especially the raising of boys, and they were the primary outlet for her poetry, which she mostly signed Gertrude Cornish Knight, the pen name she used exclusively after August 1911.
Immersed from childhood in Victorian school and temperance concerts, Gertrude wrote verses intended for recitations. They are typically little stories or lessons, primarily moral, religious, or elegiac; for example, “The children’s friend,” written in 1911, eulogizes Winnipeg politician and judge Thomas Mayne Daly*. Other topics are motherhood, babies, nature, Easter, and light-hearted subjects such as Santa Claus. Although Gertrude was sentimental about infants and youngsters, older children, particularly boys, were exhorted to make the right choices, to develop individuality and self-reliance, and to face the harshness of life – “to carry your load yourself,” as she urged in a 1913 poem. What distinguishes her from some of her contemporaries, such as Edith Sarah Groves [Lelean], is her overtly didactic and evangelical Christian messages.
Gertrude’s passion for providing wholesome ways to engage children led her to create stage productions that would embody in song and story the patriotic and moral themes she believed were important. They were pastiches, with elements found in pageants, melodramas, and comedies. The newspapers characterized these plays as cantatas or operettas because they contained so much music for the marches and drills, as well as the occasional popular tune, hymn, and patriotic song during which the audience could join in. She developed the themes and tableaux, wrote the dialogue, and selected the recitations and songs, some of which she composed. The casts, mostly girls, featured children of all ages, including her own, and a few adults in allegorical roles such as Civilization or John Bull.
Her first and most successful show, “The courtship of Miss Canada,” premiered at Trinity Methodist Church on New Year’s Eve 1912 with more than 70 performers. Through the agency of the Canadian Circulation Company of Toronto, it was produced in over 20 Canadian towns and cities between 1913 and 1917, often with the sponsorship of the local Methodist church or the WCTU. The heroine chooses Christ and the Cross, whereas in Mrs Groves’s secular play The wooing of Miss Canada (Toronto, 1917), she chooses Jack Canuck. “War time in song and story,” which appeared in 1914, enjoyed similar success across Canada. The Dawson Daily News (1915) praised it for “ringing with patriotism and palpitating with good cheer.” The two works netted $10,000 for patriotic and church purposes, not counting what Gertrude received in royalties. The allegorical play “The new empire” followed in 1916. For Christmas she created three plays between 1913 and 1921: in the first Santa Claus is placed on trial; in the second he exhorts children to sacrifice their gifts for the nation’s soldiers; and in the third Mother Nature is wooed by Jack Frost and Father Christmas. In 1918, two years after the imposition of the unpopular Ontario Temperance Act by Premier William Howard Hearst*, Gertrude composed “The hour before the dawn,” in which Squire John Bull must decide between his maid, Temperance, and his valet, Booze.
In her war poems, as well as the patriotic and recruiting lyrics that she wrote in collaboration with local music teachers, young men are expected to do their duty, and parents are expected to bear the sacrifice and loss that war inevitably brings. Such was the message of “It’s the price we pay,” about the death of airman Stanley Wallace Rosevear*. Gertrude’s best patriotic poems, such as “Canada to England,” make stirring recitations, but the worst, like “The slackers,” are jingoistic and unfeeling.
Gertrude’s husband was transferred to the isolated railway town of Sioux Lookout in 1920, and for the next 13 years she led a peripatetic life. She often shuttled between Port Arthur and Los Angeles, where her son Frederick Gordon moved in 1923. Although repulsed by California’s secularism, she would spend approximately six years there as her heart condition worsened; ironically, it was the place she had rejected in her widely printed 1915 poem “Old Ontario is good enough for me,” in response to a booklet touting the state’s many charms. She continued to write verse and plays for children both there and during her visits to Port Arthur. In the summer of 1932 she travelled to Windsor for an extended stay with her brother Frank. There she died of heart failure on her birthday.
Ellen Gertrude Cornish’s literary work bears testimony to her conviction that the woman who “rocks the cradle” is “man’s own equal in heart and brain and mind” and, as a mother, holds in her hands the fate of her land. She made this case in “The cradle and the ballot” and again in “The woman at home,” which contains these lines:
It is she who is ever shaping
The nations yet to be
And in her tender influence lies
A people’s destiny.
A creative voice for maternal feminism, evangelical Christianity and temperance, and English Canadian nationalism, she advanced these ideals in an amusing, cheerful, rhythmic way that appealed to children and adults across Canada. Her field of action was Port Arthur, not Flanders fields, her arms the pen and the stage.
Frederick Brent Scollie
The official birth registration for Ellen Gertrude Cornish (AO, RG 80-2-0-92, no.4520) states that she was born on 4 Jan. 1874; her birth was registered 24 Jan. 1877. The year 1874 must be a clerical error since her brother Francis Evans’s birth was registered 1 Feb. 1874 (AO, RG 80-2-0-52, no.1407), which is less than a month later. (The birth entry immediately preceding Cornish’s bears the date 22 Nov. 1874; it is possible that the clerk copied the year 1874 in error.) According to her daughter, May, she died on her birthday; her death registration (AO, RG 80-8-0-1423, no.14492) records 11 Jan. 1877 as her date of birth.
The subject signed most of her literary work Gertrude Cornish Knight. Early in her career she used Mrs F. or Mrs F. S. Knight for one of her columns and a few of her poems. It is unknown why she dropped the “s” from Knights in her pen names and why she sometimes used the initial “S” since neither she nor her husband had a middle name beginning with that letter. She was the author of 16 juvenile poems published in booklet form in 1894 by the newspaper of the Trades and Labor Council, Peoples Voice (Winnipeg), and about 174 poems (121 signed, 53 unsigned or unverifiable), written between 1909 and 1931. Most of the poems appeared in the Daily News and News-Chronicle published in Port Arthur (Thunder Bay), Ont.; 117 were collected by the Knights family and compiled in a typewritten anthology. Copies of the family anthology and the author’s anthology of newspaper poems are in the subject file at the DCB. Future research may uncover more of her verse in the publications of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and elsewhere.
“When Emmaline Pankhurst dies” was published in The poetry of the Canadian people, ed. N. B. Davis (2v., Toronto, 1976–78), 2 (1900–1950); it originally appeared in Woman’s Century (Toronto), the official organ of the National Council of Women of Canada, probably in June 1913. Other poems mentioned in the biography published in the Daily News are: “The children’s friend,” 30 June 1911; “The woman at home,” 12 Sept. 1912; “Canada to England,” 3 Aug. 1914; and “Old Ontario is good enough for me,” 22 Dec. 1915. “The slackers,” 18 May 1916, and “It’s the price we pay,” 29 April 1918, were published in the News-Chronicle. The poem “The cradle and the ballot,” dated 1911, is included in the anthology compiled by the Knights family. Her story “Betty, or winning him over,” was published in several instalments (the exact number is unknown) in the Daily News, beginning with the issue of 3 Feb. 1912.
Three published patriotic songs, for which she wrote the lyrics, have survived and copies are at LAC: in collaboration with A. J. Barrie, We’ve all got someone at the front: patriotic song (Winnipeg and Toronto, 1915); in collaboration with J. H. Horn, Keep step with Johnny Canuck: a recruiting song (Winnipeg and Toronto, 1915); and in collaboration with Allan Hare, Good luck to Johnny Canuck: song (Toronto, 1916). Her stage works were not published and no scripts are extant. They include: “The courtship of Miss Canada” (first produced in 1912); “The trial of Santa Claus” (1913); “War time in song and story” (1914); “Santa Claus in war time” (1915); “The new empire, or a pageant of modern times” (1916); “The hour before the dawn” (1918); “Mother Nature’s wooing” (1921); and “The master flag” (1922). Known playlets are: “The minister’s bride” (first produced in 1915); “Just a bunch of girls” (1917); “Servants of the flag” (1917); “The snowman’s wedding” (1920); “Disciples of the fine arts” (1923); and “The newly rich pack and missionary box” (1928).
AO, RG 80-2-0-39, no.16828. LAC, R233-36-4, Man., dist. Winnipeg (City) (10), subdist. Ward 5 (E): 4–5; R233-37-6, Man., dist. Winnipeg (City) (12), subdist. Ward 4 (D): 3. Man., Dept. of Justice, Vital statistics agency (Winnipeg), no.1898-001946; no.1900-002048. Border Cities Star (Windsor, Ont.), 12 Jan. 1933. Campbellford Weekly Herald (Campbellford, Ont.), 24 Feb. 1916. Canadian Courier (Toronto), 6 May 1916: 20. Daily News, 1908–16. Dawson Daily News (Dawson City, Y.T.), 31 Dec. 1915. Manitoba Free Press, 1882–98. News-Chronicle, 1916–33. S. A. Cook, “Through sunshine and shadow”: the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, evangelicalism, and reform in Ontario, 1874–1930 (Montreal and Kingston, Ont., 1995), chap.4. F. B. Scollie, “Wartime in song and story: Gertrude Cornish Knight, motherhood and patriotism, 1910–1921,” Thunder Bay Hist. Museum Soc., Papers and Records, 24 (1996): 12–32.
© 2018–2021 University of Toronto/Université Laval
Occupations and Other Identifiers
Arts and Entertainment – Stage
Authors – Poetry, prose, and drama
Communications – Newspapers and magazines – Journalists
Philanthropists and Social Reformers
Region of Birth
North America – Canada – Ontario – Southwest
Region of Activities
North America – Canada – Alberta
North America – Canada – Manitoba
North America – Canada – Ontario – North
North America – United States of America
Related Biographies
CORNISH, FRANCIS EVANS (Vol. 10)DALY, THOMAS MAYNE (1852-1911) (Vol. 14)FERGUSON, CATHERINE, Kit Coleman (Vol. 14)HUGHES, KATHERINE (Catherine) ANGELINA (Vol. 15)LELEAN, EDITH SARAH (Groves) (Vol. 16)ROSEVEAR, STANLEY WALLACE (Vol. 14)SCHULTZ, Sir JOHN CHRISTIAN (Vol. 12)
CORNISH, FRANCIS EVANS
SCHULTZ, Sir JOHN CHRISTIAN
FERGUSON, CATHERINE, Kit Coleman
HUGHES, KATHERINE (Catherine) ANGELINA
DALY, THOMAS MAYNE (1852-1911)
LELEAN, EDITH SARAH (Groves)
ROSEVEAR, STANLEY WALLACE
Frederick Brent Scollie, “CORNISH, ELLEN GERTRUDE (Knights) ,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed January 20, 2021, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cornish_ellen_gertrude_16E.html.
The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:
Permalink: http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/cornish_ellen_gertrude_16E.html
Author of Article: Frederick Brent Scollie
Title of Article: CORNISH, ELLEN GERTRUDE (Knights)
Publication Name: Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16
Publisher: University of Toronto/Université Laval
Year of revision: 2018
Access Date: January 20, 2021
© 2003-2021 University of Toronto/Université Laval
Suggest corrections or additions
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line36
|
__label__wiki
| 0.840546
| 0.840546
|
Wyman Inst. Home
Encyclopedia of America's Response to the Holocaust
Temple, William
Statements made by William Temple (1881-1944), the Archbishop of Canterbury, in support of rescuing Jewish refugees played a role in the debate in the United States over rescue policy.
In a series of public speeches, articles, and letters to the British press during 1942-1943, Temple expressed both his “burning indignation” at the Nazi mass murders and his strong disappointment at the response of the Allies. The Jews were “caught between the hammer of the enemy’s brutality and the anvil of democracy’s indifference,” he said. “In comparison with the monstrous evil confronting us the reasons for hesitation usually advanced by officials have an air of irrelevance.” The archbishop urged England and its allies to grant asylum “to any Jews who are able to escape the clutches of the Nazis.”
In an especially notable speech before the House of Lords in March 1943, Temple urged the Allies to take “immediate measures on the largest and most generous scale” to aid the Jews. The archbishop disputed the British government’s claim that public opinion would oppose taking in refugees; he insisted that “by skillful use of the wireless,” the government could effectively rally public support for helping those who “were being delivered to almost certain death.” The time had come to take action, he proclaimed: “We at this moment have upon us a tremendous responsibility. We stand at the bar of history, of humanity, and of God.”
British and American officials alike were concerned to see a prominent and influential religious leader at the head of a growing wave of public criticism over the Allies’ indifference to Hitler’s Jewish victims. In early 1943, British officials began formulating plans for an Allied conference on refugees. An internal Foreign Office memorandum explaining the need to respond to the “intense public interest” in the refugee problem singled out the Archbishop of Canterbury as one of those who had been “agitating the public conscience.”
The British government suggested holding the conference in Washington. But State Department official Breckinridge Long moved quickly to block that proposal, because–as he wrote in his diary–“to talk here would put us in a bad position with Canterbury giving publicity in the press and all the pressure which would be coming from the locally organized groups in this country.”
Ultimately the conference was held on the island of Bermuda. The failure of the attendees to craft concrete steps for rescue triggered widespread criticism, including a full-page newspaper advertisements by the Bergson Group’s Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe under the headline, ” ‘We All Stand Before the Bar of History, Humanity, and God’,” citing Reverend Temple’s phrase.
Sources: Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews, pp.48, 105, 108.
Auschwitz Bombing
Ben Hecht
Bergson Group
March of the Rabbis
Varian Fry
War Department
War Refugee Board
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line43
|
__label__cc
| 0.734418
| 0.265582
|
Encyclopedia > Marcion
Redirected from Marcion
Marcion of Sinope, who lived from the late first century to the mid second century A.D., was an early Christian teacher whose opinions were condemned by the orthodox Church as heresy.
Marcion was a native of Sinope, contemporary Sinop, in Asia Minor, and now part of the territory of Turkey. He was a wealthy shipowner; he became a bishop in the Christian church, and a major financial supporter of the Christian movement. A story told by Tertullian and St Irenæus says that Marcion attempted to use his money to influence the Church to endorse his teaching; they refused. Justin Martyr was also among his critics. He was excommunicated by the Church at Rome in 144.
Marcion's teaching was that Jesus Christ revealed to the world an entirely new god, who was different from the god of the Hebrew Bible. According to Marcion, the god of the Hebrew Bible was jealous, wrathful, and legalistic. The material world he created was defective, a place of suffering; the god who made such a world was the bungling or malicious demiurge. Jesus was not the Messiah promised by Judaism; that Messiah was to be a conqueror and a political leader. Rather, Jesus was sent by a god greater than the Creator. His role was to reveal the transcendent god of light and pure mind, different in character from the creator god of the Hebrew Bible. Jesus's god was free from passion and wrath, wholly benevolent; and Jesus was sent to lead believers out of subjection to the limited, wrathful creator god of the Old Testament.
Marcion produced the first Christian canon, or list of the books of the Bible that he considered authoritative. His list, however, was much smaller than that currently recognised as valid by most Christians; he included only the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles, and ten of the epistles attributed to St Paul of Tarsus. (He omitted Paul's pastoral epistles addressed to Timothy and Titus.) These books, according to Marcion, were the ones that contained the true teachings of St Paul. He completely rejected the Old Testament, believing and teaching that it should not be part of the Christian Bible and was of no value to Christians. (See Biblical canon.)
Marcion's position is not identical to, but is closely related to, the beliefs called Gnosticism. His thinking, untenable to almost all Christians today, shows the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on Christianity, and the moral critique of the Hebrew Bible from the ethics of Platonism.
External link:
The Center for Marcionite Research (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/3827/)
... Portuguese Capital Brasilia PresidentLu�s In�cio Lula da Silva Area - Total - % waterRanked 5th 8,511,965 km² 0.65% ...
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line44
|
__label__cc
| 0.594908
| 0.405092
|
Hacking The Planet: World Economic Forum Raises Concerns About 'Rogue' Geoengineering
A commercial airline? Or a rogue geoengineering experiment?
The World Economic Forum has put out a new report on global risks for 2013, and the report's chapter on "X factors" - concerns more remote than the report's primary risks, but still worthy of note - includes a section on rogue "geoengineering" experiments.
Geoengineering involves large-scale efforts to either remove carbon from the atmosphere, or to remake the atmosphere's chemical or physical make-up to offset the effects of climate change. The most plausible scenario mentioned by the report uses aircraft to inject particles into the atmosphere to mimic the way eruptions of volcanic ash block sunlight, and thus cool the climate. More far-fetched scenarios go so far as deploying mirrors into orbit to reflect sunlight.
Such projects involve a host of funding and deployment problems, as well as the serious risk of unintended consequences for both the climate and the billions of humans who rely on it. For instance, a project at the UK-based Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering project, or "SPICE," working on the idea to mimic volcanic ash, was delayed in October over environmental concerns. Unfortunately, this leaves an opening for smaller nations or even commercial interests to begin experimenting with geoengineering unilaterally, say researchers at the World Economic Forum:
Nobody envisions deployment of solar radiation management anytime soon, given the difficulties in resolving a suite of governance issues (evidenced by the fact that even the relatively simple SPICE experiment in the UK foundered in the midst of controversy). Beginning with Britain's Royal Society, many academic and policy bodies have called for cautious research as well as broader conversation about the implications of such technologies.
But this has led some geoengineering analysts to begin thinking about a corollary scenario, in which a country or small group of countries precipitates an international crisis by moving ahead with deployment or large-scale research independent of the global community. The global climate could, in effect, be hijacked by a rogue country or even a wealthy individual, with unpredictable costs to agriculture, infrastructure and global stability. [...]
For example, an island state threatened with rising sea levels may decide they have nothing to lose, or a well funded individual with good intentions may take matters into their own hands. There are signs that this is already starting to occur. In July 2012 an American businessman sparked controversy when he dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Canada in a scheme to spawn an artificial plankton bloom. The plankton absorb carbon dioxide and may then sink to the ocean bed, removing the carbon - another type of geoengineering, known as ocean fertilisation. Satellite images confirm that his actions succeeded in produce an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometres.
The July 2012 incident was first reported by The Guardian in October, noting the gambit may have violated two international agreements and possibly involved misleading the local indigenous population about the nature and risks of the experiment. Russ George, the American businessman who oversaw the iron sulphate dump, is the former chief executive of Planktos Inc., and has been involved in other failed efforts to pull off large commercial dumps near the Galapagos and Canary Islands. Those attempts led to a warning from the EPA and to his ships being barred from ports by the Spanish and Ecuadorean governments. George had apparently hoped to net lucrative carbon credits.
The basic problem with geoengineering is that portions of the climate cannot be walled off to perform small-scale tests. This means geoengineering projects essentially have to jump straight from the experimental and computer modeling phases to a full-on implementation phase - as Russ George recently attempted. This means, at best, that geoengineering is last-resort, break-glass-in-case-of-emergency response to climate change, to be attempted when all other efforts have failed.
At worst, geoengineering is a distraction jumped on by interest groups, who wish to delay far more technologically and economically feasible efforts to tackle climate change by simply reducing the amount of carbon human beings emit into the atmosphere.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/09/1424931/hacking-the-planet
Posted by David Herron at 3:02 PM
Labels: Climate Change, Climate Economics, Climate Progress, Climate Solutions, General, Geoengineering
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line45
|
__label__cc
| 0.504157
| 0.495843
|
TTUHSC El Paso Successfully Concludes Institutional, Programmatic Accreditation Cycles
July 26, 2018 July 27, 2018 3 min read TTUHSC El Paso
In June, TTUHSC El Paso achieved one of its most important milestones in its five-year history as a stand-alone university: institutional accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.
As a result of a years-long application process involving a detailed self-assessment and a SACSCOC site visit, the committee granted TTUHSC El Paso separate institutional accreditation for a five-year term. In addition, the SACSCOC Accreditation Committee commended TTUHSC El Paso for its “culture of excellence.” Prior to its separate SACSCOC accreditation, TTUHSC El Paso had been covered as an affiliate of TTUHSC.
“Receiving commendation from SACSCOC speaks not only to the rigor of our programs, caliber of our resources, and strength of our organization, but also to the excellence of our people,” said TTUHSC El Paso President Richard Lange, MD, MBA. “We could not have done this without our tremendous students, faculty and staff.”
As the accrediting body for institutions of higher education across the Southern U.S., SACSCOC affirms that its accredited institutions have “a purpose appropriate to higher education and… resources, programs, and services sufficient to accomplish and sustain that purpose.” In addition to setting high standards for programs of higher education—which determines eligibility for Title IV, or federal financial aid funds—the commission also works to influence legislation that impacts the work of its member institutions.
“SACSCOC accreditation empowers TTUHSC El Paso to continue to focus its efforts on the Paso del Norte region, with essential health care preparation programs in medicine, nursing, graduate biomedical sciences and dental education,” said Valerie Paton, PhD, TTUHSC El Paso senior vice provost. “These programs and their graduates have an unparalleled and positive impact on the health and future of our region.”
As part of the self-assessment process, TTUHSC El Paso had to address its capability to meet more than 60 SACSCOC standards. These standards covered the institutional mission, governance and administration, institutional effectiveness, educational programs, student support services, and physical and financial resources, among others.
TTUHSC El Paso’s SACSCOC accreditation went into effect June 14, 2018.
Also this year, the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine’s Doctor of Medicine and the Gayle Greve Hunt School of Nursing’s Bachelor of Science in Nursing programs were accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, respectively. The LCME and CCNE are autonomous accrediting agencies that set standards for medical and nursing programs nationwide.
The PLFSOM’s new accreditation period will last through 2026. The GGHSON’s is effective through 2027.
CCNE, Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, Gayle Greve Hunt School of Nursing, GGHSON, LCME, Liaison Committee on Medical Education, Paul L. Foster School of Medicine, PLFSOM, SACSCOC, Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, TTUHSC El Paso accreditation
How Is That Dental School Coming Along? Q&A With Dean Black
PodMed TT – Citizen Participation in Tick Research
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line46
|
__label__wiki
| 0.935621
| 0.935621
|
Europe’s leading genre production company, Fantastic Films, takes its name from the great tradition of European Cinema Fantastique. Focusing on genre and niche films Fantastic Films is an OSCARTM winning based in Dublin, Ireland.
Due in 2017 is the highly anticipated NAILS, directed by Dennis Bartok and starring Shauna Macdonald (The Descent) and Ross Noble (Stitches) and international co-production MUSE, directed by Jaume Balaguero and starring Elliot Cowan, Franka Potente, Ana Ularu and Christopher Lloyd.
Recent productions include: SXSW hit, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER, directed by Billy O’Brien and starring Christopher Lloyd and Max Records; CHERRY TREE, starring Anna Walton and Naomi Battrick, opening film at Film4 Frightfest; THE HALLOW, directed by Corin Hardy, which screened at Sundance (2015); the multi award-winning LET US PREY, directed by Brian O’Malley and starring Liam Cunningham and Pollyanna McIntosh; THE LAST DAYS ON MARS, the debut feature film from Oscar-nominated Irish director Ruairí Robinson, which screened at Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival; the award-winning comedy-horror STITCHES (2012) directed by Conor McMahon and starring Ross Noble, Bollywood hit EK THA TIGER (2012) directed by Kabir Khan, starring Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif; WAKEWOOD (2011), the critically acclaimed and multi award-winning HAMMER horror directed by David Keating and starring Timothy Spall, Aidan Gillen and Eva Birthistle and the award-winning OUTCAST (2010) directed by Colm McCarthy and starring James Nesbitt, Kate Dickie, with fellow Scottish actress Hannah Stanbridge receiving a Scottish BAFTA for her role in the film.
Click here for more information on Fantastic Films current slate of films.
|
cc/2021-04/en_head_0064.json.gz/line48
|
End of preview.