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Poster Abstract Submission
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Home > 2017 > January > 20 > Within the construction industry as their overdraft
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Within the construction industry as their overdraft
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Dr. Sunil K. Raghav, ILS Bhubaneswar
2002-2006: PhD in Biotechnology from IGIB Delhi.
2007-2009: SIMO SITRA postdoc fellow at Molecular Immunology group with Prof. Riitta Lahesmaa at Turku, Finland. Established pipelines for ChIPseq / RNAseq to understand generegulatory-networks underlying human T helper cell differentiation.
2009-2013: 2nd Postdoc at EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland with Prof. Bart Deplancke. Explored the role of co-regulator proteins especially co-repressors NCoR1 & SMRT in fat-cell differentiation using high-throughput genomics approach.
Since Dec 2013: Scientist at ILS Bhubaneswar. Started Immuno-genomics & Systems Biology group. Major goal is to understand how immune responses are controlled at transcriptional level in immune cells so that they can be targeted for immune-therapeutic approaches
Dr. Gundu H.R. Rao
Gundu H. R. Rao obtained his B.Sc. degree from the University of Mysore and B.Sc. (Hons) and M.Sc., degrees from the Poona University. He immigrated to the USA in 1965 and specialized in grain storage technology and obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas. He has been with the University of Minnesota Medical School for over 40 years. He is a naturalized US citizen and a tenured professor in the department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathology. He was the director of thrombosis research at the Lillehei Heart Institute, University of Minnesota.
He was the visiting Professor in the Department of Surgery and Pharmacology, Kings College, in 1986 and in the Royal College of Surgeons, England 1987, and in the Thrombosis Research Institute, London in 1988. He taught one summer at the Institute of Human Physiology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy. He also served as senior consultant to the Government of India, for three successive years (199093), under a United Nations program called TOKTEN. He started a society (South Asian Society on Atherosclerosis and Thrombosis, SASAT) to create awareness on vascular diseases in 1993. He has edited and published eight books under the aegis of SASAT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundu_Hirisave_Rama_Rao
Dr. Vairamani Ramanathan
CTO, Metahelix Life Sciences, Bengaluru.
Vairamani Ramanathan heads crop breeding, trait development and parent seed functions at Metahelix Life Sciences in his current position as Chief Technology Officer. He has worked in
Agtech Industry in India for twenty years. He completed his Ph.D in Plant Biotechnology in 1995 and had post-doctoral stints at Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel and Cornell University, USA. He returned to India in 1999 has been associated with the seed industry since then.
Dr. H S Subramanya, Director IBAB & Biocon Chair
With a masters in physics from the University of Mysore Dr. Subramanya received his PhD in structural biology from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He went on to do postdoctoral work at the University of Oxford, UK. After returning to India, he was a faculty member and Assistant Director of the Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow. He then returned to Bangalore, and was associated with Aurigene Discovery Technologies Ltd. From 2002–2014, the latest position being that of Senior Vice President, Lead generation and Structural Biology. He is currently Visiting Professor at the Institute of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology. Dr. Subramanya has 36 publications and 9 patents to his credit.
Dr. Mitali Mukerji
Dr Mitali Mukerji, PhD is a chief scientist at the CSIR- Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi. She did her PhD in bacterial molecular genetics from Indian Institute of
Sciences in Bangalore. She works in the broad area of Genomics and Molecular Medicine. She has been the convener of Indian Genome Variation Consortium which provided the first comprehensive genetic landscape of the Indian population from disease genomics perspective. Her group has also demonstrated how this basal data can be used for dissecting disease genes, identifying signatures of selection, tracing mutational histories and also for pharmacogenomics studies. Her group has been involved in genomics studies on spino-cerebellar ataxia, a rare neurodegenerative disorder for the last twenty years in collaboration with AIIMS and have identified novel mutations and founders for the disease in Indian population. Her group has pioneered the area of Ayurgenomics which has provided the first evidence for molecular correlates of Prakriti that lead to identification of predictive biomarker for high altitude adaptation. A TRISUTRA Ayurgenomics consortium comprising of collaborating partners from diverse and contrasting disciplines has been established by the group for scientific validation of principles of Ayurveda and its integration with genomics and modern medicine for preventive, predictive and personalised medicine. She has more than 60 papers in prestigious peer reviewed journals and has made over 100 presentations in national and International forums. She has been recipient of a number of national awards, the CSIR Young Scientist’s Award (2001), DBT young woman scientist award (2008) Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award (2010), Vasvik Award (2016) and is a fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences and a board member of Internation Human Phenomics Consortium.
Dr. Kumar Somasundaram
Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology,
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
Kumar Somasundaram is a Professor at Department of Microbiology Cell Biology, Indian
Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He obtained his Veterinary Medicine degree (1985) from
Madras Veterinary College, Masters in Biotechnology (1987) and Ph.D. in bacterial genetics (1993) from Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, India. Subsequently, he did his post-doctoral training at Northwestern University and University of Pennsylvania in Cancer Biology before moving to Indian Institute of Science (1999) as a faculty. The major focus of his laboratory is genetics of glioma, the most common primary adult cancer
Dr. K. Thangaraj
Dr. K. Thangaraj is a Chief Scientist and Group Leader at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad. His main research interests are; origin of modern human, cardiovascular diseases, mitochondrial disorders, and male infertility. He is an elected Fellow of; Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, and elected member of Guha Research Conference. He is a recipient of Sun Pharma Research Award in Medical Sciences, Raman Research Fellowship, Rashtriya Rathan Award, UK-India Education and Research Initiative Major Award, Life-time achievement Award, Excellence in Science Award, Distinguished
Scientist Award, Dr. Palle Rama Rao Award, Prof. GK Manna Memorial Lecture Award, Dr. Subhash Mukherjee Oration Award, Prof. Manjeet Singh Oration Award, Dr. L. D. Sanghvi Oration Award, Dr. Joseph Thomas Memorial Lecture Award, Prof. G. Jayaraman Oration Award, etc. He is a Board Editor of Mitochondrion ; Academic Editor of PLoS ONE; Associate Editor of BMC Medical Genetics; BMC Genetics; Tropical Medicine and International Health, and member of the Editorial Board of the journals – Scientific Reports, Human Genetics, and Clinical Genetics. He was the President of the Indian Society of Human Genetics (2011 – 2015) and the founder of the Society for Mitochondrial Research and Medicine.
Dr. Ajaikumar
Dr. Ajaikumar is a doctorpeneur and the Chairman & CEO of HealthCare Global Enterprises Ltd. He is a radiation and medical oncologist with over 40 years of experience.
After completing his MBBS from St John’s Medical College, Bangalore, he went on to complete his residency training in oncology from the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville. Dr. Ajaikumar completed his fellowship in radiation and medical oncology from the renowned MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, Texas.
While he had the opportunity to continue to practice at MD Anderson, he chose to start a cancer center west of Chicago in 1979. This center grew well; however, Dr. Ajaikumar was also interested in looking at building a cancer care facility in India. He used to spend several months in the year monitoring the status of cancer care in India.
As he continued to build his practice in the US, Dr. Ajaikumar also founded a not-for-profit hospital in Mysore, Bharath Hospital and Institute of Oncology in 1989. This was largely to meet the needs of patients in Mysore and its surrounding areas.
At the same time, along with a group of oncologists, he started the Bangalore Institute of Oncology (BIO). As this center grew, it helped Dr. Ajaikumar understand the nuances of cancer care in India. The requirement was very clear: there was a great unmet demand. The need of the day was accessibility, affordability, and high quality of cancer care treatment.
Scaling The Dream
With this in mind, he moved back to India with his family in 2003 with a vision of expanding the services offered in Bangalore. Dr. Ajaikumar believed in bringing the hub-and-spoke model to create multiple centers across India to make cancer care affordable, at the same time, bringing high quality care by introducing linear accelerators even in Tier2/Tier3 cities. Also, the cornerstone of his vision was the belief that cancer can be treated only one way: the right way, the first time.
HCG was instrumental in introducing high-end technologies like CyberKnife™ and TrueBeam™. It also brought in advanced bone marrow transplant therapies as well as molecular imaging.
Dr. Ajaikumar also had his eye on the end-to-end delivery of cancer care, and knew molecular diagnostics was an important part of cancer therapies. With this in mind, Dr. Ajaikumar acquired Triesta, which was a molecular diagnostic lab. Today, HCG is at the forefront of molecular diagnostics and incorporating genomics to facilitate precision medicine.
Another area of interest for Dr. Ajaikumar has also been fertility in India. He partnered with Dr. Kamini Rao, under the Milann brand name, and has established multiple centers across India.
Today, HCG is rapidly expanding and will soon have 26 comprehensive cancer care centers from its present number, 17. Milan will grow to 8-10 centers.
With this success, Dr. Ajaikumar is deeply energized and hopeful to spread this model globally. He eagerly seeks to help patients achieve longer and better lives by providing them the best accessible cancer care treatment. He continues to pursue his passion of increasing and strengthening the network of comprehensive cancer centers across the world; beginning in Africa.
Fulfilling A Vision
As a doctorpreneur, his vision has been to focus on good patient outcomes, patient safety and make treatment affordable and accessible. Among his other achievements, he has been awarded the prestigious E&Y Start-Up Entrepreneur of the Year Award as well as the Asian Health Care Leadership Awards. Harvard Business School has done several case studies on HCG and Dr. Ajaikumar has given several talks at Harvard Business School and Babson Business School. His goal has also been to encourage and mentor other doctors and entrepreneurs in their own specialties.
Today, under his leadership, cancer care in India has seen a paradigm shift, and cancer care has been redefined as a chronic disease.
Consciously Giving Back
He is a social entrepreneur and has started several NGOs, which have done tremendous developmental work in the Gundlupet district, Karnataka. His organizations have worked on providing financial aid for needy cancer patients, the empowerment of 20,000 women through microfinance, educating 550 children by providing a local school over the last 20 years, and addressing social ills in society.
Apart from his charitable work, he enjoys being a marathon runner and is a voracious reader.
Dr. Rakesh Mishra
Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB)
Brief Biography:
Dr. Rakesh Mishra did his university education from the University of Allahabad and received his Ph.D. (Organic Chemistry) degree in 1986. Subsequently, he started his career in biology at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
He has several years of research experience at the University of Bordeaux (France), University of Saint Louise (USA) and University of Geneva (Switzerland).
He joined CCMB 2001where he is studying regulation of genome information and evolution of complexity in biological systems. His lab is also interested in how genome interacts with environmental factors.
He has edited a few books, contributed to several books and published more than 100 research papers in national and international journals.
He was awarded the J C Bose Fellowship by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India.
He is elected fellow of the three national academies (Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Science and National Academy of Science, India). He is a member of committees of several Govt. Funding agencies.
Dr. K. VijayRaghavan
Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India
Professor K. VijayRaghavan is the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, succeeding Dr. R. Chidambaram on April 3, 2018 and the Chairperson of Prime Minister’s Science, Technology & Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC). He was Secretary, Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India from January 28, 2013 to February 2, 2018.
The Principal Scientific Adviser works with all arms of the Government, with our States, our citizens, national and international agencies. The goal is that the benefits of science, technology and innovation solutions reach the most needy, for the sustainable development of India and for the well being of our planet.
VijayRaghavan is also a Distinguished Professor at the National Centre of
Biological Sciences (NCBS), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Bangalore (TIFR) and was the NCBS Director till 2013. He studied Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research was a Senior Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. His research is on nerves and muscles and how complex behavior emerges during animal development.
VijayRaghavan is a Fellow of the Indian Science Academies, the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK) and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2013.
Dr. Murali Panchapagesa Muthuswamy
P M Murali, is the Chairman of Jananom Private limited a young start up established in Bengaluru. He previously worked as the Managing Director of the Swiss International Company Evolva Biotech, one of the pioneering firms in biomolecular engineering in the world to generate products from microbial factories that are applied across diverse verticals from pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, flavours & fragrances, agriculture, veterinary, FMCG goods and defence. He was instrumental in establishing this as India’s unique public private partnership model into a CSIR institute in Hyderabad before moving the establishment to
Chennai. He was one of the first in the world to build a successful pipeline for pushing “molecules to market” to reap their commercial benefits, by building a rich ecosystem of contract research institutions and public research institutions not just in India but in several other countries as well. Many of these partnerships and collaborations were also anchored by Governments in Asia for welfare of the society. Some noteworthy examples include his work with Government of Singapore to build their synthetic biology ecosystem and in Malaysia to support producing a high value fragrance compound using fermentation thereby reducing deforestation. Many of these efforts had potentially saved tons of carbon footprint for the planet and in progressing towards achieving sustainable development goals for emerging economies. All these efforts led to winning the prestigious “company of the year” award globally.
Prior to Evolva, he founded & directed the R&D team at the Dalmia Centre for Research where he pioneered many herbal products and launched them successfully post all 4 phases of rigorous double-blind placebo controlled clinical trials. Thousands of patients and users benefited for many diseases affecting respiratory, cardiac, dental and cognitive systems. Tobacco replacement, social forestry, expanding Neem’s use were some of his noteworthy contributions. He won several awards & accolades for his services.
Dr. Murali was President of ABLE (the only industry body for biotech companies in India with more than 1000 members) for two terms and currently serves on its EC. His tenure as
President facilitated the path of “vision US $ 100 Billion” for the Biotech sector. There is a lot of granularity that has been bought into this model since it was conceived.
He also serves as the Chairman for the Women’s Biotech Park in Tamil Nadu, a unique and pioneering initiative of the Government to promote women entrepreneur in biotechnology. Currently a lot of effort is going into the creation of this park into a world class tech facility.
Dr. Murali also serves in the Karnataka Vision group of Biotechnology and has played a pivotal role in the recent policy release. He is advising several state governments on policies related to biotechnology. Under his leadership several policy documents on manufacturing, biosimilars, make in India have been released. Dr. Murali serves in several government committees on Biotechnology.
Dr. Murali is a keen follower on Biodiversity issues. Has represented the Industry with the National Biodiversity Authority on a number of issues to find solutions that is a win win for the country and the Companies.
His social work includes his work at Indian Red Cross, where he presently serves as the Vice President. The focus is on girl children with disabilities and orphaned to provide education and support.
Dr. Murali has a Ph.D in Microbiology from Madurai Kamaraj University and two degrees in Doctor of science with more than 100 publications & patents. He also guides students for their Ph.D in plant biotechnology at Bharathair University and serves as visiting professor at KIIT University.
Vairamani Ramanathan
Vairamani Ramanathan heads crop breeding, trait development and parent seed functions at
Metahelix Life Sciences in his current position as Chief Technology Officer. He has worked in
Agtech Industry in India for twenty years. He completed his Ph.D in Plant Biotechnology in
1995 and had post-doctoral stints at Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel and Cornell
University, USA. He returned to India in 1999 has been associated with the seed industry since
then.
Dr. Samir K. Brahmachari
Prof. Samir K. Brahmachari is the Academy Professor of Academy of
Scientific and Innovative Research, and Chief Mentor of Open Source
Drug Discovery. He is also the Chief Mentor, Health Technology
Innovations for ACCESS Health International, Inc. He is the Founder
Director of CSIR – Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (1997-
2007) and former Director General of CSIR and Secretary, DSIR, Government of India (2007-2013). He conceptualized and implemented the functional genomics research in India and the Indian Genome Variation Project. He presently mentors several startups in Genomic Medicine and Big data analytics.
He is the recipient of many national and international awards including
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize. He is an elected fellow of The World Academy of Sciences, the European Society of Preventive Medicine and member of all four National Academies of Science & Engineering, India.
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a) What is Intangible Cultural Heritage?
The term ‘cultural heritage’ has changed content considerably in recent decades, partially owing to the instruments developed by UNESCO. Cultural heritage does not end at monuments and collections of objects. It also includes traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing acts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produve traditinal crafts.
While fragile, intangible cultural heritage is an important factor in maintaining cultural diversity in the face of growing globalization. An understanding of the intangible cultural heritage of different communities helps with intercultural dialogue, and encourages mutual respect for other ways of life.
The importance of intangible cultural heritage is not the cultural manifestation itself but rather the wealth of knowledge and skills that is transmitted through it from one generation to the next. The social and economic value of this transmission of knowledge is relevant for minority groups and for mainstream social groups within a State, and is as important for developing States as for developed ones.
Read more on: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/
In this spirit of the UNESCO Convention on the safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the world, IOV develops activities such as festivals, congresses, conferences, workshops, covering the different elements of ICH such as traditional dance, music, handicrafts, traditional cuisine, traditional medicine and others.
b) Why safeguard intangible cultural heritage?
A long process of negotiation led to the ratification of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage on 17 October 2003. Here you can read the text: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/convention
What has changed at the national level since the ratification? How safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage can contribute to sustainable development? What is the meaning and impact for the communities of the inscription of intangible cultural heritage on the lists of the Convention? Taken during statutory meetings in 2011 and 2012, these interviews express the opinion of delegates on these questions.
http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/why-safeguard-ich-00479
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Mundy & the Art of “Happy Accidents”: An Interview
Since arriving on the alt-pop-rock music scene in the 90’s with a string of multi-platinum hits (including his hit 1996 debut album Jelly Legs and an iconic rendition of “Galway Girl”), Mundy has cemented his status as an internationally beloved musical artist.
As the County Offaly native embarks upon a new US tour (including a couple stops in Kansas City in October), we were fortunate to chat with the musician over the phone, where we talked about his upcoming tour of the States, the ever-changing landscape of the music industry and the unpredictable beauty of the creative process. Answers have been edited for clarity and length.
KCIC: Where all have you been touring this year?
Mundy: My tour start(ed) the 2nd of October. I’m off to Seattle, Portland, Kansas City, Philly, NYC, Florida, Maryland, Germany. I’m away proper for a month. Three weeks in America, then one week in Germany/Italy.
KCIC: Is there a place you’re most looking forward to playing?
Mundy: I love Kansas City, I have to say. I’ve been going there a good bit these last 6 years. I’ve played the Kansas City Irish Fest and Winterfest as well as Knuckleheads. Just excited to go back that way and see good friends. I’ve never been to New Orleans, so that’s exciting. It’s a last-minute concert and I’m excited.
KCIC: I know you’re doing a house concert here in Kansas City before your KCIC concert. Have you been doing many house concerts? What are those like?
Mundy: They’re getting more popular, I suppose. My first house concert was probably in Europe, and then I did a couple in New York and then down around in KC. They’re getting more popular, more affordable because the crowd is there and you don’t have to depend on marketing them yourself. The person hosting does it, then people buy CDs. It seems to be more efficient, more intimate.
KCIC: It’s been 22 years since the release of your debut album, Jelly Legs. Looking back, did you ever expect to be where you are today?
Mundy: I had no idea! If I was 21 and I look to where I’m at now, I consider myself really fortunate. I’m very lucky to even still be playing; I know a lot of really talented and creative people who have had to go back to work and were unable to keep the creative job going. The music business can be hard to rely upon. It gets harder and harder.
KCIC: How have the changes in the music industry affected you as an artist?
Mundy: They’ve slogged down my will to put out stuff on a consistent rate, you know, because it just keeps changing. In the last 22 years, the whole medium of how music came out has changed a few times. You had vinyl, cassette, and CDs when I first started out. Then we have the digital age which just keeps changing. Even with marketing on Facebook—you try to create an ad and it’s a “oh sorry you can’t do it that way”. For a creative person it’s hard enough to put out a song without marketing it. It’s a minefield, really. I haven’t flapped my wings enough on social. I’ll get there eventually.
KCIC: What’s your song-writing process like? Has it changed at all since you started out?
Mundy: I tend to, and it’s a bad habit, but I try to write the lyrics first because I like to look at a full page before I write the music. To try and match the story with whatever the melody is trying to express can be quite difficult. I’ve picked up some bad habits and sometimes it works out well. To be honest, I will take the song whatever way it comes. I’m always waiting to be inspired. You have to be on, you have to be aware. If you’re not willing to be aware, you’re going to miss a lot of opportunities.
KCIC: Yeah, that creative process can force you to go interesting places sometimes, right?
Mundy: Oh yeah. I’ve had a few books that I’ve picked up, you set timers and you put 5 minutes on and you write as fast as you can. It’s a cool way to pull memories out of your subconscious and out of all that tangle, and you can find a couple of lines…one for me recently was with a newer song ”Dentist”. I remember going to the dentist and I had to get a tooth removed and it brought back some crazy memories that I hadn’t really approached, you know? (Those memories) are there waiting to be challenged. You have to take out the whip and give yourself a kick in the ass even when you’re not feeling inspired. You have to find angles.
KCIC: A video of you performing “Galway Girl” with Sharon Shannon and We Banjo 3 in the streets of Galway recently went viral. How did that whole experience come to be?
Mundy: Kamil (the director of the video)… saw the opportunity. Galway is trying to become the European city of the arts. He tried to get everybody together to sing the song. Loads of drones and a camera crew. He did it really well and made sure everybody got it done really well. Got it done in about 20 minutes.
KCIC: That’s it?? Only 20 minutes?
Mundy: Ok, I got it done in 20 minutes.
KCIC: After this tour, what’s on tap for you? What’s next?
Mundy: I have a few bits and pieces in November and December. January is a very creative month for me. And then on again. Next year I’ll try to put out on EP. It’ll be 4 years (since my last album) by the time that one comes out. A few little things happened along the way that made it tough. I keep truckin’, yeah.
KCIC: What’s your personal favorite song you’ve ever written and why?
Mundy: A new song I’m really enjoying called “Sometimes I Thought I Was You”. It’s kind of like a little autobiography in three or four verses: My journey going to Dublin with my guitar which my parents gave me. Meeting people, getting a record deal then losing a record deal. Another one is “Beaconettes”. Lyrically, writing part of it seems to be from another place. It’s quite amusing. It’s kind of spooky to me, you know? The subconscious. I was not fully present when I was delivering it. It kinda pours out of you and you’re like what the hell? I don’t think people will get it, but I’ll leave it there and see what happens. Often people will come back to me and say, “That line is brilliant.” That’s the beauty of art, the happy accidents.
Catch Mundy LIVE with Carswell & Hope at the Kansas City Irish Center on Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018. Tickets are available now!
Kiernan Markey2018-10-05T10:55:42+00:00October 5th, 2018|Categories: Artists, Music|Tags: Mundy|
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Ununpentium (Moscovium), used in new Spaceship Propulsion.
One more element may soon be added to the Periodic Table. On September 10, 2013, scientists reported evidence supporting the existence of element 115.
One more element may soon be added to the Periodic Table. On September 10, 2013, an international team of scientists working at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany reported that they have acquired new evidence supporting the existence of element 115. The new evidence will be reviewed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemists (IUPAC), and if confirmed, element 115 will likely be given a new name and added to the Periodic Table of Elements. Its temporary name, which is being used as a placeholder, is ununpentium.
Element 115 is one of a number of superheavy elements—elements with an atomic number greater than 104—that are so short-lived, they can’t be detected in nature. Scientists can, however, synthesize these elements in a laboratory by smashing atoms together.
In 2004, scientists from the United States and Russia first reported the discovery of element 115. Unfortunately, the evidence from that research and a few more studies that followed was not enough to confirm the existence of a new element.
Now, scientists are developing new techniques to detect the presence of superheavy elements. In an experiment conducted at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany, scientists successfully bombarded a thin layer of americium (atomic number 95) with calcium (atomic number 20) to produce ununpentium (atomic number 115). Ununpentium was observed with a new type of detector system that measured the photons that were released from the reaction. The unique photon energy profile for ununpentium can be thought of as the element’s fingerprint, the scientists say.
Creation of element 115 during a particle collision of americium and calcium atoms. Image Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Dirk Rudolph, lead author of the new study and Professor at the Division of Nuclear Physics at Lund University in Sweden, commented on the findings in a press release. He said:
This can be regarded as one of the most important experiments in the field in recent years, because at last it is clear that even the heaviest elements’ fingerprints can be taken. The result gives high confidence to previous reports. It also lays the basis for future measurements of this kind.
Presently, there are 114 elements in the Periodic Table of Elements. Two new elements, flerovium (atomic number 114) and livermorium (atomic number 116), were added to the Periodic Table in 2012. While elements 113 and 118 are also thought to exist, their presence has not yet been confirmed.
The next step for element 115 will be for the IUPAC to review all of the evidence to date and make a decision as to whether more experiments are needed or if the current evidence is sufficient to support the discovery of a new element. If the latter occurs, the scientists who first discovered element 115 will be asked to formally submit a new name for the element. Then, the new name will be released for scientific review and public comment. If approved, the element along with its new name will be added to the Periodic Table of Elements. Element 115 is currently called ununpentium, which is just a placeholder until its formal name is established.
The new research about element 115 was published on September 10, 2013 in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Nucleus of ununpentium (Uup) surrounded by a cloud of electrons. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
The research was supported by ENSAR (European Nuclear Science and Applications Research), the Royal Physiographic Society in Lund, the Swedish Research Council, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the US Department of Energy and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council.
Bottom line: On September 10, 2013, an international team of scientists working at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany reported that they have acquired new evidence that supports the existence of element 115 (ununpentium). The research was published on September 10, 2013 in the journal Physical Review Letters. After the IUPAC reviews and confirms the evidence, element 115 will likely be given a new name and added to the Periodic Table of Elements.
All of this would excite only physics and chemistry geeks if not for Bob Lazar (1959- ), who introduced it to UFO lore. According to him, UFO engines use element 115 to generate anti-gravity. Various UFO nuts and wannabe scientists have taken the idea and run with it.[3] This would provide an interesting way of verifying the UFO stories told by Lazar. Should element 115 be synthesised and shown to be capable of powering anti-gravity engines, Lazar's claim would have some serious support. Obviously, given that Lazar runs a website dealing in chemicals and sales of elements, he was smart enough to pick a number higher than any element discovered at the height of his fame in order to hide it from any scrutiny; no use saying carbon or phosphorus has magical powers, as we have more than enough of that to test it.
Lazar's claims state that bismuth has "unusual gravitational properties" (this is flatly false, though it may be a misinterpretation of the relativistic effects that control the chemical properties of heavier elements) and known characteristics of Element 115 are expected to be similar (not that this matters, as the longest reported half-life of the element is 200 milliseconds). The claims further state that the element was pressed into discs, then stacked and fused into a cylinder, then milled down to form a cone, and finally sliced to form the key piece of anti-gravity fuel. Again, this is physically impossible given that the element doesn't exist in nature and has been confirmed to be as highly unstable as all the other artificially-generated elements in that region of the periodic table. A few proponents of the claim still rave that there may be a magic "island of stability" (a particular combination of protons and neutrons) that would render this element stable, but no signs of such a region of the periodic table have emerged. Some of the elements heavier than uranium possess relatively stable isotopes (on the order of thousands of years) but by the time you get to 100, fermium, even the most stable isotopes last on the order of days and it only goes rapidly down from there. Still, the island of stability is a theoretical entity that is good, real physics — but even this wouldn't help the claims made about element 115, as expected half-lives in this island are on the order of minutes and seconds, which is indeed relatively stable in a region of the periodic table where the atoms last for milliseconds or less.
If one could synthesise element 115 (specifically its predicted stable isotope) more conclusively and show it to have an incredibly short half-life and radioactive unstability (which is pretty much conclusive right now), it would show that powering any device through the use of this element would be impossible, and certainly the 500 pounds that he claimed the US government had in their possession would also be an impossible claim. Literally. As that would consist of around 4.72 × 1023 atoms, and with only 50 atoms ever made from all the collision experiments made on this subject in a decade, this would take some time for the government to procure — many times the age of the Universe, or so.
Labels: UFO
I buy what I want
I buy what I want, far above what Wal-Mart stores and FM radio supplies. I'm far too talented for average Wal-Mart shopper; therefore, they say "different"
You are talking about mainstream pop music - not the alternative music one can dig deep and find. You probably know where to find good music today but can’t avoid hearing popular music in public places. You are talking about the mainstream and on this account you are truly right; pop music has never been so poorly crafted and horrible to listen!
Unfortunately, when one goes out to buy something, or chances upon some music playing from a workplace radio, it is not something he or she can just turn off. Mainstream music is everywhere and the masses are programmed to listen and consume it. It is both annoying and sad.
The majority are not connoisseurs of “good” anything and do not take the time to go and find the best music from any era. They will eat at McDonald's, buy poorly crafted baked goods from Walmart and be happy drowning their food in corn syrupy low grade, sugar-filled guck. They will watch cheesy super-hero films that are 99% spectacle with lame story-lines and think what they saw was actually good. Same thing with music; most people just take what is served to them and believe it when they are told, “this is the now”. But the now has never been worse, despite all our advances in technology and production!
Digitization of music and corporate downsizing might be to blame as selling vinyl record units declined. Over the past twenty-five years corporations got rid of the A&R departments (Artist and Repertoire - those people who discovered, nurtured and signed new talent) in order to cut costs. Now they just go with the pretty face and the same five to ten producers who write and create our modern music (no wonder it all sounds the same!). Most people don’t even buy their music anymore. The masses no longer sit at home with headphones, savoring their favorite record albums.
Today the emphasis is on “cheap” and that is what you hear and see out in public. Cheap is built-in to the bland architecture of the modern Walmart and Home Depot and reflected in the plastic products we buy. Everywhere you go, people are wearing ugly aprons and looking rather sad as horrible music is played over their heads. It is what you might picture a sci-fi dystopia to look like! Everything and everyone must succumb to the “formula”.
Culture is dying and we live in a barbarous age filled with materialist consumers and robot-like workers and I blame the corporations and their lame, square-headed managers who keep lowering the bar. They only focus on money and profits and how they can manipulate the people in order to get maximal return on minimal investment.
Don’t get me wrong; I believe free enterprise is good. But is only good when it has real, not fictitious persons.
Good artists need time to develop. The greatest artists are not necessarily the youngest, prettiest faces. We have to stop selling the illusion that dancing super-models actually deserve their music career success. They are the Pat Boone's of today; they might believe themselves to be wonderful and work hard learning their choreography but they are not talented or even clever. As Keith says, corporate creations are just “wannabes”.
The good news is that vinyl and serious music collecting is making a return. In the past ten years we have vinyl record sales grow exponentially. Millennials realize that vinyl records sound better - not sterile, cold and glassy like CDs but warmer to the human ear. Good artists might be able to make a career of selling records that people can seriously listen to.
I have to agree with the answer wiki, there is better music out there. If you and others like you support it, maybe we can wrestle the music away from the corporate stranglehold.
I told you so. Vote Tony Evers out!!!
https://doa.wi.gov/DECHR/conplan-5yr-strategicplan.pdf
http://www.chippewafalls-wi.gov/your-government/public-works/tentative-chippewa-falls-5-year-capital-improvement-plan
https://www.rfcity.org/853/Strategic-Planning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_China#Thirteenth_Plan_(2016%E2%80%932020)[16]
Vote Tony Evers out!!!
33 Easy Speaking Hacks to Make You Sound Smarter
Memorize a fact and drop it into a conversation Since all you’re trying to do is sound smarter, before you head to a cocktail party memorize a little-known fact, like Princes Charles and William will never travel on the same plane so that in the event of a crash, at least one will survive to protect the throne.
Shyness is pride Even if you’re brilliant, you won’t sound that way if you present your case weakly. Don’t worry about what people are thinking about you and focus on making your point forcefully.
Steer the conversation Instead of trying to fake your way through a conversation on a topic you’re clueless about, subtly direct it into an area more up your alley and go to town.
Nail down “who” and “whom” It’s always funny when someone clearly trying to sound more intelligent misuses “whom.” Here’s the way to tell: just answer the question. Who did it? He did. Whom should I thank? Thank him.
Memorize pi Have this one ready to go when someone says the word “pie.” Learn it to a max of 50 places; it’s long enough that no one will upstage you.
Fake a British accent I say, our friends across the pond sound ever so much smarter than us Yanks. Obviously the goal here is British scientist, not Russell Brand.
Cut out crutch words It’s tough to sound smart when you say “like” and “um” every few seconds. Train yourself not to resort to these crutch words.
Don’t commit If you never speak, you won’t sound dumb but you sure won’t sound any smarter. Instead, hedge. Say “I’m waiting for more conclusive evidence” when pressed for your opinion.
Beat around the bush When you’re talking business, hedging is also known as using jargon. With a crowd of people who aren’t in your industry, use all those acronyms and industry-speak that a colleague would get but will mystify the uninitiated.
Criticize intangibles This was designed for a work environment but it applies anywhere. An easy way to sound superior is to dog other people on unquantifiable traits like motivational skills or how much they’re a team player.
Fabricate statistics No one is really going to check that crazy figure you made up to back up your interesting story. If they do, just say you mixed up the magazine you got it from. Was it GQ? Or maybe it was Men’s Journal?
Don’t mention your source Even if it’s completely true, you won’t sound very smart saying you got that fact you just shared from watching “Family Guy.” You don’t have to lie, just say you “heard that somewhere.”
Use sound bites You don’t have to read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover every day to sound smart. Scan a few headlines from different sections before heading out the door and pretend you’re totally up-to-speed.
Speak to two people Everyone agrees that if you can speak to two people well, you can do the same with 200 people. The trick here to boost your confidence and sound smarter is to find two agreeable faces in that audience of 200 and speak only to them.
Learn a couple foreign language phrases The key to this hack is memorizing a few phrases in a foreign tongue. Go as obscure as possible to lower your odds of coming across an actual speaker of that language who’ll try to engage you in conversation.
Read Amazon book reviews Who’s got the time to read a whole book? Use Amazon’s user-generated book reviews for inside information that makes it sound like you read what you haven’t.
Ask questions With a little bit of information you can pose questions to someone else and then call them out if their answer is wrong, instantly making you look like a god among mortals.
Tell people you only read The Economist This will a) impress people who always mean to read The Economist but end up reading People … and b) imply that you’ve tried every other possible news magazine and they all fell short of your high standards.
You say it best … …when you say nothing at all. Tacking on a phrase like “It is what it is” to the end of a conversation just makes you sound less intelligent.
Get in the last word On the other hand, there is something to be said for getting the final say. Simply repackage what others have said and put it out there with a tone that says, “and now the subject is put to bed.”
Cheat Alex Trebek has been sounding smarter than contestants for years, but as Sean Connery revealed, the guy reads from a card! Use your smartphone to surreptitiously pull up a pertinent fact to contribute to a conversation.
Name drop Let a famous thinker or writer give your argument weight and make you sound like you know what you’re talking about. Our personal favorite: Noam Chomsky.
Say “I prefer their early stuff” Someone discussing a band you aren’t familiar with? Use this line to appear more discerning, but use with caution: the line between cool and tool here is very thin.
Gesture Gesturing while speaking actually might make you smarter by helping you have better recall. Even if it doesn’t, people’s attention will be divided between your words and watching your hands and they might miss you saying something incorrect.
Talk the loudest Probably because it conveys confidence, if you talk the loudest, the people around you will assume you are an authority on the subject.
Speak slowly Is Jeff Goldblum smart? Just by watching his movies we have no way to prove or disprove that he is. But he comes off like some kind of cool scientist in interviews just by taking his time to say things.
Master the mic If you are giving a miked-up presentation, you’ll look like an idiot if you’re holding it too close to your face or a speaker. Take a few minutes to practice the right way to use it.
Remember a few quotes Winston Churchill said, “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. The quotations, when engraved upon the memory, give you good thoughts.” See what we did there?
His or her It’s PC to say “their” when referring to one person, but it’s not really correct. It sounds smarter to say, “The owner of this sandwich should know his or her lunch is about to be eaten.”
Don’t overshoot Know your limits. If you aren’t 100% sure you’ve got a grasp of that $10 word, go with something you know.
Master the metaphor Sometimes when you have nothing relevant to contribute, your best option is to say something right out of left field, leave, and let your audience assume what you said must be brilliant because it couldn’t possibly be that moronic. Try, “A single Russian hair outweighs half a Pole.”
Answer questions with questions Teachers do this to encourage students to find their own answers. You can do this when you have no clue what the answer is.
Make up words Most people have limited vocabularies. You’ll have to assess your audience to see if you can get away with this, but if you sprinkle in a legitimate-sounding word of your own design, people will simply assume you know a word they don’t.
RH Negative blood and the paranormal … is there a connection?
Most women will be able to tell you a little bit about what it means to be RH Negative. Most people don’t take much notice of their blood type, however when you are pregnant, one of the first things they test, is to see if your blood is RH Negative. We as humans either have RH positive or RH Negative blood. To be negative means that you don’t have a certain protein on the surface of your red blood cells. As a pregnant woman, if you are RH negative and your baby is RH positive, it can cause problems as your body could start producing anti bodies to attack the RH positive antigen in your baby’s blood. It can make them sick. Don’t I know it! My Mum was RH negative and I am positive. I was born prematurely and given a blood transfusion at birth as I was becoming ill as her body was attacking our incompatible blood types. Nowadays it is not as much of a threat thanks to the way modern medicine works and a simple antibody is given to the mother while pregnant and they are monitored closely. Aside from pregnancy, it is pretty muchthe only time that th RH negative or positive factor is significant …… or is it?
RH Negative is considered to be rare
Around 15% of the population are considered to be RH Negative. Scientific studies have indicated that without the protein in the red blood cells that people who are RH Positive have, the blood has a blue colour to it. This is why people who are RH Negative are also referred to as blue bloods.
Where does the RH Negative factor come from?
Some theories out there include that the RH negative antibody actually comes from Alien DNA and that they either interbred with humans or somehow genetically engineered us in some way. The Book of Enoch (which predates the Bible) talks about a type of angel called the Nephilim who was a watcher mating with humans and creating a type of human-angel hybrid. While they were all wiped out, some were said to survive, and this is where the RH Negative factor comes in. Some people for this reason, refer to it as the God Gene.
Scientists however believe that the RH negative blood is simply a mutation that happened some time during our evolution. It is believed that we evolved from Apes, this could have happened somewhere along the way. It was actually because of the Rhesus macaque also known as the Rhesus Monkey that we even know about these positive and negative antigens. Scientists discovered that human antigens were similar to that of the Rhesus macaque. Monkey have also shown to have comparable blood types. They are not identical to the A,B and O Blood types that we have, but there are similarities.
What does this have to do with the paranormal?
People who are ‘blue bloods’ are more prone to have a lower body temperature, higher than average IQ, higher blood pressure, red hair and a sensitivity to sunlight according to studies. That is not the only thing they are said to be sensitive in. Some people say that having blood that is RH Negative means that they have elevated intuition and a stronger connection to spirtuality in part due to it’s connection with ‘The book of Enoch’. Some have a heightened awareness of their surroundings whilst others sense things before they happen. They feel a general connection to the spiritual realm. Due to this connection and it’s religious connotations, some people believe that people who are RH negative are able to sense and identify demons (if they exist).
Quite of a lot of people who are RH Negative also seem to have another trait in common. They suffer from Night terrors or sleep paralysis. Science tells us that sleep paralysis happens when our brain wakes up before our body does. Some people however interpret this as an encounter with a negative spirit or perhaps even something else. Others again put this down to an alien encounter. People who are RH negative are also said to be more likely to be able to have out of body experiences through astral projection because they feel a connection to spiritual world and space.
A lot of people who have had ET experiences or abduction stories, seem to have a connecting value. They are often RH negative. Perhaps this is where the theory of Aliens genetically engineering blood comes into play.
Is it actually true or coincidence?
The only way to determine if any of this has any sort of merit is to look at the numbers. I put the call out on various types of social media and asked people who felt they had a physic ability or some sort of sensitivity to the paranormal to tell me what their blood type was.
Updated figures as of 8th September 2018
As you can see from the results, most of the people who have completed the survey were RH negative and the majority felt they had some sort of ability or sensitivity to the paranormal. Does this show us there is a connection? It is not solid evidence but it is still interesting to see these results. For me looking at these results, the fact that only 7 people that were RH positive answered the survey leads me to think that perhaps the survey was only completed by people who felt they either had an ability or were RH negative so it is not a reliable snapshot. It is still quite interesting to look at though. I also have thrown out the results from the sleep paralysis question at the end as it didn’t give users the option to answer no so the results for that question were flawed. The way this study was set up will never give us definitive answers. It is just interesting to see what people come up with. I am by no means saying there is a scientific connection. I am not a scientist, I am just someone asking a question to see who answers.
If you would lke to contribute to the survey, click on this link: RH Negative survey . It is one thing to make a claim, it is another to have the data to back it up. So let’s create some data!
So what do you think? Do you think your blood type has an influence on your psychic ability? Is it a mutation in our DNA through evolution or some sort of intervention from above? I actually find it quite fascinating looking into the paranormal at this level. There is more paranormal research than standing in a dark room talking to yourself.
DOES RH NEGATIVE BLOOD INCREASE ODDS OF ALIEN ABDUCTION?
Throughout mankind’s history, the accounts of visitations from a higher power, extraterrestrial beings, or mysterious forces have been immortalized and passed down through generations in song and story. Controversial details get set aside or passed over as impossible or inconsistent with the current research or evidence. However, the stories persist, and the details re-emerge in tales of greater powers, lost and unknown history and tribes of people, or secrets taken to the grave with underground groups, meetings and rituals buried in the past.
It doesn’t take long to find these kinds of tales reflected in the volumes of world religious texts, myths, and folklore:
Other beings, “angels” coming down to earth off the mountain or out of a cave to guide mankind and give them “gifts” and the secrets to eternal life
Gods descending from another dimension or world to lie with women, producing superhuman offspring
Mystical encounters in secluded or high places with wise entities who impart great knowledge
Men and women abducted, literally or inter-dimensionally, transported under a spell or beam of great light, held captive and subjected to manipulation by other beings or forces, transformed into someone or something else or left with inexplicable scars, memories or feelings.
The Greek myths alone are overflowing with such tales of a God slipping under the dark of night or the veil of a wooded forest to bed a beautiful earthly woman, luring her with a fog of unearthly pheromones in a dream or by psychic powers, leaving as mysteriously as he arrived. The child born is a demigod, a newer version of man, and equipped to carry the people into a battle or into a new age of man. A simple woman giving birth to the son of a God, creating a hero that tries to save or sometimes destroy mankind.
Other “God” visitations alter the course of mankind or the destiny of a hero that plays out over the evolution of an epoch or people.
It’s not just the Greeks – this kind of superhuman or spiritual intervention can be found in the legends and historical narratives of the Norse, Sumerians, Mayans, Egyptians, Asians, Native Americans, and ancient Pagans across the globe.
Could these stories be true? Were they really Gods, or something else?
GODS, ANGELS OR ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS?
Today, modern scientists, researchers and theorists are exploring and challenging long-held beliefs and scientific hypotheses on the origin of man and our ancestry. Included in this challenge is the question of who were these outsiders of legend that visited earth so long ago, and why do we find them in so many stories and artifacts that are unique in depicting their powers and their intermingling with humans? The stories left behind, and their relevance and influence, have been uncovered through the diligent protection of sacred texts and modern archeology. Many of the sources are well known, a part of common knowledge, while others continue to be brought to our attention via modern media.
Today’s researchers are sharing and illuminating the information in new ways. Examples include:
Cave paintings depicting early human life and showing what looks like common characteristics of an alien being and flying saucer, descending from the sky and interacting with the tribes’ people
Ancient architecture with hieroglyphs and art depicting “Gods” or other beings with power and advanced technology
Artifacts bearing physical characteristics that match mythical descriptions of beings from another world used in fertility and abundance rituals
Ancient scrolls from Asia and India, passages in myths and in the Koran or Bible that mention other beings or people at the time of man being of a different origin, “taking wives” or creating great men or kings, such as Genesis 6:4 “Here were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”
Documented cases and witness accounts from the 15th and 16th centuries in Germany and France; the Nuremberg sightings; the Roswell crash; abductees Betty and Barney Hill; Whitley Strieber; the unidentified object crash in the mountains of Shaitan Mazar, Russia; and countless others who witnessed UFOs or were abducted
Government cover-ups, ex-military confessions of UFOs and secret military and government medical research on unidentified beings (“non-humans”)
The list goes on and continues to grow with time.
Contemporary truth seekers speculate that the Gods in our ancient stories are actually ancient astronauts, a species from another world. These astronauts found Earth (or created it) and through the interbreeding with apes or humans, or by genetic modification in a spaceship lab, spliced extraterrestrial genes with primate or human genes, creating a hybrid – modern man. This would mean that our ancestry is of Alien origin, a mixed breed with bloodlines that extend beyond our planet.
Some believe this interaction and experimentation continues and was the source of the evolution of man through different versions – one improving upon the other. Others believe they now live among us freely, and because of the early development of man/alien hybrid, they can naturally interbreed with humans, slowly homogenizing the bloodline and assimilating with ease.
If that’s true, then couldn’t we trace this added bloodline to the gene pool?
Safe Spaces rejection in Wisconsin
Since Elca and Rasmussen College ended, everyone alienated me from all jurgen Habermas / Axel Honneth safe spaces in the whole freakin county and maybe Minnesota I go like “Can I join your little safe space?” and wham! Instant Rejection or lying = if a safe space exists over there. What possible explanation out there is there?
Me Not liberal enough? Of course!!!!
Close the southern border
President Trump took aim at Democrats on Saturday while condemning immigration laws in the U.S., doubling down on his threat to close the nation’s southern border.
In a pair of Twitter posts in the afternoon, Trump asserted that “it would be so easy to fix our weak and very stupid Democrat inspired immigration laws.”
“In less than one hour, and then a vote, the problem would be solved,” he wrote. “But the Dems don’t care about the crime, they don’t want any victory for Trump and the Republicans, even if good for USA!”
He went on to insist that Mexico needed to step in and put a stop to the incoming flow at the border.
“Mexico must use its very strong immigration laws to stop the many thousands of people trying to get into the USA. Our detention areas are maxed out & we will take no more illegals,” Trump tweeted. “Next step is to close the Border! This will also help us with stopping the Drug flow from Mexico!”
The president has repeatedly threatened this week to take action at the border and claimed Thursday that Mexico wasn’t doing anything to help prevent “the flow of illegal immigrants to our Country.” He also accused multiple Central American nations of doing “nothing.”
Trump threatens to close southern border, says Mexico and Central America are doing ‘nothing’ to stop migrantsVideo
Trump took matters a step further on Friday, tweeting that “If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States through[sic] our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week.”
The president’s warnings followed remarks on Wednesday from U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAlleenan, who said the border was at its “breaking point.” The agency was looking at “an unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis all along our Southwest border,” he said.
Ununpentium (Moscovium), used in new Spaceship Pro...
RH Negative blood and the paranormal … is there a ...
DOES RH NEGATIVE BLOOD INCREASE ODDS OF ALIEN ABDU...
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Connecticut Senators Urge
Obama to Break the Law
By Kurt Hofmann, July 15th 2015
JPFO writer contributor, © 2015.
Gun ban zealots had no doubt planned to exploit the savage, senseless, racially motivated butchery of nine black churchgoers to push for their biggest "gun control" priority of recent years--universal background checks. Those plans hit something of a snag when it was revealed that the alleged killer had purchased the handgun he used from a licensed dealer, with the background check requirement in place.
This came as a surprise to many, because of the alleged perpetrator's recent arrest for felony drug possession--a crime to which he admitted guilt. By federal law, even with the conviction still pending, his name is supposed to have gone on the "prohibited person" list, rendering him ineligible to purchase a gun, and unable to do so under the FBI-administered National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The FBI has now admitted it screwed up in not flagging his name, allowing him to essentially "run out the clock" on the three-day deadline for the FBI to establish his ineligibility to purchase firearms. From the FBI's website:
If the search is matched to any potentially prohibiting records, the NICS Section must reach out to judicial and/or law enforcement agencies for the information needed to render a final decision. The Brady Act allows three business days for this purpose. If the information is not obtained within the three-business-day time frame and a final decision of proceed or deny is not made, the FFL [Federal Firearns Licensee--a federally licensed gun dealer] has the option to legally transfer the firearm.
Chris Murphy (D)
And the gun ban zealots rejoiced, because even without the so-called "private sales loophole" to rail against, they do indeed have a scapegoat: the three-day deadline for the FBI to find a reason to block the sale. Not quite as much as they wanted, but it will have to do. And both of Connecticut's United States Senators, Chris Murphy (D) and Richard Blumenthal (D) are wasting no time in jumping on that lame horse and seeing how far it might take them. From their press release:
In response to the announcement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that Charleston shooter Dylan Roof should have been prohibited from purchasing the firearm used in the murder of nine men and women last month, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) today announced that they will call on the Administration to take executive action to keep guns out of the hands of criminals by closing a loophole in the law and putting an end to the "default proceed" rule. Under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, the "default proceed" rule currently allows federally licensed firearms dealers who have initiated a background check, but have not been notified by the FBI within three business days whether or not the sale of a firearm to a certain individual would violate law, to sell the firearm.
Richard Blumenthal (D)
Murphy and Blumenthal are, by the way, not bothering to mention that although federal law requires that the sale be allowed to proceed after three business days, the check into the purchaser's background is supposed to continue, and if, after any length of time, it is determined that the purchase should not have been permitted, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is supposed to be notified that a prohibited person has nevertheless bought a gun, and the BATFE is supposed to retrieve it (and presumably arrest the purchaser). The alleged killer returned to pick up the gun not three days after the background check was initiated, but five days, so even that is apparently an insufficient period of time to determine if a purchase is legal or not. Furthermore, he bought it two months before his atrocity at the African Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church, all of which time his ineligibility could have been discovered, the gun retrieved, and the purchaser arrested. None of that happened, so Murphy and Blumenthal apparently believe that two months and five days is too tight a deadline.
But that's far from the worst of it--the senators want Obama to "take executive action" to lift the deadline (on what, remember, is called an "instant criminal background check"--three days is hardly "instantaneous"--and now that's apparently not enough)? As per the actual text of the law, the gun dealer must be permitted to proceed with the sale if certain conditions are met--including this one:
(ii) 3 business days (meaning a day on which State offices are open) have elapsed since the licensee contacted the system, and the system has not notified the licensee that the receipt of a firearm by such other person would violate subsection (g) or (n) of this section;
That is the law, and the President is not endowed with any legitimate power to just up and change laws as he sees fit. Obama would no doubt dearly love to have such power (and seems sometimes perhaps to think he does have it), but he does not, and cannot ever be given that power over an ostensibly free people.
Murphy and Blumenthal presumably know this, but are urging Obama to take this reckless, unconstitutional course anyway. Is it just idle political theater--something they have no real hope of happening, but will further strengthen their already well established anti-gun street cred, or do they truly hope to goad the President into this crime?
A former paratrooper, Kurt Hofmann was paralyzed in a car accident in 2002. The helplessness inherent to confinement to a wheelchair prompted him to explore armed self-defense, only to discover that Illinois denies that right, inspiring him to become active in gun rights advocacy. He also writes the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner column. Kurt Hofmann Archive.
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Home Celebrigation
Let’s All Sue Kim Kardashian
Rob Delaney, a very funny comedian who you should be following on Twitter if you do that kind of thing, is threatening to sue Kim Kardashian and her husband what's-his-name for ending their "marriage" after only 72 days:
I wish to formally announce that I am suing Kim Kardashian to stop her divorce from Kris Humphries. I am also suing Ryan Seacrest, E! Entertainment Television, and Comcast for promoting their sham marriage, bilking advertisers, and polluting the airwaves of America and every other nation unfortunate enough to be subject to the disease of Kardashia.
The ceremony, which as I hope you don't know was televised as a two-part special on the E! Network, cost an estimated $10 million not counting the $18 million they were reportedly paid to pretend to like each other on TV. Delaney says that money should go to schools, or health clinics, or his uncle the convicted sex offender — anybody but these two.
Just the USA Today report on this event has more lies in it than Rod Blagojevich did, in particular this one from the E! Network: "All of us at E! are surprised and saddened by this news." Oh, we're so sad. We can hardly bear to write the exclamation point after the name of our network. But life must go on, and so we will try to force ourselves to "continue to share the fascinating real lives and larger-than-life existence of this close-knit family."
A wedding planner quoted by USA Today said that the couple should definitely return the wedding gifts. "I think anything under a year," she said, "looks like a grab. It looks selfish." Yes, keeping the toaster at this point would make it almost seem like they only got married out of greed.
As for potential liability, "veteran celebrity divorce and family lawyer Raoul Felder" said that at least if the media outlets that financed the thing decided this was just a hoax, they might have a valid lawsuit. Well, what he actually said was "If one of the people who gave them money came to me, I'd say, 'You have a lawsuit,'" which is not quite the same thing.
Delaney isn't claiming he gave them any money, and he seems to want (or pretend to want) money from the media people rather than Kim, at least. "KIM KARDASHIAN, I WANT THIS FOR YOU," he writes. "I know that under your unnecessary inch of makeup and Kevlar sheath dress is a heart that yearns for true love …. That's why I'd like you to stay married. And if you won't, I will sue you."
I would like to formally ask him that if he does sue, to please make this a class action, on both sides, so that the four million people who watched the ceremony can be made defendants too and be sued properly by the other 296 (or whatever it is now) million Americans who didn't. If you think that seems like an unlikely candidate for a class action, just file it in California. You'll be friggin' amazed.
Link: Rob Delaney, "I Am Suing Kim Kardashian," at VICE.com (site is mildly NSFW).
So Long, Guy Who Refused to Marry Interracial Couple
Denny’s Lunar Connection?
Alan Simpson on the Deficit: “Give Them the Green Weenie”
Canadian Rectal Smuggler Catches a Break on Appeal
“Salamander Man” Finally Captured
TSA Finds It Correctly Punished Naked Protester
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Home / Sports Marketing / Chill Factor: How a Minor-League Hockey Team Changed a City Forever
Chill Factor: How a Minor-League Hockey Team Changed a City Forever
Posted by: meadmin in Sports Marketing 253 views 0
Amazon Price: N/A (as of July 17, 2019 5:02 am – Details). Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on the Amazon site at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
The city of Columbus, Ohio, had always struggled to support any professional sports franchise. It’s a town where Ohio State University reigns supreme, and everything else is less important. That was until 1991, when the Columbus Chill, a minor-league hockey franchise, arrived. Using Veeckian marketing tactics and on-ice shenanigans, the Chill became the talk of the city and gained a religious local fan base. Based on the success of the Chill, from 199199, the city of Columbus was awarded with the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2000, the city’s own NHL franchise.
Chill Factor follows the wild ride through the eyes of team president and general manager David Paitson, from the early formation of the minor-league franchise through the decision to rattle the status quo by going to the edge and beyond with a marketing and promotional plan that was both edgy and controversial.
The success of the Chill after their first season gave the organization the impetus to challenge local civic and business leaders to build a world-class arena and emerge from the shadow of OSU. There were setbacks and triumphs on and off the ice, and eventually the realization that the Columbus of today would not be possible without the aid of the Chill.
Chill Factor takes readers into the front office and onto the rink, giving every angle of how a small town was able to get behind a working-class team that fought both on and off the ice. This thrilling account will appeal to those who remember the Chill’s reign, as well as those who enjoy seeing the underdog climb the ladder to sports supremacy.
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sportsbooks about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team.
Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Publisher: Sports Publishing (March 3, 2015)
Publication Date: March 3, 2015
ASIN: B00THMCG90
Tagged with: Bob Hunter Business Aspects Columbus Chill (Hockey team) Craig Merz David Paitson ebook History Hockey Sports Publishing
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Bearded Geeks Corner
Crazy Jim’s Cheap Ass Video Show
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Posted on 17th July 2015 by Martijn
Miracleman: Book Three: Olympus
Miracleman: Book Three: Olympus – The Original Writer, John Totleben, Thomas Yeates, Steve Oliff & Joe Caramagna (Marvel / Panini)
Contrary to popular opinion, there are very few genii have emerged from the confines of the four colour universe, the word ‘genius’ having lost nearly all meaning through over-usage in the hallowed annals of fandom. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a medium filled with incredible, exciting, energetic writers and artists who imaginations seemingly know no boundaries, men and women whose talent is awe-inspiring and who’s tales regularly leave me in state of near nirvana, but genii? No, those are few and far between, and number at most, the same as the digits on both of your hands, and when you do stumble across their work, it’s presence, power and passion sets it apart from just about everything else you’ve read, or will read, lingering in that place between consciousness and dreams long after you’ve finished the final page, closed the book and set it aside. ‘Miracleman’ is one of those books, or rather, in its new collected format, three of those books, ‘Olympus’ being the final part of the trilogy. The author, who I’m sure you all know, due to a long-standing argument with the publisher had his name removed from the title, preferring to go by the sobriquet ‘The Original Writer’ for this release, has long been regarded as genius in his field, and he is, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know, one of the ten who I acknowledge as being just that. A genius. And his genius shows itself in every panel, and on every page of ‘Olympus’ as his deconstruction of super-hero mythology, and fable of the place such beings would have in society reaches its climax.
Breath-taking in its scope and literary accomplishment (and the art isn’t too bad either, in fact it’s pretty darn spectacular, Mr Totleben take a thoroughly deserved and well-earned bow), ‘Miracleman’ follows our hero in the final throes of his apotheosis, as he transforms from man-made hero to deity, and his journey complete, is left to gaze out over the mortals from whose ranks he emerged. In ‘Olympus’, Adam finally meets his Eve, Miraclewoman emerging from the shadows to aid him in understanding the universal complexities of where his power actually comes from, as they journey to the stars to discover the truth about themselves and assume their, and Earth’s, position in the ancient stalemate that exists between two aeon old empires. Upon their return, Miracleman finally gives up his humanity when his wife and child leave him, the former for some semblance of a normal life, and the latter because she has outgrown the world around her, before facing his true nemesis in a long over-due confrontation, the tragic fallout from which exposes him and those like him to every living person on the planet, changing the everyday reality of life forever as gods and men exist next to each other in a “utopia” that feels suffocating, almost too perfect and more than a little totalitarian. Told in flashback by a being who is gradually losing his humanity and his connection to the woman he loved and his fellow man, and thus everything that made him who he was, that the writer’s genius shines brightly, as Miracleman’s story is cold and distant, and yet all too human and engaging, and in the final portrait of the society crafted by these “new gods”, the writer gently exposes the kingdom that these “deities” have created and now rule over. ‘Olympus’ is an incredible story, exploring and questioning faith, power, mortality and humanity and the role that each plays in universal and individual destiny, while expanding upon, and examining the actuality (in graphic horror and detail) of what it would mean to live in a world with super-heroes and villains. It is, quite simply, a work of genius… Tim Mass Movement
Tagged Book Three, Graphic Novel, Marvel, Miracleman, Olympus, Panini
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TERRENCE HOWARD AND FELICITY JONES TO PRESENT AT 87TH OSCARS®
Monte 17 February 2015 No Comment
LOS ANGELES, CA— Oscar®-nominated actor Terrence Howard (2006) and Oscar nominee Felicity Jones will be presenters at this year’s Oscars, show producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron announced today. The Oscars, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, will air on Sunday, February 22, live on ABC.
Howard was nominated for his leading role in 2006’s “Hustle & Flow.” His other films include Oscar-winning Best Picture “Crash” (2004), “Ray” (2004), “Iron Man” (2008), “Prisoners” (2013), “Lee Daniel’s The Butler” (2013) and “St. Vincent” (2014). Howard currently stars in the hit television series “Empire.” His upcoming films include “Term Life” and “Cardboard Boxer.”
Jones is nominated for Actress in a Leading Role for “The Theory of Everything.” Her previous film credits include “The Tempest” (2010), “Like Crazy” (2011), “The Invisible Woman” (2013) and “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” (2014). Jones’ upcoming films include “True Story,” “Autobahn,” “A Monster Calls” and “Inferno.”
Oscar presenters and performers include:
Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Cate Blanchett, Jessica Chastain, Marion Cotillard, Benedict Cumberbatch, Viola Davis, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Idris Elba, Ansel Elgort, Chris Evans, Kevin Hart, Terrence Howard, Josh Hutcherson, Scarlett Johansson, Dakota Johnson, Felicity Jones, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lopez, Jared Leto, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey, Sienna Miller, Chloë Grace Moretz, Eddie Murphy, Liam Neeson, Lupita Nyong’o, David Oyelowo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt, Margot Robbie, Zoe Saldana, Octavia Spencer, Meryl Streep, Channing Tatum, Miles Teller, John Travolta, Kerry Washington, Naomi Watts, Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon.
Jack Black, Common, Jennifer Hudson, Anna Kendrick, Lady Gaga, John Legend, Adam Levine with Maroon 5, Tim McGraw, Rita Ora and Tegan and Sara with The Lonely Island.
The 87th Oscars will be held on Sunday, February 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live on the ABC Television Network at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT. The Oscars, produced by Zadan and Meron, also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.
87th Oscars Social Media Guide
Follow the Academy, Oscars producers and host Neil Patrick Harris for the latest updates throughout Oscar season.
Neil Patrick Harris: http://twitter.com/ActuallyNPH
Oscars Producers
Neil Meron: http://twitter.com/neilmeron
Craig Zadan: http://twitter.com/craigzadan
#Oscars
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheAcademy
Twitter: http://twitter.com/theacademy
Instagram: http://instagram.com/theacademy
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/oscars
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+Oscars
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the world’s preeminent movie-related organization, with a membership of more than 6,000 of the most accomplished men and women working in cinema. In addition to the annual Academy Awards—in which the members vote to select the nominees and winners — the Academy presents a diverse year-round slate of public programs, exhibitions and events; acts as a neutral advocate in the advancement of motion picture technology; and, through its Margaret Herrick Library and Academy Film Archive, collects, preserves, restores and provides access to movies and items related to their history. Through these and other activities the Academy serves students, historians, the entertainment industry and people everywhere who love movies.
FOLLOW THE ACADEMY
www.oscars.org
www.facebook.com/TheAcademy
www.youtube.com/Oscars
www.twitter.com/TheAcademy
Topics: Entertainment Arts & Technology, MBN Newsvideoweb News Tags: 87TH OSCARS, FELICITY JONES, Present, TERRENCE HOWARD
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ACME FILMWORKS TO PRESENT
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Neumann and Sennheiser Present "The Past, Present and Future of Microphone Technology" at Full Sail University
MISS AMERICA 2015 KIRA KAZANTSEV TO PRESENT AT THE "2015 BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS" MAY 17TH ON ABC AT 8PM ET
« SEMA BATTLE OF THE BUILDERS TV SPECIAL PREMIERES MARCH 8
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D3.1 Report on review of available methods for cost assessment
The report identifies methods and techniques for adaptation options appraisal and decision analysis in the climate change context. We discuss the major methods such as cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA), the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and the multi criteria analysis (MCA) and identify the different circumstances of applications of these methods. CEA is suitable for options that are difficult to value. Examples of application of CEA include health issues, freshwater systems, coastal and river flood risks, stream weather events and biodiversity and ecosystem services. When there are alternative adaptation options are considered, a full CBA can be used to calculated the Net Present Value (NPV) of alternative projects and select the one with the highest NPV. Examples of application include the assessment of raising dikes against sea-level rise, freshwater systems and agricultural sector. MCA can be used in cases where a variety of criteria is used to assess the alternative options and identify a priority ranking for adaptation options. It is especially preferred to CBA when benefits cannot be quantified and valued. In the case of risk and uncertainty, other methods such as scenario analysis and its combination with portfolio analysis, or robust decision theory and real options approach can be used.
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Obama seeks to reassure Mexico, Canada on Trump and trade
June 30, 2016 Diane Leave a comment
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US President Barack Obama at the North American Leaders Summit.
President Barack Obama sought to reassure his counterparts in Canada and Mexico Wednesday that a potential Donald Trump presidency wouldn’t throw cross-border ties into turmoil, even as he pushed back on the GOP candidate’s platform.
Expressing confidence that immigration wouldn’t be shut off and trade deals would persist, Obama argued against the type of protectionist policies that Trump has espoused on the campaign trail. And he cast the presumptive GOP nominee as a failed historical archetype.
“We’ve had times throughout our history where anti-immigration sentiment is exploited by demagogues,” Obama said. “The language is identical. But guess what? They kept coming, and they kept coming because America offered possibility for their children and grandchildren.”
Convening a final North American leaders’ summit even as the U.S. presidential contest throws crucial cross-border issues into dispute, Obama and his counterparts discussed trade, security and climate change during a day of talks in the Canadian capital.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/29/politics/obama-canada-mexico-trade-nafta-trump/
Judges halt El Chapo’s extradition to U.S.
NYT – Mexican judges have temporarily halted the extradition of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug kingpin known as El Chapo, pending the outcome of appeals filed this week by Guzmán’s lawyers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/world/americas/extradition-of-el-chapo-to-us-is-halted-in-mexico.html?_r=0
Supreme Court rejects legalizing abortions
TeleSur – Mexico’s Supreme Court threw out a proposal to legalize abortion on Wednesday in favor of upholding a longstanding ban that criminalizes women. Women who seek illegal abortion under the nationwide ban could face up to five years in prison under the current penal code.
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Mexico-Supreme-Court-Rejects-Legalizing-Abortion-20160630-0002.html
Jehova’s Witnesses accused of damaging religious site
The Guardian – Assailants have damaged an ancient Otomi religious site at the remote mountain shrine known as Mayonihka or Mexico Chiquito. A researcher who interviewed some of the attackers said they identified themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses and viewed the altars as blasphemy. However, the spokesman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Mexico said that the allegation appeared to be false.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/29/mayonhika-otomi-damaged-jehovahs-witnesses-mexico
Ex-Baja California Sur prosecutor assassinated
AP – Mexican authorities say the former assistant prosecutor of Baja California Sur state has been assassinated just a few months after he was fired for alleged ties to the Sinaloa Cartel.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/assistant-state-prosecutor-assassinated-mexico-40230472
Effort made to save first corn that popped
Fox News – The original popcorn, made from the first kinds of maize whose kernels puffed up when put to the fire, originated in Mexico and is in danger of extinction, something entrepreneur Rafael Mier is fighting to prevent with an agricultural project based on a heritage seed bank.
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2016/06/29/source-original-popcorn-rescued-from-extinction-in-mexico/
Mexico raises gas prices for July; another seen for August
Sentido Comun – Mexico’s government announced a rise of 1.8 and 2.4% for the price of Magna and Premium gasoline respectively, after the weakness of the peso against the dollar and recent increases in international oil markets.
http://www.sentidocomun.com.mx/articulo.phtml?id=31334
Camlin acquires majority interest in Dresen
Sentido Comun – Camlin Fine Sciences (CFS), an Indian chemical company focused on antioxidants, has acquired a majority interest in the Mexican company, Dresen Química, with which it seeks to boost its expansion into the Central American and Andean markets.
http://www.sentidocomun.com.mx/breves.phtml?id=31319
Intercontinental, Alkoer to build 2 hotels in Guanajuato
Sentido Comun – InterContinental Hotels Group, or IHG, a British hotel company, forged an agreement with the Mexican company Alkoer to develop two Staybridge Suites hotels in Silao and Irapuato, Guanajuato.
Chiapas could run out of gas due to Oaxaca roadblocks
Sentido Comun – Chiapas state could run out of gasoline today because of the sharp shortage that exists after the roadblocks in Oaxaca, preventing the arrival of fuel to the neighboring southern state.
LMI Aerospace moving work to Mexicali
Sentido Comun – LMI Aerospace, a US supplier of components and engineering services for the aerospace industry, will transfer its production line of sheet metal to its plant in Mexicali, after the closure of the manufacture of these products in their plant in Wichita, Kansas.
Clashes draw support for teachers protest in Oaxaca
Mexican federal police clashed with teachers protesting an education overhaul and the arrest of two of their leaders in Oaxaca on June 19. (Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)
By Azam Ahmed and Kirk Semple / New York Times
The battle over education in Mexico has suddenly turned literal.
Violent protests have claimed the lives of at least nine people in little more than a week, littered the roads with the charred remains of cargo trucks, and tapped a deep vein of anger and mistrust toward the government.
After government forces clashed with demonstrators in the town of Nochixtlán last week, the protest movement appears to have gained steam, plunging President Enrique Peña Nieto’s signature education changes deeper into controversy.
In recent days, thousands of students in Oaxaca have joined their teachers in the streets for the first time to rail against the government, and many adults once ambivalent about the teachers’ cries of injustice have also taken up the cause.
The violence touched a raw nerve in Oaxaca, which, despite a thriving tourism industry, is one of the poorest and most volatile states in the country. The government’s response to the protests has amplified a belief that the education reforms are just the latest effort by Mexico City to marginalize the people here and deprive them of their rights and dignity.
In most of the country, the president’s push to revamp the schools has found broad acceptance. Government officials and supporters of the overhaul point out that the resistance has been almost entirely concentrated in four southern states, especially Oaxaca, and involves only a small fraction of the nation’s education employees.
It has long been one of the worst-performing public education systems of the world’s largest economic powers. According to a January 2015 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Mexico’s academic achievement ranked last among the group’s 34 member states.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/world/americas/mexico-teachers-protests-enrique-pena-nieto.html
5.7 quake shakes southern Mexico, no damage reported
Reuters – A 5.7 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said, shaking buildings as far away as Mexico City, but officials reported there were no immediate reports of damages.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-quake-idUSKCN0ZD2TF
Mexico fuel markets open, but imports aren’t flowing
Bloomberg – Mexico enacted legislation in April allowing companies other than state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos to import fuel for the first time since the 1930s. Mexico has since awarded permits to import a combined 853 million barrels of gasoline and diesel. No fuel has been brought in using those 12-month permits, however.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-28/mexico-s-fuel-market-is-open-but-the-imports-aren-t-flowing
Police, troops routinely rape arrested women
Gulf News – Mexico’s police and armed forces routinely torture and mistreat women, sometimes using sexual violence during arrest and interrogation, Amnesty International wrote in a damning report released on Tuesday.
http://gulfnews.com/news/americas/mexico/mexico-police-troops-routinely-rape-arrested-women-amnesty-1.1853771
Companies, Markets
ICA plans to delist from NYSE in July
Reuters – Mexico’s ICA said it expects to delist from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after July 17, as the cash-strapped construction firm’s share price has tumbled on debt woes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-ica-idUSKCN0ZE06Y
Remains of mammoth uncovered near Mexico City
BBC – Mexican experts say they are completing work on digging up fossilised bones of a mammoth found near Mexico City. The bones are believed to be about 14,000 years old and were scattered, suggesting the mammoth had been cut up by humans for its meat and pelt.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36631474
Slim bidding for Mexico City runway contracts
Reuters – Carlos Slim’s construction arm has teamed up with three local builders to bid for two runways for Mexico City’s new airport worth a combined $1.56 billion, sources say.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/latestnews/2016/06/27/Exclusive-Slim-bidding-156-billion-Mexico-City-runway-contracts-sources
Rare cavefish discovered in Mexico
USGS – Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and Louisiana State University have identified a new genus and species of cavefish from Mexico, the Oaxaca Cave Sleeper, which is the first cave-adapted sleeper goby to be found in the Western Hemisphere.
https://www.usgs.gov/news/cavefish-mexico-identified-first-its-kind-western-hemisphere
2009 swine flu traced to pigs in central Mexico
Eurekalert – The 2009 swine H1N1 flu pandemic — responsible for more than 17,000 deaths worldwide — originated in pigs from a very small region in central Mexico, a research team headed by investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is reporting.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-06/tmsh-rdt062716.php
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Welcome to Omnivore Recordings
By submitting this form, you are granting: Omnivore Recordings, 4470 W. Sunset Bl., Suite 209, Los Angeles, California, 90027, United States, http://www.omnivorerecordings.com permission to email you. You may unsubscribe via the link found at the bottom of every email. (See our Email Privacy Policy for details.) Emails are serviced by Constant Contact.
Velvet Crush — Pre-Teen Symphonies
Pre-Teen Symphonies
Release date: July 22, 106
Buy CD $16.98
Buy Digital $9.99
Collection of 16 hard-to-find tracks including demos and live tracks bookending their U.S. breakthrough album Teenage Symphonies To God!
When Rhode Island’s Velvet Crush appeared on the scene in the early 1990s, they were obviously a force to be reckoned with. Signing with England’s Creation Records (Oasis, My Bloody Valentine, Teenage Fanclub), they released their debut LP in 1991. But, it was 1994’s Teenage Symphonies To God (the title being a play on Brian Wilson’s description for what would become SMiLE) that put them on the map. Co-produced by the legendary Mitch Easter, it opened America’s eyes to what those over the pond were so wild about.
But, what was the genesis of that record? Find out with Pre-Teen Symphonies, a collection of 16 recordings from Velvet Crush previously available in a very limited quantity from the band’s own Action Musik label. 8 demos (including one for the classic single “Hold Me Up”) and 8 tracks recorded live in 1994 at Cabaret Metro in Chicago.
As the band proved the past was the future by taking elements from classic ’60s melodies, ’70s power pop, and ’80s reinvention, Pre-Teen Symphonies is a unique look into the development of a classic, and the live power that drove it.
Find your path with Pre-Teen Symphonies.
CD / Digital Track List:
Pre-Teen Demos:
My Blank Pages
Time Wraps Around You
Not Standing Down
This Life Is Killing Me
Weird Summer
Star Trip
Live at Cabaret Metro, Chicago:
Ash And Earth
Remember The Lightning
Cat: OV-187
Categories: Alternative, Power Pop, Rock, All, CD, Digital
Tag: Velvet Crush
Sync & Publishing
Copyright © 2019 Omnivore Recordings, a division of Omnivore Entertainment Group.
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U.S. pulls staff from Iraq amid concerns over Iran
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Washington ordered the departure of non-emergency American employees from its diplomatic missions in Iraq on Wednesday in another show of concern about alleged threats from Iran.
President Donald Trump’s administration is applying new sanctions pressure on Tehran and sending additional forces to the Middle East to counter what it says is a heightened threat from Iran to U.S. soldiers and interests in the region.
Iran calls that “psychological warfare”, and a British commander cast doubt on U.S. military concerns about threats to its roughly 5,000 soldiers in Iraq, who have been helping local security forces fight Islamic State jihadists.
The U.S. State Department said employees at both the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and its consulate in Erbil, capital of semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, were being pulled out immediately due to safety concerns.
It was unclear how many personnel were affected, and there was no word on any specific threat. Visa services were suspended at the heavily-fortified U.S. missions.
“Ensuring the safety of U.S. government personnel and citizens is our highest priority … and we want to reduce the risk of harm,” a State Department spokesman said.
Also on Wednesday, Germany, which has 160 soldiers in Iraq, suspended military training operations, citing increasing regional tensions. And the Netherlands suspended a mission providing assistance to Iraqi local authorities, Dutch news agency ANP said.
“DANGEROUS SITUATION”
Both the United States and Iran have said they do not want war, and Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said on Tuesday he had indications “things will end well” despite the rhetoric.
Iraq has said it will keep strong ties with Iran, but also with the United States and regional neighbours, some of whom, like Saudi Arabia, consider Tehran an arch-rival.
“I think we are now in a quite dangerous situation where a miscalculation by either side could lead us into conflict,” U.S. Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN in an interview on Wednesday.
“When you project force into a very volatile region and you’ve got real tension between Iran and the Saudis — we have to be careful. We need a strategy,” Coons said, echoing a call by Congress for the government to brief lawmakers.
The State Department reissued travel advisory for Iraq saying U.S. citizens were at high risk of violence and kidnapping. “Anti-U.S. sectarian militias may also threaten U.S. citizens and Western companies throughout Iraq,” it said.
A senior Iranian official said on Wednesday that any conflict in the region will have “unimaginable consequences.”
Reporting by John Davison and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad, Raya Jalabi in Erbil; Additional reporting by Susan Heavy and Makini Brice in Washington; Writing by Raya Jalabi and John Davison; Editing by Catherine Evans and Andrew Cawthorne
Tags:'pulls, amid, concerns, from, Iran, Iraq, over, staff, U.S.
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Goodfellas Review
This review comes from June 2, 2009. It was not my first rodeo with Scorsese, but coming back to this film 10 years later, I have to say I’m off base in disregarding Scorsese’s direction. Storytelling structure is definitely the film’s hallmark, but the camera has a lot to do with how that story gets told.
While the title of mob masterpiece most often goes to “The Godfather” for its stunning drama and dark beauty, something must be said for honesty. Those two points belong to Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” which plays up the highs and lows of gangster life in cold truth, without any jazzed-up one-liners or thematic scores, with only honest-to-goodness storytelling and direction.
Some crime films rely on characters killing or torturing people in crazy and memorable ways, but in “Goodfellas,” when the only nutty character, Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), blows his fuse a few times, it feels jarring and unnatural, not cool or awing in any way. It’s because to Scorsese, these people are real, this is their life, and a hit is a hit because that’s how they do things — there’s not a production to be made out of it.
The film, based on true events with much consultation from the real life people who were being portrayed in the film, focuses on gangster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) and how the mob raised him and gave him everything he had, brought him the highest of highs and took him pretty low — might have even killed him had he not entered the Witness Protection Program in the ’80s.
Scorsese isn’t brilliant in this film. It’s not visionary. Leave that for some of his other films — this is just incredibly good storytelling. “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster” is not a memorable line that pulls you in at the film’s beginning because it was inspired writing — it’s Scorsese understanding how to take a script and bring it to life in the best way possible. The only truly artistic work being done is some of the camera shots and compelling angles. He finds the script’s best moments and adds something to them. Otherwise, he is telling this story, he is making a cinematic homage to this incredible true story as penned by Nicholas Pileggi.
Of course it helps that the actors he had to work with were top notch. Following him from “Raging Bull” among other films were Robert DeNiro and Pesci as Jimmy and Tommy. Both characters are easily provoked, sometimes irrational men with big mouths their hearts in the right place despite actions to the contrary. Pesci is particularly memorable between the “in what way am I funny?” and “deer paw” scenes, a deserved Oscar for great character work. As for Liotta, his great strength is swaying our opinion of him back and forth with his various infidelities yet natural charms — it’s a role that had Scorsese cast 15 years later would have gone to the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, so let that stand as some acclaim for Liotta. It is also this dichotomy of warm support and foul-mouthed matter-of-factness that makes us feel conflicted as we watch the entire film. It doesn’t elicit pity for the mafia, but it certainly complicates the “wiseguy” stereotype, which I think is much of Scorsese’s goal.
“Goodfellas” only lacks in an emotional or cathartic pull. Many times you wonder why this story is being told, but then you realize how incredibly well it’s told and you acknowledge that it’s some of the finest film-making out there, regardless how it makes you feel.
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Martin Scorsese, Nicholas Pileggi (book)
Starring: Ray Liotta, Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino
← Vice Review
Aquaman Review →
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Naomie Harris is the New Miss Moneypenny
The “Bond” franchise has not been hailed for its continuity by any means, but a few characters have been regulars in 007’s universe, namely his fellow workers at MI6. Since MGM “rebooted” the character with Daniel Craig and “Casino Royale” in 2006, one of those staples has been missing: Miss Moneypenny. But no longer, as Naomie Harris (“28 Days Later,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”) is expected to play the role.
U.K. publication The Daily Mail broke the news; reporter Baz Bamigboye has generally been correct about Bond rumors. The article seems to imply that Javier Barden and Ralph Fiennes are confirmed, but we’ll just wait and see about that; Bardem is still connected to Ron Howard’s “The Dark Tower” project.
Last month, Harris had met with director Sam Mendes and others regarding playing a “Bond girl,” but this would be no ordinary Bond girl. Moneypenny, a Lieutennant RN, was always one to take James up on some dry witty banter. In other words, she was always the one to call Bond out on his shit. The role was made famous by Lois Maxwell, who portrayed her from the first film, “Dr. No” until “A View to A Kill” in 1985. She was most recently played by Samantha Bond during the Pierce Brosnan Era.
Harris most recently starred in Danny Boyle’s National Theatre production of “Frankenstein.” She’s demonstrated some good versatility in her few notable roles.
The still-untitled “Bond 23” is expected to be ready for a Nov. 9, 2012 release. Casting should be confirmed with (hopefully) a title by summer’s end.
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'Dark Knight Rises' Teaser Poster Revealed →
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Precedents and Possibilities: Pentecostal Perspectives on World Religions
| June 5, 2006 | no comments
An introduction to theology of religions: Pentecostal/charismatic leaders cannot afford to ignore the fact of religious pluralism. How should we engage people of other religions in such a way as to share the love of Jesus without compromising the message?
Editors Notes: The Pneuma Review editorial committee asked Brother Richie to tell us about this paper and he said: “This article is a non-provocative but informative piece designed to introduce readers to the theology of religions and invite further reflection. I’ve done quite a bit of work in this area, including a forthcoming article in Pneuma: The Journal for the Society for Pentecostal Studies (Spring ‘06) and an American Academy of Religion panel discussion and presentation (Nov 21 ‘06). I know about the generally cautious attitude of many Pentecostal/charismatics toward ecumenism and/or theology of religions. In a sense, I am sort of that way myself. One of the reasons I thought of sharing this piece is because of its easy going but informative approach. Theology of religions is, whether we like it or not, forcing itself upon us in the face of rampant religious pluralism. We will have to deal with it sometime somehow.”
When I was growing up in a Pentecostal preacher’s family we pretty much had two groups of people in our community: Christians and non-Christians. Basically, that meant churchgoers and non-churchgoers because even the non-Christians had a more or less Christian belief background. Now I am a pastor myself but my how things have changed since Dad’s day! My church members have neighbors and co-workers who have religion enough all right but it is not Christian. Some of my parishioners even have friends or family of other faiths. Increased immigration and cross-cultural homogenization have helped make the United States a religiously diverse nation. 1 Religious pluralism, in the sense of the reality of a plurality of religions among us, is a fact that must be faced by pastors and church leaders if we are to equip our people to deal with the religious diversity they encounter in their daily lives. The price of Pentecostals ignoring the problem of pluralism is too high to pay. We cannot afford the lost souls that could cost.
Developing a Pentecostal approach to Christians theology of religions has quickly become not only essential but also urgent. A seasoned Pentecostal scholar supplies a helpful definition of theology or religions, particularly Christian theology of religions.
Theology of religions is that discipline of theological studies which attempts to account theologically for the meaning and value of other religions. Christian theology of religions attempts to think theologically about what it means for Christians to live with people of other faiths and about the relationship of Christianity to other religions. 2
Though extreme approaches unacceptable to most Pentecostals and Evangelicals do exist, the basic thrust of Christian theology of religions need not threaten us. Quite to the contrary, we need to account theologically for the existence of other religions and outline practically a manner of relating to their adherents. In this paper I overview our past attitudes and advance some options for the future if we are to face the challenge of religious pluralism in a mode that has compatibility with our Pentecostal identity.3
Some Precedents among Pentecostals Regarding Other Religions
Pneuma Review Editor Raul Mock with Tony Richie at the 2014 Society for Pentecostal Studies convention.
Pentecostals have historically tended to exhibit a decidedly evangelistic approach to members of other religions.4 As staunch supporters of the missionary agenda of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), we have mainly viewed adherents of other religions mostly as potential Christians to be won over by our witness of Christ. Unfortunately, sometimes this has degenerated into demonization of non-Christians and of their religious faith and values. Biblical texts warning against the demonic elements of idolatry and false forms of religion (e.g., Deuteronomy 32:17; 1 Corinthians 10:20) have sometimes been indiscriminately applied to all world religions. Accordingly, Pentecostal attitudes toward relations with other religions often have not been very positive.
Tags: pentecostal, perspectives, possibilities, precedents, religions, world
Category: Ministry, Spring 2006
About the Author: Tony Richie, D.Min, Ph.D., is missionary teacher at SEMISUD (Quito, Ecuador) and adjunct professor at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary (Cleveland, TN). Dr. Richie is an Ordained Bishop in the Church of God, and Senior Pastor at New Harvest in Knoxville, TN. He has served the Society for Pentecostal Studies as Ecumenical Studies Interest Group Leader and is currently Liaison to the Interfaith Relations Commission of the National Council of Churches (USA), and represents Pentecostals with Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation of the World Council of Churches and the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs. He is the author of Speaking by the Spirit: A Pentecostal Model for Interreligious Dialogue (Emeth Press, 2011) and Toward a Pentecostal Theology of Religions: Encountering Cornelius Today (CPT Press, 2013) as well as several journal articles and books chapters on Pentecostal theology and experience.
A New Kind of Church for a New Kind of World, by Frank Viola
Handbook of Theological Education in World Christianity
Highlights from European Pentecostal Theological Association 2002
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Palestinians call for Puma Boycott
By F.T Hupsel - June 18, 2019
Tags: [BDS] [sport]
Activists from more than 20 countries joined an international day of action on June 15 against German sports brand Puma, urging it to withdraw sponsorship from Israel's football association.
Under the slogan “Give Puma the Boot”, the Boycott, Divestment and movement (BDS) encouraged activists to “take action” against Puma stores across the world, after 200 Palestinian football clubs and sports organisations called for the boycott.
The IFA incorporates six teams situated in Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law.
The United Nations has documented, the Israeli settlements are one of the major obstacles to peace in the region, fueling severe daily impacts on Palestinian human rights.
In Germany, where the brand is originally from, BDS Berlin organised a protest in the capital outside the Puma Concept Store at Hackescher Markt.
"Thousands of people taking part in a day of action across the globe, delivering a clear message to Puma that it will be held accountable for its complicity with human rights abuses," Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Ben Jamal, told The New Arab.
More than 25,000 emails were also sent to UK football clubs who are sponsored by Puma, urging them to end their deals due to the sportswear's partnership with the IFA.
"Companies like Puma cannot claim to support universal equality whilst being the main sponsor of the IFA, which operates on stolen Palestinian land with total impunity," said James Tuite, campaign officer at the PSC.
Companies, organisations, institutions, teams, and individuals are gradually deciding against contracts with Israel’s activities based on illegal settlements, as the BDS non-violent movements grow in strength.
The IFA’s previous sponsor, Adidas, ended its agreement in July 2018 following a protest campaign by activists and complaints from over 130 Palestinian football clubs and the delivery of over 16,000 signatures to Adidas headquarters in Amsterdam.
According to the Middle East Monitor, Adidas responded to the petition saying: “We have raised with FIFA the need for them to adjudicate on the question of the Israeli settlement teams, by following the tenets of international law and their human rights policy.”
In 2017, United Nations Special Rapporteur, Richard Falk, signed a collective letter to FIFA criticising the “selective enforcement of its own rules, which prohibit any member federation from holding matches on the territory of another without the latter’s approval.”
However, neither FIFA nor the IFA has made any action in regards to the letter.
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Ashford UniversityBA/Organizational Management - Elementary Education
Kaplan UniversityMS in Education (for Existing Teachers Grades K-12)
University of PhoenixAssociate's - Elementary Education
Elementary Education Schools in Miramar, Florida
There are 12 schools close to Miramar, FL offering elementary education programs. 953 students graduated from programs at Miramar elementary education schools in 2010. 868 of all these students graduated with bachelors degrees and 75 of all these students graduated with masters degrees.
On average, 1,056 students graduate from programs in Miramar in elementary education per year. This accounts for close to 26% of students who schools in the state of Florida graduate from elementary education programs. Specifically, ten students graduated with elementary education certificates, 868 with a degree at the bachelor's level, and 75 with a degree at the master's level.
12 elementary education schools are located in Miramar. Of these, while two schools are public, ten schools are private. While tuition at a public elementary education school varies from $3,835 to $5,102, tuition at a private elementary education school varies from $10,680 to $37,836.
Average tuition for elementary education programs is $20,785. While the highest tuition for elementary education programs, which is $37,836 every year, is at the University of Miami, the lowest tuition in Miramar, which is $3,835 each year, is at Florida Atlantic University.
Miramar elementary education schools offer certificates, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and doctoral degrees.
Elementary Education Program Completions 2006 - 2010 in Miramar, Florida
Certificate 2006: 10
Certificate 2007: 9
Bachelor 2006: 1103
Master 2006: 166
Doctorate 2006: 0
Doctorate 2008: 25
Elementary Education Program Availability in Miramar, Florida
Miramar schools offer a total of 21 programs in elementary education. Of these programs, approximately 57.1% are programs at the bachelor's level. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the masters level and the doctoral level.
Certificate: 2
Bachelor: 12
Doctorate: 1
12 Nearby Matching Schools
Average Math SAT
Average Verbal SAT
Average ACT Score
Early Childhood Education Schools in Miramar, Florida
On average, 155 students graduate from early childhood education programs in Miramar, FL each year. This accounts for 26% of early childhood education students who schools in the state of Florida graduate. 100 students graduated with certificates in early childhood education. Early Childhood Education Schools in Miramar, Florida
Educational Leadership Schools in Miramar, Florida
368 students graduated with educational leadership certificates. 954 students graduated with a master's level educational leadership degree. 292 students graduated with an educational leadership degree at the doctorate level. Educational Leadership Schools in Miramar, Florida
ESL Schools in Miramar, Florida
The number of students who graduated with ESL degrees rose by around 14% from 2008 to 2010. The number of graduate students dropped by 36 students. The number of students which certificate programs graduate rose by 124 students. ESL Schools in Miramar, Florida
Special Education Schools in Miramar, Florida
The number of students who graduated with special education degrees rose by around 21.1% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students rose by eight students. The number of students which certificate programs graduate rose by 106 students. Special Education Schools in Miramar, Florida
Teaching Schools in Miramar, Florida
1,249 students graduated with teaching certificates. 13 students graduated with a degree in teaching at the associate's level. 1,084 students graduated with a bachelor's level degree in teaching. Teaching Schools in Miramar, Florida
Visual Communications Schools in Miramar, Florida
The number of students who graduated with visual communications degrees increased by approximately 28.6% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students climbed by seven students. The number of students which certificate programs graduate increased by eight students. Visual Communications Schools in Miramar, Florida
Nearby Cities Offering Elementary Education
Elementary Education Schools in Jupiter, Florida
Schools in Jupiter, FL offer bachelors degrees and masters degrees for students pursing elementary education. 450 students graduated with a degree in elementary education at the bachelor's level. 18 students graduated with a master's level degree in elementary education. Elementary Education Schools in Jupiter, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Tallahassee, Florida
198 students graduated with a bachelor's level degree in elementary education. 17 students graduated with an elementary education degree at the master's level. The number of students who graduated with elementary education degrees decreased by approximately 32% from 2008 to 2010. Elementary Education Schools in Tallahassee, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Pembroke Pines, Florida
There are 12 schools located around Pembroke Pines, FL offering elementary education programs. In 2010, 953 students graduated with degrees from Pembroke Pines elementary education schools. 868 of all these students graduated with bachelors degrees. Elementary Education Schools in Pembroke Pines, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Pompano Beach, Florida
On average, 1,077 students graduate from programs in Pompano Beach, FL in elementary education each year. This accounts for close to 27% of elementary education students who Florida schools graduate. Ten students graduated with elementary education certificates. Elementary Education Schools in Pompano Beach, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Ormond Beach, Florida
623 students graduate from programs in Ormond Beach, FL in elementary education, on average, each year. This accounts for 18% of elementary education students who schools in the state of Florida graduate. 632 students graduated with an elementary education degree at the bachelor's level. Elementary Education Schools in Ormond Beach, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Port Orange, Florida
There are five schools located near Port Orange, FL offering elementary education programs. In 2010, 654 students graduated with degrees from Port Orange elementary education schools. 607 of all these students graduated with bachelors degrees. Elementary Education Schools in Port Orange, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Boca Raton, Florida
There are 14 schools located by Boca Raton, FL offering elementary education programs. In 2010, 972 students graduated with degrees from Boca Raton elementary education schools. 887 of all these students graduated with bachelors degrees. Elementary Education Schools in Boca Raton, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Kissimmee, Florida
The number of students who graduated with elementary education degrees went up by around 26.6% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students climbed by 157 students. The number of graduate students increased by 15 students. Elementary Education Schools in Kissimmee, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville schools offer bachelors degrees and masters degrees in elementary education. 225 students graduated with a degree in elementary education at the bachelor's level. 19 students graduated with an elementary education degree at the master's level. Elementary Education Schools in Jacksonville, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Port St. Lucie, Florida
23 students graduate from programs in Port St. Lucie, FL in elementary education, on average, every year. 19 students graduated with an elementary education degree at the bachelor's level in 2010. Two elementary education schools are in Port St. Lucie. Elementary Education Schools in Port St. Lucie, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Tampa, Florida
There are 12 schools near Tampa, FL offering elementary education programs. 994 students graduated from programs at Tampa elementary education schools in 2010. 917 of all these students graduated with bachelors degrees. Elementary Education Schools in Tampa, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Wellington, Florida
Eight elementary education schools are in Wellington, FL. Seven schools are private. One school is public. Elementary Education Schools in Wellington, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Bonita Springs, Florida
The number of students who graduated with elementary education degrees climbed by close to 14.6% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students increased by 20 students. The number of graduate students went down by two students. Elementary Education Schools in Bonita Springs, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Miami Beach, Florida
Ten students graduated with elementary education certificates. 868 students graduated with a bachelor's level elementary education degree. 75 students graduated with an elementary education degree at the master's level. Elementary Education Schools in Miami Beach, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Hialeah, Florida
Hialeah schools offer certificates, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and doctoral degrees for elementary education students. Ten students graduated with elementary education certificates. 868 students graduated with a bachelor's level degree in elementary education. Elementary Education Schools in Hialeah, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Dunedin, Florida
The number of students who graduated with elementary education degrees went up by 2.9% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students increased by 45 students. The number of graduate students dropped by 21 students. Elementary Education Schools in Dunedin, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Sanford, Florida
Five elementary education schools are in Sanford, FL. Four schools are private. One school is public. Elementary Education Schools in Sanford, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Sunrise, Florida
The number of students who graduated with degrees in elementary education decreased by approximately 18.2% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students decreased by 157 students. The number of students which certificate programs graduate went up by seven students. Elementary Education Schools in Sunrise, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Daytona Beach, Florida
Daytona Beach schools offer a total of seven programs in elementary education. Of these programs, close to 71.4% are bachelor's level programs. The remaining programs are degrees at the masters level. Elementary Education Schools in Daytona Beach, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Boynton Beach, Florida
Elementary education schools in Boynton Beach, FL offer certificates, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and doctoral degrees. Ten students graduated with elementary education certificates. 615 students graduated with a bachelor's level degree in elementary education. Elementary Education Schools in Boynton Beach, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Plantation, Florida
Plantation schools offer a total of 22 elementary education programs. Of these programs, approximately 59.1% are programs at the bachelor's level. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the masters level and the doctoral level. Elementary Education Schools in Plantation, Florida
Average tuition for elementary education programs is $3,504. The highest tuition for elementary education programs is at the University of West Florida. The highest tuition for training in elementary education is $4,154 every year. Elementary Education Schools in Pensacola, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Hollywood, Florida
Schools in Hollywood, FL offer a total of 22 programs in elementary education. Of these programs, approximately 59.1% are bachelor's level programs. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the masters level and the doctoral level. Elementary Education Schools in Hollywood, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Hallandale Beach, Florida
Hallandale Beach elementary education schools offer certificates, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and doctoral degrees. Ten students graduated with elementary education certificates. 868 students graduated with a degree in elementary education at the bachelor's level. Elementary Education Schools in Hallandale Beach, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Cape Coral, Florida
Average tuition for elementary education programs is $4,146. The highest tuition for elementary education programs is at Florida Gulf Coast University. The highest tuition for training in elementary education is $4,991 every year. Elementary Education Schools in Cape Coral, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in St. Petersburg, Florida
On average, 947 students graduate from programs in St. Petersburg, FL in elementary education every year. This accounts for approximately 27% of elementary education students who Florida schools graduate. 917 students graduated with a bachelor's level elementary education degree. Elementary Education Schools in St. Petersburg, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in North Miami Beach, Florida
Ten students graduated with elementary education certificates. 868 students graduated with a bachelor's level elementary education degree. 75 students graduated with an elementary education degree at the master's level. Elementary Education Schools in North Miami Beach, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Palm Coast, Florida
In 2010, 69 students graduated with a bachelor's level degree in elementary education. The number of students who graduated with elementary education degrees dropped by 8% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students went down by six students. Elementary Education Schools in Palm Coast, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Delray Beach, Florida
Average tuition for elementary education programs is $18,411. The highest tuition for elementary education programs is at Lynn University. The highest tuition for elementary education training is $30,900 per year. Elementary Education Schools in Delray Beach, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Largo, Florida
837 students graduate from elementary education programs in Largo, FL, on average, every year. This accounts for approximately 23% of elementary education students who Florida schools graduate. 789 students graduated with a degree in elementary education at the bachelor's level. Elementary Education Schools in Largo, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Fort Pierce, Florida
The number of students who graduated with degrees in elementary education fell by approximately 40% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students went down by two students. Hobe Sound Bible College offers a total of one program in elementary education. Elementary Education Schools in Fort Pierce, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Weston, Florida
On average, 1,077 students graduate from elementary education programs in Weston, FL per year. This accounts for close to 27% of elementary education students who Florida schools graduate. Ten students graduated with certificates in elementary education. Elementary Education Schools in Weston, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Lake Worth, Florida
Lake Worth elementary education schools offer certificates, bachelors degrees, and masters degrees. Five students graduated with certificates in elementary education. 573 students graduated with an elementary education degree at the bachelor's level. Elementary Education Schools in Lake Worth, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Riviera Beach, Florida
On average, 662 students graduate from elementary education programs in Riviera Beach, FL per year. This accounts for close to 17% of students who Florida schools graduate from elementary education programs. Five students graduated with elementary education certificates. Elementary Education Schools in Riviera Beach, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Gainesville, Florida
The University of Florida is a public school. Average tuition for programs in elementary education at this university is $5,044. On average, public tuition at elementary education schools in the state of Florida is $4,161. Elementary Education Schools in Gainesville, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Margate, Florida
1,077 students graduate from elementary education programs in Margate, FL, on average, every year. This accounts for approximately 27% of elementary education students who Florida schools graduate. Ten students graduated with certificates in elementary education. Elementary Education Schools in Margate, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Coral Springs, Florida
Ten students graduated with certificates in elementary education. 884 students graduated with a degree in elementary education at the bachelor's level. 75 students graduated with an elementary education degree at the master's level. Elementary Education Schools in Coral Springs, Florida
The number of students who graduated with degrees in elementary education decreased by close to 17.8% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students went down by 151 students. The number of students which certificate programs graduate climbed by seven students. Elementary Education Schools in Miramar, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Apopka, Florida
The number of students who graduated with degrees in elementary education increased by about 16.8% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students increased by 96 students. The number of graduate students decreased by two students. Elementary Education Schools in Apopka, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in North Lauderdale, Florida
There are 13 schools conveniently located near North Lauderdale, FL offering elementary education programs. 969 students graduated from programs at North Lauderdale elementary education schools in 2010. 884 of all these students graduated with bachelors degrees. Elementary Education Schools in North Lauderdale, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Coral Gables, Florida
There are 12 schools located by Coral Gables, FL offering elementary education programs. In 2010, 953 students graduated with degrees from Coral Gables elementary education schools. 868 of all these students graduated with bachelors degrees. Elementary Education Schools in Coral Gables, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Orlando, Florida
Seven elementary education schools are in Orlando, FL. Five schools are private. Two schools are public. Elementary Education Schools in Orlando, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Ocala, Florida
The number of students who graduated with elementary education degrees fell by 0.3% from 2008 to 2010. In particular, the number of undergraduate students went down by 21 students. The number of graduate students increased by 20 students. Elementary Education Schools in Ocala, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Deltona, Florida
Deltona schools offer a total of seven programs in elementary education. Of these programs, about 71.4% are bachelor's level programs. The remaining programs are degrees at the masters level. Elementary Education Schools in Deltona, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Davie, Florida
Ten students graduated with elementary education certificates. 884 students graduated with a bachelor's level degree in elementary education. 75 students graduated with an elementary education degree at the master's level. Elementary Education Schools in Davie, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Coconut Creek, Florida
Coconut Creek schools offer a total of 22 programs in elementary education. Of these programs, about 59.1% are programs at the bachelor's level. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the masters level and the doctoral level. Elementary Education Schools in Coconut Creek, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in West Palm Beach, Florida
Five students graduated with elementary education certificates. 551 students graduated with a bachelor's level degree in elementary education. 62 students graduated with a degree in elementary education at the master's level. Elementary Education Schools in West Palm Beach, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in North Miami, Florida
North Miami schools offer certificates, bachelors degrees, masters degrees, and doctoral degrees for students pursing elementary education. Ten students graduated with certificates in elementary education. 868 students graduated with a bachelor's level degree in elementary education. Elementary Education Schools in North Miami, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Pinellas Park, Florida
11 elementary education schools are in Pinellas Park, FL. Seven schools are private. Four schools are public. Elementary Education Schools in Pinellas Park, Florida
Elementary Education Schools in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Schools in Fort Lauderdale, FL offer a total of 22 programs in elementary education. Of these programs, around 59.1% are bachelor's level programs. The remaining programs are certificates and degrees at the masters level and the doctoral level. Elementary Education Schools in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Around the country, there are about 3 schools offering online elementary education degrees, to Miramar students, at the following degree levels:
There are 4 online elementary education programs available at these online elementary education schools, through which Miramar students have the ability of earning elementary education credentials. In 2010, the number of online elementary education school graduates from these programs was 33. Online Elementary Education Schools
BA/Organizational Management - Elementary Education
MS in Education (for Existing Teachers Grades K-12)
MSE in Instructional Technology (K-12)
Bachelor of Science in Education / Elementary Education
M.Ed. in Elementary Education (Does not lead to initial teacher licensure)
PhD - K-12 Studies in Education
Jones International University
MEd in K-12 English as a Second Language Specialist: Bilingual Education Teacher Licensure
MEd in K-12 English as a Second Language Specialist: Bilingual Education
1. Barry University
2. Carlos Albizu University - Miami
2173 N.W. 99th Avenue
3. Florida Atlantic University
777 Glades Rd
Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991
4. Florida International University
11200 S. W. 8 Street
5. Florida Memorial University
15800 NW 42 Avenue
Miami Gardens, FL 33054-6199
6. Keiser University - Ft Lauderdale
7. Lynn University
8. Nova Southeastern University
3301 College Ave
9. Saint Thomas University
16401 NW 37th Ave
10. Trinity International University - Florida
8190 West State Road 84
11. The University of Miami
12. The University of Phoenix - South Florida
600 N. Pine Island Road Suite 500
Plantation, FL 33324-1393
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Early European Books
Early European Books traces the history of printing in Europe from its origins to 1700. It is mostly concerned with non-Anglophone materials: “Early European Books will be issued as a series of collections, each offering access to the early printed books of one or more major libraries. Its scope will encompass all works printed in Europe before 1701, regardless of language, together with any works in European languages printed further afield.
Early European Books provides:
Full-colour, high-resolution (400 ppi) facsimile images scanned directly from the original printed sources
Each item captured in its entirety, complete with its binding, edges, endpapers, blank pages, and any loose inserts, providing scholars with a wealth of information about the physical characteristics and provenance histories of the original artefacts
Detailed cataloguing, including standardization of variant author, city and printer names, thanks to a partnership with the CERL Thesaurus (www.cerl.org)
A thumbnail view which allows scanning the contents of the entire volume
Images displayed in a Flash viewer, allowing the user to zoom, pan and rotate the image
Searching for books, or specific pages, that feature illuminated lettering, marginalia, maps, portraits or other graphic features
Early European Books currently comprises:
Collection One: Over 2,500 volumes from the Danish Royal Library's National Collection including texts that profoundly influenced pan-European intellectual life.
Collection Two: More than 3,000 volumes from the National Central Library of Florence, including works of the major humanists and scholars of the Italian Renaissance, together with the almost complete output of the Aldine Press, which played a crucial role in the development of early European printing.
Collection Three: When completed in 2012, this will contain an estimated 15-20,000 volumes from four libraries, encompassing all major European languages and regions and including essential primary sources for the study of history, religion, science, literature, philosophy, art and music from the period, together with influential editions of classical and medieval authors and extremely rare examples of the art of early printing. Contains books digitised at the National Central Library of Florence, The National Library of the Netherlands, The Wellcome Library (London) and the Danish Royal Library.”
Only selected content is available for free. The collections included -and to be included in EEB- are part of a commercial subscription provided by Proquest & Chadwyck-Healy. Single collections are freely accessible though within the country where Proquest made agreements with local national libraries. This means, for example, that Collection Two and the Italian part of Collection 3 are free when accessing Early European Books from Italy because these collections were digitized under an agreement with the National Library of Italy in Florence.
Wednesday, 13 June 2012 - 2:32pm
Select ratingGive Early European Books 1/5Give Early European Books 2/5Give Early European Books 3/5Give Early European Books 4/5Give Early European Books 5/5
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Professor Christopher Dobson
University of Cambridge, UK
Professor Chris Dobson received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1976, having worked on the application of chemical and physical techniques to probe the structures and dynamics of biological molecules, particularly proteins.
After a short period as a Research Fellow he moved to Harvard University as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and was also a Visiting Scientist at MIT. In 1980 he returned to the University of Oxford first as a Lecturer in Chemistry, and later as Professor of Chemistry. He then became the Director of the Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences.
In 2001 he moved to the University of Cambridge as John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Chemical and Structural Biology. In 2007 he was awarded the degree of ScD by the University and in the same year became Master of St John’s College, Cambridge.
Professor Dobson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1996 and of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2005. In 2007 he was elected to Honorary Foreign Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has also been awarded five honorary degrees in Science and Medicine.
He has received many awards during his career including the Stein and Moore (2003) and the Hans Neurath (2006) Awards of the Protein Society, and the Davy (2005) and Royal (2009) Medals of the Royal Society. In 2014 he received the Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and Biophysics from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Feltrinelli International Prize for Medicine from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome.
His research interests are focused on defining the way protein molecules fold up into the compact structures in which they function, or misfold to give rise to a series of degenerative human conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease and type II diabetes.
IHMRI is a registered charity, please support our research
UOW CRICOS Provider No: 00102E | © 2017 Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute
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Catch the Fire, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Denomination Independent
Mystery Worshipper: Ronnie
Church: Catch the Fire
Date of visit: Sunday, 6 October 2013, 10:30am
Their building near Pearson International Airport is their principal and largest venue. I would guess it is of mid-1960s construction and may have served at one time as a warehouse. In addition to the large central auditorium there are a coffee shop, bookstore, and various meeting rooms. On one side of the auditorium there are a large number of flags from various nations hanging from the ceiling. On the other is a mural of Noah's ark complete with creatures. There is an enormous stage front and centre of the auditorium that has an intricate lighting system such as what you'd find in a professional theatre. The stage is flanked by two enormous screens on which words for worship songs, along with images of those at the front, were projected.
Founded in 1987, they originally met in the home of the founding pastor's mother near the airport (hence their original name Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, which they changed in 2010 to reflect more accurately the many churches they have planted in Canada as well as internationally). Later they met in a school, and they acquired their present building in 1995. They call themselves a "global revival centre." Quoting from their website, their members "experience the fullness of God's love, the power of his Holy Spirit and his healing" in order to "equip you to receive everything he has for you" by means of "an ongoing program of schools, conferences, cell groups and much more." The revival movement that has come to be called the Toronto Blessing, characterised by ecstatic worship including falling in the Spirit, speaking in tongues, "holy laughter", shaking, crying, etc., was said to have had its start here in 1994. They are a member of the Partners in Harvest family of churches.
They are located on Attwell Drive near Highways 401, 409 and 427, very near the airport. The area is strictly commercial; there is no residential housing nearby, although there are several hotels and a Seventh Day Adventist church.
Steve Long, senior leader, led the service. There were several guest speakers, including John Bootsma, airport lead campus pastor; Donna Holbrook, Canadian director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, a non-denominational faith ministry; Majed El Shafie, a human rights advocate and founder of One Free World International, a group that advocates for religious minorities globally; Martin Forget, a member of the Conservative Party of Canada; Aubrey Eisenberg, of B'nai Brith International, the well-known worldwide Jewish community service organization that is a leader in the fight against antisemitism and anti-Israel bias; DJ Schneeweiss, Consul General of Israel in Toronto; and Mark Adler, MP for York Centre.
Sunday Morning Worship: A Day of Prayer for Peace for Jerusalem. This is an event that was begun in 2004 by two Pentecostal evangelists and is celebrated around the world each year on a date in October to coincide with the Jewish high holy days.
The large auditorium seats roughly 2000 people and it was about three-fifths full. I was seated about half way between the front and back of the auditorium, perhaps 60 metres from the stage.
Yes. I was welcomed as I entered the auditorium by a lady with a beautiful smile. She asked if I was visiting and handed me a bulletin. Part way through the service we were asked to shake hands with a couple of neighbours. I did and discovered that the people seated directly in front of us had travelled from a community even farther away than the 48kms we had travelled to attend this church. But even more astonishingly, they told us that this is their home church and that they make the long trek on a weekly basis.
We were seated on waiting room style chairs that, while they had no arms, had a little bit of extra cushioning in them. Unfortunately the little bit extra was not enough as the clock began to advance well into the second hour.
It was very noisy. The rock worship band, which seemed to consist mostly of a very loud drum, was hammering away as we entered the auditorium. A young man was singing loudly over the microphone and people were talking to each other in anything but muted voices.
"Good morning, one and all, and welcome to morning worship."
None. All worship songs were projected onto the two giant screens.
Guitars, bass, tambourine and drums were the instruments I could hear. I was not near enough the front to see if there were others. They were all played very loudly loud enough that it was difficult to hear many people singing. Some just gave up and let the band "perform."
While I thought the band very good indeed, and obviously enthusiastic about their work, the most distracting thing was the volume at which the music was played. It didn't leave a lot of room for corporate worship, as the worship team just seemed to take over the sound in the building. The twelve or so minutes that were allotted to the repetitive singing of each song was a little much for me as well. Another really distracting thing was the incessant chatter during the worship service. It was especially disturbing when some continued to talk with one another during prayer. Another horrible feature of the room was that there was a large, tall platform that housed the video and sound equipment; this occupied pretty much the middle of the auditorium. I could not understand why it was not much closer to the stage below eye level of the congregation.
The worship was in a rock style: the pieces included (by words of first line) "You are the everlasting God", "Christ cornerstone", "Forever I'll be for you", and "Up from the ashes." Although unfamiliar initially, they were all very pleasing and singable. However, after singing each at least 10 times they became a little too familiar. The Canadian National Anthem as well as the Israeli National Anthem were sung. The worship also included a dancer who swirled flags around as well as an artist who produced paintings on the stage while the singing was taking place.
Collectively, over one hour.
10 – The guests all spoke in turn, and all were excellent. Majed El Shafie's talk on human rights with regard to religious persecution was especially outstanding and was peppered with passion, compassion and great humour. The Israeli consul general also spoke very well.
The talks centred on Israel and the case for supporting Israel.
The talks by Majed El Shafie and DJ Schneeweiss were thoughtful and thought-provoking. The friendliness of those who spoke to us was wonderful as well.
The chatter that occurred during prayer time and the band drowning out other people's voices.
Mr Ronnie stopped off at the coffee bar, but I didn't. After two hours and thirteen minutes I'd had enough of sitting, I'm afraid. I left. I did notice, though, that they provided visitors with a gift package consisting of a book called Grace and Forgiveness written by the founding pastors, a booklet outlining services and groups of the church, and a card to fill in and turn into them should you desire further contact all packaged in a pretty red bag. A nice touch, I thought.
Mr Ronnie, who loves a strong cup of coffee, thought this coffee awful. There were cookies for sale, but he didn't buy any.
7 – This service was, I expect, outside the norm. I don't know how likely these special guests are to return for other services. The volume of the band was overwhelming, and that would make me feel like not going much.
Yes. The speakers were wonderful and it was fantastic to learn about more organisations that are fighting against persecution and hatred.
The wonderful talk of Majed El Shafie and learning more about his organisation, One Free World.
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Select other Georgia State Panthers Benlevi, Malik Chism, Matt Clerkley, Chris Ivery, Kavonte Linder, Josh Mitchell, Devin Phillips, Nelson Simonds, D'Marcus Thomas, Jeff Tyson, Jordan Wall, James Williams, Kane Wilson, Damon Georgia State Panthers
James Wall
Team: Georgia State Panthers Height: 6-8 Born: 10/12/1999
Class-Eligibility: Fr-Fr Weight: 190 Hometown: Canton, GA
18-19 GaSt 7 0 1.6 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.4 - - .000
Career 7 0 1.6 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.4 - - .000
18-19 GaSt 7 0 11 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 1 0 0 0 1 3 0
11/21 UGa W 91-67 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
12/1 @Lib L 52-78 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
12/12 Chat W 95-88 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
12/29 MidGeo W 117-69 5 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
2/2 GaSo W 81-72 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2/28 ArkSt W 76-60 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0
3/17 Tx-Ar W 73-64 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
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Edna Simpson
Obituaries, News
I would like to take this opportunity to note the passing of two of SORM's founding members. On December 5, 2014, Edna Simpson passed away. Edna came to Canada as a war bride having met Doug while they both worked on radar, serving in the RAF. In later years, she became very involved in the War Brides organisation and could be seen at events singing, “Till we meet again” with fellow war brides. More recently, Horace "Red" Macaulay passed away on April 8, 2015. Red had a Distinguished Military Service during World War II as a pioneer in radar training and maintenance at Mt Allison University, NB and overseas with the RAF and 406 Squadron of the RCAF. Post-war service in the military included many technical assignments with NORAD radar systems and with NATO as the Wing Telecommunications Officer at Zweibrucken, West Germany. Both Edna and Red contributed significantly to SORM's permanent collection through artefact donations, photographs, reference material, and interviews. Their presence will be sorely missed.
Tagged: Memorium, obituary, SoRM, RCAF, Red Macaulay, Edna Simpson, veterans
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Will Merkel follow in Trump’s footsteps?
Burhanettin Duran Posted On August 23, 2017
German politicians have no intention of ending the ongoing spat with Turkey. By claiming that “economic pressure” was working, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel undermined Turkey’s efforts to reduce tensions and took the crisis to a whole new level. Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s call for Turkish citizens in Germany to not vote for “political parties that are hostile toward Turkey” revived the debate on meddling in Berlin’s internal affairs.
Openly supporting the “no” campaign ahead of the April 16 referendum in Turkey, German politicians could clearly stomach Berlin’s efforts to meddle in Ankara’s internal affairs. Just months later, they have expressed concern about Turkey’s “intervention” in German politics.
To be clear, the Turkish government has been trying to save its relationship with Berlin despite repeated efforts by Germany to fuel unrest in Turkey since the 2013 Gezi Park revolts. However, the Germans provided a safe haven to PKK and Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) members and refused to contribute to Turkey’s counter-terrorism efforts. As such, the disagreement between the two countries is much bigger than the upcoming general election in Germany.
Berlin wants to mount pressure on Ankara through various channels including EU institutions. As competition replaces cooperation in the relations between the two countries, which have strong trade and demographic ties, tensions are getting out of hand.
Turkish-German relations are suffering from a serious shift in perspective, as structural, strategic and economic issues are becoming increasingly personal. According to German politicians, the “Erdoğan question” lies at the heart of the ongoing crisis. But personifications of this sort threaten to inflict permanent damage to bilateral relations. This approach turned Turkey into “Germany’s other” in the eyes of German citizens. More importantly, the anti-Erdoğan campaign in the German media and politics could undermine the country’s political culture.
The most recent developments in Charlottesville established just how fragile Western democracies actually are. What happened didn’t just showcase the violent tendencies of extremists, racists and neo-Nazis. At the same time, it became clear that the rage of White America had reached a frightening new level.
As Kadir Üstün recently pointed out, American democracy could face a crisis of government unless U.S. President Donald Trump finds a way to draw a thick line between the white population’s anger toward the system and racism. Charlottesville shows us that problems that a superpower could easily handle (i.e. the Daesh threat, minorities and immigration) politicized the whites beyond the limits of populism and turned this tension into a fault line.
In my opinion, German Chancellor Angela Merkel needs to learn certain lessons from Charlottesville. Mrs. Merkel, who lays claim to the leadership of the free world in the face of Mr. Trump’s populism, could be following in his footsteps without even knowing it. Clearly, she hasn’t been promoting populism and xenophobia openly. But Mrs. Merkel, Mr. Gabriel and others have been planting the seeds of anger among Germans against Muslims and Turks by fueling anti-Erdoğanism. For the sake of teaching Mr. Erdoğan a lesson, she has been creating an environment of which white supremacists – or, to call them what they really are, neo-Nazis — among her people could take advantage. Needless to say, the idea of ‘Islamist terror’ and ‘the immigration threat’ are much more popular in Europe than the United States. The Turks – Europe’s most integrated and least radicalized community — are being alienated by European leaders themselves.
The new wave of racism and neo-Nazism could put Mrs. Merkel, who claims to represent liberal values, in a difficult position. To be clear, the German economy’s strength won’t be able to save her country from that wave. Need I remind anyone that the German democracy is particularly fragile when it comes to xenophobia, Islamophobia and racism?
This article was first published on Daily Sabah on August 23, 2017.
bduran@setav.org
Obama's broken promises continue to haunt Turkish-US relations
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Archive For The “Gin and Tonic” Category
Lehigh at New Hampshire Playoff Preview: The Granite State’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams
By LFN | November 24, 2016
“The Engineer football team once again showed their supremacy over the Yankee Conference leaders by defeating the University of New Hampshire (UNH) Wildcats, 16-3,” read the October 26th edition of The Brown and White in 1979.
LB Jim McCormick intercepted a UNH pass early in the game, and returned it to the Wildcat 4, setting up an early touchdown. After that, the Engineer defense would take over, crushing UNH’s offense the rest of the way.
That would be the last time Lehigh has won at Cowell Stadium – 1979, a year where Lehigh was one of four teams in the I-AA playoffs and made it to the championship, ultimately falling to Eastern Kentucky in the finals.
So much has changed since then. The I-AA playoffs have been renamed the FCS playoffs, and not have 24 teams instead of 4. The Yankee Conference essentially was renamed to the Atlantic 10 Football Conference and now the CAA football conference, morphing from a Northeastern-based conference to one whose center of gravity is Virginia. New Hampshire went from a championship contender to a perennial FCS playoff powerhouse, seemingly guaranteed a slot in the playoffs every year.
But what hasn’t changed much for Lehigh over the course of these last thirty-plus years is that Cowell Stadium has been Lehigh’s boulevard of broken dreams. The Mountain Hawks beat UNH in Bethlehem in 2013, it is true. But up in the Granite State, it’s been a different story. Since that epic 1979 win, Lehigh has been 0-7 up there, and not one of the games have been close.
Andy Coen, CAA, DOTW, FCS, Game Preview, Gin and Tonic, Laquan Lambert, Lehigh Football, New Hampshire, Playoffs
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Social Issues, Theology
the pitfalls of the middle ground
I’ve been hesitant to write about this particular issue because it is, in part, a response to the church I attended with my partner for almost two years. What I’m going to write about today is the single biggest reason why we left that church, and one of the more frustrating things I’ve experienced in other Christian communities since. I haven’t wanted to write about this because I still value my relationships with people who attend, serve, and lead at this church, but I now believe this is a significant, wide-spread problem worth addressing.
First, some background.
I’d been attending for a long time when Handsome suggested that we go to the “Getting to Know Us” session held after the later Sunday service. Most churches have something like it– a way for new people to ask questions and get a feel for the beliefs and mission of the congregation. I wasn’t really keen on going– I felt that I was already familiar with what they’d present, and plus, we were friends with elders and pastors so if I had a question I could just ask them.
Eventually, though, we went, and a woman asked the person directing the session– one of the senior pastors– what their stance was on women in leadership. I perked up, because I wasn’t really sure myself, even though I’d been attending for a while. The pastor responded that women could serve as junior pastors (read: youth pastor, children’s pastor) and fill any other serving or staff position, but they could not be an executive/senior pastor or an elder. When she asked him why, his response was that forbidding women from being an elder or pastor was the “biblical” position, but that the leadership had decided to “take the middle ground” on other leadership positions.
I was grinding my teeth for the rest of the day. When I confronted another elder about what he’d said, the elder explained that the pastor should not have said that his opinion was “biblical,” and that taking a strong stance on anything was anathema to the vision of the church. They worked hard at creating an “open” atmosphere where disagreement is “welcomed,” that the elders did their best to guide the church by the motto “in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
For a while, this was a position I liked. I was heartily sick of churches proclaiming that they’d discovered the One and Only Correct Theology and Way of Living, so being at this church was like a breath of fresh air.
Except, after two years, it became increasingly obvious that this church was not actually open and disagreement was not actually welcomed. Gay people were brutally condemned from the pulpit like clockwork every year, women who’d had sex were called “dirty shoes” and “used toothbrushes,” the pastor made jokes about abusing week-old infants, and complementarian messages about marriage and leadership were intrinsically endorsed (a woman could “speak” but they always said something about being “spiritually covered,” all the marriage sermons were complementarian, and the married small groups all used Captivating/Wild at Heart or other, similar books).
Anytime I raised a concern about one of these things, the same exact thing happened: the leadership would circle the wagons, defend their positions and protect the pastor from any criticism whatsoever. On one occasion, after the pastor had victim-blamed abused women for the third week in a row, my partner confronted him after the service. The pastor’s response: that “real attenders would know what he meant.” To my partner, who had served on the Sound Team, the Pit Crew, and as small group leader for three fucking years. He’d be at church at 5 or 6 am every single Sunday, and yet was not considered a “real attender” by this man.
We tried to stick it out for another six months after these problems really started rankling us, but it became crystal clear that the staff was not interested in feedback or criticism. We tried to convince various pastors and elders that their “non-position” on women in leadership was actually a position, but they didn’t take us seriously. They were invested in their “middle ground” and that was that.
A year after we left, this came through my news feed:
A pastor friend of mine asked a question: do churches that become LGBT affirming see growth in numbers or decline in numbers? As a church planter and someone reading about being affirming this is important to him.
I was instantly seeing red, and suddenly, something crystallized for me.
The “middle ground” is a way for people who don’t really want to admit to being sexist or homophobic bigots to look and feel like they’re really Nice Christians™. The church we attended didn’t want to admit that their position is misogynistic, and they used “Third Way” and “Middle Ground” as a cover-up. This pastor friend-of-a-friend wasn’t genuinely interested in being affirming to LGBT people– he just wanted a popular, well-attended church and somehow sate his conscience while making bigots feel right at home.
See, this is what happens when you try to inhabit a supposed “middle ground,” when you try not to “take a position” on something that fucking matters like whether or not you’re anti-woman or anti-LGBT. Don’t want to take a position on exactly what is going on during Communion– sure, fine, whatever. Don’t want to get dogmatic about what exactly Revelation means? Have at it.
Think you can just skirt around patriarchy and homophobia? Not going to happen.
At the church we left, by “compromising” on women in leadership, the flashing-neon-sign of a message they’re sending their congregation is that being misogynistic is an acceptable position that can be supported by Scripture. By embracing a false “middle ground,” they are implicitly endorsing a view of the Bible that subjugates women while simultaneously telling us that women are not important enough to fight for– or even take a damn stance for.
This pastor fellow, if he decided to keep his mouth shut on being affirming (if, indeed, he actually is), is sending the same message: your homophobia and bigotry is welcome here. We will not confront your hate. Our “numbers” and “attendance” are more important to us than LGBT people.
Currently, this is also the reason why Handsome and I are not attending a traditional church (we do have our small group every week). The best I could absolutely hope for in this area is the local ELCA church where the pastor swears up and down that he’s affirming, but when I asked him what he’d do if a fellow congregant said something hateful to my face, he said “nothing.”
The “middle ground” is nothing more but a retreat into fear. It’s the concession that something else is more important to you than defending oppressed and marginalized people.
Photo by Ian Sane
complementarianismin essentials unitymiddle groundmisogynyThird Way
September 2, 2015 by SamanthaField
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a journey of unlearning
trickle-down cults
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Marijuana’s Growing Economy - Legalize It, Tax It.
With legalization spreading rapidly around the globe, the United States cannabis industry is only just beginning to prosper. Thirty states, and Washington, D.C., now allow cannabis to be sold for medicinal uses, and since the 2018 November elections recreational use is now legal in 10 states: Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia. The number of companies operating in the cannabis market has increased greatly over the past few years due to the high demand for both medical and recreational use. Producers are focused on growing their customer base through geographical expansion and by offering a larger selection of products. Products currently being offered include a variety of strains and extracts such as oils, tinctures, resins and consumables. As a result of the legalization in certain states, new businesses in this industry are seeking the services of CPAs to help guide them through the tax laws and state regulations. Cannabis, is classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance under the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and is subject to federal prosecution. Historically, the majority of cannabis is sold through illicit channels. To control this illegal market, state governments have started legalizing cannabis as a way to monitor the products that enter the supply chain and reap benefits through taxes collected on these products. As the cannabis industry has expanded rapidly with legalization, tax implications have become important considerations. With careful planning and the understanding of applicable state tax codes, cannabis entrepreneurs can take proactive steps to reduce their state tax liabilities.
There are many business categories in the cannabis industry:
Growers and farmers: Regulations and licensing requirements vary from state to state, require significant farming knowledge and a sizable initial investment (seed capital).
Testing facilities or laboratories: Cannabis testing laboratories providing a research and development platform that supports data management and research needs.
Retail stores: Dispensaries that sell cannabis products and related items to qualified customers.
Delivery or courier services: Flowers, edibles, pre-filled vaporizer pens, etc. ordered by qualified customers, can all be delivered to a consumer’s home, office or hotel by licensed and reputable courier service providers.
Manufacturers of devices used to consume: Pipes, water bongs, rolling papers, vaporizers, capsules and edibles – foods and drinks infused with cannabis.
Infused product manufacturers: Distillers, cooks or bakers of cannabis edibles, tinctures, oils, pens, vapes, sprays, suppositories and other types of infused products.
Software and online data management: Software for analytical testing of cannabis and cannabis-derived products such as flowers, concentrates, butters/waxes,then storing data retrieved with Laboratory Execution System and Scientific Data Management System, etc.
The cultivation, distribution and processing of Cannabis Sativa (Marijuana) currently remains illegal at a federal level. Cannabis is currently classified as a Schedule 1 restricted substance, with the Justice Department's Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) assigning it in the same legal status as narcotic drugs like heroin and LSD, yet in a more restrictive category than cocaine, which is Schedule 2. Even though a “cannabusiness” is illegal under Federal law, it remains obligated to pay Federal income tax on its taxable income, because Internal Revenue Code (IRC) § 61(a) does not differentiate between income acquired from legal sources and income acquired from illegal sources. The 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution authorized Congress to lay and collect taxes on income (regardless of a characterization of legal or illegal sources), and the Supreme Court of the U.S. has consistently held that income means gross income, not gross receipts. Section 162(a) of the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. § 162(a)), concerns deductions for business expenses. It is one of the most important provisions in the Code, because it is the most widely used authority for deductions. If an expense is not deductible, then Congress considers the cost to be a consumption expense. Section 162(a) requires six different elements in order to claim a deduction. It must be an ordinary (1), and necessary (2) expense (3), that was paid or incurred during the taxable year (4), in carrying on (5) a trade or business activity (6). These elements have been interpreted by the courts and administrative agencies to determine if an expenditure is deductible as a business expense.
Each of the states that have legalized marijuana businesses have their own unique set of rules, restrictions and regulations. It’s important for any cannabusiness to know the forms of legal entities and the income tax consequences of operating a marijuana business in that form. Each legal form or company entity has its own pros and cons.
Sole Proprietorship: A type of business entity that is owned and run by one individual and there is no legal distinction between the owner and the business.
General Partnership: A pass-through entity whose taxable income is determined and allocated to each of its partners in accordance with the partnership agreement and reportable by each on their income returns.
Limited Partnership: Like a general partnership with taxable income determined and allocated to each of its partners in accordance with the partnership agreement and reportable by each of them on their income returns. Family partnerships are a form of limited partnerships that have been used for certain income and estate tax planning purposes.
Corporation: Legal entity created under state laws and designed to establish the business as a separate legal entity having its own privileges and liabilities distinct from those of its shareholders.
Limited Liability Company (LLC): An unincorporated business of one or more persons who have limited liability for the contractual obligations and other liabilities of the business. All states have limited liability company laws that govern the formation and operation of an LLC.
Once establishing an entity, marijuana businesses can then begin to explore the tax benefits their state may offer as well as getting to know how the R&D tax credit can benefit them come tax season.
http://taxpointadvisors.com/blog/view/state-rd-tax-credits-can-help-current-and-future-growth-in-the-cannabis-ind
While it is a challenging time for over 28,000 cannabusinesses across the United States, it’s an even more daunting task to understand both Federal and state income tax laws and state and local government regulations. But with the the help of their CPAs and Tax Point Advisors’ National Cannabis Industry Specialization Practice, cannabis businesses across the U.S. have substantial support available to manage and mitigate their income tax liabilities.
Tax Point Advisors provides R&D tax credit study services and other specialty tax services to CPA firms and their clients throughout the U.S. To learn more about R&D tax credits from the experts at Tax Point Advisors, please call us at (800) 260-4138 or please leave us a message below.
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Olympics: Ice Dancing
How amazing was the ice dancing competition yesterday night? Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won the gold medal! I’m kind of biased being Canadian, but I think overall it was quite a show. A lot of them performed quite well.
One of the things I like about ice dancing is that it is a competition, but with a fun twist… and drama.
Virtue and Moir became the first Canadians to win the Olympic gold medal in ice dance. Actually, not only was it a first for Canadians but also for anybody in North America.
Other first for Virtue and Mori: they are the first ice dancing pair to win in their first Olympics and they are the youngest pair to win in the Olympics ice dancing competition.
Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White came in second and the Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalincame in third. It was only the third time since ice dance became an Olympic sport in 1976 that either the Russians or Soviets did not win the gold medal in the ice dancing competition.
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Home / Biography / MAJOR GARRETT NET WORTH, BIO, TWITTER, FAMILY
MAJOR GARRETT NET WORTH, BIO, TWITTER, FAMILY
Published Date 30th Jan. 2017, 12:25 pm Update Date: April 4th, 2017 05:56 am
Major Elliott Garrett
Net Worth:
Bachelor of Journalism and a Bachelor of Science in Political Science
American journalist, Major Garrett net worth has been accumulated through his work as a Chief White House Correspondent with CBS News and Correspondent at Large with National Journal. Major Garrett is known best for his work with Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, and CBS News. Major Garrett bio shows that he has appeared in shows like America Live with Megyn Kelly, Face the Nation, National Journal, and more.
Major Garrett is a well-known American journalist who is known best for his work in the 2004 and the 2008 presidential election. Major Garrett net worth has been accumulated through his work in various shows and magazines like National Journal, Face the Nation, America Live with Megyn Kelly, Houston Post, Las Vegas Review-Journal, The Washington Times, U.S. News & World Report, and more.
The details of Major Garrett net worth, twitter account, and more can be found on several social media sites that are continuously observed by his fans all around the world. Major Garrett twitter account has details of his day to day life.
Major Elliott Garrett was born on August 24, 1962, in San Diego, California. Garrett is of American nationality and of white ethnicity.
Early life & Childhood
Major Garrett went on to attend the University of Missouri. He soon graduated in 1984 with a Bachelor of Journalism and a Bachelor of Science in Political Science. While at the university he was also the member of Phi Gamma Delta.
Net Worth & Career
Major began his work as a journalist in 1990 when he went on to work for U.S. News & World Report as a senior editor and congressional correspondent. Soon, Garrett went on to work for The Washington Times as a congressional reporter. He then joined CNN in 2000 and worked in the White House team.
Garrett went on to become a general assignment reporter for Fox News in 2002. Major then went on to cover various political events in White House for Houston Post, Las Vegas Review-Journal, and Amarillo Globe-News. He has also written articles for The Weekly Standard, Washington Monthly, and Mother Jones.
Major Garrett has also written various articles for numerous magazines like The Weekly Standard, Washington Monthly, and Mother Jones. Soon, he went on to work for the Fox News Channel as the senior White House correspondent. Garrett went on to work for National Journal. Garrett began working for MSNB as a guest commentator.
He is also known best for CBS’s Face the Nation. In 2012, he became the Chief White House Correspondent for CBS News. Garrett has come into the limelight through his work in CBS in the contents like Iran Nuclear Deal where he asked Barak Obama about the four trapped in Iran.
Currently, Major Garret is the host of The Takeout Podcast which airs weekly. The podcast is related to politics, policy and pop culture. Major invites various guests at a Washington, D.C. restaurant for lunch and they talk about politics, sports, movies, and more.
Furthermore, Major Garrett has also been the author of many books. He published his first book, Common Cents in 1995. Garrett has furthermore written more books like The Enduring Revolution: How the Contract with America Continues to Shape the Nation, The Enduring Revolution: The Inside Story of the Republican Ascendancy and Why It Will Continue, and The Fifteen Biggest Lies in Politics.
According to some sources, Major Garrett net worth is estimated to be $ 3 million. Major Garrett net worth has been accumulated from his work in CBS, CNN, Fox network, and more. Major Garrett bio reveals that he has had a triumphant past in journalism. Major Garrett net worth has been high and rising from his remarkable work in the field of political journalism.
Girlfriend, Boyfriend, Spouse
Major Garrett got married to Julie Kirtz. The couple married in 1990 and has been together since. The couple has three children together. His wife, Julie is the Editorial Director at the Wakefield Research, in Washington D.C. They have already celebrated their 25th anniversary. The couple currently lives in Washington, D.C.
For his exceptional work in journalism, Major Garrett has been honored many times with many awards. Garrett has been nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy Award in 2013 for Outstanding Coverage of a Breaking News Story in a News Magazine for ‘Newtown’ and another in 2016 for Outstanding Coverage of a Breaking News Story in a News Magazine for ‘Paris under Attack’.
Major Garrett show has gained wide attention from his audience who love and praise him. Major Garrett twitter account has details of his triumphant career and his day to day events. The bio of the eminent and respected, Major Garrett can be found on various social media sites like Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, and more.
Tags: 1962, Major Elliott Garrett was born on August 24, MAJOR GARRETT facther, MAJOR GARRETT NET WORTH, mother wife
Was delusional on @DSmithShow @Mighty1090 3 Rule 5/4 catchers does not = 77 wins; may not = 65 @Padres @TakeoutPodcast still EXCELLENT, tho
— Major Garrett (@MajorCBS) April 2, 2017
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Opinion Cricket
Virat Kohli's relentless drive to be the best setting him apart from the rest
Ashish Peter 21/08/2018
Virat Kohli continues to touch new heights.
Virat Kohli conquers new frontiers with almost every passing series, but his performances in England finally bear testament to his true greatness.
The India skipper notched up his second Test ton of the series and 23rd overall on day three at Trent Bridge as he put his side in a commanding position.
The 29-year-old has well and truly banished his demons from the 2014 tour of the country where he mustered only 134 runs in 10 innings.
After his latest display at Trent Bridge, he now has 440 runs in six innings in the series at an average over 73. For reference, the second highest run-scorer in the series is England’s Jonny Bairstow with 206 runs while the next best Indian batsman is Hardik Pandya with 160 runs.
After the completion of the Trent Bridge Test, the India man is poised to once again overtake Australia’s Steve Smith and take the top spot in the ICC rankings for batsmen.
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Following India’s 2014 tour of England, question marks remained over Kohli’s Test credentials even though the world had started to accept his greatness in the limited-overs formats.
Since that series though, there has been a sea of change in Kohli’s approach in the five-day format. When the 2014 series ended, Kohli had six Test tons to his name from 29 matches. In comparison, Joe Root had five tons to his name from 22 matches at the same point.
Now, four years later, Kohli has notched up another 17 centuries in the 40 matches to follow. Root, meanwhile, has only been able to add eight more tons to his name in the 50 matches he has played since.
In this period, Kohli was the second highest run-getter behind Smith in India’s 2014-15 tour of Australia with 692 runs, the highest scorer in the side’s 2018 tour of South Africa with 292 runs and is on course to finish as the highest run-getter in England.
It is Kohli’s relentless drive to be the very best that has set him apart from the rest of the pack. Always seeking for ways to constantly improve himself and push new barriers, the batsman has left no stone unturned in his quest for greatness.
It all started with Kohli’s disappointing campaign for Royal Challengers Bangalore in the 2012 IPL. Bogged down by his own poor performance, the Delhi-born man drastically changed his training regime in order to become fitter.
“My training was horrible, I ate so bad, I was up until late, I was having a drink or two regularly. It was a horrible mindset. The season ended and I was so thankful it was over. I went home, came out of the shower one day and looked at myself in the mirror and said, you can’t look like this if you want to be a professional cricketer,” Kohli had told Telegraph India.
Kohli follows the most rigorous of fitness regimes.
Now, he is undoubtedly one of the fittest cricketers in the world and a supreme athlete.
In the 2014 series in England, his susceptibility around the off-stump was horribly exposed by James Anderson. That he looks much more assured in that area in the current series is another example of his willingness to constantly improve.
When he returned from England in 2014, Kohli conducted a one-on-one nets session with his idol Sachin Tendulkar in Mumbai in order to identify his flaws. He changed his batting stance and has reaped the rewards in the overseas tours to follow.
A full blooded rock star in coloured clothing, a meditating monk in whites.. Hope the generation of cricketers being inspired by @imVkohli observe his passion and commitment towards test cricket. You can tell he LOVES it.. and he’s the best in it ! #EngvInd #KingKohli
— Jatin Sapru (@jatinsapru) August 20, 2018
There is nothing more gratifying as a fan than to see a sportsman with extreme dedication to his craft reap the fruits of his labour. That is exactly what Kohli is doing currently and we are indeed privileged to watch him as he continues his march to greatness.
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Hardik Pandya is no Kapil Dev but he can become the all-rounder India needs with time
Pandya is growing into his all-rounder's role for India.
Ever since the great Kapil Dev hung up his boots in 1994, India has been attempting to fill the void left by the prolific seaming all-rounder to no avail.
Over the years, attempts have been made to shoehorn the likes of Irfan Pathan, Sanjay Bangar and even Ajit Agarkar and Stuart Binny into the role but none of them have been able to give India the balance Kapil Dev provided.
Hence, ever since Hardik Pandya burst onto the international-stage after some exhilarating displays with both bat and ball in the IPL for Mumbai Indians, the comparisons with Dev have been rift and unending.
While his initial exploits came in limited-overs cricket, the 24-year-old’s ability to clear the boundary ropes with ease, athleticism on the field and the ability to bowl regularly above 140kmph has seen him being fast-tracked into the Test team as well.
In the two years or so since he made his India debut, the all-rounder has managed to divide opinions sharply and has earned his fair share of critics.
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Of late, those criticisms have been growing with the most scathing of them coming from West Indies great Michael Holding.
“I heard a mention, when I was working in South Africa: ‘he is the next Kapil Dev’. I ain’t going to tell anybody he’s not going to be the next Kapil Dev, but he is nowhere near there yet,” Holding told ESPNCricinfo.
While his abilities with the bat have never really been in question, it is Pandya’s bowling which has let him down at times. He came into the third Test between England and India at Trent Bridge with a bowling average of nearly 40 which is nothing to shout home about.
Pandya has shot back at this critics after his Trent Bridge display.
In the first Test at Edgbaston, Pandya was not even trusted to bowl a single over in England’s second innings. At Trent Bridge, he was only thrown the ball due to off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin having to leave the field with hip troubles.
What followed was one of the best spells of bowling by an India pacer in England. Within 29 balls, Pandya had picked up his maiden Test five-wicket haul as the hosts went on to lose 10 wickets in a session.
It wasn’t a lack of application from the batsmen that had gifted Pandya his five wickets, which included the likes of Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow and Chris Woakes. It was accurate swing bowling at a decent clip that wrecked the English batting line-up.
Pandya had England’s best batsmen in a tizzy.
In that one innings, Pandya looked head and shoulders above India’s frontline pacers; Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma. What worked for him was the fact that he was able to get the ball to move sharply both ways at will.
At the end of day two at Trent Bridge, Pandya said: “I never wanted to be Kapil Dev. Let me be Hardik Pandya, I’m good at being Hardik Pandya. I’ve come so far — playing 40 ODIs and 10 Tests — being Hardik and not Kapil Dev.”
Never one to shy away from speaking his mind, the all-rounder does make a very valid point.
For long, India’s obsession with finding the next Dev has seen players like Pathan wilt under the pressure before their careers took a nosedive.
Players in the all-rounder’s role have been put under the microscope constantly and have subsequently been found wanting more often than not.
The Trent Bridge Test is only the 10th of Pandya’s young career so far and nine of them have come away from home. Only Afghanistan’s maiden Test in June this year came at home, while the others have come in Sri Lanka, South Africa and now England.
What Pandya has shown over the course of these 10 Tests is an ability to make a big impact on certain occasions. With the bat, his sole Test ton in Pallekele and his 95-ball 93 in Cape Town come to mind.
With the ball, he has been largely inconsistent but his performances at Lord’s and now Trent Bridge reflect a growing maturity and understanding of his role.
In 2018, Pandya is only behind Virat Kohli among Indian batsmen with the most Test runs (298). That statistic is more a damning indictment of the failure of India’s specialist batsmen, but it does show that Pandya has not been slacking in his task.
One only has to look at the world’s current premier seaming all-rounder in Ben Stokes to judge Pandya’s contribution to the side. The Englishman’s batting average after 44 Tests (33.97) is not too far off from Pandya’s (31.73).
In the bowling department, Stokes averages a decent 33.57. After Pandya’s first inning heroics at Trent Bridge, his bowling average has climbed down all the way to 28.06.
It is true that Stokes has performed over a longer period of time with some memorable performances like his 198-ball 258 against South Africa at Cape Town along the way, but Pandya does have plenty of time on his side to morph into a more consistent all-rounder.
Pandya’s numbers are not too dissimilar to Stokes’.
Having grown up primarily on limited-overs cricket, Pandya has had to make the transition to red-ball cricket without any substantial first-class experience under his belt.
The all-rounder has only played 26 first-class matches in his career so far. By comparison, a 20-year-old Rishabh Pant who made his Test debut at Trent Bridge has already played 23.
Pandya has had to learn on the move in competitive Test matches and the signs are that he is getting better. What he has already proven is that he is a match-winner on his day who is capable of changing the complexion of the game in an instant.
He has his own strengths that he brings to the table and that is the reason Kohli and the team management have persisted with him despite the criticisms and inconsistencies.
As Pandya gains more experience, the consistency is bound to grow and India could yet have that all-rounder they so desperately desire.
For now, they should just let him be and wait for the finished product they envisage in the future.
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Dropping Dinesh Karthik for Rishab Pant at Trent Bridge would be the right move for India
Dinesh Karthik could be facing the axe at Trent Bridge.
Less than two days remain for the third Test between England and India to get underway and all the signs point towards young Rishabh Pant being handed the wicketkeeping gloves for the visitors at Trent Bridge.
While there is still no telling what team Virat Kohli will pick on the eve of the Test, a potential Test debut for Pant will come as a bitter pill to swallow for Dinesh Karthik.
Things had been looking up of late for Karthik as his heroic showings in the Nidahas T20 tri-series in Sri Lanka along with injury troubles for Wriddhiman Saha paved the way for his return to the Test squad after a gap of more than eight years.
His first innings in the five-day format since 2010 fetched him only four runs in Afghanistan’s inaugural Test but Saha’s long-term injury meant that Karthik was on the plane to England as first-choice wicketkeeper.
What has followed though in England, does not make pretty reading for the 33-year-old. Scores of 0, 20, 1 and 0 have ensued from the bat of Karthik while his glove work behind the stumps has almost bordered on the amateur.
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Karthik has struggled massively against the swinging ball.
Criticism have been directed at Karthik from many quarters but perhaps none of them have been as scathing as former skipper Sourav Ganguly’s.
“I think Rishabh Pant has to come into this side as Dinesh Karthik looks woefully out-of-form. I saw him (Karthik) in the nets and he couldn’t put bat to ball. I think a left-hander in the side will help the team and Pant isn’t scarred by India’s losses and he is also capable of changing the course of a game,” Ganguly said on Sky Sports following India’s innings loss at Lord’s in the second Test.
Karthik has not been the only Indian batsmen to have failed miserably in the Test series so far but given the fact that 20-year-old Pant has been breathing down his neck with some fine performances for India ‘A’ in their recent shadow tour of England, his position seems to be the most untenable of the lot.
Pant’s breakthrough came with a stupendous IPL campaign for the Delhi Daredevils where he blitzed 684 runs in 14 innings at an average greater than 35 and a strike-rate near 163.
While his game seems more suited to the limited-overs formats, he has since given ample evidence that he has what it takes to succeed at red-ball cricket.
In the two first-class matches that India ‘A’ played on their tour of England, Pant registered three half-centuries in his four innings including two against an England Lions attack containing the likes of Sam Curran and Jamie Porter.
Pant has shown he can succeed in red-ball cricket too.
His ability to translate his limited-overs form to first class cricket earned him glowing praise from India ‘A’ coach Rahul Dravid.
“Rishabh has shown he could bat differently. He has the temperament and skills to bat differently,” said Dravid. “He is always going to be an attacking player, but reading of the situation when one is playing red-ball cricket is required. We are glad he has been picked in the national team and I hope he takes this maturity and builds thereon,” Dravid had told ESPNCricinfo upon the completion of the tour.
At his age, Karthik was never going to be a long-term solution to India’s wicketkeeping hopes and when Saha does inevitably return, it will not be a surprise to see the Tamil Nadu man drop down the pecking order.
Given India’s extreme batting frailties at the moment, a quick-fire 50 from Pant batting at number seven could be gold dust for Virat Kohli and his men.
Such are the dire straits that India currently are in at the moment that a left-field move like bringing in Pant seems like the only viable solution to mend the batting woes.
It would be a tad unfair on Karthik given no other batsmen apart from Kohli have covered themselves in glory but Pant’s unorthodox approach to batting might just be the remedy to India’s current ailments.
Conventional Test batsmen like Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane have hardly been pulling up trees against the moving Duke ball. It might be time for India to finally throw caution to the wind as they look to salvage the series at Trent Bridge.
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Marla Stone was an actress throughout her childhood.
She was in every play in Elementary, Junior High and High School. Marla took all 21 units of Theater Arts required for a BA in her first year of college. “I was in all the plays throughout that first year of college. I dropped out of school and moved to Hollywood in the early 80’s with no family or financial support”. After a few B films and some B experiences Marla decided to go back to school, received a BA in Psychology and a Master’s in Social Work. There went her dreams of being a “Movie Star”.
After 17 years of being a Social Worker, and in her own private practice for 10 years, counseling everyone from housewives in Orange County to the Military Personnel, and their families, from Camp Pendleton, she decided to start acting again. Family and friends were surprised to say the least. “I was surprised also, since I thought I had washed that thought right out of my head!” Marla thought she had squelched any dreams of acting with doing social work. “I was surprised that as soon as I decided to retire from social work the first thing I did was sign up with ActorsAccess.com, and start submitting for parts.” She won a short film within a couple of weeks of submitting to Actors Access., and coming up this June, will play the role of a Mother of a young man who is desperate to enlist in the Iraq War. The film is called Not Without My Brothers, directed by Chris Ziegenhagel, about a young man wanting the permission of his mother to enlist prior to 18 years old. Marla says, "Playing the role of the mother will be meaningful, due to my involvement in counseling young men and women, who actually fought, and were traumatized in that war." She also is a new member of MCA-I OC/LA and enjoys the workshops, connections and networking.
So far Marla has done a short film, won two small parts in two feature films, and won a starring role in The Dixie Swim Club at the Newport Center Theater opening March 25th, 2011, and has a new role if a film starting in June. To top it off, this has happened in a matter of 4 months time! So, dreams really do come true, even if a little delayed.
OCS: What was the aha moment that told you to quit your profession after twenty years and return to acting?
Marla: I realized I wasn’t supposed to be a Social Worker anymore when I started to have difficulty with the boundaries of treating clients. I started to be too emotional and realized that I was overflowing with feelings and dreams about, not only my client’s lives, but my own life. I had concentrated on others for so long…. I had forgotten I was once so creative, that I had a book of poetry I had not finished, and that I loved acting and singing so much.
OCS: Can you relate a high and/or low moment since your return to acting?
Marla: The memory is not quite as sharp as it was when I was 20. Learning 300+ lines for a play has led to some doubt about my abilities, but there is nothing that beats being on a stage and working with other actresses and having that “moment” in the lights. After memorizing the lines, I realized that developing the character was so fun and exciting and that doing stage work is really a fabulous way to keep the mind exercised and ready to go. I had forgotten how invigorating acting is. Also doing a few feature films right off the bat, after not being in front of a camera for so long, definitely put a spark in my ol’ dreams.
OCS: I know you are accepting all types of work as any good actor does. Is there a special kind of role or roles you’d like to do over the next years? Stage or film.
Marla: Quite frankly the role is not as important as the meaning of the play or film. I have been thinking I could play anything from a murderess to a saint…as long as I know the production has a meaningful message, or that it is just wonderful and magical entertainment. I do not want to be a cougar in a hapless, meaningless production, so the audience’s minds can turn to mush. I know it may sound redundant but I want to do performances in productions that have a great and profound message, or something that takes the imagination to a different plane of existence.
OCS: What is the most important advice you would give to someone just entering or returning to acting?
Marla: Join a group like MCA-I where you will start to learn about the film and theater production aspects of the business. Joining a media group is all about educating yourself on the technical aspects of acting. The Networking opportunities help you catch the great energy of people that are already working in the world of entertainment. Also pay for an inexpensive service like Actor’s Access, and start submitting a picture and resume. It doesn’t even have to be a professional picture or a fabulous resume, at first. Just start…don’t talk about it….do it. The greatest thing about being an actor is you are either correct for the part or not….but you will be correct for a part at some time. Just keep auditioning or no one will know you exist. Don’t worry about having a talent agent, at first, since you can get parts all on your own via Actor’s Access or LA Talent. And by Gosh, if you can really act, get involved with community theater. STRUT your STUFF.
OCS: With all the competition and people that have been working at the craft for years ahead of you, what keeps you motivated to keep pursuing your dream of being a working actress?
Marla: I don’t think about the field of acting as a competition. I am purely happy doing what I can when I can do it. I am more apt to seek friendship, camaraderie, education, learning curves and fun, then bumping someone out for a role. Truly acting is only a part of wanting to be an actress. You cannot be an actress alone…it takes a whole crew and a village for an actor to act.
OCS: Do you worry about not being able to get over the hurdles of getting back into the business professionally and actually earning a living from acting.
Marla: No, because I have an education and other skills and talents. I would really not like to see people have a one track mind of becoming an actor, and be starving on the sidelines. It is very important, if you want to become an actor/actress full time, that you can support yourself through the process. The old “starving” actress thing is not fun. I’ve been there, when I was younger, and it usually turns out badly and without the success the person had intended for themselves.
OCS: Who has been the most inspirational person in your acting career?
Marla: I would have to say Robert Easton, the famous dialect coach. I studied with him for two years privately. He actually arranged an interview with Stella Adler so I could study with her privately as well, and Uta Hagen. One day I told him I was worried, that the audience would not like me, as I prepared for a production. He said Marla, 50% of the people will like you and 50% won’t, just go do it and love it! He basically said don’t worry about what people think! I think that is good advice. Find your own critic and work hard.
OCS: What was your favorite role and acting experience of the recent films you have completed?
Marla: Well, I had the wonderful experience of playing Peggy in Something Real & Good produced by Rebecca Green, who also helped produce Boys Don't Cry, and many other hit films, and working with Luke Rivett who directed the movie. My charcter is a quirky and sarcastic sales person that works at the airport. The film be going to the Sundance Festival this coming January and I will be attending. It is a wonderful comedy written by the late Erin Carroll.
You can keep up with Marla's career at her Facebook page and at her IMDB listing.
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AGAINST THE background of the developing crisis in the Irish economy, the Labour Party continues to posture as a party that fights in the interests of working people. At its recent national Conference, Party Leader Eamon Gilmore several times referred to "crony capitalism" which had brought the country to the "edge of disaster". He demanded an economy "where economic activity is primarily to serve the needs of people and where people are no longer slaves of the market".
The Labour Party now feels comfortable in naming capitalism and the market as responsible for the crisis because this is commonly referred to in the Irish and international media. However just as in that same media establishment, there is no question of the Labour Party identifying socialism as the solution to this crisis. In fact the Labour Party supports the same capitalist market but merely wants it a bit more regulated.
Labour – No Alternative
Posted by: Joe Higgins TD Apr 18, 2009
AGAINST THE background of the developing crisis in the Irish economy, the Labour Party continues to posture as a party that fights in the interests of working people. At its recent national Conference, Party Leader Eamon Gilmore several times referred to “crony capitalism” which had brought the country to the “edge of disaster”. He demanded an economy “where economic activity is primarily to serve the needs of people and where people are no longer slaves of the market”.
In fact the Labour Party is very much on board with the prescription of the Fianna Fail/Green Party Government for dragging themselves out of the disaster into which capitalist greed has plunged society. They are supporting cuts in public expenditure but try to cover this up by referring to them as “adjustments”. Labour tries to distinguish itself from the government by opposing the way it is implementing the policies of making working people pay for the crisis but not the principle.
The Labour Party claims to be opposed to the extent of the savage wage cuts inflicted on low and middle income public sector workers in the guise of a pension levy. But Eamon Gilmore continuously undermines any effective fight back by workers. Thus when the Civil and Public Services Union held a one day strike the Labour Party opposed it and Labour Deputies crossed the picket lines at Leinster House.
Gilmore also came out strongly against the proposed one day strike supposed to be organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions on 30 March. As a ploy he called on the Taoiseach to talk to the trade unions. Of course he knows that nothing will come of such talks but it was an excuse to undermine independent industrial action by workers.
The fact is that the Labour Party accepts the dictatorship of the capitalist market and intends to implement policies on that basis if they can get into government at the next election. Thus Eamon Gilmore said in interviews after their Conference that the “markets should be reassured” that the opposition in the Dail were taking such a “responsible” approach in the way they dealt with the crisis.
At the conference the Labour Party continued with the cynical fiction that it would contest the general election as an independent party. This allows the party not to take any responsibility for Fine Gael’s more right wing approach to the economy during the election campaign. But of course it is with Fine Gael that the Labour Party hopes to be in government after the election.
This means that Labour will jettison any policies that would be a stumbling block to such a coalition in the negotiations after the election. This is a long time ploy by the Labour Party. The best example was when former Leader, Dick Spring made a career out of condemning Fianna Fail, calling this party a cancer in Irish political life but within weeks of the 1992 General Election restored this cancer to government.
Polls show that the Labour Party will gain increased support in the Local Elections. This is to be expected in view of their verbal opposition to the details of the government policy and the hatred for Fianna Fail who are held clearly responsible by ordinary people for the present crisis. However, the Labour Party must not be allowed to deceive working people. They must be forced to spell out exactly what their real programme for government will be in the event that they are in coalition with Fine Gael after the election. Or even in government with Fianna Fail which they refuse to rule out as an option!
Joe Higgins TD
By Joe Higgins TD
Only a government that will challenge the system can bring real justice for working class people
Joe Higgins TD on the plight of refugees
Joe Higgins on SIPTU’s support for Sinn Fein
Joe Higgins on the politics of right-wing populism
Joe Higgins on how water charges were beaten in 1996
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WikiLeaks: The Afghan Tunnels the US Just Bombed — “They were built by the CIA”
Jack Burns April 14, 2017
WikiLeaks just pointed out the truth about the US dropping the MOAB on Afghanistan — and the CIA is furious.
As The Trump administration is flexing its military muscle, having stood up to Syria and its ally Russia, and while it’s now relishing in the news it has dropped the nation’s largest most-powerful non-nuclear bomb on a cave complex in Eastern Afghanistan, one critic was quick to point out one little-known fact. Wikileaks tweeted a simple but true statement concerning the origin of the cave complex the Americans are so proud to have reportedly destroyed. “Those tunnels the U.S is bombing in Afghanistan? They were built by the CIA,” Wikileaks tweeted.
Those tunnels the U.S is bombing in Afghanistan? They were built by the CIA https://t.co/u66ScoiNpX (via @GabiElenaDohm) pic.twitter.com/mAaUrQ0yLk
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 14, 2017
Linked to the tweet was a New York Times article from 2005, which described a similar cave complex in detail, and added a few additional details worth noting. “Tora Bora” as it’s known, contains “fortified caves” which are reported to contain, “miles of tunnels, bunkers and base camps, dug deeply into the steep rock walls.” The tunnels were built by the “C.I.A.”, with the help of the Bin Laden family, who constructed the complex.
Also jumping in on the mockery of the Trump administration is Edward Snowden, who tweeted, “The bomb dropped today in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan, cost $314,000,000.” And in a follow up tweet, also said, “Those mujahedeen tunnel networks we’re bombing in Afghanistan? We paid for them.” He, too, linked his tweet to The NY Times article mentioned above. Apparently, the ant farm network of tunnels built by the CIA can now be destroyed by the American military in yet another pseudo-show-of-force meant to make the Trump administration seem tough on Syria, ISIS, and Al Quaeda.
It was said Bin Laden even helped to run the bulldozers at Tora Bora and knew the labyrinth of tunnels like the proverbial back of his hand. Financed by the intelligence agency to provide a headquarters and safe haven for the Mujahedeen, the Afghani fighting force was used to prevent the Russian takeover of Afghanistan during the Afghan War. After the Russians were defeated, the same Mujahedeen became known as Al-Qaeda, led by Osama Bin Laden.
After the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Bin Laden became the United States’ most wanted man. Not surprisingly, he took up refuge inside Tora Bora, within its miles and miles of complex, well-fortified tunnels. Times writer Mary Anne Weaver “asked Masood Farivar, a former Khalis officer who had fought in Tora Bora during the jihad, to tell me why the caves were so important. ‘They’re rugged, formidable and isolated,” he said.
“If you know them, you can come and go with ease. But if you don’t, they’re a labyrinth that you can’t penetrate. They rise in some places to 14,000 feet, and for 10 years the Soviets pummeled them with everything they had, but to absolutely no avail. Another reason they’re so important is their proximity to the border and to Pakistan.'”
One American military leader tasked with capturing or killing Bin Laden was General “Mad Dog” Maddox. Maddox is now the Trump Administration’s Secretary of Defense, and appears to have attempted to destroy at least a portion of Tora Bora’s system of tunnels with the drop of the MOAB bomb, known as the “Mother Of All Bombs.”
The aging general who’s now the nation’s most powerful military leader, with the exception of Trump as Commander-in-Chief, appears to be following through with a sixteen year old vendetta he may have been holding onto. The Times article from 2005 writes, “Brig. Gen. James N. Mattis…along with another officer with whom I spoke, was convinced that…he could have surrounded and sealed off bin Laden’s lair…He argued strongly that he should be permitted to proceed to the Tora Bora caves.”
However, according to Weaver, “The general was turned down,” and the decision not to take Bin Laden there at Tora Bora was one of the greatest military mistakes of the Bush Administration’s attempt to get him. Bin Laden escaped Tora Bora on December 16th, 2001.
It is also important to note that Wikileaks’ tweet may or may not be 100 percent accurate. CNN reported the MOAB bomb was dropped on a tunnel complex about 12 miles from Tora Bora. However, those tunnels likely all connected. CBS reported the airstrike destroyed several caves used by ISIS with it’s 11-ton ordinance. The news agency also interviewed a military expert who said the U.S. has at least 14 more MOAB missiles and may be prepared to lay waste to all such cave systems.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, the director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, targeted Wikileaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.”. The recently appointed director has apparently had enough of Wikileaks’ activities, such as the March release of the CIA’s Vault 7.
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Minae Mizumura's Intelligent Novel
Review Literature February 6, 2015
A True Novel
by Minae Mizumura
Translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter
Other Press (2013 ), 880 pages
Minae Mizumura, author of A True Novel, can spin a mean yarn. A scholar of French literature and author of four novels, Mizumura is one of the most interesting writers working in the Japanese language today. It was something of a disappointment, then, upon reading her 2002 Yomiuri Prize-winning rehashing of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, to feel like Mizumura only settled down into storytelling mode around page 550.
No, that’s not a typo—if there’s one thing to be said for Mizumura’s novel (beautifully wrought into English by veteran translator Juliet Winters Carpenter), it’s that readers are getting their money’s worth. Topping out at nearly 900 pages, this bicep-builder of a book is more like three books stitched into one: a long prologue by the author herself, trying to convince the reader that the novel is a fictionalized account of a true story; then an account of the author’s knowledge of real-life (note: not-real-life) Taro Azuma, the novel’s Heathcliff; and finally, the fictionalized story of Taro and Yoko, using Catherine and Heathcliff’s ill-fated romance as a rough template. By the end, you, the reader, may feel like you’ve been treated to three books (and perhaps a short essay on literary theory) for the price of one.
Which is not necessarily a criticism. The subjects that concern Mizumura are fascinating, and she is in a unique position to explore them. Mizumura, an author who grew up straddling Eastern and Western cultures by virtue of her Japanese and American upbringing, picks at the supposed divide between hemispheres; and, as a scholar-novelist, she does this by picking at the divide between theory and storytelling. At one moment, she is interested in expounding on the history of the confessional Japanese “I-novel”; a couple hundred pages later, she has embodied Fumiko, the novel’s Nelly Dean narrator, and is laying the groundwork for a gripping love story. Make no mistake, Mizumura is quite capable of embodying each of the many roles she has assigned herself.
The problem arises, as it so often does, in putting it all together. While Mizumura used one British woman’s Gothic novel as a touchstone, it is another who comes to mind: Mary Shelley and her reanimated monster. The novel’s constituent parts, at times, feel overwhelming, and while echoes of certain themes and obsessions are recurrent, it was hard to string together a coherent literary experience.
To illustrate the problem more clearly, here are a sampling of excerpts from a short stretch of the prologue. Within a span of twenty pages, we find many different Mizumuras:
There is Mizumura, deft and lyrical storyteller: “At long last, Yusuke started to tell me his tale, beginning hesitantly but then going on as if unable to stop...With my sense of the solid reality around us dissolving, the yellowish glow from the small bulbs on the walls looked like will-o’-the-wisps, ghost fires. The wildness outside the little house now seemed distant, as if the power of nature couldn’t penetrate our world.”
A few pages later, we meet Mizumura the messenger, determined to fit class into the pages of her English-style novel, come hell or high water: “In the States, if you’ve made money for yourself, it doesn’t matter whether you’re black or Asian. Money means everything.”
Literary historian Mizumura makes an appearance shortly thereafter: “The term ‘true novel’ once played a crucial role in the development of modern Japanese literature. The period when Japan opened its doors to the West, beginning in 1868, coincided with what might be called the golden era of the Western novel.”
And finally, Minae Mizumura, navel-gazing postmodernist: “[S]omething I can only call a sense of the real—was slipping through my fingers. What was at stake wasn’t what is usually referred to as the problem of realism; rather, it was a problem with the ‘power of truth,’ which ultimately determines the worth of a novel. And I couldn’t ascribe it solely to my inadequacy as a writer.”
The problem isn’t with any one of these iterations of Mizumura, generally. As a lover of fiction, I am happy to be sucked into her drama of Gothic Japan. As a writer, I am interested in her theoretical views on fiction. As a translator of Japanese, it is interesting to listen to her expound on the incongruities of Japanese and European fiction. Only, listening to her try to sew it all together into a single literary vision gave me something akin to literary whiplash.
If pressed, I would say that Mizumura’s scholarly concerns acted as a weight, dragging down the more compelling storytelling aspects of her novel. The photographs of the story’s real-life settings, intended to highlight the tension between truth and fiction in storytelling, become cumbersome—the inevitable degradation in photo quality inherent in the mass publishing process didn’t help. Mizumura’s determination to introduce British themes of class into a Japanese literary form can feel forced (indeed, class is everywhere, sometimes making the privileged characters feel cartoonish, like stock villains in a morality tale).
Finally, the tension of placing an English novel, with its familiar themes and characters, into a Japanese literary form, born of the Japanese language, loses a lot of its kick when faithfully rendered back into English. The challenge of transposing an English story into Japanese is of primary interest to Mizumura (“The story I was told on that stormy night was merely one of many love stories already told a thousand times. Why turn it into yet another novel? There was only one answer I could think of: it recalled the translated Western novels I had encountered as a girl.”), and she talks about some of the translational difficulties at length:
In their first encounters with Western thought, Japanese people tried to grasp the concept of a ‘subject’—a concept that has become increasingly important in the modern West. Yet in Japanese there exists no grammatical equivalent to, for example, the English word ‘I’… All this render the notion of the abstract and transcendent ‘subject’ difficult to conceive of in Japanese. And that may be one of the reasons why Japanese readers continue to look for an actual, specific individual in a story rather than perceive the story as the work of a writer’s imagination.
As a translator, this can’t help but pique my interest. As a reader, however, there is no opportunity to watch this project play out. The subtle distinction between languages is paved over by Carpenter’s elegant translation. The benefits of a good translation are manifold: it ensures a smooth and enjoyable reading experience and an accurate peek into the author’s original work, but reading Carpenter’s final product also nullifies the tension of the process. Since that tension is at the core of this novel, this is a bigger loss than we are accustomed to accepting in translated works.
There are other places, however, where Mizumura’s academic concerns are quite interesting. It should be noted here that Mizumura keeps things accessible. Readers familiar with Japanese history and literature may feel inclined to skip over the more basic explanatory sections, but for many readers, the long prologue can serve as a primer on Japanese history and literature, an introduction to Mizumura’s academic concerns, and the points of her biography these concerns stemmed from, all in one text.
Where these concerns really take flight is when Mizumura abandons the scholarship and flashes her considerable storytelling chops. Mizumura’s own life story, growing up in America yet longing for Japan, demonstrates the dual nature of the cultural divide between East and West. At times it can appear imaginary, or perhaps more accurately man-made as culture must necessarily be; for instance, when a rich Japanese woman is treated like a servant on a trip to visit American friends, resulting from a simple change of context. And yet this divide often looms large in the minds of individual characters confronted with the culture gulf, or worse, forced to straddle it. As Mizumura’s novel marches from the early postwar period to the 1990s, the cultures move closer together; perceptions change, Japan grows into a wealthy global power, and yet the preoccupations with the West persist. Mizumura’s prologue, much of which draws on facts from her own life, demonstrates this tension with a supreme deftness and intelligence that permeate the better parts of the book.
The story picks up again, as mentioned above, somewhere around page 500. By then, the narrator, Fumiko, has performed the incredibly laborious task of transposing Brontë’s story into a Japanese setting. Here, finally, Mizumura the storyteller re-emerges, and the tale of Yoko and Taro, the former an inheritor of rising wealth and reputation, the latter an abused orphan who flees to America to make his fortune, takes over until the end of the book. Mizumura makes the story her own, abandoning Brontë’s Gothic tropes, her Satanic Heathcliff and haunted estates, for a simpler story of a love that will not die under the weight of a society trying to kill it. Somehow, in the thicket of this yarn, Mizumura manages to do what the best storytellers are capable of: she addresses every one of her thematic obsessions—the tensions between fiction and reality, between East and West, between Japanese history and American influence—at a depth that the postmodern hijinks that color earlier sections of the book are unable to reach.
A True Novel is a hard book to recommend to a general audience. At nearly 900 pages, reading it is a project; which is not to say that it isn’t a page-turner. The book is well written, well translated, and the story flies by without much trouble. Rather, it is a book I would recommend to readers who would rather wade through an inspired mess than something tidier, safer, and less surprising. It is a book written with considerable intelligence, exploring themes that are rarely addressed in literature. It is a book for readers who crave originality over consistency, and who value daring more than cohesiveness. I happen to be one of those readers—and so I am happy to hereby recommend it to you.
Japan, Fiction, Translation
Geoffrey Robert Waring
Geoffrey Robert Waring is a writer and translator currently working out of New York. His stories have appeared in Fugue, decomP mazinE, and Blue Moon.
A Softly-Worded Novel on Systematic Violence
'The Neverending Story' and the Art of Good Translation
Berlin's Youth Between the Wars
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With the recent loss of Gene Wilder, we have been doing a lot of reminiscing about the comedies of yesteryear, and the one that always rises to the top is Blazing Saddles. The interesting thing about this Mel Brooks classic is that -by far- it is not politically correct and yet it is still a classic. Mel Brooks has gone on record saying that he believes such a movie would never be able to get made today in Hollywood. In fact, even when it was produced in the 1970’s the studio was giving notes to Brooks saying things like, “Can you reshoot Black Bart with a white actor?” and we can understand why. The N-word is used enough to qualify the movie as a gangsta rap album, and it leans heavily on almost every stereotype and joke one might be able to think of when it comes to racism, sexism, and even homophobia. So why is it still such a classic? Is it wrong they we enjoy it so much? Is this a question that is too big for us to accomplish?
Oh Lord! Do we have the strength to pull off this mighty task in one night…or are we just jerking off?
On the Nature of PC
We here at The NYRD pride ourselves on being inclusive and progressively minded, almost to a fault. We believe that everyone should be treated equally and that the artificial boundaries of race, religion, and sexuality should not limit people’s potential or affect how they are treated by one another, but by-god if it isn’t funny when the mayor says “to extend a laurel and hardy handshake to our new… N*****” See, we can’t even write the word because it a foul and terrible expression of centuries of oppression and bigotry. Yet, we laugh. So what is going on? Are we terrible people for laughing at the very un-political correctness of this movie, or are we just having fun? Should we be taking comedy so seriously, or are we just bad people?
Blazing Saddles is the type of movie that a lot of people point to as the very reason political correctness is wrong. “People care too much about offending each other today. Back in my day we laughed at one another. Look at Blazing Saddles,” these imaginary men might say. It is true that if Mel Brooks had limited himself to being “PC” this classic movie would have never been made. A racist Western written by two Jewish men and Richard Pryor does not exactly sound like it would be a marquee moment in civil rights. And yet, does the inclusion of Pyror make the script acceptable? Does the fact that the movie won three Academy Awards and is listed as Number 6 on American Film’s Institute of 100 Years… 100 Laughs make it okay to laugh? After all, we want to be inclusive and fair to all people, but sometimes funny is funny. This is all so confusing…
Maybe the term Political Correctness, itself, has become part of the problem. Over the years it has transformed into an almost derogatory phrase. It has become a sort of clarion call by those on the more conservative side. It has become the bigot’s excuse for why people take certain actions. If Obama apologizes to a foreign country it is political correctness, as opposed to just fair-minded diplomacy. If a black person gets a job over a white person it must have been because of political correctness, as opposed to just one candidate who got a job over another candidate. If a Christian baker is forced to make a cake for a gay wedding it is seen as political correctness, as opposed to just a merchant fulfilling a job they were paid legal tender to accomplish. Ultimately, being “PC” has become a word that allows people to avoid dealing with deeper issues of society and race. It is a cop-out phrase that some people use to label certain actions they see as offensive to their good-old-boy sensibilities, but then again…
You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.
Beside a Brooks near a Stone in a Parker
Regardless, it is hard to argue that Blazing Saddles is politically correct, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. For our best contemporary comparison we need to turn to Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the minds behind South Park. The cartoon about four foul-mouthed children from a small town in Colorado is usually both political and correct, but it is not politically correct. The genius behind Stone and Parker’s work is that -like Brooks- they lean on stereotypes, but they often subvert them or turn them on their head. They do not shy away from making fun of people, even making fun of those who make fun of the very people they just lampooned themselves. South Park is a landmark show because it goes after everybody: black, white, gay, Christian, Jew, celebrity, Hollywood, small town folk, big city folk, Canadian… etc. It is an equal opportunity offender painted in the form of outlandish comedy, and that is something they have in common with the master, Mel Brooks.
Being politically correct means making all interactions equal and colorblind, which is a noble goal, but also fails to acknowledge and even joke at our differences. Comedy is a contract that allows us all to enter into a safe space where we can acknowledge and laugh about the idiocy of the cultural norms we have constructed around ourselves. Blazing Saddles and South Park are ways for us to look around at the absurdity of the social cage we have built and laugh as equals. In Blazing Saddles, the black men are called the N-word, the Chinese are called the Ch-word, but the white people are morons. The politicians are cross-eyed idiots, the townsfolk are inbred Johnsons, the male-dancers are all gay stereotypes, and even the Native Americans speak Yiddish. We’re all idiots, and that is the real reason why we should enjoy this movie. Mel Brooks doesn’t want us to laugh at one type of race or one type of religion or sexual identity. No, he is asking us to laugh at humans and our absurd ideas. In essence, we aren’t laughing at black characters but at the concept of racism.
This is different than movies that put white actors in black face and ask the audience to laugh at the wild hijinks of the “negro,” or use the only gay character as the “weird and funny” one. Those are offensive and -quite frankly- lazy jokes. Those moves are deserving of our derision. However, that does not mean we should wash away all our differences, or stop joking about them. In fact, comedy is an amazing arena that often allows everyone to come together to laugh at our flaws as human beings. Mel Brooks accomplishes just that with Blazing Saddles. It creates a world where not one type of person is ridiculed or made to feel inferior, but where everyone is made to see their own flaws and find the humor in them. Thus, despite what critics think maybe Blazing Saddles is more PC than anyone realizes. It is about finding the funny in the absurdity of humanity as a whole, and not just one single human.
Men, you are about to embark on a great crusade to stamp out runaway decency in the west.
The Big Finale
Just look at Bart, the main character of Blazing Saddles. He is the smartest man in the picture, a Bugs Bunny type transported to the absurdly backwards racist West. Much like Mark Twain, Mel Brooks is not showing us a black character worth of ridicule, but instead a moronic world that cannot see the sense and rejects him simply because of something as arbitrary as the color of his skin. The movie even addresses the overly simplistic labels of black and white…
Sir, he specifically requested two “n*****s”. Well, to tell the family secret, my grandmother was Dutch.
So maybe, Mel Brooks is right. A film like Blazing Saddle with its outstanding and offensive story will probably never get made again in today’s Hollywood. Maybe we have become too PC, but that’s also not as bad thing. Equality, justice, and love are not concepts to be avoided, but they also should not negate the humor of our stories and differences. Being PC is fine, but we also can’t be afraid to laugh about ourselves, so long as we do so fairly and equally. After all, the real humor of race, religion, and division is not so much in the differences between people, but that those differences exist at all.
12 Signs of the Nerdiac
Long ago, our ancestors gazed up to the stars to find the meaning and guidance that was hidden in the sparkly goodness of the zodiac. For in those celestial shapes they found wisdom and stories of great heroes and deeds. We are no different than our stargazing forefathers, as we too tell stories of heroes and sepia toned supermen, and those stars still hold many truths for us, as well, which are just waiting to be discovered.
Much like the standard zodiac the signs of the nerd zodiac or Nerdiac can give us great insights into our day to day living as well as the many talents and special qualities we posses as both people and geeks. Many ancient nerds believed that you could discover a great deal of relevant information about yourself through reading about your Nerdiac sign. So we at The NYRD invite you to find your sign and your destiny.
March 21 to April 19
The Archaeologist is a desert sign and those born under it are regarded as adventurous, active, and outgoing. It won’t matter where you go or how remote or unusual it is. From the Outback to the Antarctic, you can be sure that an Archaeologist has been there before you. Although they are independent, outgoing and assertive they are also surprisingly trusting, and at times will innocently walk into a temple of doom with no thought for their own safety. They love to discover new things, and very much believe these things should be shared with the world, because sometimes it really does belong in a museum. Yet, no matter what upheaval, challenge, or triumph that confronts them, Archaeologists have a wonderful ability to find their way through. Their faith in life and the future remains untouched by hardship, and their gift is such that with every new discovery the world is still a magical place (and there are sometimes aliens, but we try not to think about that one.)
The Archaeologist is considered the most masculine sign of the nerd zodiac, with females born under the sign sometimes called Crofts and men sometimes called Jones. In romance, Archaeologists are forceful, dynamic, and aggressive, and can often intimidate potential partners. For true happiness a person born under the Archaeologist sign needs a partner that balances their component traits (their true mirror reflection side). This balance can often be referred to as The O’Connells. Archaeologists are doers rather than talkers. They are the impulsive. They act first and doubt later. Their ability to live life close to the edge provides them with a wealth of real experience to call upon. Being active people Archaeologists cannot adapt to any kind of restriction, particularly possessive relationships. They often travel to escape any feelings of being stuck or possessed, even have been know to jump out of their own office windows on occasion.
April 20 to May 20
Underneath their cool, calm, and logical exterior, Vulcans differ greatly from all the other signs of the nerd zodiac. Often times they will let others get close, but only so close as they want them. Some claim that trying to connect with a Vulcan on an emotional level is similar to trying to break through a Tholian Web, but that is not true at all. There is no such thing as an open-book Vulcan, but their feelings, fears, and desires often run far deeper than anyone around them would guess. In some ways, of all the souls you may encounter a Vulcan’s will be the most human. Their true spirit often remains hidden behind a veneer of day-to-day activities, which is why those born under the Vulcan sign can sometimes be perceived as withdrawn, boring, or even cold. In terms of the future, Vulcans hate the unknown and often strive to create tomorrow in advance, rather than leave it to fate. They do not normally seek adventure or the unknown, instead preferring a life where they can live long and prosper in other realms.
In love, they are regarded as extremely sensual beings, but ones which only mate on an average of once every seven years. For most people, a relationship with a Vulcan will be defined by intellectual pursuits and based in cold hard reality, but when a Vulcan mates, they mate for life. It is the rare and lucky person, (friend or lover) for which a Vulcan will reveal his true inner self, because he or she has and always shall be your friend.
Timelord
May 21 to June 20
Those born under the sign of Timelord are always on the move; thirsty for knowledge and new experiences. Terminally curious and sometimes even mischievous, Timelords are multi-faceted souls who enjoy knowing a little bit of everything. Those born under the sign of Timelord have also gained the reputation of being the incessant talkers, and have a special interest in anything foreign or unique in the universe. Their comfort zone has almost no boundaries, and as such when things often look their worse a Timelord will be in their prime. In love, they look for a companion who can keep up with them mentally and physically. Among the many signs of the nerd zodiac, they are the sign that is often discussed, dissected, and sometimes even put down most by the other Nerdiac signs. This is sometimes a subtle form of jealousy by others, because Timelords lead very unique and unusual lives. Those born under this sign are lovers of adventure and game playing that involves out-thinking other people.
Their personality usually appears mysterious or detached to others and therefore they are often misunderstood and unappreciated for the talents they offer to the world at large, but this does not mean they do not feel, for in fact they have two hearts. Most members of this sign simply hide their feelings behind their jovial and verbose natures. It is rare and often scary when a Timelord chooses to reveal any hurt, pain, or sacrifice they bear. That is called going a little Capaldi. It is has been said, that even demons run when a Timelord goes to war.
June 21 to July 22
Those born under the sign of River, are one of the Nerdiac’s enigmas. It is fair to say that most are a bundle of contradictions and mysteries. One moment, a River can seem like a child, scared and alone, the next that same person can be capable of slaying a hundred Reavers. They invoke strong family ties, especially those between siblings. Those born under this sign are also incredibly intuitive to the point of being psychic. They can be compassionate and caring with friends and family, yet find a weakness that will cut you to your bone. The mood of a River is ever changing, making them endearingly eccentric and insecure. They are often described as an albatross, both lucky and unlucky depending on how they are handled. Rivers go through many phases of experience. Life doesn’t stand still for this sign of the nerd zodiac, and even if they remain in one place or on one ship, they live as much in their internal ocean of emotions as they do among reality.
They flow both up and down, like a leaf on the wind. Most Rivers feel one way one minute, then sometimes totally different the next. With their changeable natures Rivers are fascinating, mysterious, stimulating, and extremely alluring. This sign is one of the most alluring of all and once their touch has reached you, they can be the most beguiling partners and co-pilots you can hope to find out there in the black.
Kingslayer
July 23 to August 22
Kingslayers are said to be born fortunate. Charismatic and ambitious, they attract not only an abundance of friends and opportunities, but manage to survive life’s stormy times with style and good humor. Once a Kinglsayer is committed to a relationship, no matter how incestuous it may be, they are totally devoted and faithful. Any born under this nerdy zodiac sign are often considered honorable, though others may find their honor to be a twisted sort of one. Much like their namesake who slew the mad king, Kingslayers will often taken measures that may seem extreme, but are entirely justifiable to themselves. In love, should their heart or trust be broken they will never forgive or forget. When a relationship breaks down -even a long standing one- they can disappear into the South without a backwards look. For a Kingslayer, when a relationship is over, really over, it is over for good. They will move on, sometimes finding solace in new and larger companions.
Above all Kingslayers are trendsetters, leaders, and adventurers. Their weakness is their pride, and sometimes their golden hand. Some sayings associated with those born under the Kingslayer are, “flattery will get you everything,” and a “Kingslayer always repays his debts,” in coin as well as in blood.
Samwise
August 23 to September 22
Samwise are often put down by many and perceived as being soft and provincial. But when this sign of the nerd zodiac shines, there is practically no stopping their inner light. When a person born under the Samwise sign is confident within themselves they are the most successful, structured, and creative of all the Nerdiac signs. Many Samwise can be found working in the service to others, such as teachers, gardeners, and fellowship companions. One of the most magical characteristics of the Samewise is no matter how many times life turns sour on them, they still manage to maintain faith in others, refusing to become cynical. There is an genuineness around this sign, a kind-heartedness, which unfortunately is sometimes played upon by others for their advantage. Samwise can often become victims of relationship power-games, where they are mistreated. Creative and sensitive, people born under Samwise are delicate, like rare and special orchids that often require individual treatment to fully blossom into their true unique beauty.
Shy at times, they are content to allow others to take center-stage and often generate their time and energy into making those they love happy or successful. They are givers and when the chips are down and you need someone to help you bear your burden to a mountain of fire, you want a Samwise. With them in your life, you will always have someone who understands and cares, and any romance or friendship based upon these qualities is certain to be mutually rewarding.
September 23 to October 22
It is the fantasy of every adolescent born under the Link sign to rescue the prince or princess of their dreams. As their lives unfold and the Song of Time is played, the experiences, false starts, dramas, broken heart pieces and disillusionment they encounter while seeking this personal quest, often shapes their futures in the most extraordinary manner. Love and love-lost (especially when lost to evil wizards) makes a big difference to someone born under this sign of the nerd zodiac, although the happy-go-lucky appearance they present -against all kinds of odds- may not reveal this as fact. Links can switch off from the world, as easily as turning off a video game. Many who fall under the sign of Link can be difficult to fathom, but that is because many born under this Nerdiac sign often don’t express the more diverse sides to their personalities. When applied their charm can win jobs and provide powerful friends, whether Zora or Goron.
It is a sad fact that many Links fair far better in both personal and professional ventures if they remain alone, but for those who do find their secret dream and rescue their prince or princess, that is another story. A Link must always remember that when they are looking to fulfill their dreams they should never undermine their own integrity, or anger the chickens. Life for a person born under this sign is a true quest, and if they stick to it long enough, not only will they find their Master Sword, but reach their goals, no matter the adversity.
October 23 to November 21
Reputed to be one of the most powerful signs of the nerd zodiac and the Jedi, Skywalkers lead fate-filled lives and have intense and dramatic personal relationships. Even as children on Tatoonie, Skywalkers are often found to be wise beyond their years, and gifted pod-racers. Those born under this sign often know all the answers, but they have difficulty finding what they need to develop their own happiness. Passion, desire, and power go hand in hand for those born under this sign. This often leads to many challenges and temptations, and a Skywalker’s biggest test in life is choosing between the power of love and the love of power. Coming to grips with their extraordinary emotional depths and sensitivity isn’t easy for those around them. They are different from all other Nerdiac signs and this difference has them following a different path to their destiny. Others can often live with a Skywalker partner for years -and for many horribly acted scenes- but not really know them. Their eyes often blaze with feelings that words never express, and beware on the days or nights they hide their feelings behind dark helmets, as there is likely to be a force storm brewing.
When you deal with a Skywalker you have to always deal with them on an intuitive level. They often wear a mask and occasionally a respirator, and too often say no when they really mean yes. Once they find true love they can be the most faithful and dedicated of all partners, but fall out badly with a Skywalker and you are likely to find your windpipe being crushed. They never forgive or forget. Most born under Skywalker are winners. The main thing they have to worry about is their attitudes, which influence their mind powers and can either make or break them for the dark or the lightside. When they are negative about something or someone, or critical of themselves, they can tend to get in their own way, because sometimes the only thing found inside the Cave of the Darkside is what you take with you.
November 22 to December 21
Airbenders possess a natural exuberance, sense of adventure, and love of life that makes them one of the most optimistic signs of all. Like their element of choice, those born under this Nerdiac sign tend to blow toward whatever it is they find alluring -a love partner, dream job, vacation, etc- and make it their own. Airbenders believe that anything is possible, and because of this belief system, they are adept at seeking out their own destiny. They are not blown by the winds of change, instead they control them and bend them to their will. Sometimes trying to tie down these free-spirited individuals is frustrating for those around them. Airbenders are happiest on the move, exploring new cultures and ideas and many are attracted to occupations related to travel, outdoor work, begin the avatar, and philosophical pursuits. In love, they often shy away from being fenced in, but once they find a partner who understands their needs to retain their own sense of self and identity, Airbenders can be the most big-hearted, generous and fun-loving companions of all.
Although people born under this nerd zodiac sign are often intellectually and spiritually advanced, they are notorious for their directness, which can sometimes be seen by others as a lack of tact. However, they are freedom loving, optimistic, and honest. Those born under Airbender are ruled by a wisdom all their own, and have an inherent need to develop their own unique philosophy of life.
December 22 to January 19
The sign of the high roller, Ironman is regarded as the Nerdiac’s top in life and business achievers. Often the most hard-shelled and stubborn of the signs, it can be difficult to get an Ironman to concede on any point, whether it be physically, mentally, or politically, especially when it comes to superhero registration. Those born under this nerd zodiac sign are often never content till they reach the top of whatever endeavor they are involved with. However, with their stubborn nature also comes patience, an iron will, and repulsor cannons. They reach their goals because they know the longest journey commences with a single step and that the first step is always the most difficult. However, the one thing an Ironman must always try to do is balance work with play; otherwise they can become too one-sided, sacrificing one aspect for the other. Ironmen often do rise to the occasion when faced with a new task or deadline, even if it sometimes takes them a while.yet, if things go wrong, their ambition to reach the ultimate keeps them moving forever onward and upwards.
They are also innovators who are willing to think outside the box and try unusual approaches on their road to success in business or in love. Romantically, they desire a permanent relationship with someone who will give them the affection they crave and often neglect to give themselves, but finding that person will be a road of trial and error, even if he or she have been staring them in the face -getting coffee, fetching dry-cleaning, being an under appreciated personal assistant, etc- all along. Although many Ironmen are borderline workaholics, this does not necessarily make them dull or gloomy. They have an offbeat sense of humor, which seems to erupt at the most unexpected moments. Their motivating force in life is success, money, status, authority and, -although many might not admit it- love.
January 20 to February 18
Those born under the sign of Batman have a high focus on intellect and perfectionism. Others may view them as eccentric or misunderstood. Many inventors, explorers, and caped crusaders are born under this Nerdiac sign, and with such a high level of focus, Batmen succeed in almost any area they devote themselves to, whether it be physical or mental. This trait is often a boon and a bane, as this level of focus also means that a person born under the Batman sign may have trouble letting go of past hurts and are often haunted by the things about their life they cannot change. Many extremes surround this sign, and these extremes can take them to heaven or hell. In everyday terms, most Batmen are humanitarian in nature and often devote themselves to helping others. They can also be objective in judgement, as they have a unique talent for burying their emotions in an inner cave. Men and women born under this nerd zodiac are happiest when they are useful and they often have a strong sense of right and wrong. However, their single-minded obsessions can sometimes lead to a life of insomnia, as those born under the Batman are the most likely to suffer from sleeplessness.
In romance, the Batman is unlucky. The extremes of their life often lead to quick and shallow relationships, as many partners will not see beyond the mask of the billionaire playboy. Those lovers who are able to pierce the veneer will often be another Batman, -also sometimes called a Catwoman, for a female born under this sign- and the relationship, though deep, will never be smooth.
February 19 to March 20
Mysterious and alluring individuals, most Snapes are gifted in many ways, but still manage to spend most of their lives battling confusing conditions. Snapes are frequently torn between two pathways in life, often mirroring their own conflicting desires to serve or rule. This can lead to an almost dual life as villain and hero. This nerd zodiac sign is acknowledged as being the Saint and the Sinner rolled into one. Snape is the sign of the lost soul, the philosopher, the psychotic, and the visionary. As a credit to them, and considering their many vulnerable characteristics, those born under this sign are incredibly adaptable and resilient. Many Snapes can be amongst the top wizards of the world, but many can also be found in places such as Azkaban. One thing that plays havoc with the life of a member of this Snape sign is romance. They often replace fantasy for reality and this is especially true when it comes to relationships.
Most born under this Nerdiac are more likely to pine for a person from a distance, unable to act on their feelings and yet equally unable to let them go. This can sometimes result in situations were a person born under the sign of Snape may be forced to help the offspring of a long lost love defeat a dark wizard, despite the conflicting emotions of hate and love they may feel for that child. Snapes are the nerd zodiac’s most sensitive sign, and should take extra special care, as nobody can beat them up as much as they can beat themselves up -with maybe with the exception of those kids from Gryffindor.
By Adam J. Brunner January 7, 2016 January 11, 2016
It’s happening. The trailer for Zoolander 2 has finally hit the Inter-webs, and surprisingly the trailer does not look as bad as one might expect. Everyone here at The NYRD are huge fans of the original movie, but even we have to admit that sequels to comedy movies very rarely work. Just look at The Hangover 2 or whatever it was that Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels tried doing a few years back.
We have high hopes for Zoolander 2, but grand in a way that still keeps them small, like high hopes for ants. the one thing this movie has going for it is a great cast from Owen Wilson to Will Ferrell to Ben Stiller to a questionably androgynous Sherlock Holmes. For now we feel that we owe Ben Stiller and his creation the benefit of the doubt so we will hope for the best.
Zoolander 2 will be out in theaters on February 12th. So watch the trailer below and let us know what you think. Did you enjoy what you saw? did it make you laugh? Is this movie so 2000 and late? Was that last joke so 2000 and late? Give us a shout in the comments below.
Image courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zoolander/
By The NYRD November 18, 2015 March 3, 2016
Dating Fictions
We are all looking for Mr. or Ms. Right, that special someone who will make us feel like we’re in a Disney movie with singing crabs and kleptomaniac monkey sidekicks. Unfortunately, not everyone we date will always meet our expectations. If only our partners could be more like the heroes and heroines we read about in books or see on the big screen. Yet, not even those seemingly perfect two-dimensional representations are without flaws, and if you were to ever find yourself on a date with any of the following characters just remember that no person -even fictional ones- are perfect.
This corn-fed farmboy is a protector through and through. He will stop a speeding bullet, catch a falling plane, or even superspeed to the store to get you ice cream when you’re feeling depressed. Superman is friendly, conscientious, and will take you on romantic flights over the city. He naturally puts your needs before his own, and if the Man of Steel makes you a promise you can count on him keeping it. It does not hurt that he is easy on the eyes and looking for a committed and loving relationship.
However, when it comes to dating Superman you might find that it may not be all truth, justice, and a two-way relationship. Setting aside the fact that he has a secret mild-mannered side, protectors like him are always trying to rescue the damsel in distress. Though that is appreciated, not every woman is looking to spend their days falling off of buildings so a man in blue tights can catch them. A relationship with the Last Son of Krypton will work for a while, but eventually he may lose interest when he realizes you don’t need him or becomes frustrated if he is unable to help you. Even worse, he will always be flying off to save someone else instead of spending time with you, and the jealousy that might create could prove to be as good as kryptonite to your relationship.
This good-hearted know-it-all is a real thinker, but her calm and serious exterior hides a deeper passion and a true loyalty to those she cares about. She can be quiet at times, but when you need someone to punch a Malfoy in the face you will be surprised by the fire you find inside her. Her dedication to schedules will help you always be on time, but she is not without a spontaneous side and can occasionally be made to abandon her best laid plans in the name of friendship. She is well organized, practical, and the exact type of person you want around on a date to playing pub trivia or trying to solve a century’s old riddle to break into an underground basilisk pit.
Because of Hermione’s status as an underage wizard, dating her may be difficult for many. Be warned that she is Azkaban bait and cannot practice magic outside of school. So that means you shouldn’t try any your “magic” on her. Those that can date her may find that she is sometimes arrogant or emotionally distant. The wizarding wunderkind spends too much time in the library, preferring the company of books to most people, and her strict adherence to rules -which she can often quote by memory- could drive a partner crazy. Anyone who cannot take criticism or a strong will would do good to avoid Hermione as she can often be dismissive and skeptical of other’s ideas, often believing that she is right in most situations. The most annoying part is that she usually is, and that could mean avada kedavra to any hopes of romance.
If you like those who are outgoing, friendly, and fun-loving than Michelangelo might be who you are looking for. The hero in the half-shell is all about being spontaneous and enthusiastic about almost anything that life throws at him. Less arrogant or rude than some of his brothers he will always be there for you as a supporter and a team-player. Michelangelo is also the exact type of person you want around when you are feeling down or depressed. He can find the fun and the funny of any situation, even when facing down a clan of ninja or a robot that houses a talking brain in its stomach.
Unfortunately, that also means Mikey doesn’t take a lot of things seriously. So when situations or romance get tense he will often come off as annoying. Everybody likes to party, but not everybody wants to party all the time, especially when you are trying to have a serious conversation about your feelings. He is not a leader or a hard worker, often preferring to seek pleasure and getting bored easily in mundane situations. Michelangelo also does not respond well to rules or structure, like those found within the confines of a relationship or a government laboratory that might want to dissect him. Overall, he is a very uncomplicated personality, though he will seek the spotlight and he enjoys being the center of attention in all occasions. Any significant other who cannot share the spotlight might find that hard to compete with. It is also worth mentioning that he is a giant talking turtle, and any sort of relationship would probably not win the approval of parents, friends, civil authorities, or the religious community.
Snow White is a caregiver. Generous, compassionate, she will always be there to kiss your wounds or cook your pot roast. She is happiest when she can lend a hand and is always the person who tries to keep her environment harmonious, which is hard when you live with seven other roommates. Some will see Snow White as adhering to outdated stereotypes, but she is just content being a homemaker, and she is the exact person who will help you make your house your castle. Her love of animals also belays a kind soul and a possibly magical ability to summon the beasts of the wild on command.
However, many people will see “the fairest of them all” as nothing more than old fashioned. Not every man is looking for a maid who will take care of his every need, or wait patiently for him to save her with his kiss. When it comes to dating she is mostly a shut-in, preferring to stay at home rather than go out for the night. Many will often see her as fussy and maybe even a bit smothering, and Snow White’s adherence to keeping domestic peace will be frustrating at times. It will ultimately mean that any argument or disagreement will be stopped before it can become productive, causing feelings to fester until they explode like a bubbling cauldron of a wicked witch. There is also the matter of her questionable relationship with seven unattached miners that could cause emotions to flair from happy to grumpy to dopey to jealous.
Spock’s life is dominated not by emotion but logic. He is a natural problem solver and just the type of person who will always be able to give you the best of advice. He excels at predicting outcomes and patterns in situations and people. Unlike other high thinkers, Spock is not arrogant and is often fascinated by the emotions of others, even if he cannot always understand them. When proven wrong the Vulcan science officer is the first to admit his mistake and take responsibilities for his actions. So, if you are looking for a good conversationalist you have found your green-blooded man. He is also a strong leader and an equally adept follower, comfortable in playing any role in your relationship.
The Vulcan Mind Meld is a technique that literally allows two people to share each other’s thoughts, so if you are not open to a completely honest relationship, then Spock may not be the mate for you. He is also not the person who will be there with a shoulder to cry on. For all his logic the decorated Starfleet officer can sometimes come off as cold and unfeeling. He is a great life-coach but a terrible sympathizer, and he will often put the needs of the many before the needs of the few, including you. Biologically, Vulcans only need to mate once every seven years, thus you should not expect an overly physical closeness. Spock is long lived, and even after he dies he can store his katra or personality inside your mind, which gives a new meaning to the word “commitment.” Yet, in some ways, of all the souls you will ever meet, he may be the most… human.
Leia has it all. She is a strong willed leader who can pick a Stormtrooper off with a blaster at fifty meters, and look good in a golden bikini while doing it. Any relationship with Leia will be one of give and take one, as she is a master at negotiation and compromise. She also usually knows what she wants, being both decisive and assertive. Coming from a royal upbringing Leia is highly educated and refined, and if you ever need the perfect date for a wedding, formal reception, or Galactic State dinner, she is the woman you want on your arm.
However, Leia is very much a career oriented woman. She is one of the leaders of the Rebel Alliance and that comes with a lot of responsibilities and not a lot of time for dating. Include into this that her family life is a bit of a mess, and you do not want to meet her father. Some men will also see her as blunt and argumentative, as she has no fear of speaking her mind and telling people exactly what she thinks of them. Yet, the former senator from Alderaan is also a very shrewd politician and an adept liar when it suits her purpose. That can always leave a seed of doubt in the back of any man’s mind. The princess is very goal oriented and will work tirelessly to reach those goals, which mean she has a tendency to ignore the feelings of others, including you, in the pursuit of a higher objective. Most importantly, Leia needs excitement in her life and some who works a 9-5 job and watches Netflix on the weekend is not going to keep her entertained for long. As much as she claims to like nice boys it is clear that she is looking for the scoundrel type, no matter how scruffy looking.
Peter Venkman is a ladies man in the truest sense of the word. A showman, he is outgoing, witty, and at times aloof. Most of Peter’s life is ruled by his impulses, including his mouth. Peter will always knows the right comment to make to infuriate or impress his significant other or any crowd that has gathered to watch him. This means that when he wants to be, Venkman can be the most romantic partner a girl will ever have. Also, despite his exterior fun-loving nature, he does care deeply about the friends and family around him, even if he is often unwilling to show it.
Unfortunately, Peter Venkman will never settle down. He is not marriage material as much as he sometimes wishes he was. It will about the time when he starts introducing you as “the old ball and chain,” that you may decide to pack up and move on. He is smart, having two doctorates, though most people do not quite know how he got them. Many will find Venkman selfish and self-centered, often using his charm and wit to manipulate others into doing what he is unwilling to do himself. A natural liar and showman you will always find yourself having doubts about the sincerity of anything he says. There is also the very serious question of where Peter got the tranquilizer drugs that he once used to knock out a possessed Dana Barrett, because that means he may carry roofies around with him whenever he goes on any date.
Katniss is a survivalist and the kind of person you want around when you are stranded with a dead phone battery or in the middle of a vast wilderness where children are constantly trying to kill you. She is fiercely independent and does not care much for rules. Basically, time spent with Katniss will always be difficult, but it will never be boring. She is also slow to trust but incredibly loyal once you earn her confidence. She will stop at nothing to protect those she cares about or feels responsible for. More than anything the Girl on Fire is an introvert at heart and will often need time alone to recharge; any partner that can respect that will go far to learning how to maintain a relationship with her.
Unfortunately, no relationship with Katniss Everdeen will ever be easy. Having faced so much tragedy, her natural instinct is to cut herself off completely from her feelings, including love. However, every so often she will explode in what may appear to be an emotional and almost irrational outburst. She also does not like being controlled by anyone, and will often withdraw or fight against the will of others, whether it is an oppressive white-bearded dictator or an overbearing significant other trying to plan for a night out. She has admitted to being opposed to romance or marriage, but Katniss has problems understanding what she truly wants, whether it be the son of a baker or the brother of a thunder god. This kind of indecisiveness coupled with her emotional problems and fiercely independent nature does not bode will for the odds of any relationship with her being in your favor.
Did you enjoy our list? Was there anyone we forgot? Anything you disagree with? Let us know in the comments below.
By Adam J. Brunner November 11, 2015 November 11, 2015
The Great Lakes Avengers
With the flop of last week’s Fant4stic Four movie it may be time to start asking ourselves if superhero movies are starting to go more stale than that loaf of bread that has been sitting on top of our office refrigerator since April? -We’re not actually sure where the bread came from. It is actually a bit of concerning mystery.- Then again, maybe this new Fantastic Four movie was a fluke made by a lazy production company scrambling to keep the rights to Marvel’s first family, but what if it speak to a larger formulaic problem in the superhero genre itself? What if we are reaching critical mass of superhero movies? Well, much like the shadowy origins of that loaf of bread, we here at The NYRD can only speculate, but what we do know is that maybe it is time for our beloved movies to start shaking things up again, before we all get a little moldy.
The Thing About Movies
In all fairness, Marvel and other studios have begun branching out superhero films, to include elements from other genres. Ant-Man was a super-powered heist movie, Guardians of the Galaxy was a space opera about the fat guy on Parks and Recreation, and with its upcoming release of Deadpool, Sony is going to give us a hyper-violent and comedic tale about Ryan Reynolds trying to prove he can be in a good superhero movie. However, studios can be fickle when it comes to these sorts of things. They will always try to stick to tried and true methods in a hope that they can get as many golden eggs from their goose as possible before it dies a slow, humiliating, and painful death, which they will then try to sell to us as the next big summer blockbuster. So how do we fix superhero movies? Maybe with another superhero movie, but not about any ordinary heroes.
For anyone who does not have our level of comic knowledge, charisma, or devastatingly good looks, you have probably never heard of The Great Lakes Avengers. They are a superhero team in the Marvel universe, but they are less Iron Man and more ironing board. Less Captain America and more Captain Kangaroo. They are less Thor the Marvel hero and more Thor the crappy SyFy original movie. You get the picture, but they might also just be what the world needs right now, a vehicle to really shake up the genre and remind everyone why they thought superheroes were so fun in the first place. With all the snark of Tony Stark, the snappy one-liners of Starlord, and all the wit and charm of Paul Rudd already enshrined in the existing Marvel Cinematic Universe, it could be the perfect place to introduce audiences to the first superhero comedy.
Obviously, all of this is hypothetical, and we are not talking about a comedy like Superhero Movie or some other terrible parody movie that may or may not involve the Wayans brothers. We would picture The Great Lakes Avengers, to be more clever than that, perhaps something in the line with 21 Jump Street, Ghostbusters, or Men in Black. It would be a comedy with heart, but still very much one that prioritizes the humor. For a real good idea of what we are talking about go watch the underrated by enjoyable superhero movie, Mystery Men. We can wait… Seriously, Hank Azaria, William H. Macy, Ben Stiller, it is a classic, and like Mystery Men a movie involving the Great Lakes Avengers would have to rely on a subtle sort of humor that plays with and pokes fun at the conventions already established in comic books and the existing MCU.
In essence, this movie could offer Marvel a chance to hang a lantern on their own world and shake up the genre even more. Of course, we are not saying the comedy/superhero line would be an easy one to walk, but if anyone can do it would be Marvel. The time is right and the source material is rich with things that can really be turned into a smart and hilariously fresh take on the MCU.
The Fantastic Mister Immortal
The movie would start with Craig Hollis, who dubs himself Mr. Immortal, because he cannot die. That is his only power, and it would offer some great jokes for Marvel to poke fun at itself, as the MCU cannot seem to let even Phil Coulson stay dead. He starts a superhero team in Milwaukee, which is not exactly a hub of super-villain activity, but would make for an interesting and clever contrast to New York, DC, LA or any of the other major metropolitan areas where most superhero movies have taken place.
Through a series of events and Internet advertisements he would eventually recruit Dinah Soar, who is half woman and half pterodactyl. She cannot speak English and the only one who can understand her is Mr. Immortal. She would also be his love interest. Next is Ashley Crawford, known as Big Bertha who is a supermodel with the ability to become obese. When she does, she gains superhuman strength and durability. Even better Big Bertha prefers her obese form compared to her supermodel size and there could be some good comedy and moments about commenting on the unspoken standards of attractiveness of superheroes. Dr. Val Ventura or Flatman is most definitely a parody of Reed Richards, except that his doctorate is highly questionable. No one is really sure what he has a degree in and he is usually pretty cagey about it. His body is two-dimensional and can stretch and form to fit under doorways or be folded up like origami. He would also be the first openly gay superhero we get to see on the movie screen. The next member is DeMarr Davis. Doorman is one of the most powerful of the group. He can use his body to open an inter-dimensional door, but only to the next room. He is also the only African America in the group, and with a name like Doorman it is a pretty good chance for Marvel to make some pointed observations about how they have been treating superheroes of color.
Of course, the last and most popular member of the team is Doreen Green. Squirrel Girl, is somewhat of a cult favorite among comic nerds. She can talk and direct squirrels, similar to how Ant Man can control ants, only these are squirrels. She is also the most successful and well known of the group. In the comics, she has defeated Dr. Doom, Thanos, and even Wolverine. She even stops Galactus from destroying the world, through the power of friendship. Her cult status would offer some great moments of comedy, and maybe even a few reflective comments on geek culture itself. Basically she is Felicia Day with superpowers.
The point of the movie would be that you don’t need to be an Avenger to be a hero, and that you do not always need to take yourself too seriously. Some new threat would arise in Wisconsin and since it is not New York or Chicago or any other typical place, the Avengers would miss it. So it would fall to the newly formed and struggling Great Lake Avengers to take care of the problem, while still trying to fight low-level crime in the 31st most populated city in the continental United States. There can even be some great cameos. We can already see a stinger where Tony Stark walks into Great Lakes Avengers HQ, makes some quips, admires their work, and then hands them a cease and desist order to stop calling themselves Avengers.
The Human Torch and Disappearing Woman
Right now the superhero genre is burning bright, but if we are not careful that spark is going to diminish and vanish. A heartfelt, clever comedy could be the kind of movie that would offer Marvel and the genre, in general, a lot of opportunities to shake some of the dust off itself and laugh at its own flaws. It would not be about cheap humor or low-hanging jokes, though those things may not be off the table, entirely. Instead, it would be about bringing back some of the campy fun and self-parody that is missing from new superhero movies. After all, a world of superheroes offers more than enough weird, interesting, and funny opportunities to make for a good comedy.
Robert Frost once said, “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane,” and that is as true for our movies as it is for us. Look at the newest version of the Fantastic Four. The original movie from the 2000’s was deemed to be too campy and colorful. It tried to hard to be humorous, so they went dark and realistic. Well the original Fantastic Four was a commercial success. This new Fant4stic Four is heading toward financial ruin. There is a lesson to be learned there, and a funny one at that. Now with the arrival of DC’s grittier monotone universe we can look forward to even more seriousness from men and women who fly around in capes and hang out with bats all day. A Great Lake Avengers movie could go a long way to remind people why they fell in love with Marvel, Iron Man, and superheroes in the first place, while letting us all laugh at their flaws and our own.
The real truth of the matter is that if studios keep pumping out generic and senselessly “dark” superhero movies then the genre as a whole will move quickly from stale to moldy. If the formula for success in these movies does not have the room to expand than the genre will start collapsing in on themselves, quicker than the Fant4stic Four‘s plot did. Marvel has already proved they can blend comedy and action effectively, so we know they could certainly do justice to Squirrel Girl. After all, if they can get Rocket Racoon to become a box office success, than we would have high hopes for what they could do with a comedy about a team of superhero wannabes and rejects.
By The NYRD August 14, 2015
A Farewell to Jon Stewart
We are standing at the end of an era. We here at The NYRD do not want to put too fine of a point on this, so we will just be blunt. We are going to miss Jon Stewart, and without him around, the future of American news and politics seems a little more bleaker. Tonight, Stewart finishes up his final show, ending a more than 16 year run on Comedy Central. The final show itself will be full of all the humor and candor that we have come to respect and love about Stewart, but we do not want to talk about the end. Instead, let’s start on the beginning.
At Wit’s Beginning
The year was 1999, and a little know comedian whose specialty seemed to be more sheepish bro humor than scathing political commentary, took the seat of a little know late night comedy show on Comedy Central. The Daily Show began in 1996 with host Craig Kilborn. In the beginning it seemed to have problems finding its footing. It ran more like a parody of a local news program than political satire, but that all changed after Stewart took over. Over those first few years he helped the show develop a style based more on lampooning the major news networks and pointing out the absurdities in the American political system. The change did not happen all at once, but in a sense both he and the show grew together, and we all took notice.
It seemed the grayer Stewart’s hair got, the more popular he became. It may also have helped that he took over at the beginning of a new era of absurdity in news reporting. His first on-air report was literally on Clinton’s Impeachment. We would offer to insert some kind of Clinton-penis-joke here but Monica Lewinsky already did that… And The Daily Show always did it better. In their first ever Presidential race Jon and his associates introduced their Indecision 2000 coverage, a name so overwhelming appropriate that in a time when it seemed like the regular news media has no idea how to cover Florida ballot recounts or Supreme Court rulings on who our President was, that people turned to the “fake new” to make more sense out of the debacle. Then, after the world was rocked by tragic events in New York and the subsequent wars that followed it was Stewart that we all went to for comfort and understanding. He never made the news less scary or depressing, but he made us laugh and told us truths as no one else seemed capable of doing.
Then the world went and changed. Social media, the Internet, and the loss of our collective attention spans altered the way we digested the news. So even as The Daily Show grew and Stewart progressed, the world around him cranked the crazy meter up to eleven. Fox News, CNN, and all the rest became less about reporting and more about ratings, invoking both flag waving and scare tactics, but Stewart adapted. He followed the national conversation and dissected it four times a week for sixteen years, often with more skill and wit than any professional journalist. In the process, The Daily Show went from chasing the national conversation to shaping it. Each day Stewart seemed more at home in his suit and behind his desk, and each year more and more young people were tuning in. He became not just a footnote to the day’s news but the source of it for many. He engaged youth in politics, world events, and even asked the tough questions that other news sources dared not to. He did good in a way so many people can only dream of. He helped change public awareness on many issues, and even got CNN to cancel Crossfire.
A 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center found that Jon Stewart ranked fourth in the category of “Most Admired Journalist,” alongside names like Tom Brokaw, Anderson Cooper, and Dan Rather. By 2009 he landed on top of Times‘s list of “Most Trusted Newscasters”, and with good reason. The show’s success has a lot do with it’s format, but as much to do with the honesty of Stewart himself. A Jersey boy, born and bred, straight-talker who refuses to eat NY pizza with a knife and fork. He is an everyman, the smartest everyman you may ever meet, but over the years he became a voice for everyone in the audience.
The comedian often spoke our frustration, rage, and even depression at the events that were unfolding around him. He watched the world turn from a chair on a sound stage, and the jokes he made seemed like the last bedrock of sanity in a world that was spinning too fast and in the wrong direction. Nothing was ever perfect and Stewart would be the first to admit that The Daily Show made its fair amount of mistakes, but that is the point. He always admitted his faults and failures, never trying to hide behind some sheen illusion of perfection. He also had his detractors, others in the news media, politicians, celebrities, and more. He got his fair share of angry phone calls and emails, but the truth is that for many, being featured on a segment of the The Daily Show was almost a mark of honor.
His opinions sometimes felt harsh, but funny. Even at times when his jokes ran parallel to one’s own opinion you still managed a chuckle. That was the magic of Stewart. He was not demagogue sent to lecture you, but a friend there to give advice over a bottle of beer. Most importantly, he made you think. Well, first he made you laugh, and then ball up in a corner and cry a little, but once you thought about it all, then you got to thinking. Even if you did not share his opinion you still entertained it, and even if your mind was not changed you still respected him for his words.
The Punch Line
Courage will be a word you may hear a lot in other tributes like these that will be floating around in the next week or so, but courage is not the right word. Sure, it takes courage to get on TV every night and say the things others won’t about a Senator or a US President who will be a guest on your show in two days, but there is something more to it. Jon Stewart created a space where comedy informed a greater dialogue, because despite some of the opinions of others, once we learn to laugh about something we fear talking about it less. Maybe humor really is a rubber sword or maybe it had more to do with Stewart himself, but there was a refreshing quality about the 25 minutes we all got to spend together.
He spawned many like him, both friends and imitators. He changed the way people watched and reported the news, but there will never be another Jon Stewart, and we are going to miss him. We can not blame him for retiring, he deserves it, but we wish there was a clear successor to the torch he lit. We face a world where Donald Trump can blast ignorance and insults and be ahead in polls for a Presidential primary, and part of us has to wonder what will we do without our daily dose of sanity. With his retirement from the The Daily Show, Stephen Colbert going mainstream on CBS, Larry Wilmore floundering to find his voice, and only one weekly dosage of John Oliver on HBO, we find ourselves looking out on a landscape that is suddenly less vibrant and a bit more chaotic. -We will not even mention Stewart’s replacement, who no one seems entirely sure about. Where are we going to get our news from now? Certainly, not the 24-hour news networks. If we wanted to watch comedy, we would go to down to Chelsea and catch a stand-up show. At least it would feel more honest.
On a very personal note, Jon Stewart and his drive and passion to engage in the national conversation is one of our major influences here at The NYRD. We know we will never be able to do what he did or even be as funny, but we will never stop trying. He has inspired us and others like us to talk about what is going on and think about how our actions and our voices can change the national debate, and really what higher compliment can you give to any man. Many may call Jon Stewart a cultural phenomena, but he is more than that. His work changed the way people see the world and the way people want to engage in it. So maybe the answer to our hypothetical question is that we are all Jon Stewart’s successors. We may not have cable shows or even blogs, but we have a responsibility to continue the discussion he started.
A Moment of Zen
Between 1999 and 2015 we went from the West Wing to House of Cards. We went from a nation built on hope to one wrapped in fear. Sound bites became shorter and more sensational. Sex tapes made celebrities, while politicians ran for the far corners of their respective aisles. Everything became more sensational and more irrelevant, but Stewart was always there, a friendly Sherpa willing to point us in the right direction and maybe offer us a warm drink and a place to dry off, if only for a short time. When Stewart was on stage it never seemed so bad. Maybe it is a truly absurd world when we have come to rely on our comedians to tell us the truth about the world around us, but no one did it better. We may never see his like again.
We know we should have put more jokes in this article, but for once we just did not feel funny enough to match up to the master, but we at The NYRD want to thank him for all he has done and to remind everyone that it is up to us now, all of us, to continue on with the national discussion, even if it will now be lacking some of the same sharp and childish wit.
By The NYRD August 7, 2015 September 14, 2015
Amy Schumer Uses and Abuses the Force
Funny woman Amy Schumer is coming off a relatively good high as of late. Her new romantic comedy is out in theaters and thanks to her acceptance speech at the 2015 Glamour Awards, she has become somewhat of an icon for powerful women everywhere. Her latest outing for GQ’s Comedy Issue has been to don the guise of everyone’s favorite princess from a galaxy far far away. Of course Schumer doesn’t do anything halfway or without putting her brand of comedy on it.
GQ let her pick her own cover idea and Schumer not just went funny and geeky, but she blew out our servomotors. It is a shame that GQ is only featuring Schumer as part of their “comedy” issue. She is a powerful and sexy woman and we would not mind seeing more of her and those like her on the cover of GQ in the future.
For insight into the Schumer shoot, check out GQ and the hilarious video she made while lying next to a bewildered and somewhat jumpy C3PO. Of course in all fairness, surprised and a bit insulted tends to be Threepio’s default look, but it works fairly well. Our personal favorite would have to be the bar scene. Check out the magazine and the pictures below for more.
Photos courtesy: http://www.gq.com/gallery/amy-schumer-photos-star-wars-trainwreck
By The NYRD July 17, 2015 July 24, 2015
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Pillbox
March Madness delivers madness with wild games
By Marika Yang | Mar 26, 2018
When March rolls around each year, we hope for warmer weather, the fragrant smell of flowers, and the arrival of spring. But, most importantly, we await the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, three weekends of madness when we watch the top 64 college teams face off and fall in love with a Cinderella, the little team that could. This year is no different.
The 2018 tournament saw records being broken and brackets being busted. For the first time in tournament history, a lowest-ranked 16th seed upset a no. 1 seed, after 135 losses. When the little-known University of Maryland–Baltimore County shocked the world by beating the overall no. 1 University of Virginia, we knew we were in for an amazing tournament.
But, even before the historic 74–54 blowout on March 16, other upsets captured the country. No. 13 University at Buffalo defeated another favorite, no. 3 University of Arizona, and no. 11 Loyola University Chicago made a buzzer-beating three-pointer to take the win over no. 6, University of Miami, giving the world a small taste of what was to come in terms of upsets.
The second round brought even more madness, with upsets ruling into the second weekend. No. 11 Syracuse toppled no. 2 Michigan State University, and no. 7 Texas A&M University handed defending national champions University of North Carolina a stunning 21-point loss, one of their worst ever in the tournament.
In the Sweet Sixteen, the upsets continued, with perennial favorites no. 5 University of Kentucky and no. 4 Gonzaga University falling to no. 9 Kansas State University and no. 9 Florida State University, respectively.
However, in the later rounds, staples of the tournament remain, in recent champions no. 2 Duke University, no.1 Villanova University, and no. 1 University of Kansas. Both teams have had a relatively breezy tournament so far as they battle for their spot in the Final Four.
Undoubtedly, the Cinderella of the tournament has been Loyola Chicago, a small, underrated basketball program. In their first three games against higher-ranked teams, the Ramblers won with exciting buzzer-beaters, playing their way into the hearts of basketball fans around the country.
But it is the 98-year- old nun, chaplain of the team Sister Jean Dolores-Schmidt, who has become the symbol of hope and joy for the team. From her bracket predicting the team only going to the Sweet Sixteen, to her name on custom-made Air Jordans, Sister Jean and the Ramblers have embodied everything we love about college basketball: fun, joy, and the unexpected.
As the teams move toward the championship, it is safe to say that the tournament has delivered everything we could’ve ever hoped for.
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Tag Archives: how date of Thanksgiving was set
November 22, 2018 Mark Taylor
Home To Thanksgiving, Currier & Ives, 1867
Public Domain (U.S. Library of Congress, digital id# pga 00780)
Thanksgiving was not an official national holiday until 1863. A letter from a 74-year magazine editor, Sarah Josepha Hale, inspired President Abraham Lincoln to create a national holiday. She wrote in 1863 that we needed to have a national day of Thanksgiving so that everyone could celebrate it on the same day. At the time Thanksgiving was celebrated by the various states but not on the same date. She wanted President Lincoln to make it a national day so it would become a permanent part of “American custom and institution.”
According to Abraham Lincoln Online , other presidents had ignored such requests. Lincoln decided to act on her request and directed a proclamation be drawn up. On 3 October 1863, President Lincoln’s proclamation that establishes Thanksgiving as a national day was issued. It sets aside the last Thursday of November as a “day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” Secretary of State William Seward actually drafted the proclamation which Lincoln signed. Thanksgiving became a national holiday and was celebrated on that date until 1939. President Roosevelt in 1939, 1940 and 1941 changed it to the third Thursday (to extend the Christmas season) causing considerable controversy. A joint resolution of Congress in 1941 resolved it by decreeing Thanksgiving would fall on the fourth Thursday of November.
Lincoln’s proclamation was written during the American Civil War, a terrible time in U.S. history. Today we forget why this day was made a national holiday. It was to thank God for the blessings of liberty but also to ask his help. In our politically correct times, this proclamation is not always read in full or edited. So here is the original proclamation. Read it and understand why Lincoln thought a national day of Thanksgiving was needed for the United States of America.
Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
A. Lincoln
Victorian Traditions/Shutterstock.com
how date of Thanksgiving was setLincoln's Thanksgiving proclamationPresident Franklin RooseveltThanksgivingThanksgiving proclamationU.S. holidays
Thanksgiving Grace (1942)
Photo: Public Domain (US Library of Congress, digital id#fsa.8d10749)
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Wrap Your Mind Around That: Lumosity Grew 400 Percent Last Year
By Michelle Castillo Feb. 25, 2011
It doesn’t take a genius to realize why web-based brain training website Lumosity grew 400 percent to 11 million users in 190 countries last year. That’s because the mentally stimulating website not only helps scientists understand how the brain works, but provides puzzles that help you use your memory and thought processes.
“We can dig through the database to get a better understanding of how people can improve their cognitive performance,” co-founder and Chief Science Officer Mike Scanlan told Mashable.
The website was started in 2007 in collaboration with Stanford, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon and Columbia University. Scientists use player’s data to understand how the brain functions, and the company creates games to fit the findings.
Last year, the start-up acquired ShuffleBrain, known for a feature that transforms Facebook photos into puzzles called Photograb. It has since grown to include over 40 games that can be accessed through the websites and mobile apps for the iPhone, Android and webOS. Luminosity credits the over six million downloads of their mobile apps for part of its massive growth.
The best part about the puzzles: You don’t have to feel bad about not going to the gym after work since you’re exercising part of your body – your brain – when you play the games.
More on TIME.com:
Can You Be “In Love” With Your Gadgets? Study Says Yes
Study: Virtual Reality Personas Influence How You Act In The Real World
A New Use For Bacteria? Encrypt it With Data
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Black Hole discovered orbiting a Spinning Star 1200 GMT 20 January 2014
A group of Spanish astronomers using the Liverpool and Mercator Telescopes at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos have recently reported the discovery of a binary star system comprising a Be-type star and, remarkably, a black hole.
Artists impression of a Be star spinning at extreme velocities and depositing matter onto its binary companion, a black hole, seen here in the background.
Image credit: Gabriel Perez - SMM (IAC).
Jorge Casares of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) and La Laguna University (ULL) is lead author on a paper1, recently published in the science journal Nature, in which he and his colleagues present their exciting results.
Be-type stars are known to be fast rotators, and many find themselves to be one-half of an interacting binary system. However, their companions are usually neutron stars. This is the first time that the object orbiting the Be star has been identified as a black hole.
The newly-discovered system is located in the constellation Lacerta (the Lizard), at a distance of about 8,500 light years from the Earth. Known as MWC 656, the Be star rotates with an angular velocity of more than 1 million kilometres per hour. At this speed the star is close to being ripped apart by centrifugal forces, and is ejecting matter through an equatorial disk towards its mysterious companion. Casares' new spectroscopic observations indicate that this companion is a black hole.
A detailed analysis of the spectrum of MWC 656 suggests that its companion has a mass somewhere between 3.8 and 6.9 times that of the sun. Such an object is too massive to be a neutron star, and can only be a black hole. Matter is transferred from the Be star, though its equatorial disk, down onto the black hole via a second disk (an "accretion disk"). By analysing the emission from this second disk Casares and his team were able to measure the mass of the black hole.
In all likelihood, binary systems comprising Be-type stars and black holes are far more common than previously thought. Even so, it is notable that such a discovery was made using two relatively modest-sized telescopes, the 2.0 meter LT and the 1.2 meter Mercator telescope.
1Casares J., Negueruela I., Ribo M., Ribas I., Paredes J.M., Herrero A., Simon-Diaz S., 2014, Nature, 505, 378 [links: Nature | Astro-ph ].
Spectroscopic observations obtained with FRODOspec on the Liverpool Telescope showing the orbital evolution of emission lines from ionised Iron (Fe) and ionised Helium (He) atoms: (a) a sequence of spectra showing the change in line profile shape through one orbital phase; the vertical dashed line indicates the rest wavelength of each transition. (b) trailed intensity images of the same two emission lines plotted across two orbital cycles. See paper [ Nature | Astro-ph ] for further details.
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Lou Reed | RSS Feed
The 2014 Reclink Community Cup will pay tribute to Lou Reed
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Monday, 28 October 2013 | by Roshan Clerke
Lou Reed (1942 – 2013): Remembered
"I heard the news today, oh boy," John Lennon sung on The Beatles’ 'A Day in the Life'. It was my first thought this morning when I heard the news of Lou Reed's death. Lennon had an understanding in his voice, and an ability to comfort that very few artists have. Lou Reed was one of the few that had that ability, too.
Have you ever been woken up with the news that your hero has died? Lennon probably had; he'd been making music for long enough at that time. 'A Day in the Life' was even inspired by the death of his and Paul's close friend Tara Browne. Reed definitely had - just listen to his and John Cale's album for Andy Warhol, Songs for Drella, or his 1989 album, New York, and you'll hear it in his voice. What struck me the most was that the man who sung 'Halloween Parade', one of those rare, enveloping piece of music, had died just days before Halloween.
I felt guilty that my second thought was 'What will I write about this?', but that's creative effect that Reed's music has always had on me since I first heard it. Like most of Generation Y, my first memory of his songs comes from the Adventureland soundtrack, put together by Yo La Tengo. The scene where Jessie Eisenberg and Kirsten Steward are driving to 'Pale Blue Eyes' immortalised The Velvet Underground to a new generation. From there I went to 'Sunday Morning', and from there, to 'Heroin'.
Jonathan Richman has described the first time he heard 'Heroin'. "These people would understand me," he remembered thinking. "I was hypnotised. It was the begging." 'Heroin' is still unlike any other piece of music I've heard in my life. Cale's droning viola sounded like someone was opening a door very slowly, and that was exactly how I felt. It was a rush, and it was a positive escape I needed at the time. If it wasn't for 'Heroin' and Jonathan Richman, I'd probably still be listening to Joy Division and cutting myself.
The next time I was touched by Lou Reed's music he was singing about heroines rather than heroin. The trilogy of albums Reed released in the early 80s, The Blue Mask, Legendary Hearts, and New Sensations, were different to any that he'd made before. Sure, it was Transformer that had me insisting to my friends that this was the best art-pop album ever, the production work from Mick Ronson and Bowie remains inimitable, and the 'do, do-do's are still one of my favourite moments in musical history; but it was 1984's New Sensations that changed by life in a tangible way.
'New Sensations', off New Sensations, changed the way I lived my life. To hear a rock star sing lines like, "I want to eradicate my negative views," and, "I don't want to give it up, I want to stay married," was shocking. Reed was in his 40s, married, and happy. It made no sense. But the more I listened to it, the more it started to. Steadily, things inside me began to unwind. I found more albums, like Richman's I, Jonathan album, and his whole discography, that were focused on positivity and change. It sounds cliché now, but I grew my hair long just because I could. I was enjoying being alive and experiencing things for the first time.
It's strange how attitudes towards music change when an artist dies. I've always loved a few tracks off Reed's less popular albums - Mistrial, Street Hassle - but it's been truly surprising to see more love paid towards Metal Machine Music than I previously knew existed. I've even caught myself wanting to listen to Lulu. It was Reed's singular vision across albums like these - his belief in himself - that I owe more to in my life than from any other musician. As Reed sung on 'Halloween Parade': this Halloween is something to be something to be sure, especially to be here without you.
Listen to 'New Sensations' below:
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NSAC chairman Anthony A. Marnell III: “We will be releasing the Jon Jones tests, but we will not do that until sometime very, very close to the night of the fight. So if you could stop requesting that data from the executive director, it would be helpful because it’s not going to come out until we’re ready to send it out and have all of that properly put together – but it will be published before the fight.” h/t MMAjunkie
MMA is a complex sport that involves many different art forms. Fighters are forced to balance all aspects of their fight training, including boxing, Muay Thai, kickboxing, wrestling, jiu jitsu, drilling, technique, sparring and more. On top of this, they also need to fit some type of strength and conditioning plan, pay their bills, eat, sleep, and manage to squeeze in a personal life (family, friends, kids, etc).
In February 2016, Michelle and Robert King, when asked about a spin-off, stated that there was a possibility for a spin-off series.[23] In May 2016, CBS was in final negotiations to set up a spin-off featuring Christine Baranski reprising her role as Diane Lockhart, but which would air on CBS All Access instead of the network.[4] The spin-off was officially ordered to series on May 18, with Cush Jumbo returning as well.[7] In September 2016, it was confirmed that the 10 episode spin-off would premiere in February 2017, with the story picking up a year after the final episode of the original series and seeing Diane pushed out of her firm after a financial scam involving her mentee wipes out her savings, resulting in her move to Lucca Quinn's firm.[2] The series was initially planned to air in May 2017, but was moved to February 2017 after production delays forced CBS to postpone the premiere of the new series, Star Trek: Discovery.[3] After months of speculation, CBS revealed the title for the spin-off series, which was revealed to be The Good Fight, on October 31, 2016.[24] It was announced that The Good Fight would premiere on February 19, 2017.[1] CBS released the first trailer for the spinoff on December 18, 2016, featuring footage from the premiere and later episodes.[25]
Jussi Saloranta, the owner of Thailand's only MMA promotion, DARE Fight Sports, revealed that his lawyers found that the ban was actually premature, and that from a legal standpoint, there is no law banning mixed martial arts in the country, suggesting that the SAT's ban was more of a scare tactic. DARE continue to showcase events, informing fans only at the last minute through texts on the day of the event, and presenting the videos on YouTube as The Most Dangerous Gameshow.[267] Saloranta has also helped set up the MMA Association of Thailand, in the hopes of reaching a compromise with SAT and regulating mixed martial arts in Thailand.
After founding partner Carl Reddick dies, the partners work to ensure that all their clients remain on board and are surprised when they learn that a lucrative project involving the Obamas is in jeopardy after his death. At the end of her tether with politics and professional strains, and feeling her mortality following the deaths of several Chicago lawyers, Diane accepts the offer of psilocybin from a bartender, and starts microdosing to relax. Justice Department lawyer Liz Lawrence, Reddick's daughter and Boseman's ex-wife, leaves her job at the Department of Justice after she tweets a criticism of Donald Trump, and is criticised for it. To preclude Liz taking the Reddick name away and becoming a competitor, Diane recruits her to the firm. Maia learns some surprising facts about her father's past.
What? Self defence is for everyone no matter the gender and size or height. I have experienced bullying in shape and form even domestic violence. I do four styles of mma and I train with men in my dojo and I am respected and treated as an equal because I can fight. It won’t matter where anyone moves to. Trouble and danger is everywhere. Offenders attack those who can’t defend themselves and don’t matter what area you’re from or visiting.
Another early example of mixed martial arts was Bartitsu, which Edward William Barton-Wright founded in London in 1899. Combining catch wrestling, judo, boxing, savate, jujutsu and canne de combat (French stick fighting), Bartitsu was the first martial art known to have combined Asian and European fighting styles,[18] and which saw MMA-style contests throughout England, pitting European Catch wrestlers and Japanese Judoka champions against representatives of various European wrestling styles.[18]
If a fighter has been doing two workouts per day for a month straight, has poor nutrition, doesn’t sleep much, and is stressed out, the last thing he needs is a ball-busting, crusher workout that is just going to break him down even more. Remember, these guys are punching each other in the face, taking each other down, and tying each other into knots. They are always banged up somewhere.
Another common misconception is that boxing is primarily an arm workout. Sure, you’ll shred your tris and bis, but Ortiz says you’ll actually be targeting more of your core and legs. “You’re working your obliques because you’re crunching to the sides and twisting,” he says. “And you’re constantly bending from the hips and bouncing on your toes, which uses your quads, hamstrings, and calves.”
Is that even possible for the average guy or gal? I say yes! Wait a second…. What’s that you say? You only have a couple Kettlebells and your back yard? You don’t own a heavy bag nor do you have access to an octagon. Well, guess what? Today is your lucky day! I’ve devised a UFC / MMA “inspired” Workout for members of Rich Man’s Gym and it’s progressive, which means you can incorporate this into almost any fitness level.
The rules for modern mixed martial arts competitions have changed significantly since the early days of vale tudo, Japanese shoot wrestling, and UFC 1, and even more from the historic style of pankration. As the knowledge of fighting techniques spread among fighters and spectators, it became clear that the original minimalist rule systems needed to be amended.[80] The main motivations for these rule changes were protection of the health of the fighters, the desire to shed the perception of "barbarism and lawlessness", and to be recognized as a legitimate sport.[citation needed]
On July 15, 2017 after a TKO loss resulting from unanswered punches in the second round of his fight, 37 year old Donshay White became unresponsive and collapsed in his locker room and was rushed to the KentuckyOne Health Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital in Kentucky.[189] He was soon pronounced dead and was revealed to be caused by hypertensive/atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.[190]
Is it for you? Because there are so many aspects to MMA, it usually requires a bigger time and money commitment than some other schools. But, because you’re doing so much work, it usually offers a superior workout. It’s not meant for self-defense, but isn’t the worst since it teaches fighters to handle a lot of diverse situations. It’ll also make watching the UFC a lot more exciting.
On February 27, 2014, 29-year-old Booto Guylain was transported to Johannesburg General Hospital to be treated for swelling and bleeding on the brain after suffering a KO loss via elbow in the last round of his fight in South African promotion “Extreme Fighting Championship Africa”. He was unable to make a recovery, and after one week in the hospital he was pronounced dead.[186][187]
Without the power of legal change, the status of civil rights in America would not be nearly as far along as it is today. Lawyers have the power to use the law to protect victims of racism, as well as change the law in order to protect civil rights and ensure equality. Sometimes racism is fought in the streets, and sometimes it is fought in courtrooms.
I was greeted by a man named David Arnebeck. I could tell that he had a fighters build and an abundance of confidence. He made me feel at ease as we discussed my martial arts history and goals. I told him that I had taken 4 years of Tae Kwon Do but still felt as thought I was no good in a ‘real’ situation. I was good at forms but lacked the real sparring experience. He told me that many students at Warrior’s Cove had joined because of the ‘true to life’ training. He said, ‘kicking the air will do you no good.’ He said many things that I also heard from Bruce Lee’s fighting philosophy. He had me convinced. I joined that week. I have now found what seems to be the most effective form of self defense and exercise.
^ UFC 40: Vendetta (PPV)|format= requires |url= (help) (Television production). Zuffa (November 22, 2002). Event occurs at 1:00 into Chuck Liddell vs. Renato Sobral. "The evolution of martial arts since 1993, since the UFC came around, martial arts have evolved more than they have in the last 700 years. We know exactly now what works in a real live situation with two warriors fighting. For a long time that was just speculation." —Joe Rogan
While you can’t depend on boxing solely as a skill, it is an important part of MMA training. The advantage of sharpening your boxing skill set is that you will improve your hand skills, and boxing includes a great deal of conditioning that will make you a stronger MMA fighter. Find an MMA gym with skilled boxing coaches that offer classes ranging from beginning skills to professional-level boxing. However, don’t expect to simply rely on those boxing skills. Many a tough boxer has been thrown to the ground by an expert wrestler.
get into fighting shape
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Law digest
Law On Adjacent Zone of Ukraine signed
President Petro Poroshenko has signed the Law of Ukraine On Adjacent Zone of Ukraine adopted by the Ukrainian Parliament on 6 December 2018.
The purpose of the law is to harmonize the maritime legislation of Ukraine with the legislation of other Black Sea states and other states that are parties to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Also, the law is aimed at preventing smuggling operations and calls by illegal vessel to the closed ports of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
According to the law, the adjacent zone of Ukraine is a zone of the high seas, which is adjacent to the territorial sea of Ukraine, and whose external border is at a distance of not more than 24 nautical miles, measured from the baselines, from which the width of the territorial sea of Ukraine is measured.
In its adjacent zone, Ukraine exercises control necessary to prevent violations of customs, fiscal (tax), immigration (migration), and sanitary legislation of Ukraine within the territory of Ukraine, including its internal waters or territorial sea.
The control is carried out with the aim of bringing to responsibility parties for any violation of the legislation of Ukraine, committed within the territory of Ukraine, including its internal waters or territorial sea.
The authorized body that ensures the inviolability of the state border and protection of the sovereign rights of Ukraine in its adjacent and exclusive (marine) economic zones can stop vessels; inspect them, detain or arrest vessels and/or their crew members, with the exception of warships and other state vessels used for non-commercial purposes.
According to the law, if a vessel has violated the legislation of Ukraine and tries to escape, the authorized body has the right to pursue such a vessel without delay to detain and prosecute it pursuant to the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The right to pursue is terminated as soon as the pursued vessel enters the territorial sea of the state whose flag the vessel is flying, or of any third country.
Pan-Euro-Med Convention on origin applied in trade with EU
From 1 January 2019, Ukraine and the European Union started application of provisions of the Regional Convention on pan-Euro-Mediterranean preferential rules of origin in their trade relations. Pan-Euro-Med Convention establishes identical rules of origin for goods, which are applicable within the framework of free trade agreements concluded by its contracting parties. At present 25 countries are parties to the Convention. Ukraine has concluded free trade agreements with the following parties to the Regional Convention: EU, EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland), Georgia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro. A free trade agreement between Ukraine and Israel is being readied for signing, and negotiations with Turkey are in progress. In practice, application of provisions of the Pan-Euro-Med Convention means the ability of a Ukrainian manufacturer to purchase raw materials or components from one of the parties to the Convention and to export finished products to another party to the Convention duty free or subject to payment of duty at a reduced rate.
National Bank of Ukraine approved new currency regulation system
The National Bank of Ukraine has approved and published regulations, which will become the framework for the new liberal system of currency regulation provided for by the Law On Currency and Currency Operations.
The new currency regulation system consists of eight major Decrees issued by the NBU, which replaced the preliminary framework consisting of 56 regulations.
The NBU’s main priorities include lifting the number of restrictions that create the majority of additional difficulties for the conducting of foreign economic activity and that restrain inflow of new foreign investments into Ukraine. First and foremost:
— gradual decrease and cancellation of requirements for the mandatory sale of currency receipts;
— cancellation of the requirement for reservation of preliminary funds to purchase foreign currency (purchase under T+1 terms);
— decrease and/or cancellation of the limit on repatriation of dividends;
— cancellation of deadlines for settlement under residents’ transactions related to the export and import of goods, but not prior to adoption of the draft law on BEPS counteraction;
— cancellation of the ban on the purchase of foreign currency using loan facilities;
— cancellation of additional supervision over offsetting of currency liabilities;
— increase and cancellation of limit on purchase of foreign currency in cash of no more than UAH 150,000/day by individuals.
List of offshore zones increased by five countries
The Cabinet of Ministers has included Trinidad and Tobago, Namibia, Guam, Palau and American Samoa to the list of its offshore zones.
Taking into account the data of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for OECD Tax Purposes, the state updates the Ukrainian list of offshore zones from time to time.
The forum has developed a “blacklist” of states that do not intend to cooperate on issues of taxation and do not implement OECD standards, and this list now includes the mentioned countries.
The list of offshore zones is approved by the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 143-r of 23 February 2011.
Parliament extends ban on sale of agricultural land
The Verkhovna Rada has approved an extension to the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land sale 1 January 2020. Draft Law No.9355-5 stipulates that the Cabinet of Ministers should develop and introduce to Parliament for consideration a Draft Law On Agricultural Land Turnover by 1 March 2019.
The ongoing moratorium on the sale of land was introduced in Ukraine in 2001 for a period until adoption of the new Land Code, but it has, in fact, become indefinite.
The moratorium allows the owner of a plot of land to lease it or to transfer it by succession, but it prohibits the sale of such a land plot or its pledging.
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Venues for weddings and civil partnerships
Book your wedding ceremony in the Palace of Westminster
How to access the Houses of Parliament
Input into legislation
Object to a Private Bill
Follow legislation online
Follow the progress of current legislation and have your say on Bills that affect you.
There are several ways to have your say on legislation that affects you, including contacting a Member of the Lords and submitting evidence to a Public Bill Committee.
Private Bills are proposed laws that only apply to certain individuals or organisations. You can petition against a private bill if you are specifically and directly affected by it.
Keep up to date with the progress of current and draft Bills before Parliament; read the full texts of Acts of Parliament, and find out the details of delegated legislation that change laws under existing Acts.
Bills v Acts
A Bill is a draft law; it becomes an Act if it is approved by a majority in the House of Commons and House of Lords, and formally agreed to by the reigning monarch (known as Royal Assent). An Act of Parliament is a law, enforced in all areas of the UK where it is applicable.
More about Bills
More on Acts
Video: find out how to get involved with Parliament
Watch video on YouTube
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The Workplace Equality Networks, in liaison with the Diversity & Inclusion Team, have developed the Parliamentary Role Models Campaign 2015. The campaign recognises the importance of a working environment where people are valued for who they are and how they contribute to making Parliament a positive, inclusive workplace environment and institution.
Anyone at any level can be a role model and we are championing the importance of having visible, diverse role models at all levels of the organisation who people can be inspired by. It is also important for us to celebrate those who go out of their way to act as role models and to recognise the positive impact that they have made on individuals, the wider organisation, and beyond in encouraging people to engage with Parliament.
Parliamentary Role Models book ( PDF 3.98 MB)
Watch the Parliamentary Role Models video (external site)
Meet the Role Models
Find out about the role models who have been selected because of their positive values and behaviours.
The Workplace Equality Networks
ParliAble: in support of disabled people in Parliament. It is open to both those who consider themselves to have a disability and those who have an interest in supporting disabled people.
Parliagender: in support for gender equality. Our aim is to achieve gender equality across Parliament.
ParliREACH: in support of increasing awareness and appreciation of race, ethnicity and cultural heritage issues in Parliament.
ParliOUT: in support of LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexual, and questioning) people in Parliament
Role Models video
People from all over Parliament discuss what they believe constitutes a Role Model, who they nominated and why.
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Vikings win, ending the Lakeland Rustlers winning streak
UAA
LAKE 23 25 21 23 1
UAA 25 13 25 25 3
K: Shelby Becker - 12
B: 3 Players (#02, #09, #10) - 1
D: Hailee Mckenna - 26
SA: Bailee Weiler - 2
K: Rae Metrunec - 11
B: Karen Wagner - 4
D: Rae Metrunec - 20
SA: 2 Players (#4, #8) - 2
Camrose, AB - The Augustana Vikings took on the Lakeland Rustlers in their second game back from Christmas break. The Augustana Vikings won the game, ending the Rustlers undefeated streak, minus one game. The scores were 25-23, 13-25, 25-21, 25-23.
The first set ended with the same score as the first set from their previous game, yet this time the Vikings had 25 points while the Rustlers had 23 points.
The second set the Rustlers took the lead and won with 25 points while the Vikings were only able to score 13 points.
However, during the third set the Vikings regained their strength and were taking the lead, and the crowd's enthusiasm was palpable. The Vikings won 25-21. At this point the game was looking to their favour again.
The fourth set was a close match with both teams not far from each other. The crowd and teams erupted in an uproar over each point scored by both teams. The Vikings won a close 25-23 set. This won them the game, and showed their mettle against the Rustlers, who have previously only lost one game this season.
From the Lakeland Rustlers, Avery Maginel, number 8 was awarded the player of the game with 5 kills and 5 digs. From the Augustana Vikings, Lauren VanDyke, number 14, was awarded the player of the game with 9 kills, 2 digs and 1 block.
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Legal Downloads » TV Shows » Big Brother US S18E16 HDTV x264-W4F
TV Shows : Big Brother US S18E16 HDTV x264-W4F
Author: supper88 | 28 July 2016 | Views: 0
Big Brother US S18E16 HDTV x264-W4F
Size: 368 MiB | Time: 42mn 52s | Type: mkv
Video: 720x404, x264 @ 60.000 fps
Audio: AAC @ 48.0 KHz
Genre: Game-Show, Reality-TV
Big Brother is a television reality game show based on an originally Dutch TV series of the same name created by producer John de Mol in 1997. The show follows a group of HouseGuests living together 24 hours a day in the "Big Brother" house, isolated from the outside world but under constant surveillance with no privacy for three months.
Since its television debut in 2000, Big Brother has run continuously with at least one season of the show airing each year. It is currently the second longest running version in the world to have done so, after the Spanish version. The HouseGuests compete for the chance to win a $500,000 grand prize by avoiding weekly eviction, until the last HouseGuest remains at the end of the season that can claim the $500,000 grand prize. The American series is hosted by television personality Julie Chen. Produced by Allison Grodner and Rich Meehan for Fly On The Wall Entertainment, it currently airs in the United States on CBS and Global.The show's debut season followed the format of most international editions of the series, in which a group of contestants live together and are voted off each week by the viewers. Following a negative critical and commercial reaction to the first season, the format for future changes was drastically changed. For this new format, a group of contestants, known as "HouseGuests," compete to win the series by voting each other off and being the last HouseGuest remaining. One HouseGuest, known as the Head of Household, must nominate two of their fellow HouseGuests for eviction. The winner of the Power of Veto can remove one of the nominees from the block, forcing the HoH to nominate another HouseGuest. The HouseGuests then vote to evict one of the nominees, and the HouseGuest with the most votes is evicted. When only two HouseGuests remained, the last seven evicted HouseGuests, known as the Jury of Seven, would decide which of them would win the $500,000 prize. Much like the first season, the HouseGuests are still under constant surveillance and are filmed at all times. The September 5, 2013 episode marked the show's 500th episode.
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Home » IFTTT » UPROXX » Zac Efron Is A Charming Killer In Netflix’s ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, And Vile’ Trailer
Zac Efron Is A Charming Killer In Netflix’s ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, And Vile’ Trailer
Netflix has never met a teen (or, y’know, a 20-something playing a teen) idol that it didn’t want to make #content with. There’s Noah Centineo from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (and Sierra Burgess Is a Loser, and the upcoming The Perfect Date, and…), Joey King from The Kissing Booth, and even Zac Efron, who got his big break as floppy-haired basketball stud Troy Bolton in High School Musical and its diminishing sequels. The streaming service acquired the distribution rights to Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, where Efron plays handsome serial killer Ted Bundy, following the film’s premiere at Sundance. It’s already caused quite the stir, both online and in pants; Netflix has already reminded “everyone that there are literally THOUSANDS of hot men on the service — almost all of whom are not convicted serial murderers.”
The lust bandwagon for Big Mouth‘s Coach Steve begins here.
Here’s the official plot synopsis:
1969. Ted (Zac Efron) is crazy-handsome, smart, charismatic, affectionate. And cautious single mother Liz Kloepfer (Lily Collins) ultimately cannot resist his charms. For her, Ted is a match made in heaven, and she soon falls head over heels in love with the dashing young man. A picture of domestic bliss, the happy couple seems to have it all figured out … until, out of nowhere, their perfect life is shattered. Ted is arrested and charged with a series of increasingly grisly murders. Concern soon turns to paranoia — and, as evidence piles up, Liz is forced to consider that the man with whom she shares her life could actually be a psychopath. This is the story of Ted Bundy, one of the most notorious serial killers of all time.
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile premieres on May 3.
from UPROXX https://uproxx.com/movies/extremely-wicked-shockingly-evil-vile-netflix-trailer/
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News roundup: Signs of Mideast Shift
Talks Signal Mideast Shift
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
BEIRUT, Lebanon — After years of escalating tensions and bloodshed, the talk in the Middle East is suddenly about talking. The shift is still relatively subtle, but hints of a new approach in the waning months of the Bush administration are fueling hopes of at least short-term stability for the first time since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Much is happening, adding up not to any great diplomatic breakthrough, but to a distinct change in direction. Syria is being welcomed out of isolation by Europe and is holding indirect talks with Israel. Lebanon has formed a new government. Israel has cut deals with Hamas (a cease-fire) and Hezbollah (a prisoner exchange).
On Wednesday, the United States agreed to send a high-ranking diplomat to attend talks with Iran over its nuclear program, and was considering establishing a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time since the 1979 revolution and hostage crisis.
“The overall picture is moving in the direction of cooling the political atmosphere,” said Muhammad al-Rumaihi, a former government adviser in Kuwait and the editor of Awan, an independent daily newspaper there.
Many underlying problems, including the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, are not on the verge of resolution. Afghanistan has recently seen a sharp spike in violence. In the Middle East, optimism can fill the void left by even a temporary lull in violence, like the recent — and still fragile — stability gains in Iraq. Nevertheless, not long ago, the fear was that Lebanon would descend into civil war and that either Israel or the United States, or both, would attack Iran. That seems less likely at the moment.
The United States, Israel and some of their European allies have begun to recognize that their policy of trying to defeat their enemies by isolating and vilifying them has failed.
The West’s opponents — Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas — also appear to recognize that the cost of ratcheting up tensions may be too high. Syria and Iran are suffering serious economic problems and could benefit from better relations with the United States and Europe. “We are seeing the outlines of a general thaw in the region,” said Osama Safa, director of the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies in Beirut.
This is not necessarily good news for Washington’s traditional Arab allies, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Leaders there were content to have the United States keep pressure on Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, which threaten their own power.
But it represents a pragmatic recognition among Western nations, analysts said, that those deemed rogues in the West have often generated popular support in the region. Hamas, Hezbollah and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood have repeatedly shown nimble political instincts that have allowed them to exploit democratic openings urged by Washington to enhance their influence.
There is also recognition that the players who can deliver in hot spots like Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza are the same ones that Washington had shunned — Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.
“You may have to deal with governments on political issues, but when it comes to security, they have to deal with nonstate actors like Hezbollah and Hamas,” Mr. Safa said.
Simon Karam, a former Lebanese ambassador to Washington, said Hezbollah and Hamas also seemed to have followed the path taken by Yasir Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization, which was also condemned as a terrorist group before it found its place at the negotiating table.
“I witnessed a similar process with regard to P.L.O., Fatah and Arafat,” Mr. Karam said. “Both Americans and Israelis are more inclined to accept the status quo.”
Not long ago, for example, when Fatah leaders negotiated a cease-fire with Israel, it was Hamas that had to be pressed to abide by the truce. Now Hamas, having negotiated a cease-fire with Israel in Gaza, has tried to rein in groups like Islamic Jihad.
The United States and Israel may have failed to dislodge Hamas from Gaza, weaken Hezbollah in Lebanon, stop Iran’s nuclear program or force any pronounced change of behavior in Syria. Yet, each of those players has now seen it is in its interests to deal, too. The process of talks confers on them new diplomatic and political status, but maintaining that status requires some moderation in their policies.
The emerging phase in Middle Eastern dynamics was on display on Wednesday. Emotions ran high when Israel and Hezbollah completed the deal to trade five Lebanese prisoners for two coffins with the remains of the Israeli soldiers captured two years ago. It was a clear Hezbollah victory, yet it was also seen in Lebanon as a deal to reduce the chances of a fresh cross-border conflict, analysts said.
On the same day, the United States announced that it would send William J. Burns, the under secretary for political affairs at the State Department, to attend talks with Iran over its nuclear program. The White House said there would be no negotiating. But that did little to mask the new approach, and was undermined by the talk of establishing limited diplomatic ties with Tehran.
“The presence of the representative is a move towards calm between Iran and the United States, especially within the Iraqi context,” said Mr. Rumaihi, the former Kuwaiti government adviser. “The Iraqi scene is also witnessing a political cooling through the announcement made by the Emirates, Bahrain and finally Kuwait about sending ambassadors to Iraq.”
Events in this part of the world can change quickly. Lebanon could erupt next spring, when parliamentary elections are scheduled. If diplomatic overtures to Iran fail to dissuade it from pursuing what the West fears is a nuclear weapons program, military options could again take center stage.
Some analysts suspect that Israel and the United States may be trying to placate their other enemies in advance of a military strike on Iran that they consider all but inevitable. But these days, for everyone who sees diplomacy as a cover for military action, someone else sees saber rattling as a cover for compromise.
“The Arab side is unable to grasp the speed with which the change is happening,” said Salama Ahmed Salama, a daily columnist in Al Ahram, Egypt’s largest state-controlled newspaper. “Newspapers in Egypt and Saudi are all talking about the coming war between the United States and Israel on the one hand and Iran on the other. They can’t understand that a compromise can happen at any time.”
Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo.
Report: U.S. to station diplomats in Iran for first time since 1979
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and The Associated Press
The United States intends to station diplomats in Iran for the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution which saw a severence of ties between the two countries, The Guardian reported on Thursday.
The move would be a step in the direction of setting up a full embassy in Iran, a dramatic political shift for the Bush administration, which has spent the last few years guiding international pressure on Tehran over its contentious nuclear program.
The Guardian report comes a day after the U.S. announced plans to send a senior envoy to meet with a senior Iranian representative to discuss Iran's nuclear program, an announcement met with concern in Israel.
"There is a bad feeling in Israel and dissatisfaction with the U.S. move," Israel told senior Washington officials, according to a source in Jerusalem. "There can be no concession on the demand to end uranium enrichment as a precondition to negotiating with Iran," Israel added.
UN Security Council members, Germany and the European Union have been holding regular meetings with Iranian representatives, and U.S. Under Secretary of State William Burns, considered No. 3 in the State Department, will be participating for the first time.
The U.S. informed Israel of its plans to send Burns to the talks, emphasizing that this is a one-time meeting and not a change in policy.
The source said the Americans considered the talks "feelers" to test whether it should be speaking with Iran.
The U.S. also claims it is sending an envoy to the talks because it "doesn't trust" the reports from EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, the liaison with the Iranians. The Americans said Solana "pulls the wool over our eyes," according to the source in Jerusalem.
Israel emphasized to the U.S. that "there is great importance in maintaining the international demand to suspend uranium enrichment, as mandated by the UN resolution, as a precondition to entering negotiations with Iran. We believe there can be no concession on this demand," the source said. The Americans responded that "the condition remains."
Iranian FM in Syria for talks with Assad
Iran's foreign minister arrived in Damascus on Thursday for talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that will likely cover Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
Manouchehr Mottaki said on arrival Thursday that he'll discuss the latest Mideast developments with Assad.
But the two are also expected to discuss a request by the French president that Assad help persuade Tehran to cooperate with the international community over its nuclear ambitions.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy met Assad at a Euro-Med summit last weekend in Paris. Assad promised to relay the request from France to Tehran.
Syria and Iran are close allies, but Assad has expressed doubt that his intervention can help in a fierce standoff between Iran and the West.
Iran and U.S. Signaling Chance of Deal
By Glenn Kessler_Washington Post Staff Writer_Thursday, July 17, 2008; A16
President Bush's decision to shift policy and send a senior U.S. envoy to nuclear talks with Iran this weekend was made after increasing signs that Iran was open to possible negotiations and that international sanctions were having an impact on the Islamic republic, U.S. officials said yesterday.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed for the move in a meeting on Monday of Bush's top aides, and Bush's support suggests he increasingly is determined to put aside a possible military strike in an effort to reach a deal to end Iran's nuclear program in his final six months in office. In recent weeks, the White House already has approved a sweetened package of incentives to Iran that included a pledge to refrain from the use of force, supported a European gambit to begin preliminary talks with Iran and sent clear signals to Israel not to consider acting against Iran on its own.
For more than two years, the Bush administration has had the same bottom line: Iran must suspend its enrichment of uranium -- a route to a nuclear weapon -- before serious talks can begin. U.S. officials insisted yesterday that such a demand, also shared by European allies, had not changed, but the diplomatic lines have become sufficiently hazy that if negotiations start in earnest, Iran will also be able to claim a diplomatic victory.
Iran last week sent its own mixed signals, test-firing long-range missiles in the Persian Gulf while appearing conciliatory on possible negotiations.
With negotiations now a real possibility, the Bush administration, which had largely subcontracted the nuclear diplomacy with Iran to its European partners, also appears intent on making sure that Iran hears its voice directly, rather than having it filtered by other interlocutors. The international coalition seeking talks with Iran -- Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the United States -- is an unwieldy group with different interests and expectations in negotiations, and so U.S. officials wanted to ensure that the preliminary talks did not veer off course and lose sight of the suspension demand.
The chief negotiator is E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana. When he delivered the revised package of incentives to Iran last month, he was accompanied by senior foreign policy officials of the other five countries, but not the United States. Now, Undersecretary of State William J. Burns, the State Department's third-ranking official, will join the group meeting with Saeed Jalili, Iran's nuclear negotiator, in Geneva.
"The substance remains the same, but this is a new tactic," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. She added: "What this does show is how serious we are when we say that we want to try to solve this diplomatically."
Bush accepted Rice's recommendation at the closely held meeting, which also included Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, White House chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten and Burns. The move infuriated the administration's conservative critics, who said it was yet another sign the White House has lost its moorings.
"This is a complete capitulation on the whole idea of suspending enrichment," said former U.N. ambassador John R. Bolton. "Just when the administration has no more U-turns to pull, it does another."
But former State Department counselor Philip D. Zelikow said the decision is a natural evolution. "For some time, we and our allies have been reflecting on ways to reinforce that basic approach while taking away some of the more superficial complaints about it. This move does that. But the substantive position remains unchanged," he said.
U.S. officials said they felt comfortable making this shift because there are increasing signs that sanctions are beginning to harm Tehran, such as the decision last week by France energy giant Total SA to abandon plans to develop a liquefied natural gas project in Iran.
At the same time, however, the administration has sufficiently moderated its own position on how to proceed with talks.
In 2006, the initial package of incentives offered by the six countries included only a vague reference to Iran's security concerns because the Bush administration insisted that section of the offer be largely gutted. The new package, by contrast, offers to negotiate extensive security commitments, including supporting Iran in "playing an important and constructive role in international affairs."
The administration has also supported Solana's concept of a "freeze for a freeze," a six-week interim period for preliminary talks that blurs the lines between suspension and discussion. Under Solana's plan, talks could begin as long as the allies halt efforts to increase sanctions and Iran does not expand its nuclear program. Then formal negotiations would begin as soon as Iran suspended enrichment.
Thus, Iran could say it only suspended its program in the midst of talks, while the United States could say talks did not begin until nuclear activities were suspended -- allowing both sides to save face.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is aimed at generating electricity, not weapons, and thus far its official response has disappointed U.S. and European officials.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, in a three-page letter responding to the June offer made public this week by a French magazine, did not directly address the demand to suspend enrichment.
Instead, he called for a comprehensive dialogue, saying, "The time for negotiating from the condescending position of inequality has come to an end."
OP-ED COLUMNIST
So Popular and So Spineless
Much ink has been spilled lately decrying the decline in American popularity around the world under President Bush. Polls tell us how China is now more popular in Asia than America and how few Europeans say they identify with the United States. I am sure there is truth to these polls. We should have done better in Iraq. An America that presides over Abu Ghraib, torture and Guantánamo Bay deserves a thumbs-down.
But America is not and never has been just about those things, which is why I also find some of these poll results self-indulgent, knee-jerk and borderline silly. Friday’s vote at the U.N. on Zimbabwe reminded me why.
Maybe Asians, Europeans, Latin Americans and Africans don’t like a world of too much American power — “Mr. Big” got a little too big for them. But how would they like a world of too little American power? With America’s overextended military and overextended banks, that is the world into which we may be heading.
Welcome to a world of too much Russian and Chinese power.
I am neither a Russia-basher nor a China-basher. But there was something truly filthy about Russia’s and China’s vetoes of the American-led U.N. Security Council effort to impose targeted sanctions on Robert Mugabe’s ruling clique in Zimbabwe.
The U.S. put forward a simple Security Council resolution, calling for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, the appointment of a U.N. mediator, plus travel and financial restrictions on the dictator Mugabe and 13 top military and government officials for stealing the Zimbabwe election and essentially mugging an entire country in broad daylight.
In the first round of Zimbabwe’s elections, on March 29, the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won nearly 48 percent of the vote compared with 42 percent for Mugabe. This prompted Mugabe and his henchmen to begin a campaign of killing and intimidation against Tsvangirai supporters that eventually forced the opposition to pull out of the second-round runoff vote just to stay alive.
Even before the runoff, Mugabe declared that he would disregard the results if his ZANU-PF party lost. Or as he put it: “We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X” on some paper ballot.
And so, of course, Mugabe “won” in one of the most blatantly stolen elections ever — in a country already mired in misrule, unemployment, hunger and inflation. Some 25 percent of Zimbabwe’s people have now taken refuge in neighboring states. (I have close friends from Zimbabwe, and one of my daughters worked there in an H.I.V.-AIDS community center in January.) The Associated Press reported in May from Zimbabwe “that annual inflation rose this month to 1,063,572 percent, based on prices of a basket of basic foodstuffs.” Zimbabwe’s currency has become so devalued, the A.P. explained, that “a loaf of bread now costs what 12 new cars did a decade ago.”
No matter. Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, argued that the targeted sanctions that the U.S. and others wanted to impose on Mugabe’s clique exceeded the Security Council’s mandate. “We believe such practices to be illegitimate and dangerous,” he said, describing the resolution as one more obvious “attempt to take the Council beyond its charter prerogatives.” Veto!
Mugabe’s campaign of murder and intimidation didn’t strike Churkin as “illegitimate and dangerous” — only the U.N. resolution to bring a halt to it was “illegitimate and dangerous.” Shameful. Meanwhile, China is hosting the Olympics, a celebration of the human spirit, while defending Mugabe’s right to crush his own people’s spirit.
But when it comes to pure, rancid moral corruption, no one can top South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, and his stooge at the U.N., Dumisani Kumalo. They have done everything they can to prevent any meaningful U.N. pressure on the Mugabe dictatorship.
As The Times reported, America’s U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, “accused South Africa of protecting the ‘horrible regime in Zimbabwe,’ ” calling this particularly disturbing given that it was precisely international economic sanctions that brought down South Africa’s apartheid government, which had long oppressed that country’s blacks.
So let us now coin the Mbeki Rule: When whites persecute blacks, no amount of U.N. sanctions is too much. And when blacks persecute blacks, any amount of U.N. sanctions is too much.
Which brings me back to America. Perfect we are not, but America still has some moral backbone. There are travesties we will not tolerate. The U.N. vote on Zimbabwe demonstrates that this is not true for these “popular” countries — called Russia or China or South Africa — that have no problem siding with a man who is pulverizing his own people.
So, yes, we’re not so popular in Europe and Asia anymore. I guess they would prefer a world in which America was weaker, where leaders with the values of Vladimir Putin and Thabo Mbeki had a greater say, and where the desperate voices for change in Zimbabwe would, well, just shut up.
Labels: EU, Iran, US Syria Policy
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The internet is now an arena for conflict, and we're all caught up in it
By Tom Sear, Industry Fellow, UNSW Canberra Cyber, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW
There is a vast infrastructure of digital tools that can be used to strategically manipulate behaviour for tactical gain. Shutterstock
Most people think the internet operates as a kind of global public square. In reality, it’s become a divided arena where conflict between nation states plays out.
Nation states run covert operations on the same platforms we use to post cat videos and exchange gossip. And if we’re not aware of it, we could be unwittingly used as pawns for the wrong side.
How did we get here? It’s complicated, but let’s walk through some of the main elements.
The age of entanglement
On the one hand, we have an information landscape dominated by Western culture and huge multi-national internet platforms run by private companies, such as Google and Facebook. On the other, there are authoritarian regimes such as China, Iran, Turkey and Russia exercising tight control over the internet traffic flowing in and out of their countries.
We are seeing more cyber intrusions into nation state networks, such as the recent hack of the Australian parliamentary network. At the same time, information and influence operations conducted by countries such as Russia and China are flowing through social media into our increasingly shared digital societies.
The result is a global ecosystem perpetually close to the threshold of war.
Because nations use the internet both to assert power and to conduct trade, there are incentives for authoritarian powers to keep their internet traffic open. You can’t maintain rigid digital borders and assert cyberpower influence at the same time, so nations have to “cooperate to compete”.
This is becoming known as “entanglement” – and it affects us all.
A state actor has targeted Australian political parties – but that shouldn't surprise us
Data flows in one direction
Authoritarian societies such as China, Russia and Iran aim to create their own separate digital ecosystems where the government can control internet traffic that flows in and out of the country.
The Chinese Communist Party is well known for maintaining a supposedly secure Chinese internet via what is known in the West as the “Great Firewall”. This is a system that can block international internet traffic from entering China according to the whim of the government.
For the majority of the 802 million people online in China, many of the apps we use to produce and share information are not accessible. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter are blocked. Instead, people in China use apps created by Chinese technology companies, such as Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu.
Traffic within this ecosystem is monitored and censored in the most sophisticated and comprehensive surveillance state in the world. In 2018, for example, Peppa Pig was banned and the People’s Daily referred to her as a “gangster” after she became iconic of rebelliousness in Chinese youth culture.
Complete blocking of data is impossible
A key objective of this firewall is to to shield Chinese society and politics from external influence, while enabling internal surveillance of the Chinese population.
But the firewall is not technologically independent of the West – its development has been reliant upon US corporations to supply the software, hardware innovation and training to ensure the system functions. And since the internet is an arena where nations compete for economic advantage, it’s not in the interest of either side to destroy cyberspace entirely.
As cyber security expert Greg Austin has observed, the foundations of China’s cyber defences remain weak. There are technical ways to get around the firewall, and Chinese internet users exploit Mandarin homophones and emoji to evade internal censors.
Chinese economic and financial entanglement with the West means complete blocking of data is impossible. Consistent incentives to openness remain. China and the United States are therefore engaged in what Canadian scholar of digital media and global affairs Jon R Lindsay describes as:
chronic and ambiguous intelligence-counter intelligence contests across their networks, even as the internet facilitates productive exchange between them.
That is, a tension exists because they are covertly working against each other on exactly the same digital platforms necessary to promote their individual and mutual interests in areas such as trade, manufacturing, communications and regulation.
Since Russia is less dependent upon the information technology services of the United States and is therefore less entangled than China, it is more able to engage in bilateral negotiation and aggression.
How digital media blur the border between Australia and China
Different styles of influence
If the internet has become a contest between nation states, one way of winning is to appear to comply with the letter of the law, while abusing its spirit.
In the West, a network of private corporations, including Twitter, Google and Facebook, facilitate an internet system where information and commerce flow freely. Since the West remains open, while powers such as Russia and China exercise control over internet traffic, this creates an imbalance that can be exploited.
Influence operations conducted by China and Russia in countries such as Australia exist within this larger context. And they are being carried out in the digital arena on a scale never before experienced. In the words of the latest US Intelligence Community Worldwide Threat Assessment:
Our adversaries and strategic competitors […] are now becoming more adept at using social media to alter how we think, behave and decide.
The internet is a vast infrastructure of tools that can be used to strategically manipulate behaviour for specific tactical gain, and each nation has its own style of influence.
I have previously written about attempts by China and Russia to influence Australian politics via social media, showing how each nation state utilises different tactics.
China takes a subtle approach, reflecting a long term strategy. It seeks to connect with the Chinese diaspora in a target country, and shape opinion in a manner favourable to the Chinese Communist Party. This is often as much as about ensuring some things aren’t said as it is about shaping what is.
Russia, on the other hand, has used more obvious tactics to infiltrate and disrupt Australian political discourse on social media, exploiting Islamophobia – and the divide between left and right – to undermine social cohesion. This reflects Russia’s primary aim to destabilise the civic culture of the target population.
But there are some similarities between the two approaches, reflecting a growing cooperation between them. As the US Intelligence Community points out:
China and Russia are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s.
We've been hacked – so will the data be weaponised to influence election 2019? Here’s what to look for
A strategic alliance between Russia and China
The strategic origins of these shared approaches go back to the early internet itself. The Russian idea of hybrid warfare – also known as the Gerasimov Doctrine – uses information campaigns to undermine a society as part of a wider strategy.
But this concept first originated in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In 1999, Chinese PLA colonels penned a strategy titled Unrestricted Warfare, which outlined how to use media, government, pretty much everything, in the target country not as a tool, but as a weapon.
It recommended not just cyber attacks, but also fake news campaigns – and was the basis for information campaigns that became famous during the 2016 US presidential election.
In June 2016, Russia and China signed a joint declaration on the internet, affirming their shared objectives. In December 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on a new Doctrine of Information Security, which establishes how Russia will defend its own population against influence operations.
Observers noted the striking similarity between the Russian document and Chinese internet law.
Russia and China also share a view of the global management of the internet, pursued via the United Nations:
[…] more regulations to clarify how international law applies to cyberspace, with the aim of exercising more sovereignty – and state control – over the internet.
The recent “sovereign internet” bill introduced to the Russian Parliament proposes a Domain Name System (DNS) independent of the wider internet infrastructure.
If the internet is now a site of proxy war, such so-called “balkanization” challenges the dominance of the United States.
Nations are competing for influence, leverage and advantage to secure their own interests. Russia and China don’t want to risk an all out war, and so competition is pursued at a level just below armed conflict.
Technology, especially the internet, has brought this competition to us all.
Russian trolls targeted Australian voters on Twitter via #auspol and #MH17
We’re entering turbulent waters
Despite its best efforts, China’s leaders remain concerned that the digital border between it and the rest of the world is too porous.
In June 2009, Google was blocked in China. In 2011, Fang Binxing, one of the main designers of the Great Firewall expressed concern Google was still potentially accessible in China, saying:
It’s like the relationship between riverbed and water. Water has no nationality, but riverbeds are sovereign territories, we cannot allow polluted water from other nation states to enter our country.
The water metaphor was deliberate. Water flows and maritime domains define sovereign borders. And water flows are a good analogy for data flows. The internet has pitched democratic politics into the fluid dynamics of turbulence, where algorithms shape attention, tiny clicks measure participation, and personal data is valuable and apt to be manipulated.
While other nations grapple with the best mix of containment, control and openness, ensuring Australia’s democracy remains robust is the best defence. We need to keep an eye on the nature of the political discussion online, which requires a coordinated approach between the government and private sector, defence and security agencies, and an educated public.
The strategies of information warfare we hear so much about these days were conceived in the 1990s – an era when “surfing the web” seemed as refreshing as a dip at your favourite beach. Our immersion in the subsequent waves of the web seem more threatening, but perhaps we can draw upon our cultural traditions to influence Australian security.
As the rip currents of global internet influence operations grow more prevalent, making web surfing more dangerous, Australia would be wise to mark out a safe place to swim between the flags. Successful protection from influence will need many eyes watching from the beach.
Tom Sear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Originally published in The Conversation.
Online Feature
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BBBS Services, Inc. Serving North Carolina
Big Impact
Bigs Council
Enroll a Child
BBBS of Winston-Salem Local History
The first staff person, Bert Grisard, was hired as Executive Director, and the agency began to provide children from single-parent families with Big Brothers and Big Sisters.
Big Brothers Big Sisters held its first Bowl For Kids’ Sake.
Big Brothers Big Sisters sought and received the support of a local foundation to purchase an office building at 107 Westdale Avenue in Winston-Salem. The building was purchased in order to house several non-profit agencies under one roof, cost-effectively sharing a conference room, storage space, and a copier.
An Endowment Campaign was undertaken under the direction of a Board committee. Board members made leadership gifts, and the agency received matching grants from three local foundations.
Big Brothers Big Sisters Services was chosen as one of the agencies to pilot the Site-Based program and started providing volunteers to children at elementary schools. Recruitments for volunteers were done in high schools.
June: Wanda Starke, a local news anchorwoman and Big Sister to Courtney, was selected as National Big Sister of the Year.
September: a Director of Development and Communication position was created through initial support from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust.
A Big Brothers Big Sisters Advisory Committee was formed in Davie County to develop a plan for expansion of Big Brothers Big Sisters Services into Davie County.
October: a satellite office was opened in Mocksville and a caseworker for Davie County was hired.
November: the Board of Directors of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Forsyth County, Inc. voted to change the name of the agency to Big Brothers Big Sisters Services, Inc. in order to reflect the expanded geographic service delivery area and expanded services
A Big Brother Big Sisters Advisory Committee was formed in Elkin to develop a plan for expansion of services into the tri-county Yadkin Valley area. In December 2000, a satellite office opened in Elkin and a part-time Case Manager for the satellite office was hired.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Forsyth County was officially changed to Big Brothers Big Sisters Services, Inc. and Bert Grisard’s title changed from Executive Director to President/CEO.
May: Big Brothers Big Sisters Services, Inc. celebrated it 25th Anniversary with Lynn Swann, the BBBSA national spokesperson, as the guest speaker.
September: Elkin Valley office had grown and a full time staff person was hired.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America celebrated its Centennial Anniversary.
President/CEO Bert Grisard received the national Skip Walsh award for ExecutiveDirectors at the BBBSA National Conference in Washington, DC.
The office building located at 107 Westdale Avenue is completely paid for.
The Teen Mom program is established and the first matches are made.
Bert Grisard retired after serving as leader of the agency for almost 32 years and over 12,000 children served.
June: Elkin Valley office was closed.
November: Amy R. Mack was hired as President and CEO after relocating to Winston-Salem from Washington, DC where she worked at The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and served in multiple roles including Chief of Staff, Director of Public Affairs, and Senior Advisor to the CEO.
Amy R. Mack resigned as President/CEO. Shawan Gabriel was named President/CEO.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America - 100 Years of History
For over a century, Big Brothers Big Sisters has been helping change kids’ perspectives and giving them the opportunity to reach their potential. And we have over a century of volunteers, donors, and advocates just like you to thank.
It all started in 1904, when a young New York City court clerk named Ernest Coulter was seeing more and more boys come through his courtroom. He recognized that caring adults could help many of these kids stay out of trouble, and he set out to find volunteers. That marked the beginning of the Big Brothers movement.
At around the same time, the members of a group called Ladies of Charity were befriending girls who had come through the New York Children’s Court. That group would later become Catholic Big Sisters.
Both groups continued to work independently until 1977, when Big Brothers Association and Big Sisters International joined forces and became Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.
More than 100 years later, Big Brothers Big Sisters remains true to our founders’ vision of bringing caring role models into the lives of children. And, today, Big Brothers Big Sisters currently operates in all 50 states—and in 12 countries around the world.
Here is a look at our history, from the start:
Ernest Coulter, court clerk, helps organize the first New York Children's Court; Ladies of Charity, later Catholic Big Sisters of New York, starts to befriend girls who come before the New York Children's Court.
Businessman Irvin F. Westheimer befriends a young boy in Cincinnati, OH; seeds are formed for the start of Big Brothers in Cincinnati.
Ernest Coulter founds the organized Big Brothers movement by obtaining 39 volunteers, who each agree to befriend one boy.
The New York Times reports Big Brothers activity in 26 cities.
Ernest Coulter embarks on nationwide lecture tour on behalf of Big Brothers; planning begins for a national Big Brothers and Big Sisters organization.
The first national conference of Big Brothers and Big Sisters organizations is held in Grand Rapids, MI.
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., becomes treasurer of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Federation;
First motion picture based on a Big and Little Brother relationship is released by Paramount Pictures.
President Calvin Coolidge becomes patron of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Federation.
Six hundred delegates attend a Big Brothers and Big Sisters Federation meeting in New York City.
President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt become patrons of Big Brothers and Big Sisters Federation.
Norman Rockwell produces the sketch that becomes a symbol for the Big Brothers Association.
The Big Brothers of the Year program begins, Associate Justice Tom Clark of the U.S. Supreme Court and J. Edgar Hoover are named.
Big Brothers Association is chartered by Congress.
Big Sisters International is incorporated.
Big Sisters International and Big Brothers Association merge, forming Big Brothers Big Sisters of America with 357 agencies.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America occupies its headquarters at 230 North 13th Street in Philadelphia.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is honored with a commemorative stamp by the Postmaster General.
Public/Private Ventures Study on Big Brothers Big Sisters Community-Based Mentoring shows measurable, positive results on youth who have a Big Brother or Sister, seminal research in the field of youth mentoring.
President William J. Clinton holds Volunteer Summit in Philadelphia; Big Brothers Big Sisters plays key role.
Big Brothers Big Sisters International is founded.
President George W. Bush announces three-year $450 million mentoring initiative in his State of the Union Address.
Big Brothers Big Sisters celebrates 100 years of serving America’s youth.
First Lady Laura Bush stars in a public service announcement to recruit volunteers across the nation.
Public/Private Ventures conducts a study on Big Brothers Big Sisters School-Based Mentoring program, reinforcing the value of strong, long-lasting relationships and leading to program enhancements.
In a Super Bowl first, CBS, the NFL and Big Brothers Big Sisters joined forces to create a public service announcement that features the two coaches whose teams are competing in the game. Roughly 90 million viewers tuned in to watch the game and see Indianapolis Colts' Coach Tony Dungy and Coach Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears underscore the importance of mentoring by referencing their real-life mentoring relationship.
President Obama holds a White House National Mentoring Month Ceremony; Big Brothers Big Sisters attends and plays a key role.
It’s not just a donation. It’s an investment in a child’s future.
When you donate online to Big Brothers Big Sisters, you join our cause and directly support children in your community. No matter how little or big the amount, donating can start making a difference in the lives of young people around you.
For more than 100 years, Big Brothers Big Sisters has operated under the belief that inherent in every child is the ability to succeed and thrive in life. As the nation’s largest donor and volunteer supported mentoring network, Big Brothers Big Sisters makes meaningful, monitored matches between adult volunteers (“Bigs”) and children (“Littles”), ages 6 through 18, in communities across the country. We develop positive relationships that have a direct and lasting effect on the lives of young people.
© 2019 Big Brothers Big Sisters Services, Inc Serving North Carolina.
200 South Marshall St, Winston-Salem NC 27101
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California Has Longer ER Wait Times, But Fares Better By Other Health Measures
Pauline Bartolone
Friday, October 11, 2013 | Sacramento, CA | Permalink
MIKI Yoshihito via Flickr
The report from the California HealthCare Foundation found the state stood out from the national average in emergency room wait times.
Californians admitted to the hospital from the ER typically waited over five hours, almost an hour longer than the national average.
“I’m not surprised because we’ve known that it’s a very large problem in parts of California,” says Howard Backer, Director of the California Emergency Medical Services Authority.
“This is a process measure that impacts many other aspects of health care quality and patient care,” says Backer.
Backer says the problem of emergency department wait times is not uniform across the state - he says it varies by hospital and location.
But there was positive data about California health care in the report.
It suggests Californians getting long-term nursing home care were the least likely in the nation to have lost too much weight, be depressed, or have a fall with a major injury.
California adults are also slightly less likely to have chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, obesity, and arthritis.
healthcarehealthcarehealthcare
Pauline Bartolone has been a journalist for more than 15 years, during which she was Capital Public Radio’s healthcare reporter from 2011-2015. Her work has aired frequently on National Public Radio. Read Full Bio
Davis Shakespeare Festival’s ‘Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder’ A Giddy, Gloomy Good Time
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Bank of Russia Today
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Where Does the Black Muslim Woman Fit in Discussions of Sexuality
by Iman Hussein
Carrie Bradshaw and Marilyn Monroe are two cultural icons infamous for their sexual exploration, freedom, and depiction of what mainstream media believes to be a modern woman. And when I say a "modern woman," I mean the constantly evolving modern white woman—the balance of purity and sin. As an American, I was unconsciously raised with this standard, and consciously told how incapable I was of achieving that standard because of my Blackness and Arabness. My identity and looks are subject to a harmful history that has not only orientalized, but also fetishized the Black, Muslim Female.
When you're faced with the "ideal, modern" woman, the key to their entire being, success, and culmination is whiteness. In 2007—which seems like a world away now—Dr. Edward Rhymes brought to light the different ways that Black and white women are received in society when expressing similar forms of sexual expression. Rhymes provides a wide range of examples—from popular porn stars to Pretty Woman—to showcase a clear point: "...even when the 'textbook' requirements of what constitutes being promiscuous is met, her whiteness saves the day." The "innocent, wholesome" white woman is then the opposite of the "crude, immodest, and sexually deviant" Black woman.
This depiction of Black women can be found even in the earliest form of media: art. White women have traditionally been depicted as “‘harmonious with nature’—‘peaceful and comfortable within [their] environment’—as they serve as ‘metaphors for the land,’ while white men represent the ‘masculinized culture’ in control of the ‘feminine realm.”' White women are just the extension of the natural world, and consequently, are "passive" in their own sexuality, because—like nature—they cannot escape their "natural beauty." Themes like "sleep/death...environmental distraction and...allegory" were used to reinforce the idea that white women are inherently "sexually innocent". These ideas establish the "preservation of 'innocence' of the [white] female by externalizing the orgin of the sexaul gaze." On the other hand, Black women, as seen in art pieces like the Colored Nude, are depicted as "[sellable] flesh," their bodies becoming something "other" and needing to be possessed by the right hands. Unlike white women and their sexuality, Black women are not portrayed as passive in their sexuality; they are aggressively sexual and overt. Hence, Black women are just sexual beings that deserve to be put on display, and punished for their overt sexuality (i.e. kinky hair and curvier bodily features).
When you look at the history of how female bodies are perceived, you can better understand the treatment of white bodies in comparison to bodies of color. White women are free to do as they please because their bodies are considered good and moral. White women in most societies can do no wrong, so they can take on sexually explicit professions and lifestyles and still be deemed as being part of a "sexual revolution." Yet Black women, even from childhood, are deemed as inherently dirty and overtly sexual unless they look or have stake in some sort of whiteness (i.e. biraciality or lack of curves). The ruthless sexualization of Black women and their bodies has led to the demonization and exploitation of the same actions that their white counterparts are praised for regularly.
Depictions of women in the past—all controlled and determined by a white "masculinized culture"—serve to represent all women of their race and consequently erase the individual and her experiences. These visual representations served as models of understanding how to treat and label women. While white women were also sexualized, they still had the power to be seen as positive and as the "ideal" in not only their own cultures but around the world.
The idealization of not only the white female form, but also white people and culture in general, can be defined by the concept of Occidentalism: the learned, idealized perception of what it means to be a Westerner. Occidentalism is in direct opposition to Orientalism, the western depiction of the East and its inhabitants. Europe was viewed as "essentially rational, developed, humane, superior, authentic, active, creative, and masculine, while the Orient...[was considered] irrational, aberrant, backwards, crude, despotic, inferior, inauthentic, passive, [and] sexually corrupt". The Oriental people, specifically the Oriental woman, were defined by these "western travel writers" as "lusty" and in dire need of "western/Christian heroes to satisfy their libidinous desire." Muslim/Arab women were viewed as needing to be saved from "Muslim men and Islamic patriarchy," establishing a sort of white savior complex.
Eastern women (including Black Arabs and Africans) were seen as "passive" figures in need of a guiding force to provide them with a voice. Consequently, Eastern women, like their "inferior nations," were considered to lack all of the qualities found in white women. Mahmudul Hasan summed it up perfectly by stating that "western women are conscious of their rights, while eastern women are passive, submissive recipients of patriarchal domination". Because of their 'inherent nature,' Oriental women were denied their autonomy and individuality, and were '[homogenized]' by not only white men, but also white women. White feminists were known to "depreciate the struggles of local feminist protagonists" by stripping away or ignoring Eastern women’s "rich intellectual [and cultural] heritage" to continue subjecting them to the same constraints placed upon them by white men.
On top of being subjected to an intense amount of "othering" by colonialists, women of color were treated and depicted just as harshly by those in the East. Feminist scholars often refer to this as "double colonization" as Eastern women experienced both "patriarchal oppression...[and] Orientalist manipulation." Muslim women often received the brunt of the oppressive and manipulative treatment found in the East due to a deep hatred of Islam.
The demonization of Muslims led to the literal soul-removal and dehumanization of Muslim women by Western colonialists. Western men having sex or participating in any sexual acts with Muslim women was then seen as more than justifiable by Westerners like Richard Burton due to their lack of humanity—because "Asiatic beauties [were] the most convenient women alive." Rape and sexual assault were equally as permissible because Muslim women "were so nymphomaniac and [...] so uncontrollable that, in the absence of men, they used to dally with each other." The pillaging of Muslim women's souls and humanity then allowed for colonialists to feel justified in treating them like "living rewards...they [could] reap" whenever they pleased". Muslim/Eastern women were not seen as people. As put so well by Mahmudul Hasan, they were seen in the order of "'Oriental’, woman, and Muslim."
While Muslim women were treated like sex maniacs by Westerners, they were also ironically stripped of their sexual identity by the prevalent Muslim culture. Western treatment of the female body partially solidified several ideas reiterating that "if [their bodies were] not controlled, [it] could result in social chaos and social disorder." This belief can be traced back to a time and culture prior to Islam's arrival in which women were punished just for existing. Even though the Qu'ran never discusses female sexuality, women in the Muslim faith have been exploited by their own people.
Muslim women are forced to adhere to harmful male notions regarding their womanhood, their sexuality, and their agency, all without their individuality, opinions, and consent being factored into the equation. This isn't the case for all Muslims, but there are many Muslim women who face the reality of not having autonomy over their bodies and actions. Laws and cultural practices have determined that female sexuality and identity are representative of individual families’ "purity," and if women "[violate these] codes," they're punished and "subjected to violence, forced marriage, and even killed." Consequently, women that veer from the path established by the patriarchy are made to feel evil or dirty for expressing their own desires and actions.
Now how does the Black Arab woman fit into these narratives of the Black woman and the Arab/Muslim woman? Black Arab women, like Somalis and Berbers, are excluded altogether from the conversation regarding the Black female form and Arab/Muslim female representation. Black Arab women's bodies, features, and culture reflect and embody that of the Arab World, but their location and skin color paints a different story for Westerners. The idea of Blackness and Arab-ness and womanhood existing together has been impossible to acknowledge in general—let alone on an individual basis.
The Black Arab woman is restrained by her appearance, her religion, and a misogynistic, prejudiced culture working against her. The worst part about the dichotomy is that when you’re not being seen as Black, you're being seen as either Muslim or "Other." Black Arab women are under the pressure of various outlets—from specific Muslim cultures to television—to either conform or face an immense amount of cruelty and shame in being "Other."
I say these things because my experiences in life have been dictated by these historical dynamics of gender, religion, and race. When I get catcalled or ogled by men, I can't help but be reminded of the culture that used religion to shame me for the gaze of others. When I step outside in shorts, I can't help but feel guilty for being immodest and feeling like I'm giving people permission to make comments and judgements. For the longest time, I was even ashamed for being darker skinned because it seems like the blacker you are in the Arab world, the less deserving you are of being respected and treated as an Arab, despite growing up and existing in an Arab culture all my life.
Muslim women's treatment has gone from being nymphomaniacs to being prudes incapable of sexual autonomy. The day I decided to stop wearing my headscarf, I felt like I could no longer be considered respectable. I no longer was deemed "Muslim" enough or "Arab" enough by my community and others to deserve respect. It was like my headscarf was the source of my dignity.
My body, no longer protected by a symbolic piece of cloth, was open to the world to be discussed and fetishized. It felt like the world took ownership over my body once my family stopped caring about what I did. My features, combined with my blackness, were fetishized and sexualized along with my background, especially while dating. I wasn't a person; I was an experience to enjoy because I was considered "exotic" and a "naughty Muslim."
My sexuality, and my expression of it, was never left for me to determine. If it wasn't my family warning me of my "dangerous sexuality," it was other people who felt like they could claim my sexuality based on my skin color, features, and/or religion. While white women in the media found love, had guiltless sex, and exposed themselves without shame. My body and sexuality were considered dangerous and toxic in a Western context that still manages to orientalize the Arab world.
Most importantly, this troubling history has caused millions of other Black Arab women to feel the same way I have regarding sex and sexuality. Our intersectional identities make it tough to claim our sexual autonomy because we live in a world where what it means to be Black is already determined. Because we live in a world where what it means to be Muslim and/or Arab is already determined. Because we live in a world where everyone feels like they can explain our identity, our culture, our history, and our sexuality because a deeply troubling history has made that okay.
In the future, we need to begin shedding these toxic ideas and realities so Muslim women of color—Black Arab or not—can be comfortable in their bodies and sexualities. More importantly, we need to think of Blackness and Arabness as being more than just individual identities. It's this need to create a distinction that has led to my experiences and as well as millions of other women.
Note: Footnotes can be found in the printed piece and were excluded in this transcription to ease reading.
Michele Dale October 11, 2017 iman hussein, race, sexuality, image of Muslim women, Arab identity, intersectional feminism, religion, Islam, womanhood
BFB #6: New York, Told Through Food
Michele Dale October 12, 2017
BEB #4: life//noise
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The Woman and the Man from the Old South
I have had a copy of ‘Gone with the Wind’ for close to four years, but never dared watching it. The only reason was its daunting four-hour running time. A couple of days ago, on my 30-hour train journey, I watched five films, the first being this Victor Fleming historical. I feel relieved – as if a long-pending job is over. And I feel fulfilled – an unforgettable cinematic epic is now a part of my consciousness.
Adjusted for inflation, ‘Gone with the Wind’ would be the highest grossing film in the history of cinema. It played in certain theatres for more than 3-4 years. It is certainly as magnificent as a movie can be. It is also one of those rare instances where the film is believed to have done justice to its literary source, though I must confess that I haven’t read the Margaret Mitchell novel. In fact, I’m not sure whether I would ever read it. And that brings me to the biggest sense of fulfillment on watching the film.
The real triumph of the story of ‘Gone with the Wind’ is its two main characters – Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Although she might very well have been the heroine of an immortal Shakespearean tragedy, a protagonist as flawed as Scarlett is rare in cinema. I don’t think I’m wrong to believe that she is the most selfish and conceited of all characters in the story. And thus she attracts, unintentionally so, Rhett Butler, the compulsive non-committal philanderer, believing in his own morality and giving a damn to the world. There is nothing conventionally likeable about the two except, may be, their good-looks. Apparently, it is difficult to understand how a story with primary characters as corrupt as these secured such an insane amount of funding to be made into a film during the era dominated by the conventional studio mind-set. But the monumental success and popularity of the film proves that the audience related to them. This time, they did not worship the hero and the heroine for being superhumans of great character, valour, or beauty, but they empathized with the lead pair for being what they were – opportunistic, and self-centered. The audience loved the unapologetic characters because they were everything a man-animal (or a woman-animal) would secretly like to be, and they expressed something the society does not let us express. In fact, this very reason makes Scarlett and Rhett immortal and evergreen; they are as valid today as they ever were. Any story, based anywhere in the world, with these two as the lead pair would always be fascinating and more true than others involving more idealistic or romantic characters. I do not know whether I will have the patience to read the epic in its original form, but thanks to cinema, I will never forget this story of the Old South, and the woman and the man I could so relate to – two of the most lovable anti-heroes we will ever see.
Labels: Hollywood and Around, Movies Aaj-Kal
mohit mittal July 16, 2011 at 1:30 AM
Rightly said sir. Two of the very rare and most lovable anti heroes of all times. In fact both Hollywood and Indian cinema have always tried to portray its heroes as somebody possessing beauty, strength and moral ethics. But the foreign cinema interestingly has got many examples of anti heroes. Ingmar Bergman's 'persona', Sicca's 'bicycle thieves', Kurosawa's 'Ikuru', Fellini's '8 1/2' and 'la dolce vita' have some of the very memorable anti-heroes of all times. A special mention must be made about the portrayal of characters in Keislowski's cinema. His characters are neither heroes nor anti-heroes. His characters are always very simple and miserable protagonists caught in the rigmarole of life, trying to survive every moment. Indian cinema desperately need some anti heroes, more than it requires heroes at this moment.
satyanshu singh July 17, 2011 at 11:02 PM
ek sentence mein bade-bade devon ka naam le liya mohit babu, punya ka kaam kiya...
and Kieslowski is my ishta-deva, anyway!
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Dirty Picture!
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Prepping Gay Men for PrEP
LONDON – In October, two groups researching the effectiveness of a potential breakthrough drug in the fight against HIV did something unusual. They announced that the therapy they were testing, an antiretroviral drug called Truvada, had proved effective enough to end the randomized phases of the trials, and that they were offering the pill to all of the studies’ participants.
The researchers found that gay men who take Truvada, in addition to using condoms when they have sex, were significantly less likely to contract HIV. This is further evidence of the effectiveness of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a technique by which people who are HIV-negative use antiretroviral drugs to protect themselves from infection. In 2011, a trial funded by the Gates Foundation found that straight couples using Truvada reduced the risk of transmitting HIV by 73%.
Those fighting to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS thus have a new tool in their arsenal. The question now is how best to deliver it to those who need it most: gay men in developing countries.
This summer, the World Health Organization took an important step to that end, recommending PrEP for all gay men and men who have sex with men, making it the first major international health organization to do so. The WHO estimates that increased use of PrEP could reduce HIV infections by up to 25% over the next decade among men who have sex with men (this category includes anyone with elevated risk, not just those who identify as gay).
But an important obstacle remains: the legal predicament of gay men in much of the developing world. In countries like Nigeria, where anti-homosexuality legislation has recently been approved, those following the WHO’s new PrEP guidelines could find themselves subject to imprisonment.
The climate of officially sanctioned homophobia in Nigeria has already set back the fight against AIDS. In 2006, a study found that 13% of men who have sex with men in Nigeria were HIV-positive, compared to 4.5% of all Nigerians. By 2012, the HIV rate among men who have sex with men had jumped to 17%. Meanwhile, an increasing number of men reported encountering homophobia at healthcare centers, making them less likely to seek help.
The consequences could not be more serious. Two years ago, a young HIV-positive Nigerian man contacted me on Facebook to tell me about his monthly ordeal at the clinic. The nurse at the hospital spent more time lecturing him on the evils of homosexuality than telling him about the drugs he was taking and their possible side effects. The man, a third-year medical student, told me that he had decided to stop going to the clinic. When I asked how he would continue treatment, he said that he had a friend abroad who could get him the drugs. Less than two years later, I saw a Facebook update announcing his death.
My Facebook friend is not the only one who has paid the price for Nigeria’s homophobia. A preliminary report from the Solidarity Alliance Nigeria, a coalition of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organizations, details a huge decrease in the use of HIV services by men who have sex with men in the six months following the enactment of the anti-gay legislation. The decrease ranges from 40% in Lagos – Nigeria’s most cosmopolitan city – to 70% in Kano, a predominantly Muslim state.
Nigerians living with HIV must do more than just fight the infection; they also must brave social stigma, weather discrimination by secular and religious institutions, and now, potentially, face threats from the legal system. In this environment, the promise of PrEP begins to dim, as the risks of seeking treatment outweigh the potentially life-saving benefits.
The story is similar in Uganda. Last spring, as legal persecution of gays there mounted, the government raided an HIV clinic and withheld its operating license for providing care and support to HIV-positive men who have sex with men.
As an African activist with more than ten years of experience in the fight against HIV, I hope that the WHO will build on its important first step of advising the use of PrEP. That means initiating a public conversation with countries like Nigeria, Uganda, Gambia, and Russia on the importance of inclusion in the battle against HIV.
The WHO should make it clear that while it may not be advocating for LGBT political rights, it is determined to ensure that all those who can benefit from PrEP are able to access the necessary drugs, without fear of legal consequences. Researchers, drug companies, and human-rights campaigners must take up the fight to ensure that PrEP is made available – without risk – to those who need it most.
This article was published in Project Syndicate on DEC 17, 2014
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You are here: Home / Archives for Nutrition / Vitamins / Vitamin D
Vitamin D Can Help Elderly Women Survive
July 3, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment
Giving vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) to predominantly elderly women, mainly in institutional care, seems to increase survival. These women are likely to be vitamin D deficient with a significant risk of falls and fractures. This is the key conclusion in a systematic review published in the latest edition of The Cochrane Library.
Up until now there has been no clear view on whether there is a real benefit of taking vitamin D. “A Cochrane meta-analysis published only a couple of years ago found that there was some evidence for benefit, but it could not find an effect on mortality. We were, however, aware that more trials had been published and wanted to assess the effects of vitamin D when you added all the data together,” said Dr Goran Bjelakovic, who works at Department of Internal Medicine – Gastroenterology and Hepatology, at the University of Nis, in Serbia and at The Cochrane Hepato-Biliary Group at The Copenhagen Trial Unit in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The eight-strong international team of researchers identified 50 randomised trials that together had 94,148 participants. They had a mean age of 74 years, and 79% were women. “Our analyses suggest that vitamin D3 reduces mortality by about 6%. This means that you need to give about 200 people vitamin D3 for around two years to save one additional life,” says Bjelakovic.
There were no significant benefits of taking other forms of vitamin D such as vitamin D2, and the active forms of the vitamin, alfacalcidol or calcitriol. However, the researchers point out that they could only find much less data relating to these types of vitamin D and so these conclusions should be taken with caution. “We need to have more randomised trials that look specifically to see whether these forms of vitamin D do or don’t have benefits,” says Bjelakovic. His team did conclude that alfacalcidol and calcitriol significantly increased the risk of hypercalcaemia, and vitamin D3 combined with calcium significantly increased the risk of kidney stones.
There have been reports and comments that taking vitamin D can reduce the risk of getting cancer, but this work showed no evidence that vitamin D reduced cancer-related mortality.
“Previous reviews of preventive trials of vitamin D have not included as much information and have not examined the separate influence of different forms of vitamin D on mortality. By taking data from a larger number of trials we have been able to shed much more light on this important issue,” says Bjelakovic.
Filed Under: Nutrition, Vitamin D, Vitamins Tagged With: Vitamin D, Women
Vitamin D Supplements Found To Be Safe For Healthy Pregnant Women
June 28, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment
Use of vitamin D supplements during pregnancy has long been a matter of concern but now researchers writing in theJournal of Bone and Mineral Research report that even a high supplementation amount in healthy pregnant women was safe and effective in raising circulating vitamin D to a level thought by some to be optimal. The study also found no adverse effects of vitamin D supplementation, even at the highest amount, in women or their newborns.
The research team, led by Dr. Bruce Hollis from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, used a randomized controlled trial with healthy expectant mothers to discover how varying dosages of daily supplements could safely sustain a circulating vitamin D level of at least 32 nanograms per milliliter.
“Vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy remains controversial largely due to severe misconceptions about the potential harm it may cause to the fetus,” said Dr Hollis. “Surprisingly the scientific debate has made little progress since Dr. Gilbert Forbes made a recommendation of 200 IU (international units) per day in 1963, which was based on a hunch.”
While the threat of vitamin D during pregnancy has remained little known, it has been established that the vitamin plays a role in homeostasis, the body’s internal regulation, during pregnancy and that a deficiency can effect immune, pancreatic and cardiovascular systems.
Dr Hollis’ team monitored the pregnancies of 350 women, from a variety of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, who were all between 12 and 16 weeks into gestation. The women were randomly assigned to one of three groups. One group received 400 IU of vitamin D per day, the second group received 2,000 IU per day and the third received 4,000 IU daily.
The team found that women who received the highest level of supplementation (4,000 IU per day) were more likely to achieve and sustain the desired level of circulating levels of vitamin D throughout their pregnancy. Moreover, the researchers found that pregnant women who received lower levels of vitamin D supplementation did not attain the threshold circulating level of the vitamin.
“In our study subjects, a daily dosage of up to 4,000 IU of vitamin D was required to sustain normal metabolism in pregnant women,” concluded Dr Hollis. “Furthermore, following decades of speculation into its safety our research has demonstrated vitamin D supplementation to be both safe and effective.”
Full citation:
Hollis. B, Johnson. D, Hulsey. T, Ebeling. M, Wagner. L, “Vitamin D Supplementation during Pregnancy: Double Blind, Randomized Clinical Trial of Safety and Effectiveness”, Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, Wiley-Blackwell, June 2011: DOI
Filed Under: Nutrition, Vitamin D, Vitamins Tagged With: Pregnancy, Vitamin D, Women
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They Come From Everywhere: An Interview with Mike Elizalde
Many of today’s most original and bizarre visions of alternative worlds and landscapes come from the workshops of Hollywood effects studios. Behind the scenes of nondescript San Fernando Valley offices and warehouse spaces (if not outside California altogether, in many of the other nodes in the ever-expanding global network of cinematic effects production, from suburban London to Wellington, New Zealand), lurk the multidisciplinary teams whose job it is to create tomorrow’s monsters.
Mike Elizalde of Spectral Motion applies make-up to actor Ron Perlman, as Hellboy.
Spectral Motion, the effects house responsible for some of the most technically intricate and physically stunning animatronic creatures seen in feature film today, is no exception. Based in a small strip of anonymous one-story warehouse spaces squeezed in between a freeway and rail tracks, and overshadowed by a gargantuan Home Depot, Spectral Motion has developed monsters, effects, and other mechanical grotesqueries that have since become household nightmares, if not names.
Since its founding, by Mike & Mary Elizalde in 1994, the firm has worked on such films as Hellboy & Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Looper, Attack the Block, Blade 2 & Blade: Trinity, X-Men: First Class, The Watch, and this summer’s highly anticipated Pacific Rim.
This winter, while out in Los Angeles on a trip for Venue, I had the enormous pleasure of stopping by Spectral Motion with Nicola Twilley in order to interview Mike Elizalde, CEO of Spectral Motion, on a cloudy day in Glendale to talk all things monstrous and disturbing. To a certain extent, this interview thus forms the second part in a series with BLDGBLOG’s earlier interview with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola, and the present conversation, reproduced below, pairs well with Mignola’s thoughts on what we might call landscapes of monstrosity.
Our conversation with Elizalde ranged from the fine line that separates the grotesque and the alien to the possibility of planetary-scale creatures made using tweaked geotextiles, via the price of yak hair and John Carpenter’s now-legendary Antarctic thriller, The Thing.
Mike Elizalde behind his desk at Spectral Motion.
Elizalde, a good-humored conversationalist, not only patiently answered our many questions—with a head cold, no less—but then took us on a tour through Spectral Motion‘s surprisingly large workshop. We saw miniature zombie heads emerging from latex molds (destined for a film project by Elizalde’s own son), costumes being sewn by a technician named Claire Flewin for an upcoming attraction at Disneyland, and a bewildering variety of body parts—heads, torsos, claws, and even a very hairy rubber chest once worn by footballer Vinnie Jones in X-Men: The Last Stand—that were either awaiting, or had already performed, their celluloid magic.
The visit ended with a screening of Spectral Motion‘s greatest hits, so to speak, with in-house photographer and archivist Kevin McTurk—a chance to see the company’s creations in their natural habitat. We walked back out into the flat light and beige parking lots of the Valley, a landscape enlivened by our heightened sense of the combination of close observation and inspired distortion required to transform the everyday into the grotesque.
Geoff Manaugh: I’d love to start with the most basic question of all: how would you describe Spectral Motion and what the company does?
Mike Elizalde: We are principally a prosthetics, animatronics, and special effects creature studio, but we are also a multifaceted design studio. We do a lot of different kinds of work. Most recently, for example, in partnership with one of my long-time colleagues, Mark Setrakian, we built anthropomorphic bipedal hydraulic robots that engage in battle, for a reality show for Syfy. It’s called RCL—Robot Combat League. It’s pretty astounding what these machines can do, including what they can do to each other.
Battling it out in Robot Combat League with two robots—”eight-feet tall, state-of-the-art humanoid robots controlled by human ‘robo-jockeys,'” in the words of Syfy—designed by Mark Setrakian of Spectral Motion.
Nicola Twilley: Are the robot battles choreographed, or do you genuinely not know which robot will win?
Elizalde: Oh, no, absolutely—it’s a contest. It really is about which robot will emerge as the victorious contender.
RCL is not only one of our most recent projects, but it also shows that, here at the studio, we can do everything from a very delicate prosthetic application on an actor, to an animatronic character in a film, to something that’s completely out of our comfort zone—like building battling robots.
I always tell people that, if they come in here with a drawing of a car, we could build that car. It is a very diverse group that we work with: artists, technicians, and, of course, we use all the available or cutting-edge technologies out there in the world to realize whatever it is that we are required to make.
Mike Elizalde of Spectral Motion shows us a creature.
Manaugh: What kind of design briefs come to you? Also, when a client comes to you, typically how detailed or amorphous is their request?
Elizalde: Sometimes it is very vague. But, typically, what happens is we’re approached with a script for a project. Our job is to go through the script and create a breakdown and, ultimately, a budget based on those breakdowns. We take whatever we think we should build for that script and we make suggestions as to how each thing should look—what should move, what the design should be, and so on.
Other times, we’ll be working with a director who’s very involved and who maybe even has some technical knowledge of what we do—especially someone like Guillermo del Toro. He’s completely savvy about what we do because he used to own a creature shop of his own, so working with someone like him is much more collaborative; he comes to us with a much more clear idea of what he wants to see in his films. Lots of times, he’ll even show us an illustration he’s done. He’s the first one to say, “I’m not an artist!” But he really is. He’s quite gifted.
The creature known as Wink from Hellboy II: The Golden Army, designed by Spectral Motion, including a shot of the mechanical understructure used inside Wink’s left hand.
So he’ll bring us his illustrations and say, you know, “You tell me if it’s going to be a puppet, an animatronic puppet, or a creature suit that an actor can wear.” And that’s where our knowhow comes in. That’s how it evolves.
There are also times—with the robot show, for example—where they know exactly what they need but they don’t know how to achieve it. In those cases, they come to us to do that for them.
Twilley: Can you talk us through one of the projects you’ve worked on where you had to create your vision based solely on what’s in the script, rather than more collaborative work with the director? What’s that process like?
Elizalde: Well, I’d actually say that ninety percent of our work is that way. For most of the projects we work on, we do, in fact, just get a script and the director says, “Show me what this looks like.” But we love that challenge. It’s really fun for us to get into the artistic side of developing what the appearance of something will end up looking like.
We had a lot of fun working with a director named Tommy Wirkola, for example, who directed Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. He was the director of Dead Snow, a really strange Norwegian film that involved this group of young kids who go off to a cabin where they’re hunted down by a hoard of horrifying zombie Nazi monsters. It’s really grisly.
Anyway, although Tommy did have really good ideas about what he wanted his characters to look like for Hansel & Gretel, there were certain characters whose descriptions were much more vague—also because there was such a broad scope of characters in the film. So they did rely on us to come up with a lot of different looks based on loose descriptions. In the end, the principal characters in the film were total collaborations between Tommy, myself, and Kevin Messick, the producer, and the rest of my team here at Spectral Motion, of course.
I’d say that’s a good example of both worlds, where you have some clear ideas about a few characters, but, for another group of characters, there really isn’t a whole lot of information or a detailed description. You have to fill in a lot of blanks.
Mark Setrakian, Thom Floutz , and Mike Elizalde of Spectral Motion pose with Sammael from Hellboy.
Twilley: What kinds of things do you look for in a script to give you a clue about how a character might work—or is that something that simply comes out when you’re sketching or modeling?
Elizalde: In a script, we basically know what we’re looking for: “Enter a monster.” We know that’s what we’re going be doing, so we look for those moments in the script. Sometimes there’s a brief description—something like, “the monster’s leathery hide covered in tentacles.” That kind of stuff gives us an immediate visual as to what we want to create. Then we explore it with both two-dimensional artwork and three-dimensional artwork, and both digital and physical.
In fact [gestures at desk], these are some examples of two-dimensional artwork that we’ve created to show what a character will look like. This [points to statuette above desk] is a maquette for one of the characters in Hellboy II—the Angel of Death. This was realized at this scale so that del Toro could see it and say, “That’s it. That’s what I want. Build that.” This actually began as an illustration that Guillermo did in his sketchbook, a very meticulous and beautiful illustration that he came to us with.
The Angel of Death from Hellboy II: The Golden Army.
But that’s the process: illustration and then maquette. Sometimes, though, we’ll do a 3D illustration in the computer before we go to the next stage, just to be able to look at something virtually, in three dimensions, and to examine it a little bit more before we invest the energy into creating a full-blown maquette.
The maquette, as a tool, can be very essential for us, because it allows us to work out any bugs that might be happening on a larger scale, design-wise. Practically speaking, it doesn’t give us a lot of information as to how the wings are going to work, or how it’s going to function; but it does tell us that a human being could actually be inside of it and that it could actually work as a full-scale creature. It’s essential for those reasons.
Simon, the mechanical bird from Your Highness, before paint has been applied, revealing the internal workings.
Because you can show a director a drawing, and it might look really terrific—but, when it comes to actually making it, in a practical application at scale, sometimes the drawing just doesn’t translate. Sometimes you need the maquette to help describe what the finished piece will look like.
Manaugh: You mentioned animatronics and puppeteering. We were just up at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena yesterday afternoon, talking to them about how they program certain amounts of autonomy into their instruments, especially if it’s something that they’re putting on Mars. It has to be able to act on its own, at times, because it doesn’t have enough time to wait for the command signal from us back on Earth. I’m curious, especially with something like the robot combat show, how much autonomy you can build into a piece. Can you create something that you just switch on and let go, so that it functions as a kind of autonomous or even artificially intelligent film prop?
Elizalde: It really depends on the application. For example, when we’re filming something, a lot of times there’s a spontaneity that’s required. Sometimes actors like to ad lib a little bit. If we need to react to something that an actor is saying via a puppet—an animatronic puppet—then that live performance really is required. But we always have the option of going to a programmable setup, one where we can have a specific set of parameters, performance-wise, to create a specific scene.
For live performances on a stage, we’d probably want to program that with the ability to switch over to manual, if required. But, if it’s scripted—if it’s a beat-by-beat performance—then we know that can be programmable. We can turn on the switch and let it go. In the middle of that, you can then stop it, and have a live show, with puppeteers in the background filling in the blanks of whatever that performance is, and then you can continue with the recorded or programmed performance.
It really goes back and forth, depending on what it is the people who are putting on the production need.
The mechanical skull under structure of the Ivan the Corpse from Hellboy.
Twilley: That’s an interesting point—the idea of how a live actor responds to your creatures. Have there been any surprises in how an actor has responded, or do they all tend to know what they’re getting into by the time you’re filming?
Elizalde: They do know what they’re getting into, but it’s always rewarding to have an actor go over to the thing that you built, and stare at it, and say, “Oh, my God! Look at that thing!” They can feed off of that. I think they are able to create a more layered performance, with a lot more depth in their reactions to something if it’s actually there—if it’s present, if it has life to it, and it’s tactile.
A lot of times people turn to digital solutions. That’s also good, if the application is correct. But, you know, a lot of directors that we talk to are of the mind that a practical effect is far better for exactly that reason—because the actor does have a co-actor to work with, to play off of, and to have feelings about.
That’s one of the things that keeps us going. And, the fact is, with this business, no matter what walks through that door we know that it’s going to be a completely different set of challenges from the last thing that we did.
Mechanical puppet of Drake from a Sprite commercial. Scott Millenbaugh and Jurgen Heimann of Spectral Motion are seen here making mechanical adjustments.
Manaugh: About six years ago, I interviewed a guy who did concept art for the Star Wars prequels, and he had a kind of pet obsession with building upside-down skyscrapers—that is, skyscrapers that grew downwards like stalactites. He kept trying to get them into a movie. He would build all of these amazing 3D models and show them to the director, and the director was always excited—but then he’d turn the model upside-down and say, “Let’s do it like this!” So all the upside-down skyscrapers would just be right-side up again. In any case, this artist was then working on the recent Star Trek reboot, and there’s a brief moment where you see upside-down skyscrapers on the planet Vulcan. It’s only on screen for about a second and a half, but he finally did it—he got his upside-down skyscrapers into a film.
Elizalde: [laughs] But, ohhh! For half-a-second! [laughter]
Manaugh: Exactly. Anyway, in the context of what you do here at Spectral Motion, I’m curious if there is something like that, that you’ve been trying to get into a movie for the last few years but that just never quite makes it. A specific monster, or a new material, or even a particular way of moving, that keeps getting rejected.
Elizalde: That’s an interesting question. [pauses] You know, I’d have to say no. I’d say it seems like the more freely we think, the better the result is. So it’s quite the contrary: most of the stuff we suggest actually does make it into the film, because it’s something that someone else didn’t think about. Or perhaps we’ve added some movement to a character, or we’ve brought something that will elicit a more visceral reaction from the audience—bubbly skin, for instance, or cilia that wiggle around.
I don’t think I’ve really encountered a situation where I thought something would look great, but, when I brought it to a director, they said, “Nah—I don’t think that’s going to go. Let’s not try that.” They always seem to say, “Let’s try it! It sounds cool!”
Mike Elizalde applies some last-minute touch-ups to actor Ron Perlman on the set of Hellboy.
We really haven’t had a whole lot of frustration—maybe only when it turns into a very large committee making a decision on the film. Then, I suppose, a certain degree of frustration is more typical. But that happens in every industry, not just ours: the more people are involved in deciding something, the more difficult it is to get a clear image of what it is we’re supposed to do.
Manaugh: When we first spoke to set-up this interview, I mentioned that we’d be touring the landfill over at Puente Hills this morning, on our way here to meet you—it’s the biggest active landfill in the United States. What’s interesting is that it’s not only absolutely massive, it’s also semi-robotic, in the sense that the entire facility—the entire landscape—is a kind of mechanical device made from methane vents and sensors and geotextiles, and it grows everyday by what they call a “cell.” A “cell” is one square-acre, compacted twenty feet deep with trash. Everyday!
But I mention this because, during our visit there, I almost had the feeling of standing on top of a mountain-sized creature designed by Spectral Motion—a strange, half-living, half-mechanical monstrosity in the heart of the city, growing new “cells” every day of its existence. It’s like something out of Hellboy II. So I’m curious about the possibilities of a kind of landscape-scale creature—how big these things can get before you need to rely on CGI. Is it possible to go up to that scale, or what are the technical or budgetary limitations?
A Tyrannosaurus rex in a bathtub in the back prep rooms of Spectral Motion.
Elizalde: We can’t build mountains yet but, absolutely, we can go way up in scale! Many times, of course, we have to rely, at least to some degree, on digital effects—but that just makes our job easier, by extending what is possible, practically, and completing it cinematically, on screen, at a much larger scale.
For example, on Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro’s new film that comes out this summer, we designed what are called Jaegers. They’re basically just giant robots. And we also designed the Kaiju, the monsters in the film. First, we created maquettes, just like the ones here, and we made several versions of each to reflect the final designs you’ll see in the film. Those were taken and re-created digitally so they could be realized at a much larger scale.
To that degree, we can create something enormous. There’s a maquette around here somewhere of a character we designed for the first Hellboy movie—actually, there are two of them. One of those characters is massive—about the size of a ten-story building—and the other one is much, much bigger. It’s the size of… I don’t know, a small asteroid. There really is no limit to the scale, provided we can rely on a visual effects company to help us realize our ultimate goal.
The animatronic jaws and bioluminescent teeth (top) of the alien creature (bottom) designed by Spectral Motion for Attack the Block.
But going the opposite direction, scale-wise, is also something that interests us. We can make something incredibly tiny, depending on what the film requires. There is no limit in one direction or the other as to what can be achieved, especially with the power of extension through digital effects.
Manaugh: Just to continue, briefly, with the Puente Hills reference, something that we’ve been interested in for the past few years is the design of geotextiles, where companies like TenCate in the Netherlands are producing what are, effectively, landscape-scale blankets made from high-quality mesh, used to stabilize levees or to add support to the sides of landfills. But some of these geotextiles are even now getting electromagnetic sensors embedded in them, and there’s even the possibility of a geotextile someday being given mechanical motion—so it’s just fascinating, I think, to imagine what you guys could do with a kind of monstrous or demonic geotextile, as if the surface of the earth could rise up as a monster in Hellboy III.
Elizalde: [laughs] Well, now that I know about it, I’ll start looking into it!
Twilley: Aside from scale, we’re also curious about the nature of monsters in general. This is a pretty huge question, but what is a monster? What makes something monstrous or grotesque? There seems to be such a fine line between something that is alien—and thus frightening—and something that is so alienating it’s basically unrecognizable, and thus not threatening at all.
Elizalde: Exactly. Right, right.
Twilley: So how do you find that sweet spot—and, also, how has that sweet spot changed over time, at least since you’ve been in the business? Are new things becoming monstrous?
Elizalde: Well, I think my definition of a monster is simply a distortion: something that maybe looks close to a human being, for example, but there’s something wrong. It can be something slight, something subtle—like an eye that’s just slightly out of place—that makes a monster. Even a little, disturbing thing like that can frighten you.
So it doesn’t take a lot to push things to the limit of what I would consider the grotesque or the monstrous. At that point, it runs the gamut from the most bizarre and unimaginable things that you might read in an H. P. Lovecraft story to something simple, like a tarantula with a human head. Now there’s something to make me scream! I think there’s a very broad range. But you’re right: it’s a huge question.
Mark Setrakian of Spectral Motion working on the animatronic head of Edward the Troll from Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.
And sometimes the monstrous defies definition. I guess it’s more of a primal reaction—something you can’t quite put your finger on or describe, but something that makes you feel uneasy. It makes you feel uncomfortable or frightened. A distortion of what is natural, or what you perceive as natural, something outside what you think is the order of things—or outside what you think is acceptable within what we’ve come to recognize as natural things—then that’s a monster. That’s a monstrous thing.
Do you recall seeing John Carpenter’s The Thing?
Manaugh: It’s one of my favorite movies.
Elizalde: My goodness, the stuff in that film is the stuff of nightmares. It really is brilliantly executed, and it’s a great inspiration to all of the people in our industry who love monsters, and to all the fans all over the world who love monstrous things.
Actor Ron Perlman gets make-up applied for his role as Hellboy, as director Guillermo del Toro and Mike Elizalde from Spectral Motion stop in for a visit.
Twilley: Have there been trends over time? In other words, do you find directors look for a particular kind of monster at a particular moment in time?
Elizalde: I do think there are trends—although I think it’s mainly that there’s a tendency here in Hollywood where somebody hears a rumor that someone down the street is building a film around this particular creature, so that guy’s now got to write a similar script to compete. But sometimes the trends are set by something groundbreaking, like The Thing. Once that movie was released, everybody paid attention and a whole new area of exploration became available to create amazing moments in cinema.
Those are the real trends, you know. It’s a symbiosis that happens between the artistic community and the technological community, and it’s how it keeps advancing. It’s how it keeps growing. And it keeps us excited about what we do. We feed off of each other.
Technician Claire Flewin uses her hand to demonstrate how yak hair looks stretched over a mold.
Manaugh: Speaking of that symbiosis, every once in a while, you’ll see articles in a magazine like New Scientist or you’ll read a press release coming out of a school like Harvard, saying that they’ve developed, for instance, little soft robots or other transformable, remote-control creatures for post-disaster reconnaissance—things like that. I mention this because I could imagine that you might have multiple reactions to something like that: one reaction might be excitement—excitement to discover a new material or a new technique that you could bring into a film someday—but the other reaction might be something almost more like, “Huh. We did that ten years ago.” I’m curious as to whether you feel, because of the nature of the movies that you work on, that the technical innovations you come up with don’t get the attention or professional recognition that they deserve.
Elizalde: I think your assessment is accurate on both counts. There are times when we see an innovation, or a scientific development, that we think could be beneficial to our industry; in fact, that happens all the time. There’s cross-pollination like that going on constantly, where we borrow from other industries. We borrow from the medical industry. We borrow from the aerospace industry. We borrow, really, from whatever scientific developments there are out there. We seek them out and we do employ some of those methods in our own routines and systems.
In fact, one of our main designers, and a very dear friend of mine whom I’ve worked side by side with for years now, is Mark Setrakian. When he’s not working here with us, he is a designer at one of the labs you just described.
So there is a lot of crossover there.
The mechanical skull of the scrunt from Lady in the Water.
Manaugh: That’s interesting—do the people who work for you tend to come from scientific or engineering backgrounds, like Mark, or are they more often from arts schools? What kinds of backgrounds do they tend to have?
Elizalde: Generally speaking, I think they’re people like myself who just have a love for monsters. That’s honestly where a lot of people in our industry come from. There are people who started their careers as dental technicians and people who started out as mold-makers in a foundry. In all of those cases, people from those sorts of technical fields gravitate toward this work because of, first of all, a love for monsters and creatures, and, secondly, a technical ability that isn’t necessarily described as an art form per se. Electronics people love to work for us. People who design algorithms love to work for us. Even people with a background in dentistry, like I say, love to work for us.
There’s really no limit to the fields that bring people to this industry—they come from everywhere. The common thread is that we all love movies and we all love creatures. We love making rubber monsters for a living.
The shelves at Spectral Motion gives a good sense of the workshop’s range of reference. Highlights include the Third Edition of the Atlas of Clinical Dermatology (in color), The National Audubon Society: Speaking for Nature, Marvel’s Fantastic Four, The Graphic Works of Odilon Redon, and a Treasury of Fantastic and Mythological Creatures.
To go back to your previous question, there are definitely times when I think we don’t get a lot of exposure for what we do, but there is also, at some level, a kind of “don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain” thing going on, where we don’t really want people to look backstage at what makes a movie work. We are creating a living creature for film, and that’s what we want to put across to the audience. In some ways, it’s actually better if there isn’t too much exposure as to how something was created; it’s like exposing a magic trick. Once you know the secret, it’s not that big a deal.
So we do live in a little bit of a shroud of secrecy—but that’s okay. After a film is released, it’s not unusual for more of what we did on that film to be exposed. Then, we do like to have our technicians, our artists, and what we’ve developed internally here to be recognized and shown to the public, just so that people can see how cool it all is.
I think, though, that my response to those kinds of news stories is really more of a happiness to see new technologies being developed elsewhere, and an eagerness to get my hands on it so I can see what we could do with it in a movie. And, of course, sometimes we develop our very own things here that maybe someone hadn’t thought of, and that could be of use in other fields, like robotics. And that’s kind of cool, too.
Mike Elizalde of Spectral Motion sculpting an old age Nosferatu as a personal project.
Manaugh: Finally, to bring things full circle, we’re just curious as to how Spectral Motion got started.
Elizalde: Well, I became involved in the effects industry back in 1987. It sort of just dawned on me one day that I wanted to do this for a living. I had been in the Navy for eight years when it really started getting to me—when I realized I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do with my life.
I decided that I’d come back to my home, which is Los Angeles, California, and look into becoming a creature effects guy. I was totally enamored of Frankenstein’s Monster when I was a kid. I grew up watching all the horror movies that I could see—a steady diet of Godzilla, Frankenstein, you name it. All the Universal monsters, and even more modern things like An American Werewolf in London. They just really fascinated me. That was a real catalyst for me to start exploring how to do this myself.
I also learned from books. I collected books and started using my friends as guinea pigs, creating very rudimentary makeup effects on them. And, eventually, I landed my first job in Hollywood.
Cut to fifteen years later, and I had my first experience on set with Guillermo del Toro. I was working with him on Blade II. I had done an animatronic device for the characters he was using in his film, and I was also on set puppeteering. We became very good friends. That’s when he offered me the script for Hellboy and that’s how we started Spectral Motion. I became independent. Prior to that I had worked for Rick Baker, and Stan Winston, and all the other big names in town. But this was our opportunity to make our own names—and here we are, today.
You know, this is one of those industries where you can come in with a desire and some ability, and people around you will instruct you and nurture you. That’s how it happened for me. I was taught by my peers. And it really is a great way to learn. There are schools where you can learn this stuff, as well, but my experience proved to me that the self-taught/mentored method is a very good way to go.
This interview was simultaneously published on Venue, where a long list of other interviews discussing the human relationship to the virtual, built, and natural landscapes can be found.
Author Geoff ManaughPosted on April 10, 2013 December 30, 2015 Categories BLDGBLOG InterviewTags Design, Film, Guillermo Del Toro, Hellboy, Horror, Interview, Landscape, Los Angeles, Mike Elizalde, Mike Mignola, Monsters, Robots
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Israeli government in Prague, May 2012
“Israel has no better friends in Europe than the Czech Republic,” the Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu told his Czech counterpart Prime Minister Petr Nečas this year, in May 2012 in Prague. Both statesmen met for a unique cabinet to cabinet meeting affirming strong ties between those two countries. The two-day visit resulted in signing a number of intergovernmental agreements that touched wide range of topics.
Two delegations
In addition to the Israeli Prime Minister who met with the head of Czech delegation Prime Minister Petr Nečas, Prague was visited also by the Foreign Minister Mr. Avigdor Lieberman, the Minister of Industry and Trade Mr. Shalom Simhon, the Minister of Science and Technology Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz, the Minister of Social affairs and Communications Mr. Moshe Kahlon, the Minister of Transportaiton Mr. Israel Katz, the Minister of Construction and Housing Mr. Ariel Atias and the Minister of Culture and Sports Mrs. Limor Livnat to hold separate bilateral meetings with their Czech ministerial counterparts. These included the Czech Foreign Minister Mr. Karel Schwarzenberg, the Industry and Trade Minister Mr. Martin Kuba, the Minister of Education Prof. Petr Fiala, the Minister of Labour Mr. Jaromír Drábek, the Minister of Transport Mr. Pavel Dobeš, the Minister of regional Development Mr. Kamil Jankovský and the Minister of Culture Mrs. Alena Hanáková.
Ministry of Foreign Affaires
The bilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of both countries included the exchange of opinions about political and economic situation in Europe, situation in the Middle East and the state of European and national political discourse toward this vibrant region. Minister Lieberman has also invited minister Schwarzenberg to meet four Israeli Nobel prize laureates who came to Prague at the end of May 2012. The mutual declaration was signed.
Ministry of Industry and Trade
The Industry and Trade Minister Mr. Martin Kuba declared at the bilateral meeting with his Israeli counterpart that the Czech Republic has a great interest in the Israeli experiences in commercial use of science, as well as the state politics toward the support system of small and medium enterprises and start-ups. “We are ready to support any business intention from any of our two countries with the tools we have at our disposal,” minister Kuba said. Czech and Israeli economic relationship was improving ever since the establishment of Czech Republic in 1993. In 2011, the mutual balance of trade was worth USD 911 million. Israel is the Czech Republic’s most important business partner in the Middle East region making it the 5th largest export partner among non-European countries.
Ministry of Transportation
The transportation ministers Pavel Dobeš and Israel Katz signed a protocol that changes the bilateral agreement of air transportation from 1991. “The primary goal of this document is to liberalize the current scheduled flight services framework that is in effect between our countries,” said Dobeš. More flexibility and easier access to Czech-Israeli transportation market – those are supposed to be the main objectives of the protocol. Both ministers took a ride in one of Prague’s trams, namely in 15T ForCity that is to be considered as one of the candidates for Tel Aviv municipal transportation system.
The minister of education and sport Petr Fiala held a meeting with the Israeli minister of science and technology Daniel Hershkowitz. Both ministers talked about mutual cooperation in science and development. They appreciated the outcomes of the first Czech-Israeli mixed conference for scientific cooperation that took place in Jerusalem in February 2012. The conference called upon the project presentation in the field of neurodegenerative illnesses and advanced programming research with time of application in 2013-2015. Ministers also praised the outcomes of GESHER/MOST program conference held in Prague in May 2012. Ministers promised to support mutual scientific projects as they believe they could mean an important basis for preparation of research at multi-lateral level.
Friendship out of ordinary
The meeting showed the extraordinary relations there are between the Czech Republic and Israel. Both countries invite each other‘s businesses, academia and private citizens to engage in this prosperous friendship. This meeting that declared support of science and development appears even more significant today, when the Czech government announced the modification of its economic policy from tough austerity measures to pro-growth plan with the focus on science, education and technology.
Historical Connection Between Prague and the Jewish people
At the end of the official visit to the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu together with delegation of Israeli ministers visited the Old Jewish Town in Prague where they entered the famous Old-New Synagogue. Benjamin Netanyahu said a Kaddish prayer for his father that deceased few weeks prior to the visit in Prague. Embassy officials that accompanied the visit to the synagogue said that the Prime Minister was deeply moved by this historical moment.
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Joint statement Israel & Czech Republic 2012.pdf
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You are here: Home / Featured / Racist Violence and Militarized Terror in the Age of Disposability: From Emmett Till to Eric Garner
Racist Violence and Militarized Terror in the Age of Disposability: From Emmett Till to Eric Garner
February 7, 2015 by lizayling
by Henry A. Giroux (The Critical Institute)
The larger reasons behind Eric Garner’s execution seem to be missed by most commentators. The issue is not simply police misconduct, or racist acts of police brutality, however deadly, but the growing use of systemic terror of the sort we associate with Hannah Arendt’s notion of totalitarianism that needs to be explored. When fear and terror become the organizing principles of a society in which the tyranny of the state has been replaced by the despotism of an unaccountable market, violence becomes the only valid form of control. The system has not failed. As Jeffrey St. Clair has pointed out, it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, which is to punish those it considers dangerous or disposable—which increasingly includes more and more individuals and groups. Hannah Arendt was right in arguing that “If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarian domination.”[1]
In an age when the delete button and al utterly commodified and privatized culture erase all vestiges of memory and commitment, it is easy for a society to remove itself from those sordid memories that reveal the systemic injustices that belie the presence of state violence and terrorism. Not only do the dangerous memories of bodies being lynched, beaten, tortured, and murdered disappear in the fog of celebrity culture and the 24/7 entertainment/news cycle, but the historical flashpoints that once revealed the horrors of unaccountable power and acts of systemic barbarism are both disconnected from any broader understanding of domination and vanish into a past that no longer has any connection to the present.[2] The murder of Emmett Till, the killing of the four young black girls, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair, in the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, the killing by four officers of Amadou Diallo, and the recent killings of countless young black children and men and women, coupled with the ongoing and egregious incarceration of black men, in this country are not isolated expressions of marginalized failures of a system, they are the system, a system of authoritarianism that has intensified without apology.
Rather than being viewed or forgotten as isolated, but unfortunate expressions of extremism, these incidents are part of a growing systemic pattern of violence and terror that has unapologetically emerged at a time when the politics and logic of disposability, terror, and expulsion has been normalized in American society and violence has become the default position for solving all social problems, especially as they pertain to poor minorities of class and color. If police brutality is one highly visible expression of the politics of disposability, mass incarceration is its invisible underside. How else to explain that “the United States incarcerates a higher proportion of blacks than apartheid South Africa did [and that in] America, the black-white wealth gap today is greater than it was in South Africa in 1970 at the peak of apartheid.”[3] Or that 77 percent of all inmates out of a population of 2.3 million are people of color.
When ethics and any vestige of social responsibility and the public good are trampled beneath the hooves of the militarized finance state, there is no space for democratic values or justice. We live in an age of disposability–an historical period of increasing barbarism ruled by financial monsters who offer no political concessions and are driven by a death-drive. Under assault are those individuals and populations considered excess such as poor minority youth and immigrants but also those public spheres such as public and higher education that offer a space for critical ideas, thoughtfulness, informed exchange, and the development of modes of democratic solidarity. Democratic values, commitments, integrity, and struggles are under siege in the age of neoliberal misery and disposability. The aim of the terrorist state, as Arendt argues, is not only to instill fear, but to destroy the very capacity for convictions. Under such conditions, power not only unaccountable, but it is free from any sense of moral and political conviction. Hence, the rise of the punishing state as a way to govern all of social life. In this context, life becomes disposable for most, but especially for poor minorities of class and color.
I think Bell Hooks is right when she states that “the point of lynching historically was not to kill individuals but to let everybody know: ‘This could happen to you.'” This is how a terrorist state controls people. It individualizes fear and insecurity and undercuts the formation of collective struggle. Fear of punishment, of being killed, tortured, or reduced to the mere level of survival has become the government’s weapon of choice. The terrorist state manufactures ignorance and relies on induced isolation and privatization to depoliticize the population. Beliefs are reduced to the realm of the private allowing the public realm to sink into the dark night of barbarism, terror, and lawlessness. Without the ability to translate private troubles into public issues, Americans face a crisis of individual and collective agency as well as a historical crisis.
As an endless expression of brutality and the ongoing the elimination of any vestige of equality and democratic values, the killing of innocent black children and adults by the police makes clear that Americans now inhabit a state of absolute lawlessness and extreme violence, one that both fills the Hollywood screens with prurient entertainment and a culture of cruelty and, unfortunately, provides testimony to the ravaging violence that marks everyday life as well. Of course, this is not simply a domestic issue or one limited to the United States. As Arif Dirlik points out, “Life in general is being devalued for entire sections of populations across the globe. Let’s not forget the callousness with which people are being murdered by drones, U.S. troops, Israel, Han Chinese(Tibetans, Uighurs). The assassination of blacks by the police across the US gives the impression of a vulnerable population being used as guinea pigs, to warn the rest of what to expect if we get out of line.”[4] Totalitarianism is on the rise across the globe just as a growing number of populations that are vulnerable are becoming more disposable due to modes of governance wedded to militarism, unchecked market forces, corporate sovereignty, and updated forms of disorder.
Calls for minor reforms such as retraining the police, hiring more minorities, equipping police with body cameras,[5] or making the grand jury system more transparent will not change a political and social system that has lost its connections to the ideals, values, and promises of a democracy.[6] Just as calls for punishing the Wall Street crooks who caused the financial crisis will not reform the system that produced the financial debacle. In fact, the pleas for reform are often made by apologists for the punishing state in the aftermath of highly publicized examples of police brutality, botched executions, the shootings of unarmed black teenagers, and the numerous reports of torture, solitary confinement, and the ongoing criminalization of social problems.
For example, President Obama responded to the police violence and national uprisings by chastising blacks for looting and rioting. This not merely another blame-the-victim narrative, it is an act of moral duplicity coming from a president that makes George W. Bush look liberal when it comes to violating civil liberties and punishing whistle blowers while expanding the indiscriminate killing of civilians through the use of indiscriminate drone warfare. In addition, there is Eric Holder who refused to prosecute Wall Street criminals and yet assures the American public that the government will conduct independent investigations in the interests of the powerless. Credibility is more than stretched in this instance.
It gets worse. New York City Police Chief, Bill Bratton, vows to retrain 22,000 police officers but evades questions about the police force using chokeholds on innocent victims. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani appearing on “Fox News Sunday” suggests that some police reforms maybe necessary and then gets to the heart of the matter by invoking the argument that blacks inhabit a culture of criminality. His comments are worth repeating: “But I think just as much, if not more, responsibility is on the black community to reduce the reason why the police officers are assigned in such large numbers to the black community. It’s because blacks commit murder eight times more per capita than any other group in our society.”[7] As if this argument justifies the beatings, shootings, and killing of innocent individuals at the hands of the police. These calls for reform are not only disingenuous coming from people entrenched in supporting the punishing state and the interests its supports, but also because they are invoked to hide the real causes of misery and violence in the United States which come from a society immersed in racism, economic inequality, poverty, the redistribution of wealth away from the public sector, the ongoing destruction of the welfare state, and a political system now entirely controlled by financial elites. Chase Madar is right in arguing that lawlessness is on the side of the police and the law has become a license for them to kill with impunity, and as such the question of police brutality has to be addressed far beyond the discourse of liberal reforms. He writes:
Police demilitarization, the decriminalization of working-class people, new policing models: these are all projects that could work in Ferguson and thousands of other American cities. Although none of these large-scale ideas is explicitly race-conscious, they would most likely tighten the severe racial disparities in policing violence that exist all over the country, more so than pouring more money into racial sensitivity training for cops. These big-picture reforms are fundamentally political solutions that will require long-term effort, coalition politics that spans race, ethnicity and political affiliation—a challenge, but also a necessity. As police and prosecutors assume more and more power in the United States—regulating immigration (formerly a matter of administrative law), meting out school discipline, and other spheres of everyday life where criminal law was almost unknown even a generation ago—getting law enforcement on a tight leash is a national imperative. In the meantime, the constant stream of news reports of unarmed, mostly black and Latino civilians killed by police demands bigger, bolder approaches. They are the only available paths to getting the police under control.[8]
What drives the increasing brutalization and killing of innocent people in the United States is a form of state terrorism free of social responsibility, guilty, and morality. This is a form of state violence fed by the gun culture, the criminalization of poverty, the militarization of the culture of low income and poor minorities, and the misery spurned by neoliberal polices of slash and burn policies aimed mainly at the poor and the welfare state. The face of terrorism can be captured in images of the police spraying tear gas into the crowds of peaceful protesters in New York City. It can be seen in reports of the police choking students, firing hundreds of rounds of bullets into the cars of civilians, beating a defenseless mentally-ill woman, and in the ongoing comments of right-wing fundamentalists who instill moral panics over the presence of immigrants, protest movements, and any other form of resistance to the authoritarian state.
How else to explain the comments made on national television news by Pat Lynch, the head of the New York City police union, who stated that officer Daniel Pantaleo deserved to be acquitted by the grand jury in the death of Eric Garner because Garner was able to utter the words “I can’t breathe,” which allegedly indicated there was no chokehold applied to his neck, in spite of what the video displayed or what the medical examiner concluded. Even Orwell could not make this up. Lynch overlooked not only the evidence provided by the video of Garner’s brutal killing and the verdict of the medical examiner but also the fact that officer Pantaleo has a history of racial misconduct in the police force.
But more importantly, the New York City Police force has a long history of racist practices and violence extending from an aggressive policy of racial profiling to bullying people in the name of the broken windows theory, which is a synonym for harassing young black men. [9] It gets worse as fatal police encounters with black men reach epidemic proportions.[10] Necropolitics now drives the everyday existence of poor minorities. As David Theo Goldberg points out, how else to explain “the account Darren Wilson has given publicly about his sense of Michael Brown as a large, violent, probably armed young black man? Or the shooting with absolutely no warning of 12 year old Tamir rice for carrying a pellet gun in an otherwise empty snow-filled park?…Or the luckily unsuccessful shooting at a black father by mistaking for a weapon the 6-yearold daughter he was rushing to save from a server asthma attack?”[11] It doesn’t end here as the nightmare videos appear of a cop viciously beating a 50-year-old, mentally-ill black woman along a busy Los Angeles highway, and another report of a young black man being killed in a Walmart store for allegedly “brandishing” an air rifle which he had reportedly been holding and leaning on, as if it was a walking stick. In totalitarian regimes, the mass psychology of authoritarianism runs amok as such indiscriminate acts of state violence are followed by the language of demonization, racism, cruelty, and mad utterances of hate. Black men are called dangerous criminals, thugs, or drug addicts. This is a discourse of abusive certainty, unmoved by its ignorance, and determined to legitimate massive extremes of inequality, material deprivation, and human misery as it produces widening zones of violence and abandonment.
Under such circumstances, the language of reform has become the discourse of apologists.[12] None of these alleged reformers situate the violence done to Garner within a wider context of state violence. For instance, Garner’s death is not analyzed in the face of the charge that the Cleveland Police Force is a corrupt and lawless institution, which raises questions about a society that produces such lawless institutions. No connection is made between how the police are trained and regulated and the evidence that the killing of a 12 year old black child was committed by a cop deemed incompetent by his previous department. Only recently has the militarization of local police forces become national news, but the latter is largely unassociated with the rise of a permanent warfare state and the militarization of the entire society. Little is learned from the ongoing evidence that blacks are mostly terrified of the police who act like an occupying force in their neighborhoods, which are treated like war zones. What ties all of these events together is that all of these acts of violence, corruption, and incompetence are not isolated practices but add up to the new face of domestic terrorism in a post 9/11 America.
Lawlessness in the authoritarian state thrives on the purported existence of an alleged culture of criminality. The culture of criminality thesis has taken on a new register as the punishing state increases the range of social behaviors it now criminalizes. If somebody is poor, unable to pay their debts, violate a trivial rule in school, is homeless, or viewed as the other, they are prime targets for the criminal justice system. As the police become more militarized and the culture of cruelty becomes more pervasive, the senseless harassment of young black men is followed by a spate of racist killings. Under such circumstances, the criminal justice system is not noted for its respect for justice but for how it has “become criminal in its lack of justice.”[13] Unfortunately, there is a culture of criminality in the United States and it resides in the mega banks, the ultra-rich hedge funds, and other apparatuses of the finance state. But on this issue there is nothing but silence from alleged patriots.
Calls for such reforms do not challenge the totalitarian politics and financial forces that rule American society, they simply give the system a veil of legitimacy suggesting it can be fixed. It can’t be fixed. This is not to suggest that it is better for cops to wear cameras than carry military grade weapons or that there is no point in creating new policing models. But these are short term solutions and do not address the larger structural violence and racism built into the neoliberal financial state. It is a death-dealing system ruled by political and moral zombies, and it has to be transformed through the ongoing, non-violent mobilization and development of social movements that can imagine a democracy that is real, substantive, and radical in its calls for justice, equality, and freedom. The dark possibilities of our times are everywhere.
The killing of Eric Garner is a flashpoint that has mobilized people all over the country. Many people are beginning to realize that the ongoing killing of black people is not even the most serious issue, however horrible and tragic. The biggest problem is the existence of the militarized finance state—a police and punishing state that operates as the repressive apparatuses of the financial elite. The demonstrations must continue full force and as a first step criminal charges must be brought against rogue cops and lawless police departments that believe that they can engage in racist repression, brutalize black neighborhoods by treating them as war zones. The racist ideologies, institutions, and language the new authoritarianism are part of a systemic project of disposability, harassment and expulsion and provide the formative culture necessary to treat blacks, as Robin D. G. Kelley points out, “like enemy combatants,” which constitutes the first step toward brutalizing and in some cases killing young black men with impunity.[14] But then the hard work begins of creating political formations at every level of government that will dismantle this barbarous system run by financial looters and backed up by rogue paramilitary forces. The left and other progressives need a single cause that speaks to multiple forms of oppression and that cause is the promise and struggle for a radical democracy. Let’s hope the killing of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner provides the beginning of a political and social movement to fight what has become a dark and gruesome political state of governance in the U.S.
[1] Hannah Arendt, “Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government,” The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York: 2001). pp. 464.
[2] I take this issue up in great detail in Henry A. Giroux, Dangerous Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism (Boulder: Paradigm, 2015).
[3] Nicholas Kristof, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 5,” New York Times (November 29, 2014). Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-when-whites-just-dont-get-it-part-5.html. Two important books on racism and mass incarceration are Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012) and Maya Schenwar, Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better (Oakland, California: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014).
[4] Arif Dirlik, personal correspondence, December 5, 2014.
[5] Margaret Talbot, “Why Cameras on Police Officers Won’t Save Us,” The New Yorker (December 4, 2014). Online: http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/camera-police-officers-wont-save-us?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&mbid=nl_120514_DailyB&CNDID=10718928&spMailingID=7339967&spUserID=MjUyNDM5MTcyMDUS1&spJobID=580644765&spReportId=NTgwNjQ0NzY1S0
[6] Lauren C. Regan, “The Secret Darkness of Grand Juries,” CounterPunch (November 28-30, 2014). Online: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/28/the-secret-darkness-of-grand-juries/print; Ginia Bellafante, “Police Violence Seems to Result in No Punishment,” New York Times (December 4, 2014). Online: “http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/nyregion/police-violence-seems-to-result-in-no-punishment.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-middle-span-region®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-middle-span-region
[7] Jelani Cobb, “No Such Thing as Racial Profiling,” The New Yorker (December 4, 2014). Online: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/eric-garner-racial-profiling?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&mbid=nl_120514_DailyB&CNDID=10718928&spMailingID=7339967&spUserID=MjUyNDM5MTcyMDUS1&spJobID=580644765&spReportId=NTgwNjQ0NzY1S0
[8] Chase Madar, “Why It’s Impossible to Indict a Cop,” The Nation ( December 4, 2014).
https://www.thenation.com/article/190937/why-its-impossible-indict-cop
[9] Elijah Anderson, “What caused the Ferguson riot exists in so many other cities too,” The Washington Post (December 3, 2014). Online http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/13/what-caused-the-ferguson-riot-exists-in-so-many-other-cities-too/
[10] Eba Hamid and Benjamin Mueller, “Fatal Police Encounters in New York City,” New York Times (December 3, 2014). Online: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/nyregion/fatal-police-encounters-in-new-york-city.html?_r=0
[11] David Theo Goldberg, “Revelations of ‘Postracial Ferguson,” Truthout (December 3, 2014). Online:http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27773-revelations-of-postracial-ferguson
[12] Mychal Denzel Smith, “The System That Failed Eric Garner and Michael Brown Cannot Be Reformed,” The Nation ( December 3, 2014) http://www.thenation.com/blog/191929/system-failed-eric-garner-and-michael-brown-cannot-be-reformed
[13] John Feffer, “Racial Apartheid in America,” CounterPunch (December 4, 2014). Online: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/04/racial-apartheid-in-america/
[14] Robin D. G. Kelley, “Why We Won’t Wait,” CounterPunch, November 25, 2014http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/25/75039/
Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His most recent books include: On Critical Pedagogy(Continuum, 2011), Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability (Paradigm 2012), Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories and the Culture of Cruelty (Routledge 2012), Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future (Paradigm 2013), America’s Educational Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013), Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Haymarket 2014) and The Violence of Organized Forgetting (published by City Lights in 2014). Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s Board of Directors. His web site is www.henryagiroux.com.
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Elfyn Evans may know what 2019 holds for him, but if he does he is not letting on.
What Elfyn Does Next – Evans’ Options For 2019!
Posted on 10th October 2018 by Ian Gordon
Elfyn Evans, without doubt, has the pace and ability to win the World Rally Championship but as he licks his wounds following an unfortunate exit from his home rally, the Dolgellau’s born driver’s future is yet to be confirmed. Will he stay at M-Sport, whose own future is up in the air, or move to another team? Dai Sport’s Rally expert, Paul Evans, looks at the Welshman’s options.
His performances this year have attracted the attention of every World Rally Championship team manager, but a big question remains – what team will Elfyn Evans be driving for in 2019?
If the 29-year old star from Dolgellau knows, then he’s keeping very tight lipped.
With just two rounds of this year’s series remaining, more driver announcements are expected in the coming days and weeks – but seldom has winter arrived with so much uncertainty in the WRC. Good grief, we don’t even know what the 2019 WRC calendar is, or how many manufacturer teams there will be, or who will be driving for them!
Evans is one of a handful of drivers with the experience to win any round of the WRC. He’s contested the full series six times, four times in a World Rally Car, and he is equally as fast on asphalt and gravel.
A potential world champion? Absolutely.
So what are Evans’ options for next year?
Some say that only Sébastien Ogier can get the most out of the Ford Fiesta WRC, and that no other driver could have won Wales Rally GB in the car – but that’s not true. After the opening Friday morning loop of stages, Evans (in 2nd) was 19 seconds ahead of Ogier (in 8th) and the only driver able to keep up with Ott Tänak. Evans was just 8.9 seconds behind leader Tänak when his car conked out on the road section to Clocaenog 2.
Tänak retired the next day after stretching his lead to 41.9 seconds and Ogier went on to win. It’s too simplistic to conclude that Evans would have therefore beaten Ogier and won Wales Rally GB if he’d been able to keep going, but he’d have been up there fighting for victory, that’s for sure. It’s a pace Evans has driven at all season, before and after returning under Rally 2 rules.
Finland’s Teemu Suninen is the only driver with an M-Sport contract for next year, although team boss Malcolm Wilson dropped a bombshell by saying that without more financial investment from Ford, to help run the team and develop the Fiesta WRC, there is no guarantee of an M-Sport Ford WRC team next year. It must be a pretty serious situation for Wilson to so publically put the ball in Ford’s court, and with Monte Carlo in January, there is precious little time to thrash out a multi-million dollar deal.
Sebastien Ogier claimed a record fifth Wales rally GB triumph, but would Evans have beaten him but for mechanical problem.
In part because of the lack of commitment from Ford, Ogier is leaving M-Sport for Citroen, and he might well be taking sponsor Red Bull with him. The five time world champion and Evans (also a Red Bull athlete) have very similar driving styles and work well together on car set-up. They have a fantastic working relationship, and Evans has gone beyond the call of duty to help his team-mate out this year, like in Rally Turkey, when he stopped to help Ogier and then worked on his own car in service while the M-Sport mechanics concentrated on the number one Ford. Could the Ogier-Evans dream team continue in red next year? It would be the type of strong driver line-up that Citroen needs to get back to the top, although Craig Breen has done an excellent job for Citroen this year and it is rumoured that Esapekka Lappi might be heading to the French team.
There might be a new home for Evans at Toyota. It’s rumoured that Toyota has retained Jari-Matti Latvala and that team principal Tommi Mäkinen has signed Kris Meeke – news which may not please Tänak, the driver with a Toyota contract for next year and who doesn’t want a new favourite coming into camp. The trio of available Yaris WRCs looked filled, but are they?
It’s always looked a bit crowded over at Hyundai, with four drivers in a three-car team and a young driver programme to boot. The one thing we know for sure is that Thierry Neuville has signed a three-year extension to his existing contract that will keep him in the team until the end of 2021. What Andreas Mikkelsen’s plans are, or for that matter Hayden Paddon and Dani Sordo, who share the third car, are less clear. It might need at least two of the current drivers to leave Hyundai before Evans could join.
Evans had no chance of reporting his historic 2017 win on Wales Rally GB.
Evans could return to rally an R5 car. He did this in 2016, winning the British Rally Championship title and the WRC2 category in Monte Carlo, Sweden and Corsica. But his age and experience puts him at the prime of his career. Evans wants to be world champion, not a support act, and having bounced back so brilliantly from a demotion three years ago, it would be a huge injustice to place him in a similar position again.
His experience makes him a highly sought after test driver. It’s not a high-profile job, but Evans would be a massive asset to any team and it would at least keep him at the forefront of World Rally Car development – and in pole position for any new opportunities that came up.
Worst-case scenario would be retirement, temporary or otherwise, from the sport. It’s a situation that doesn’t bare thinking about, but Evans isn’t the sort of sportsman who’d drive for anyone, just to make up the numbers. Nor should he. He’s a proven winner and one of the fastest drivers in the WRC. He’s had a terribly unlucky season, the latest being retiring on a road section not far from home for goodness sake, but that bad luck can’t last forever. Given the opportunity, Evans could challenge for the world title in 2019 – without any doubt whatsoever.
Posted in Dai Rally
Tagged Elfyn Evans, Esapekka Lappi, Hyundai, Jari-Matti Latvala, Kris Meeke, Malcolm Wilson, Ott Tanak, Sebastien Ogier, Sport, Teemu Suninen, Thierry Neuville, Toyota, Wales Rally GB
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Stop Celebrating Toya Graham While Condemning Protestors
Even before Toya Graham, the Baltimore mother of six who was captured on video “disciplining” her son, began making the news rounds, she was already being hailed as a hero.
The video of her dragging her 16-year-old son, Michael, who was throwing rocks at police, from Baltimore’s melee and slapping him repeatedly in the face had gone viral. Commenters e-applauded her for “doing what any good mother would do.” Some called her “mother of the year.”
I’m part of the contingent that doesn’t think Graham was right. I was a kid who got hit, and I’m in the camp that striking another person—especially a child—in anything other than self-defense is wrong. Countless studies have concluded that hitting your children doesn’t make them better, responsible people. After seeing Graham’s reaction—admittedly one born out of anger and fear—I’m not surprised that her son has a similar reaction to anger and fear: violence. The lessons you get at home are the habits you take “abroad.”
I absolutely don’t think that she handled it the best way, but I think it was the best way she knew how in the moment. While I have the luxury of sitting at my laptop debating the moral quandary of it all a few days later, Graham didn’t have that same luxury when she spotted her son in a crowd of protesters. She wasn’t thinking philosophically or about what bystanders would say or whether there were cameras rolling or whether her actions would soon be viewed by an audience watching on their cellphones.
She was reacting as she thought about her son getting himself killed by police out in the streets of Baltimore. She told CBS News, “I didn’t want him to be a Freddie Gray,” referring to the 25-year-old man who died after he was seriously injured under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Graham’s fear for her son if he was anywhere near the police, much less antagonizing them, has merit.
Graham was scared and she was admittedly angry. Her only son was putting himself in harm’s way, and undoubtedly she was desperate to protect him. Graham, as she describes it, “lost it.” I won’t condemn Graham’s reaction.
But I will point out the hypocrisy of people who applaud Graham and yet condemn Baltimore’s protesters, who have been called “thugs” and “animals” and everything but a child of God, when their reactions and Graham’s are one and the same.
Just like Graham, the people in the streets of Baltimore are also scared and fearful and desperate. Graham is using all her might to “discipline” her child, who is taller and, likely, physically stronger than she is. There are citizens throwing rocks at police officers with guns. These are means of last resort because they have all “lost it.”
Read the full post on The Root
In featured-post, Newest Tags Baltimore, Mom of the Year, protestors, the root, Toya Graham
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Hi Thea, That’s wonderful that IF has worked for you. Diets, and particularly fasting, can be very triggering for others with a history of an eating disorder. People who have been in remission can relapse. For more about what concerns and problems others have had, there is alot of information out there, and for starters I recommend this thorough article from Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hunger-artist/201411/the-fast-diet-fast-route-disordered-eating
The 5:2 diet is another intermittent fasting method, which allows you to eat normally five days a week and restricts your calories to just 500 to 600 for the other two days. The advantage of following the 5:2 diet versus the 16:8 diet is that you can eat normally on any days you want, depending on your schedule. However, research shows that the 5:2 diet isn't more effective than continuous calorie restriction.
Intermittent fasting is hard in the contemplation, of that there is no doubt. “You go without food for 24 hours?” people would ask, incredulously when we explained what we were doing. “I could never do that.” But once started, it’s a snap. No worries about what and where to eat for one or two out of the three meals per day. It’s a great liberation. Your food expenditures plummet. And you’re not particularly hungry. … Although it’s tough to overcome the idea of going without food, once you begin the regimen, nothing could be easier.”
A 2018 review of intermittent fasting in obese people showed that reducing calorie intake one to six days per week over at least 12 weeks was effective for reducing body weight on an average of 7 kilograms (15 lb); the results were not different from a simple calorie restricted diet, and the clinical trials reviewed were run mostly on middle-aged women from the US and the UK, limiting interpretation of the results.[29] Intermittent fasting has not been studied in children, the elderly, or underweight people, and could be harmful in these populations.[29][30]
Wondering what fits into a keto diet — and what doesn’t? “It’s so important to know what foods you’ll be eating before you start, and how to incorporate more fats into your diet,” says Kristen Mancinelli, RD, author of The Ketogenic Diet: A Scientifically Proven Approach to Fast, Healthy Weight Loss, who is based in New York City. We asked her for some guidelines.
Normal dietary fat contains mostly long-chain triglycerides (LCTs). Medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) are more ketogenic than LCTs because they generate more ketones per unit of energy when metabolised. Their use allows for a diet with a lower proportion of fat and a greater proportion of protein and carbohydrate,[18] leading to more food choices and larger portion sizes.[4] The original MCT diet developed by Peter Huttenlocher in the 1970s derived 60% of its calories from MCT oil.[15] Consuming that quantity of MCT oil caused abdominal cramps, diarrhea, and vomiting in some children. A figure of 45% is regarded as a balance between achieving good ketosis and minimising gastrointestinal complaints. The classical and modified MCT ketogenic diets are equally effective and differences in tolerability are not statistically significant.[9] The MCT diet is less popular in the United States; MCT oil is more expensive than other dietary fats and is not covered by insurance companies.[18]
His theory, known today as Occum’s Razor, basically says that the simplest path forward is usually the best. And while we’ll never know if William actually had ye olde abs, his view on philosophy is the same as our view on quick weight loss: If you just do the little things—take advantage of tiny overlooked tweaks to your daily routine—you could toss the rice cakes and running shoes once and for all. (Or at least not feel like you were a slave to them.) In fact, a swing of just 10 calories a day—about as many calories as you burn in 3 minutes of standing still—will make you a pound slimmer by this time next year.
^ Jump up to: a b c Harris, L; Hamilton, S; Azevedo, LB; Olajide, J; De Brún, C; Waller, G; Whittaker, V; Sharp, T; Lean, M; Hankey, C; Ells, L (February 2018). "Intermittent fasting interventions for treatment of overweight and obesity in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis". JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports. 16 (2): 507–547. doi:10.11124/JBISRIR-2016-003248. PMID 29419624.
The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that in medicine is used primarily to treat difficult-to-control (refractory) epilepsy in children. The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fueling brain function. However, if little carbohydrate remains in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, a state known as ketosis, leads to a reduction in the frequency of epileptic seizures.[1] Around half of children and young people with epilepsy who have tried some form of this diet saw the number of seizures drop by at least half, and the effect persists even after discontinuing the diet.[2] Some evidence indicates that adults with epilepsy may benefit from the diet, and that a less strict regimen, such as a modified Atkins diet, is similarly effective.[1] Potential side effects may include constipation, high cholesterol, growth slowing, acidosis, and kidney stones.[3]
I decided to follow time-restricted eating, or fasting 18 hours out of the day and eating the other six (no food between 8pm and 2pm). The first day I managed to abstain all 18 hours, but it wasn't pretty (here's what happens to your body when you skip a meal). My mind was racking up obsessive food thoughts faster than my phone hunts Pokemon. The inner dialogue went something like this: I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm friggin hungry, I'm hungry, I'm STARVING, get this girl a cookie already!
Probably, and there are a few reasons why the keto diet usually equals weight-loss gold, says Keatley. For starters, people usually reduce their daily caloric intake to about 1,500 calories a day because healthy fats and lean proteins make you feel fuller sooner—and for a longer period of time. And then there’s the fact that it takes more energy to process and burn fat and protein than carbs, so you're burning slightly more calories than you did before. Over time, this can lead to weight loss.
Another program called the 5:2 Fast Diet involves eating 5 days a week and fasting for the other 2 days, when women can get no more than 500 calories and men no more than 600. That’s a quarter of the amount you likely eat on the days when you don’t fast. Whether you eat those calories in one sitting or spread them across micro-meals throughout the day is up to you.
A study with an intent-to-treat prospective design was published in 1998 by a team from the Johns Hopkins Hospital[20] and followed-up by a report published in 2001.[21] As with most studies of the ketogenic diet, no control group (patients who did not receive the treatment) was used. The study enrolled 150 children. After three months, 83% of them were still on the diet, 26% had experienced a good reduction in seizures, 31% had had an excellent reduction, and 3% were seizure-free.[Note 7] At 12 months, 55% were still on the diet, 23% had a good response, 20% had an excellent response, and 7% were seizure-free. Those who had discontinued the diet by this stage did so because it was ineffective, too restrictive, or due to illness, and most of those who remained were benefiting from it. The percentage of those still on the diet at two, three, and four years was 39%, 20%, and 12%, respectively. During this period, the most common reason for discontinuing the diet was because the children had become seizure-free or significantly better. At four years, 16% of the original 150 children had a good reduction in seizure frequency, 14% had an excellent reduction, and 13% were seizure-free, though these figures include many who were no longer on the diet. Those remaining on the diet after this duration were typically not seizure-free, but had had an excellent response.[21][22]
Con: Results can vary depending on how much fluid you drink. By drinking more water, you dilute the concentration of ketones in the urine and thus a lower level of ketones will be detected on the strips. The strips don’t show a precise ketone level. Finally, and most importantly, as you become increasingly keto-adapted and your body reabsorbs ketones from the urine, urine strips may become unreliable, even if you’re in ketosis.
As a lifestyle-leaning research doctor, I needed to understand the science. The Obesity Code seemed the most evidence-based summary resource, and I loved it. Fung successfully combines plenty of research, his clinical experience, and sensible nutrition advice, and also addresses the socioeconomic forces conspiring to make us fat. He is very clear that we should eat more fruits and veggies, fiber, healthy protein, and fats, and avoid sugar, refined grains, processed foods, and for God’s sake, stop snacking. Check, check, check, I agree. The only part that was still questionable in my mind was the intermittent fasting part.
That said, I have heard that women may find a wider window of eating to be more favorable when doing daily intermittent fasting. While men will typically fast for 16 hours and then eat for 8 hours, women may find better results by eating for 10 hours and fasting for 14 hours. The best advice I can give anyone, not just women, is to experiment and see what works best for you. Your body will give you signals. Follow what your body responds favorably to.
Well, most notably, it’s a great way to get lean without going on a crazy diet or cutting your calories down to nothing. In fact, most of the time you'll try to keep your calories the same when you start intermittent fasting. (Most people eat bigger meals during a shorter time frame.) Additionally, intermittent fasting is a good way to keep muscle mass on while getting lean.
Forms of intermittent fasting exist in religious practices in various groups across the world.[11] Religious fasting regimens include, but are not limited to, Vrata in Hinduism, Ramadan fasting (Islam), Yom Kippur fasting (Judaism), Orthodox Christian fasting, Fast Sunday (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), and Buddhist fasting.[11] Certain religious fasting practices, only require abstinence from certain foods, while others, like the Jewish fast on Yom Kippur, last for a short period of time and would cause negligible effects on the body.[11]
Based on this, researchers from the University of Alabama conducted a study with a small group of obese men with prediabetes. They compared a form of intermittent fasting called “early time-restricted feeding,” where all meals were fit into an early eight-hour period of the day (7 am to 3 pm), or spread out over 12 hours (between 7 am and 7 pm). Both groups maintained their weight (did not gain or lose) but after five weeks, the eight-hours group had dramatically lower insulin levels and significantly improved insulin sensitivity, as well as significantly lower blood pressure. The best part? The eight-hours group also had significantly decreased appetite. They weren’t starving.
While the 16:8 diet seems like a great way to drop weight fast, it does have some cons. Sarah Mirkin, RD, author of Fill Your Plate, Lose the Weight, a 21-day meal plan designed to help women over 40 lose weight, says, "I think that it limits food intake to such a small window of time that it's difficult for someone to meet their nutritional needs."
The ketogenic diet is not a benign, holistic, or natural treatment for epilepsy; as with any serious medical therapy, complications may result.[28] These are generally less severe and less frequent than with anticonvulsant medication or surgery.[28] Common but easily treatable short-term side effects include constipation, low-grade acidosis, and hypoglycaemia if an initial fast is undertaken. Raised levels of lipids in the blood affect up to 60% of children[38] and cholesterol levels may increase by around 30%.[28] This can be treated by changes to the fat content of the diet, such as from saturated fats towards polyunsaturated fats, and if persistent, by lowering the ketogenic ratio.[38] Supplements are necessary to counter the dietary deficiency of many micronutrients.[18]
Surprisingly, since I've started intermittent fasting I've increased muscle mass (up 10 pounds from 205 to 215), decreased body fat (down 3% from 14% to 11%), increased explosiveness (set a personal best with a clean and jerk of 253 pounds a few months back), and decreased the amount of time I've spent training (down from 7.5 hours per week to 2.5 hours per week).
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Jonathan Thurston wrong foots Woodridge High with a visit
A group of 180 students at Woodridge State High School who had been taking part in NRL legend Jonathan Thurston’s JT Succeed Program, an initiative of his JT Academy, were treated to a surprise visit from the man himself.
The JT Succeed Program looks at a wide range of subjects and includes a focus on building self-confidence.
“We also encourage a change of mindset. We love to empower courage with our participants and give them the self-belief to put their hand up for future employment opportunities. We're all about encouraging our participants to build their aspirations and achieve their goals," Woodridge High’s Employment Connections Coach Rhiannon Parsons said.
“The students were called to an assembly where we played them a video JT had made thanking them for being a part of the JT Succeed program which we had done last semester
"There were TV cameras at the school filming what the students were told was material for the JT Academy chronicling a visit from the Academy’s General Manager, Samantha Johnson, who had previously spoken at the school as part of the JT Succeed Program.
“The students have been taking part in the JT Succeed program where we talk about self-belief, courage and confidence; how to find them and how to use them. The program is an intensive employment program designed after industry consultation to give young people who want to work, the edge they need to gain and maintain employment," she said.
Thurston told students he receives a report about every school visit undertaken by staff at the Academy as part of the JT Succeed program and that he had seen the social media work students at Woodridge High produced as part of the first visit to the school from the Academy.
“We are hoping that the Academy will be able to reach as many young Australians as possible to equip them with the tools needed to help them find meaningful employment,” Thurston said. “The idea of being courageous, having self -belief and being confident can be scary, I know.
“My message is don’t be scared of failing, be more scared of not giving it a go. I want to encourage as many youth as I can to keep turning up to school and to keep believing in themselves.
“And for those who may not have access to school, or who just don’t fit with the school system, there are other ways of getting the skills and qualifications you need to get a job. Don’t give up. Let us help you if we can."
Rhiannon said she knew the messages being shared by the JT Succeed Program would resonate with students at the school and that was why the school became involved with the JT Academy.
“We know Johnathan Thurston is a major role model for the majority of our student population, and he has built such a great reputation for himself that we knew it would be a great program that our students would be excited to be a part of,” she said.
“We knew these messages were going to be well received by our students who follow Johnathan Thurston’s career, but I found that all students were able to take away valuable knowledge and insight that will be useful during their schooling years and beyond.
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Bigamist, The (1953)
And such a small man in comparison...
Starring: Edmond O'Brien (The Wild Bunch • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), Joan Fontaine (Rebecca • Letter from an Unknown Woman), Ida Lupino (High Sierra • On Dangerous Ground)
Directed By: Ida Lupino ("Have Gun - Will Travel" • "Gilligan's Island")
Overview: When a bigamist is uncovered by a private investigator, he attempts to explain his reasons for this double life.
Years ago, I found The Bigamist in a bargain bin, as a double feature which included The Man With The Golden Arm, starring Frank Sinatra. Today, I need to confess something. I watched The Man With The Golden Arm first, but I wasn't cheating on it, in fact I was married to it before I ever met The Bigamist, but I swear I love them both! Who am I kidding? Given the choice, I'd have dropped Ida Lupino's boring melodrama the moment she started asking me to 'be more sensitive to her needs'.
Quickly, The Bigamist is the story of simply that. After a man and his wife fill out the necessary paperwork to adopt a child, the private investigator whose job it is to do a quick background check discovers that hopeful father Harry Graham is also Harrison Graham, and that he's married too. When the investigator confronts him, Harry sits him down and explains all the reasons for this gross fumbled misunderstanding that is a double life. Rather than go into the details of the what and why, let me just say that the reasons do not endear Harry one bit.
On the plus side, The Bigamist does a great job of making the two women involved completely pathetic, in a way that makes you care, not in a way that has the audience asking 'why are you such a pathetic loser?'. Aside from that, The Bigamist doesn't have much to offer besides tempting you to two-time it with some better movie. Of the 80 minute total runtime, a good 15 minutes is spent by the private investigator doing his background check. What possibly could be the terrible secret held by the suspicious Harry Graham? I sat there wondering why they weren't getting on with it. We knew exactly what the P.I. would find, it's the damned TITLE OF THE FILM. What could have been an interesting mini-mystery introduction was spoiled before I opened the DVD case.
The Bigamist is basically a Christian morality play distilled into film. Remember those cheap 'girl succumbs to drugs and sex' movies from the 50s? There you go, only with a bigger budget, yet without any improvement in dialogue. My favourite line, spoken in a hoity cadence by the private investigator after Harry's apologetic tale, "I must say that was both a gallant and a foolish scheme." I rolled my eyes and wrote it down to share this camel-back breaking straw of dialogue with you. To top is off is brutally poor sound work which includes moments without any ambient sound whatsoever that cause you to wonder what's wrong with your surround sound system. Wonderful.
Chris Fujiwara, the critic who wrote the review of The Bigamist for the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, stated that "the orchestration of [looks shared or half-avoided] achieves a combination of ambiguity and intensity that recalls both Carl Dreyer and Nicholas Ray." Clearly that 1001 critic was quite moved by the sheer drama and acting of The Bigamist's players, but for me those other directors' names used as banners on high to express the genius of this film merely served as two more cartridges of ammunition for my own review. When reminded of those directors' worst works, personal favourite reviews I loved ranting vitriol about, Ray's Johnny Guitar, full of ridiculous posturing and Dreyer's Gertrud, copiously overfilled with awkward 'ambiguous half-avoided looks', the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book merely helped explain why I disliked The Bigamist so much.
He's all torn up about having double the pleasure?! Oh wait... double the Hell.
Performance: 5 Cinematography: 6 Script: 4 Plot: 6 Mood: 6
Overall Rating: 54% (The Trouble with Married)
I've also discovered that I'm not a fan of Joan Fontaine. Beautiful and talented as she is, how she ends up playing some of the most boring garrulous characters in film I'll never know. The Bigamist only brought back bad memories of Letter from an Unknown Woman.
If nothing else, the best thing to come of The Bigamist was discovering a film I'd never heard of and probably would not have otherwise stumbled upon, the excellent, gripping The Man With The Golden Arm. Talk about 'the other woman'. I recommended that instead of watching The Bigamist, you should just go to bed with that one twice.
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die | 1950-1959 | 50-62% | American Drama | Drama Submitted by Squish on December 18, 2011 - 7:47pm.
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Archive for category: Aircraft Carrier
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Nimitz class aircraft supercarriers are to be replaced with new, even better aircraft carriers.
April 3, 2013 /0 Comments/in Aircraft Carrier, Fighter Jets /by FlyFighterJet
US Navy nuclear aircraft carriers – the seagoing airbase
The United States Navy has the biggest fleet of aircraft carriers in the World. Having 10 carriers in service, two in reserve and one being building it operates half of all carriers being used all over the World. Nimitz-class carriers which are at the moment (after USS Enterprise CVN-65 retirement in December 2012 and before USS Gerald R. Ford CVN-78 enters service est. 2015) the only type of carriers in service are a reason to be proud of for the US Marines. They are the largest warships ever built. 1’092 ft long, they are capable of carrying over 100’000 tons. When needed ships’s company can number 3’200 people and almost 2’500 air wing complement. Up to 130 F/A-18 Hornets or 80-90 aircraft of mixed types can find an accommodation. Although a maximum aircraft capacity is bigger currently typically air wing consists of 64 aircrafts including F/A-18 or F Super Hornets, F/A-18C Hornets, EA-6B Prowlers, E-2C Hawkeyes, C-2 Greyhounds, SH-60F & HH-60H Seahawks. Historically also other aircraft were carried aboard Nimitz-class carriers: F-14 Tomcats, S-3 Vikings, A-7 Corsair II and A-6E Intruders.
Responsibility for all air operations on a carrier are hold by the air boss on the bridge. There are several facilities to be used during air operations such as four steam catapults for launching of fixed wing aircraft and four arrestor wires used to rapidly decelerate an aircraft after landing (USS Ronald Reagan CVN-76 and USS George H.W. Bush CVN-77 are equipped with only three arrestor wires as the fourth was used rarely).
Nimitz class aircraft carriers over years
Designed to replace Kitty Hawk class and Enterprise class Nimitz class carriers started their service for the US Navy in 1975. First major mission in which USS Nimitz was involved was Operation Eagle Claw in 1980 which was an attempt to rescue 52 Americans held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and end the Iran hostage crisis. She also was used to provide security of the coast of South Korea during 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.
By July 1992 already 6 of planned 10 Nimitz-class carriers were in service and in January 2009 the last one USS George H.W. Bush CVN-77 was commissioned. She was first deployed in May 2011, crossed Atlantic to visit Britain and take part in Exercise Saxon Warrior. USS George H.W. Bush returned to Norfolk after 7 month deployment in December 2011.
Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers – the best is still to come
Nimitz class carriers which are in service for almost 40 years now are soon to be gradually replaced by the new Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers. The new class will use almost unchanged hull design as its predecessor, but will introduce new technologies developed since USS Nimitz was commissioned. New technologies implemented will help to improve efficiency, lower running costs and reduce crew requirements.
One of the biggest innovations will be Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS). Although the steam catapults used on Nimitz-class aircraft carriers (which were developed in the 1950s) have been really reliable, they are massive, hard to control and their efficiency is very low. The force used for launching can be controlled with greater precision in comparison to steam systems, allowing it to be used by wider range of aircraft from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to heavy fighter jets.
The first of Ford-class carriers USS Gerald R. Ford CVN-78 is announced to join the US Fleet in 2015, and will be 11th nuclear super carrier in the US Navy service.
Two next ships USS John F. Kennedy CVN-79 and USS Enterprise CVN-80 (named after USS Enterprise CVN-65) are planned to be placed in commission by 2020 and 2025 accordingly.
Additional Articles and Resources
http://nns.huntingtoningalls.com/products/carriers/ford/index
http://www.nimitz.navy.mil
Fastest plane in the world
http://www.flyfighterjet.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/transparent-logo-300x138.png 0 0 FlyFighterJet http://www.flyfighterjet.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/transparent-logo-300x138.png FlyFighterJet2013-04-03 13:47:242013-04-03 13:47:24Nimitz class aircraft supercarriers are to be replaced with new, even better aircraft carriers.
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Publisher’s Letter
Direct From …
Behind the Baton
Fitness to the Max
Booster Support
Magical Travel Tips
Encore! Encore! Magazine Extras
All About Accessories
Drum Corps Diary 2010
Brass Techniques
Percussion Techniques
Instructor’s Insight
Financial Need and Advocacy
Find a sense of belonging within marching arts
Creating Cadences
LGBTQ+ Inclusion
2019 WGI Winners
United Sound Participates in Drum Corps Performances
Drum Corps Memorabilia Museum
Sousa’s March Mania
WGIcon Professional Development Conference
The Three C’s
Taking the NBA Court
Post on: May 13, 2009
Eddie Carden
Professional drum lines have increasingly become a popular staple of professional basketball with team managers, fans and even the ball players themselves taking note.
Photo by Allen Einstein
Leave it to the pros. At least that’s why Chicago Bulls forward Tyrus Thomas doesn’t play the snare drum.
One day Thomas stumbled upon Scott Idle, director of the Stampede Chicago Bulls Drumline while he was scoping out the United Center sound system with his snare drum. According to Idle, Thomas walked over and jokingly asked if he could try out the drum. But after seeing Idle play—an accomplished percussionist that performed for five years at Michigan State University and with the Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps in 2001—Thomas probably thought better of it and said, “Nevermind, man—I don’t want to make a fool of myself. I’ll just stick to basketball.”
Stampede!
There’s no question about it. These guys are professionals.
The Stampede Drumline, which started for the 2007-2008 season, is composed mostly of former Cavaliers members as well as other local drum corps and college band alumni. With just three hours of rehearsal per performance, the group relies on individual talent and drive to bring together an exciting show for each game, according to Idle.
Differently from drum corps, though, Idle values pure entertainment value over rigid corps precision. “It’s the whole largerthan- life idea,” he says. “We’re trying to create characters on the floor. It’s not just about drumming for us. I want everyone to have their own personality and really bring it out.”
The Stampede plays at select Bulls home games, which usually amounts to two to three games per month, and Idle is quick to point out the team’s 10-1 record with the drum line present. The group typically performs during one timeout in the third quarter and then spends the fourth quarter playing to the upper deck of the arena to reach die-hard fans in the “nosebleed” seats. The Stampede will also coordinate with the Bulls game operations crew to start chants throughout the fourth quarter.
“One of the things I talked about … before we actually started the line was that there was a real lack of intimacy with the upper bowl level,” Idle says. “Sometimes, the best fans sit in the cheapest seats. … I think especially for those ticket holders, it’s a pretty cool rush for them to see the Bulls Drumline come up the aisles and stand in the sections. It gets everybody involved.”
The group also performs outside the arena—regardless of the weather—after every Bulls win and will participate in other special events including the opening-day festivities.
“Even if it’s minus 10 degrees, we’re out there playing,” Idle says. “We get crowds of 200 people watching us after the game outside, even if it rains. … When they leave the stadium, the last thing they’re going to see is our electrifying entertainment, and that’s going to make them want to come back.”
Drum Battle
The Stampede isn’t the only drum line or live music group in the NBA, nor was it the first. In fact, Idle attended Michigan State University with Todd Ohme, who started the Detroit Pistons Drumline in 2005. The two have since worked together to share new ideas for their respective groups.
In fact, the two drum lines recently challenged one another to a drum battle at a home game for each team. When the Pistons and Bulls face off in the classic rivalry game, more is at stake than the score. Both musical groups take the floor at the same time and face off, pitting drum performances in similar style to the movie “Drumline.”
While no winner was announced at the competition, both drum lines enjoyed the experience, and according to the two directors, the energy level was through the roof.
“Last year, both of our groups traveled to the away game,” Idle says. “We really got the crowd to feed off of that; it was incredible. During that drum battle, I guarantee you, the Pistons and Bulls were watching us, not listening to their coach.”
Most of the time, the Chicago Bulls Drumline doesn’t interact with the basketball team, but Idle says that team members do take notice of the high-energy performance during a timeout.
All About Image
According to Pistons Drumline director Todd Ohme, a successful NBA drum line is all about the image. Clad in Pistons blue and red sweat suits, the drum line takes the stage with hats and headbands askew, displaying the group’s aggressive attitude.
“We’re really aware of our image,” Ohme says. “We always want to give them something positive. If we’re there leaning against the wall or sitting crosslegged at the end of the game, that’s not very good. They want to see energy, feel the excitement. We want them to know that: ‘You’re at The Palace, and there’s nowhere else to be right now.’”
Ohme echoes Idle’s sentiments about the group’s musicians taking on a “larger-than-life” persona on the court. “Everybody in the group is a phenomenal player,” he says. “But we’ve had guys that are really good that didn’t last because they didn’t connect with the crowd. The hands and the notes, it’s got to sound good and everything, but the big thing is how good can you look, how in control of the drum can you be?”
Although nearly every participant in the Pistons and Bulls drum lines has some experience with either corps or college marching band, these groups differentiate themselves with their power-packed performances.
“On the surface, we look like a typical marching band drum line,” says Idle. “But with our background having been part of world-class drum corps, the high degree of talent that we have within the ensemble, it really allows us to do a lot more than what you’d just expect at a high school football game or even a college football game for that matter.”
In addition, the raw talent assembled by these groups allows them to perform well with minimal practice time, a luxury that other marching ensembles are unable to take advantage of.
“Right now, we’re making up our show on the bus,” says Ohme over the cacophony during the drum line’s bus ride to the arena. “Sometimes we have a lot of prep time; sometimes we’re doing it on the fly right before we go out there. … We’ll do at most one rehearsal per game. It’s a three-hour rehearsal. We’ll have a guy that writes most of our parts; he uses Virtual Drumline. He’ll write that, create it and then get it out there. It’s the expectation that we have a practice on Sunday, and you need to get to know it. Sometimes if we don’t have a practice, we really rely on it. It’s a professional gig. Everyone shows up, and they know what they’re doing.”
Ohme’s on-the-fly preparation nonetheless belies the group’s number one mission: to support the team. “We started realizing we need to be very strong here because we’re a big part of the energy in the arena,” he says. “It really has a big impact. The team can be down like 20 points, and we still get a good response from the crowd. We’re there for a reason. We’re not just there because they thought it would be a fun opportunity for us to get to play in front of a bunch of people.”
In addition to performing at select home games and the drum battle with the Chicago Bulls Drumline, the Pistons Drumline also had the opportunity to travel in 2006 to the All-Star Weekend in Houston as well as to perform with Kid Rock and Keith Urban on separate occasions.
Live Experience
Although fans attend NBA games to see basketball, teams are increasingly looking for ways to create a more engaging atmosphere to fill seats night after night. According to Lisa Estrada, director of game operations and entertainment for the Los Angeles Lakers, the Laker Band came into existence at the request of team owner Jerry Buss, who wanted to create a live music atmosphere rather than piping in only recorded charts to the arena. The group began in 1978 when the Lakers still played at the Forum in Inglewood before moving to the Staples Center.
“In the world that we live in with iPods, computers and technology, I hope people don’t forget how special bands are,” Estrada says. “I love it. It’s such a nice tradition, and to have that loyalty is great.”
The Laker Band draws from current and former members of the University of Southern California’s Trojan Marching Band. Unlike most of the other NBA performing groups, however, the Laker Band comprises percussion as well as brass players.
The band performs during timeouts and post game as well as other events with the Lakers team. Estrada says the organization wants them to be “a part of our show in any way, no matter how big or small.”
“It brings a little bit of the live atmosphere,” she adds. “I think tradition again comes to mind. We are a pretty traditional organization, and that’s what our owner likes. He likes the collegiate game atmosphere. That is definitely where we’re unique. We have that collegiate feel.”
Jeff Wolschlager, senior director of game operations for the Chicago Bulls, feels that The Stampede fills a similar role at the United Center.
“Our philosophy is really simple,” Wolschlager says. “We want to make the outcome of the game as moot a point as possible for our fans and make coming to the game as much a value as possible. We look at our basketball floor like a stage. It came out of a desire to have more varied entertainment options.”
Eddie Carden is an editorial intern for Halftime Magazine. He is a senior, majoring in public relations and neuroscience, at the University of Southern California. He has been playing the trumpet since the fifth grade and currently serves as the drum major for the USC “Spirit of Troy” Trojan Marching Band.
NBA Music
There are many live music groups throughout the NBA working hard to keep crowds fired up.
Here are a few of the drum lines and pep bands that we found around the league:
• Chicago Bulls Stampede Drumline
• Dallas Mavericks Drumline
• Detroit Pistons Drumline
• Los Angeles Lakers Laker Band
• Memphis Grizzlies Drumline
• Milwaukee Bucks Wild! Drumline
• New Orleans Hornets Drumline
• Portland Trailblazers’ the Groove Machine
If you know of more groups, please let us know.
Tags: Drumlinemarching bandHalftime Magazinepercussionindoor percussionmarching artspep banddrum linemarchingbasketball bandNBAmarching musicnational basketball associationChicago Bulls Stampede DrumlineDallas Mavericks DrumlineDetroit Pistons DrumlineLos Angeles Lakers Laker BandMemphis Grizzlies DrumlineMilwaukee Bucks Wild! DrumlineNew Orleans Hornets DrumlinePortland Trailblazers the Groove Machine
How to Keep Alums Involved
Winning WGI
Halftime Magazine® is the only lifestyle publication that presents the sights, sounds and spirit of the marching arts in a highly visual format. Our mission involves education, entertainment and inspiration for ourreaders--marching instructors, students, parents, alumni and fans. This bimonthly print magazine showcases marching participants' shared experiences about competitions, school spirit and band traditions with profiles, first-person accounts and thought-provoking feature stories.
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Best Travel Destinations In World
Top Five Things to Do and See in Sri Lanka
November 16, 2018 Comments Off on Top Five Things to Do and See in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is an island nation located on the Indian Ocean south of India. It is popularly referred to as the ‘pearl of the Indian Ocean’ owing to its sandy beaches, highlands, wildlife sanctuaries, ancient Buddhist ruins and more. Tourists can easily access the country through direct flights from various destinations to the capital city of Columbo. Here are the top 5 activities to do in Sri Lanka.
Ascend Sigiriya
The 5th-century castle of Sigiriya is a good example of an ancient urban enterprise. The fortress was constructed by king Kaspaya and rest atop the towering rock formation. Tourists can go up to the peak through a series of winding steps leading to an entryway. The fortress also features King Kaspaya’s palace which is adorned in colorful frescoes. The neighboring landscape, consisting of water gardens and green forests certainly add to the excitement and makes Sigiriya a renowned World Heritage Site.
Explore the ancient ruins of Polunnaruwa
The kingdom of Polunnaruwa was set up in the 11th and 12th Centuries AD. It was famed for its tall buildings, superb parks as well as a 25 km² lake. However, its prominence started to fade and was later abandoned by the 13th century. The remains of this once famous metropolis are now a tourist site and provide some splendid photography opportunities including the 13m tall King’s Royal Palace. The city of Polunnaruwa also features several Buddha statues most of which in different levels of decays. Nevertheless, the 4 Buddhas located at Gal Vihara are in almost great condition. A great way to survey these ruins is through cycling. You can rent a bicycle from nearby cafes and guest houses.
Board the express train from Kandy to Ella
If you want to explore the different and striking landscapes of Sri Lanka, then get on the train from Kandy to Ella. The conspicuous blue and red express train usually takes about 6 hours to travel from Kandy to Ella. Don’t worry; there are many stops along the way. On the journey, you’ll see cascading waterfalls, dense forests, misty mountains and local farmers tending to green crops and tea plantations. The spectacular views are best enjoyed while standing in one of the carriage entryways.
Nestled in the southern part of Sri Lanka, Udawalawe National Park is home to elephants. It consists of dense forest cover and grasslands and accommodates more than 500 species of flora and fauna. Just like in many other countries, the elephant species in Sri Lanka are endangered because of illegal poaching. The park is a safe and secure sanctuary for about 2000 elephants. Apart from elephants, you can spot water buffalo, deer and sloth bear in the park.
Located on the south-east coastline of Sri Lanka, Arugam Bay is a perfect surfing spot. The bay is moon shaped and usually attracts a relaxed crowd eager to surf on the waters of the Indian Ocean. There are specific spots for those who love high and strong waves and quieter areas for those who love serene waters.
Sri Lanka is undergoing a renaissance at the moment and you should make it a point to visit this island and sample what’s on offer.
Ways to Cut Expenses and Save Money for Travel
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Grahall is located just 16 minutes from Okemo Mountain Resort, 30 minutes from Claremont, NH and just 45 minutes from Woodstock, VT. An overview of what's nearby is below.
The Town of Cavendish was chartered in 1761. It has always been a generally quiet rural community with beautiful forested hills and valleys, mountain views and productive river valleys. The picturesque Black River Valley runs west to east through the town, complete with two distinct villages, a trophy trout stream section, a hydro plant and two intersecting Vermont state highway arteries. With housing ranging from magnificent old country estates to great contemporary mansions, from classic village homes to crisp and clean affordable housing, there is a wide assortment of residential opportunities. The two villages sprang from the early success and growth of Vermont's woolen industry yet they adapted gracefully and flourished in their own right after the decline of that industry with a little help of some Town revitalization efforts. Cavendish's largest industrial resident is a branch of the Mack Molding company which specializes in custom plastics molding. Mack took one of the former mill complexes in town and has developed it into a fine modern plant while keeping the exterior of the plant well maintained and preserving the classic mill complex character.
Okemo Mountain Resort
Known for some of the best snowmaking in New England, Okemo Mountain has a total of 121 trails spread across 667 acres of skiable terrain. Trail difficulty is almost evenly divided between novice, intermediate, and advanced/expert. A paved road, named Mountain Road, runs along the mountainside is used as a ski trail in the winter. Mountain Road can be driven during the summer and has parking spots for scenic viewing of the valley. The quality of the grooming has been ranked sixth in the nation by SKI Magazine readers.
Hawks Mountain
GRAHALL abuts Hawks Mountain Wildlife Management Area, a beautiful and rugged tract of land that is 2,183 acres in size. The Black River flows along part of the western boundary and a portion of the northern boundary. Cavendish Gulf Road parallels a portion of the southwest boundary. The terrain on the WMA is very steep and rugged, ranging in elevation from approximately 700 feet along the Black River to 1,940 feet on the slopes of Hawks Mountain. Ledge outcrops are common throughout the property and are home to porcupines and bobcats. The WMA is completely forested with red and sugar maple, yellow birch and beech. Patches of red spruce and red oak are scattered throughout.
Woodstock, Vermont is the quintessential New England historic town. It sits in a valley surrounded by low-lying hills that nestle rather than overwhelm, and is a community snuggled around the Ottauquechee River. Woodstock is home to many excellent shops and restaurants, the Woodstock Inn & Resort, a great Middle and High School, and never fails to serve as an incredible place to go for a walk or meet someone for Coffee.
Those who choose to reside near Woodstock continue to be some of the most educated in the world, some of the most accomplished “captains of industry” in the country. It seems everyone has an interesting back-story. You’ll find filmmakers, war correspondents, writers, artists, military experts, doctors, high-tech entrepreneurs, rock stars, equestrians and happy soccer moms and dads all grabbing a coffee in town. Woodstock also attracts its fair share of Dutch, English and French, many of whom are reminded of home by the gentle hills, winding dirt roads, cows, sheep and horses in pastures next to beautiful weathered barns. Even if it’s not the old country, it has the feel of a place with deep roots.
The Woodstock Inn & Resort features several fabulous restaurants, a full-length pool, golf course, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, and a comprehensive gym.
Snyder Donegan Real Estate Group, 5 The Green, Woodstock, VT 05091
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Kenya to Build Africa’s Largest Windfarm
Ambitious plans to light up Africa, but local off grid power sources must not be neglected Sam Burcher
A clean energy frontier
The desert land around the beautiful Lake Turkana in Kenya, the scene of an award winning film [1] (see The Constant Gardener SiS 30) is set to become the site of Africa’s largest windfarm by 2012. This ambitious project aims to end Africa’s electrical blackouts and tackle global warming simultaneously [2].
The Lake Turkana Wind Project (LTWP) has received funds of 300 million euros from the African Development Bank, 70 percent of the total cost, the remainder will come from private Dutch and Kenyan investors. The project will produce 310 megawatts (MW) of power going directly to the national grid. It is hoped that this will meet the surging demand for energy though renewable resources.
The African Development Bank is a treaty signed in 1963 [3] which focuses on regional development and is active in 78 countries throughout the Continent. Its aims are to:
Make loans and equity investments for the social and economic advancement of regional member countries
Provide technical assistance for the preparation and execution of development projects and programs
Promote investments of public and private capital for developing purposes
Assist in co-ordinating national and multinational projects and programs that promote regional integration.
The LTWP consists of 365 wind turbines at a height of 30-40 metres each with a capacity of 850 kilowatts (KW). This will add approximately 25 percent to Kenya’s existing electricity capacity, which is projected to produce 1 440 Gigawatt hours (GWh) of power per year, enough to light up around 2 million Kenyan households [4].
Currently, less that one in five Kenyan has access to electricity and almost three quarters of its major power supplier’s KenGen’s electricity comes from hydropower. Some 11 percent of this energy is powered by geothermal plants that absorb heat and steam from rocks deep below the Rift Valley. But low rainfall in the country has boosted the short term reliance on fossil fuels such as coal. However, as only 10 percent of Kenya’s total energy comes from electricity (see Table 1), this project is a significant step towards Kenya’s 2030 Vision of Development and Least Cost Power Development Plan (2009-2029).
Africa going for the wind
Kenya is not the only African country harnessing energy from the wind. The Tigray region of neighbouring Ethiopia, which has already produced remarkable crop yields from compost [5] (see The Tigray Project, SiS 23), has recently commissioned a £190 million 120 MW wind farm. This will represent 15 percent of Ethiopia’s current electrical capacity and more windfarms are planned. In Tanzania, 100 MW of power will be produced from two projects in the Central Singida region, which account for more than 10 percent of the current supply.
Earlier this year, South Africa became the first African country to announce a feed in tariff for wind power, which means that customers generating electricity receive a financial remuneration for selling power to the national grid.
Two further wind projects are underway in Kenya. One is in the popular tourist town Naivasha and one is in the Ngong Hills near Nairobi where Danish wind company Vestas have already installed six 50-metre V52 turbines contributing 5.1 megawatts to the national grid. It is believed that 365 V52 turbines will be used in the LTWP.
The Turkana Channel Jet Stream
The LTWP will be constructed at a rate of one turbine per day starting from July 2011 to be completed by July 2012. The wind park will take advantage of the low level jet stream called the Turkana Channel Jet that blows all year round and is at full force during the night. The average monthly wind speed at the site, on the southeast side of Lake Turkana measures 11 metres per second (at a height of between 40 and 80 metres) one of the highest averages recorded globally.
The windpark will cover 40m2 and turbines will span three ridges 70 metres apart between 450 metres at the lake shore and the bases of Mount Kulal (2 300 masl)) and the Mount Nyiru range (2 750 masl). This is a strategy to catch the SE winds blowing through the Rift Valley in between the East African and the Ethiopian Highlands.
What are carbon credits?
Carbon Africa is a carbon credit trading company in Kenya that has emerged in tandem with the LTWP. A carbon credit is a permit approved by a body of the United Nations (UN) known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), an arrangement under Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol. This permit allows the holder to emit one metric tonne of carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide equivalent per one carbon credit.
Carbon credits are awarded to countries, or entities, that reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to below a set baseline. It is expected that the LTWP will generate somewhere between 565 920 – 1 264 320 GHG emission reductions per year. Therefore, an average of 850 000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent electricity generated from wind priced at 10 euros per carbon credit would accrue 8 500 000 euros per year. An independent Gold Standard review, which is an independent carbon credit certification body, will monitor the sustainable benefits of the LTWP.
Development pros and cons
An environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) of the LTWP has been done [6]. The report concludes that there will be a number of social, economic and environmental impacts both positive and negative for local communities and for the region in general. For example, 196 km of new tarmac roads must be built to transport the 8 ton axle weight of each wind turbine mast and blade from Mombasa to the Lioyangalani location. There will also be the significant reconstruction of existing roads and the construction of a 266 km transmission line to junction electricity via multiple towns in the region to connect to a terminal substation for grid feed-in.
Currently, all the local institutions such as schools, hospitals, missionary stations and tourist facilities are powered by diesel. The Lioyangalani district is very poor, has a low nutrition rate and is dependent on food relief. Therefore, there are obvious benefits for health, education, local employment, and the stabilization of electricity supplies as well as the diversification of power sources.
As the bulk of Kenya’s energy derives from wood fuel and other biomass resources (see Table 1) the result has been the highest deforestation rates in Africa.
Table 1 Energy use in Kenya [6]
Energy source Percentage of total energy
Wood/Biomass
On the negative side, a predicted 600 people working in the area at the peak of construction will increase the exploitation of natural resources, noise, vibration, pollution and risk of disease from outsiders coming in. It will also increase disease vectors from stagnant waters in pits, ponds and quarries. There will be disturbance to livestock, loss of trees, shrubs and grasses, and increased soil erosion from digging and turbine installation. There are further concerns for environmental impact on birds, fish and wildlife, (see Box.)
The indigenous population around Lake Turkana include four major Kenyan tribes people; the Samburu, the Turkana, the El Molo and the Rendile. According to the ESIA, they will benefit directly from cold storage for fish caught on the lake and many problems including ‘relief dependency syndrome’ will be solved. The EISA’s table of environmental perametres has predictably placed the stabilization of electricity at the top as highly positive and the risk of bird mortality at the bottom as moderately negative. The risk to collision between birds and turbine blades is thought to be low.
The beasts, birds and fishes of Lake Turkana
Lake Turkana is in the Great Rift Valley, 400 km from Nairobi [7]. It is a saline body of water that originally flowed into the Nile, but was cut off millions of years ago. It is the 20th largest lake in the world and home to at least 84 species of birds, native to Kenya. Birds such as common and wood sandpipers, African skimmers, little stints, white necked cormorants, the greater flamingo and Heulins Bustard flock there. It is a key stopover site for birds on migration passage for breeding, feeding and nesting that are supported by plankton masses in the lake.
Fish such as the African perch, tilapia and African tetra are abundant in Lake Turkana. It is also home to Africa’s largest population of Nile crocodiles. Whilst animals such as kudu, oryx, zebra, gazelle, giraffe and buffalo outside of the Marabit National Park and other national parks in the region have been hunted to extinction, reptiles such as adder cobra, lizard viper and scorpion thrive.
The once abundant acacia tree has been exploited for firewood and for income generation from charcoal. Other plants in the locality are traditionally used for medicinal purposes are also eaten by the grazing herds belonging to local tribes peoples, who are mainly pastoralists.
Local power development
It must be remembered that no more than 20% of Africans have access to electricity, in some areas as few as 5%, dropping to 2% in rural regions [8]. Dr Bhattacharyya from Dundee University is leading a research project into energy for less-industrialised countries. He has warned that inefficient energy technologies used by low-income families in Africa such as burning wood and other biomass such as dung, crop wastes, kersosene and candles is bad for the environment and for human health, and recommends the development of local ideas.
He said, “Just extending the grid does not help the poor as they always lose out when there are shortages. What they need is local power.” Therefore, off grid local and small-scale reliable power sources such as the innovative windmill made entirely from scrap materials by a boy in Malawi [9] (see Harnessing the Wind with Scrap SiS 44) must be encouraged. Low or no cost strategies such as scrap turbines help communities to power their homes and schools, to irrigate crops and to lower carbon emissions throughout the Continent.
Burcher S. The Constant Gardener Science in Society 30, 4, 2006.
Rice X. Kenya to Build Africa ’s biggest Windfarm, 27th July 2009. http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=Kenya+to+build+largest+windpower&sitesearch-radio=guardian&go-guardian=Search
The African Development Bank Group Kenya-AfDB to Facilitate 300 Million Euro Loan for Kenyan Power Project http://www.afdb.org/en/news-events/article/kenya-afdb-to-facilitate-300-million-euro-loan-for-kenyan-power-project-4608/
Carbon Africa Limited. Lake Turkana Wind Power Project overview for Clean Development Mechanism and Gold Standard local stakeholder consultation, Loiyangalani, Kenya 17-18 July 2009 http://www.carbonafrica.co.ke/lake_turkana_wind_energy/2009%20July%20LTWP%206-page%20project%20summary.pdf
Edwards S. The Tigray Project Science in Society 23, 6-7, 2004
Environment and Social Impact Assessment Study. (ESIA) Lake Turkana Wind Project Kenya. Project Number K-PE –F20-001 Department OPSM-3. Date April 24th 2009 http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Environmental-and-Social-Assessments/LTWP_ESIA%20ExecSummary_Final_2009_ENG.pdf
Lake Turkana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Turkana
Levitt T. Local electricity: Africa goes off-grid. 29th July, 2009, http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/293902/local_electricity_africa_goes_offgrid.html
Burcher S. Harnessing the wind with scrap. Science in Society 44
How many legsdoes a tripod have?
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Stay informed with the latest news about IC4
IC4 shortlisted by ISA for Outstanding Academic Achievement of the Year
Shortlist announced for Irish Software Awards 2015
The Irish Software Association (ISA) has released the shortlist of 26 indigenous technology companies that are vying for the title of Digital Technology Company of the Year at the ISA Awards to be held in Dublin on 20 November.
Five companies have been shortlisted for ISA Digital Technology Company of the Year; Fenergo, Asavie, Qstream, Globoforce, and Ocuco. Between them, these Irish companies employ over 850 people.
In the Emerging Company of the Year category (sponsored by William Fry), six younger and highly innovative companies, Sedicii, Bizimply.com, InvoiceFair, SilverCloud Health, The Hire Lab and Beats Medical will battle it out for the top prize.
Other categories include, Outstanding Achievement in International Growth (sponsored by Enterprise Ireland), Technology Innovation of the Year (sponsored by Bank of Ireland),
Technology Services Project of the Year (sponsored by Tenego Partnering), and the Excellence in Talent Development Award (sponsored by the ISA Software Skillnet).
The work of four academic institutions and researchers has also been recognised with the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC), the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at DCU, the Irish Centre for Cloud Computing & Commerce (IC4) and Trinity College Dublin (TCD) also nominated for Outstanding Academic Achievement of the Year.
In addition, a selection of foreign direct investment (FDI) companies have been shortlisted in the Multinational Initiative of the Year (sponsored by FIT ICT Associate Professional), having shown a solid commitment to supporting the growth of the industry as a whole in Ireland.
Paul Sweetman, Director of the ISA said: “The software and digital technology sector in Ireland is thriving. Year-on-year, stellar companies are entering the Awards and 2015 is no exception. I would like to extend my congratulations to all of the companies that entered the Awards. It is the tireless efforts of those working in these companies that bring Ireland to the fore of the global technology sector”.
Following publication of shortlisted entries, all companies will present to eight independent panels of judges, composed of CEOs and founders of successful Irish software and digital technology companies.
Almost 70 tech companies and organisations from across Ireland entered this year’s awards and winners will be announced at the annual awards event on 20th November in Dublin. The keynote speaker for the Awards is US based founder and CEO of Automattic Inc. Matt Mullenweg. Sharon Ní Bheoláin, Journalist and Broadcaster is MC for the evening.
The full list of the shortlisted companies can be found on www.software.ie/awards
You will find the official press releases here and here.
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To move an audience - that's the highest praise an artist can receive. Young Sarah Burgess is definitely moving her audience. Naughty, self-confident, powerful and unique are some of the words that describe Sarah the best – besides her mutability, outstanding live voice and stage presence. Sarah’s first stage experience was at the age of six and involved performances in the church. From then on she never stopped singing and worked hard for her dream to become a singer.
Since 2007 known in the US by many as the Season 6 American Idol auditioner whose father didn't know she had snuck out to New York. Sarah Burgess was one of 173 (out of 120,000 total auditioners) awarded Idol's Golden Ticket to Hollywood. Over 10 millions playings on MySpace, Chris Daughtry opening act (live audience of 80.000 people), school-tours in the US and Switzerland (65 schools in 3 weeks) and a top 10 single in the US (secondary market) are just a few references.
sarah burgess
Sassy (single) (jan. 2012)
Biography - UK
Link to tour dates
sarahburgessmusic.com
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The Subject-Object Approach as a Direction of the Learning Theory in the Context of Modern Linguistic Education Paradigms
Zhanat H. Salkhanova, Valentine S. Lee, Ainakul B. Tumanova, and Aida T. Zhusanbaeva
In-text: (Salkhanova, Lee, Tumanova & Zhusanbaeva, 2016)
Your Bibliography: Salkhanova, Z.H., Lee, V.S., Tumanova, A.B. & Zhusanbaeva, a.A.T. (2016). The Subject-Object Approach as a Direction of the Learning Theory in the Context of Modern Linguistic Education Paradigms. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 11(10), 3730-3745.
In-text: (Salkhanova, Lee, Tumanova and Zhusanbaeva, 2016)
Your Bibliography: Salkhanova, Z., Lee, V., Tumanova, A. and Zhusanbaeva, a. (2016). The Subject-Object Approach as a Direction of the Learning Theory in the Context of Modern Linguistic Education Paradigms. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 11(10), pp. 3730-3745.
In-text: (Salkhanova, Lee, Tumanova and Zhusanbaeva 2016)
Your Bibliography: Salkhanova, Zhanat H., Valentine S. Lee, Ainakul B. Tumanova and and Aida T. Zhusanbaeva (2016). "The Subject-Object Approach as a Direction of the Learning Theory in the Context of Modern Linguistic Education Paradigms". International Journal of Environmental and Science Education 11 (10):3730-3745.
The research object is the activity-based learning theory. The purpose of the study is to prove the assumption that the subject-object approach as a direction of the learning theory is the most effective one in the context of development of modern paradigms of linguistic education. The authors believe that the main content of the learning activity should be the learning of generalized modes of action in the field of scientific concepts and the qualitative changes in the intellectual and psychological development of the student that occur on this basis. The design of the academic subject as an object of learning activity should put the student into an active position based on the principle of combination of theory and practice. The study investigates the essential difference of the learning problem from other problems, which lies in the fact that its goal and result is to change the acting subject, rather than the objects with which the learning subject interacts. The authors present a theoretical and conceptual model of developing linguistic competence, which is based on the subject-object approach as a direction of the activity-based learning theory.
Keywords: Activity theory, learning activity, learning problem, subject-object approach, speech activity, competence
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WikiLeaks caused Clinton's defeat in US elections
LONDON - Criticism by documents posted by global whistleblower WikiLeaks on Twitter played a key role in the failure of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 US presidential race, an analysis of tweets suggests. The study, which analysed viral tweets during the final two months of the 2016 election race, showed that Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, was much more heavily criticised on the microblogging site...
as compared to her rival Trump.Posts relating to WikiLeaks were the most common form of attack on social media for Clinton, who was also heavily criticized on Twitter over an FBI investigation into her use of a private email server. "Our findings reveal a wide disparity between traditional media, which was very critical of Donald Trump, and social media, where Hillary Clinton was much worse off," said lead researcher Walid Magdy from the University of Edinburgh.
An analysis of the top 50 most retweeted posts each day between September 1 and November 8 revealed that there were thrice as many posts attacking Clinton than posts in her favour. By contrast, viral tweets relating to Trump were split equally in favour and against his campaign, the researchers said.
The results will be presented at the Social Informatics 2017 conference in Oxford in September. Further, the posts from Trump's social media campaign and his supporters had a more positive tone than that of Clinton, with effective reach for slogans, policy promises and campaigning for swing states. Whereas, tweets that backed Clinton compared her with Trump and attacked Trump rather than praising Clinton.
For the study, the team used computer analysis to analyse the top viral tweets. They analysed almost 3,500 posts, which together were retweeted more than 25 million times. Tweets were labelled as being favourable to Trump, Clinton or neither.
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420 Special permit questioning
Officials with a medical marijuana dispensary appeared before Russellville city council members this week as part of a review of a request for a special use permit. Officials with 420Rx responded to questions about several aspects of the process of obtaining a marijuana prescription. If the special use permit is approved, the dispensary will feature strict entry protocol. The 420Rx official indicated it wouldn't be like a regular pharmacy at all - but rather, along the lines of a high
Rain, flooding potential cancel festivals
Two local community festivals scheduled for this weekend have been cancelled due to the forecast for more rain and anticipated river flooding. Perryville's Fourche River Days will not be held on Saturday. Fourche River Days has traditionally been a two-day festival held in April each year on the courthouse square in Perryville, but this year, it was moved back to May and it was planned as a one-day event at Perryville City Park. Organizers announced Wednesday that because rain is expected on
Go Gray in May 5K Set
May is Brain Cancer Awareness Month, and you can do your part to support brain cancer research and care in Arkansas by participating in the Third Annual Go Gray in May 5-K. The race is presented by Going Gray for Julie, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization based in Morrilton that was founded by family and friends of Morrilton resident Julie Session, who was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of brain cancer in 2014. It will take place Saturday, May 18th, in downtown Morrilton, beginning at
State Tournament time!
Weather permitting, state baseball and softball tournaments will get underway today. Morrilton High School's baseball and softball teams and Sacred Heart's baseball and softball teams will all be competing in first round games today. Morrilton will be in the Class 4-A Tournament at Southside Batesville. The softball team will play Nashville at 11:00 a.m. The baseball team will play Joe T. Robinson at 1:30. We'll have the broadcast of both of those games live on KVOM-FM 101.7. Sacred Heart is in
UCA Awards SCCSD "Partner of the Year"
The University of Central Arkansas College of Education has recognized the South Conway County School District as its Partner of the Year for 2019. South Conway County's Associate Superintendent of Schools, Lora Hendrix, says the district earned the award for working with U-C-A to help prepare future educators. Hendrix was on hand to receive the award from the U-C-A College of Education Dean at a ceremony in Conway on Tuesday.
Mayor's Young Artist Award Recipients Announced
Several Morrilton-area youth have been honored as recipients of the Mayor's Young Artists Awards. The art competition features artwork from students in five different age divisions. Most of the works are displayed at the Morrilton Area Chamber of Commerce. However, the top four pieces in each division are displayed at Morrilton City Hall. The overall winners in each division were recognized at a banquet at City Hall on Tuesday. The winner in the primary school age division is Laeylah
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VAUGHT: Bilas expects P. J. Washington to be a good NBA player for a long time
If ESPN analyst Jay Bilas is right, PJ Washington is going to be the first Kentucky player picked in Thursday’s NBA Draft.
He has Washington ranked 13th on his list of players going into the draft — ahead of both Tyler Herro and Keldon Johnson. All three UK players have been invited to attend the draft by NBA officials.
“Not that I'm saying that's where he'll be drafted, but that's where I have him on my list of prospects, irrespective of what teams think of him. He's a 6-9 forward that can step away and knock down a perimeter shot. He's a good athlete. Solid, a solid prospect,” said Bilas during a NBA Draft conference call with national media members Monday.
Washington averaged 15.2 points, 7.5 rebounds and 29.3 minutes per game for UK last year as a sophomore. He shot 52.2 percent overall from the field and 42.3 percent (33 of 78) from 3-point range. He also was a 66.3 percent shooter at the foul line. He had 63 assists, 43 blocks and 29 steals. He led the team in scoring, rebounding and 3-point percentage. He was second in blocked shots and overall field goal percentage.
Bilas, who will be part of ESPN’s draft coverage for the 17th straight year, expects Washington to be a good NBA player for a “long time” from all he’s seen.
“He's just solid. With his athletic profile, the fact that he's very skilled, do I see him being a star in the NBA, an All-Star? Probably not,” Bilas said. “Do I see him being a starter in the league? I do. I think he's got the opportunity to play for a long, long time.”
Washington contemplated putting his name into the draft after his freshman year before deciding to return to UK where he improved his shooting and consistency.
“I think he certainly helped himself (coming back). It doesn't mean that's the only way. He certainly is going to be drafted higher this year than he would have been last year. Coming back and working on his game, being a more finished product I think was immensely helpful to improving his draft position,” Bilas said.
“Now, had he gone pro last year out of college, after just one year at Kentucky, could things have worked out just as well if not better? Of course. There's no rule book or road map for this.”
However, Washington went from a likely high second round pick in 2018 to a very possible lottery pick this week.
“If you're looking at it just from improving draft stock, absolutely he improved his draft stock by coming back. I think he is a better player, more prepared to step into the NBA and be productive right away. He still has a lot of improving to do and I think is going to be a good player in the NBA,” Bilas said.
“He became far more consistent. You could tell that he was more assertive, confident, impacted the game in far more ways than he did as a freshman. PJ is a good passer, has a good understanding of the game. He showed that he could step out and knock a perimeter shot down. He could go into the post and be a go-to scorer with his back to the basket.
“I think he improved his body, did a much better job of running the floor. He was much better as a defender, rebounding, protecting the rim, things of that nature. He improved in every conceivable way I think and became more of a leader. You could tell just by the way he carried himself, much more confident as a player.”
Bilas again emphasized there is no right or wrong time for a player to turn professional depending on his goals and perspective. However, he says it is easy to see the value in Washington staying at Kentucky for a second season.
“You certainly can't argue with his decision, that he did everything right,” Bilas said.
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ISSUE: JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010
Copenhagen Conference on climate change
The Copenhagen Conference on climate change concluded with an accord, hastily cobbled together in last-minute negotiations on the evening of Friday 18 December between US President Barack Obama and the leaders of major developing nations – China, India, Brazil and South Africa. This accord, not a binding treaty, is merely an expression of aims, recognising as it does the scientific case for keeping the rising in global temperatures to 2ºC. It calls upon developed countries to provide $10bn a year until 2012, rising to an annual sum of $100bn by 2020, to support developing countries adapt to climate change and to mitigate its effects. This sum falls far short of the $100bn a year that is required according to the EU estimates. In addition to the paucity of funds to help developing countries, the accord says nothing about who pays to whom.
Disappointing cuts by developed countries
The US has promised to cut its emissions by 17 per cent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels, which reduces to a miserly 3 per cent on the levels of 1990, the baseline year under the Kyoto protocol; the EU has pledged a cut of 20 per cent on 1990 levels; and so too has Japan, but by reference to 2005 levels, which amounts to a single-digit reduction compared to 1990; most developing countries, China and India included, have agreed to curb the future growth of their emissions, with China committed to reducing the growth of her carbon dioxide output per unit of gross domestic produce by 40 to 45 per cent by 2020. Many countries, instead of committing themselves to a single target of reduction in emissions, have merely pledged to abide by a range. The EU, for instance, has hinted that it will deepen its cuts to 30 per cent below 1990 levels if other countries too agreed on ambitious targets.
The cuts promised by the developed countries fall far short of what is necessary to prevent the emissions growth to catastrophic levels. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made it perfectly clear, and the Group of 77 plus China have repeatedly demanded, that developed countries need to reduce their emissions by 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by 90 per cent by 2050.
The developed countries, who together account for half of all global emissions and are responsible for changes in global climate resulting from accumulated greenhouse gasses emitted by them over the past two centuries, by their refusal to make the necessary deep cuts in their emissions, have disappointed environmentalists and hundreds upon hundreds of million of poor people round the world, who are the most likely victims of erratic rainfall, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and the resultant inundation of coastal areas, extreme and freak weather conditions, consequent upon this failure.
Bitter reaction from developing countries
No wonder, then, that a large number of developing countries were bitter about the outcome. Lumumba Di-Aping, thte leader of G-77, likened the rich countries’ stance to genocide. Many of these countries were furious at what they rightly perceived as a deal imposed on them by the most powerful. During the heated discussions in the UN’s principal meeting room, which were still continuing as the sun rose on Saturday (18 December) morning, a Venezuelan representative cut her own hand to symbolically demonstrate how the rich countries spilled the blood of the poor.
Accord – not a treaty
It being starkly clear by 9am on Saturday morning that Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua were implacably opposed to the accord, the latter could not be formally adopted as a decision of the UN meeting, for such a decision required consensus among all participating countries. Instead, the decision-making body of the UN opted for the much weaker option – the “decision to note” the existence of the accord. The result is that it leaves countries free to sign up to the accord if they so wish, while requiring a consensus at a new general meeting so as to turn the accord into the basis for a fresh UN treaty on climate change.
The section of the accord designed to indicate commitments to reduce emissions by big economies is blank, but is supposed to have been filled by the end of January 2010. That gives the UN a further six months of hard bargaining and tough negotiations to win approval, followed by an attempt at turning such approval into a treaty – possibly at another climate conference under the aegis of the UN planned for Mexico City in December 2010.
The UN Conference in its entirety did not feel able to endorse the proclamation, which concluded two years of tortuous and detailed negotiations, built upon more than a decade of prior talks. For two decades the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been recognised, but thus far there has been only one attempt at a globally binding treaty – the failed 1997 Kyoto protocol, which never met with US ratification and placed developing countries under no obligation.
President Obama described the Copenhagen vacuous declaration as an “important breakthrough”, saying that it is “the first time in history all major economies have come together here in Copenhagen to ensure that international action to significantly reduce emissions is sustained and sufficient over time”.
The truth is that the Copenhagen accord fell abysmally short of that which is required to avert catastrophic climate change. Even the Financial Times, in it leading article, entitled ‘Dismal outcome at Copenhagen fiasco’, described the accord as “worse than useless” and “the emptiest deal one could imagine” (21 December 2009).
To avert catastrophe on the climate front requires global cooperation and collective action. Further, it requires developed countries to cut their emissions drastically and agree to a generous transfer of funds and technology to developing countries in order to enable the latter to cope with, and adapt to, climate change. Unless this is done, the next conference in Mexico will only prove to be a repeat performance of this year’s Copenhagen.
Two positive outcomes
The only two positive outcomes of Copenhagen are: first, that five of the current and future large emitters of carbon – the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa – agreed for the first time that scientific evidence dictates “deep cuts in global emissions” to prevent average temperatures from rising more than a disastrous 2ºC; second, that China made a commitment to join the global fight to reduce climate pollution. According to Jeremy Symons of the National Wildlife Federation, China’s measurable pledge to back global efforts to reduce carbon emissions was the conference’s most important development. “This breakthrough”, he said, “is important for the global climate efforts, as well as encouraging the [US] Senate to move forward and deliver the climate and clean energy bill to the president”, adding that “China will act, and the China excuse is off the table”.
Socialism the only solution
While the China excuse would doubtless be off the table, there is one basic problem of which the likes of Jeremy Symons take no note, that is, the driving force behind capitalist production. Profit is the regulator of production under capitalism and the extraction of “the maximum profit is the motor of monopoly capitalism” (Stalin). In its never-ceasing chase after maximum profit through “the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the population of a given country”, through “the enslavement and systematic robbery of the peoples of other countries, especially backward countries”, and through “wars and militarisation of the national economy”, monopoly capitalism cares not a hoot about ‘trifles’ such as climate change. It does not hesitate for a moment in trampling upon human life, and the prerequisites for a decent human existence, if these stand in the way of securing by it of maximum profit. The clogging up of the world’s cities with motor cars, and the resultant pollution, are just one example of the madness of life under capitalism – driven solely by the need of monopoly capitalism to secure the maximum of profit.
Undoubtedly, public pressure can force the leading powers to reduce somewhat the emission of greenhouse gases and provide some amelioration in the near future. That, however, is not the solution.
Only the overthrow of capitalism, and its replacement by socialism, whose basic law is “the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole of society through the continuous expansion and perfection of socialist production on the basis of higher techniques”, can lay the real basis for tackling climate change and other urgent problems facing humanity. In other words, those who want to aspire to be green must become red first.[1]
[1] The remarks appearing in quotation marks in the preceding two paragraphs come for Joseph Stalin’s epoch-making pamphlet Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, pp 39-41, FLP Peking 1971.
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Part 2 U.K.Public order etc.
Chapter 3SOther provisions
Offensive weaponsS
73Increase in maximum term of imprisonment for certain offencesS
(1)The Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995 (c. 39) is amended as follows.
(2)In section 49(1)(a) (penalty on summary conviction for offence of possessing an article with a blade or point in a public place) for “six” there is substituted “ twelve ”.
(3)In section 49(1)(b) (penalty on indictment for offence of possessing an article with a blade or point in a public place), for “two” there is substituted “ four ”.
(4)In section 49A(5)(a)(i) (penalty on summary conviction for offence of possessing an article with a blade or point on school premises) for “six” there is substituted “ twelve ”.
(5)In section 49A(5)(a)(ii) (penalty on indictment for offence of possessing an article with a blade or point on school premises), for “two” there is substituted “ four ”.
74Amendment of requirements for exercise of certain powers of arrestS
(2)In section 47(3) (power of constable to arrest without warrant person suspected of possessing an offensive weapon in a public place)—
(a)after “believe” where first occurring there is inserted “ to have committed or ”; and
(b)the words from “if” to the end are repealed.
(3)In section 48(3) (power of constable to arrest without warrant person suspected of obstructing search for offensive weapon), after “committed” there is inserted “ or is committing ”.
(4)In section 50(3) (power of constable to arrest without warrant person suspected of contravening section 49(1) or 49A(1) or (2)), the following provisions are repealed—
(a)paragraph (a) and the words “and the constable” immediately preceding it; and
(b)paragraph (b).
75Sale of knives and articles with blade or point to young personsS
(1)Section 141A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (c. 33) (sale of knives etc. to persons under 16) is amended as follows.
(a)at the beginning there is inserted “ Subject to subsection (3A) below ”; and
(b)for “sixteen” there is substituted “ eighteen ”.
(a)the word “and” immediately following paragraph (b) is repealed; and
(b)after that paragraph there is inserted—
“(ba)any sword; and”.
(4)After subsection (3) there is inserted—
“(3A)It is not an offence under subsection (1) to sell a knife or knife blade to a person if—
(a)the person is aged 16 or over; and
(b)the knife or blade is designed for domestic use.”.
(5)The side note to that section becomes “ “Sale of knives and certain articles with blade or point to persons under eighteen ”.
FireworksS
76Possession of prohibited fireworks: powers of search and arrestS
After section 11 of the Fireworks Act 2003 (c. 22) there is inserted—
“11AProhibitions on possession of fireworks – power of search: Scotland
(1)A constable may search a person without warrant if the constable has reasonable grounds for suspecting that the person possesses a firework in contravention of a prohibition imposed by fireworks regulations.
(2)A constable may detain a person for such time as is reasonably required to permit a search of the person under subsection (1) to be carried out.
(3)A constable who detains a person under subsection (2) must inform the person of the reason for the detention.
(4)If in the course of a search under this section, a constable discovers a firework which the constable has reasonable grounds for suspecting is being possessed by the person in contravention of a prohibition imposed by fireworks regulations, the constable may seize it.
(5)A person who—
(a)intentionally obstructs a constable in the exercise of the constable's power under subsection (1) or (2); or
(b)conceals from a constable acting in the exercise of the constable's power under subsection (1) any firework whose possession contravenes a prohibition imposed by fireworks regulations,
commits an offence.
(6)A constable may arrest a person without warrant if the constable has reasonable cause to believe the person has committed or is committing an offence under subsection (5).
(7)A person who commits an offence under subsection (5) is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.
11BProhibitions on possession of fireworks – arrest without warrant: Scotland
(1)A constable may arrest a person without warrant if—
(a)the constable has reasonable cause to believe that the person has committed or is committing an offence under section 11(1) in respect of a contravention of a prohibition on possession of a firework; and
(b)either of the two conditions mentioned in subsection (2) is met.
(2)The conditions are that—
(a)having asked the person to give the person's name or address (or both), the constable—
(i)is not given the information asked for; or
(ii)is not satisfied that such information as is given is correct;
(b)the constable has reasonable cause to believe it is necessary to arrest the person in order to prevent the person committing any other offence in the course of whose commission there might be used a firework whose possession is prohibited by fireworks regulations.”.
Control of sex offendersS
77Powers to take data and samples from persons subject to notification requirementsS
(1)The 1995 Act is amended in accordance with subsections (2) to (5).
(2)After section 19A there is inserted—
“19AASamples etc. from sex offenders
(1)This section applies where a person is subject to—
(a)the notification requirements of Part 2 of the 2003 Act;
(b)an order under section 2 of the Protection of Children and Prevention of Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2005 (asp 9) (a risk of sexual harm order); or
(c)an order under section 123 of the 2003 Act (which makes provision for England and Wales and Northern Ireland corresponding to section 2 of that Act of 2005).
(2)This section applies regardless of whether the person became subject to those requirements or that order before or after the commencement of this section.
(3)Subject to subsections (4) to (8) below, where this section applies a constable may—
(a)take from the person or require the person to provide him with such relevant physical data as the constable considers reasonably appropriate;
(b)with the authority of an officer of a rank no lower than inspector, take from the person any sample mentioned in any of paragraphs (a) to (c) of subsection (6) of section 18 of this Act by the means specified in that paragraph in relation to that sample;
(c)take, or direct a police custody and security officer to take, from the person any sample mentioned in subsection (6A) of that section by the means specified in that subsection.
(4)Where this section applies by virtue of subsection (1)(c) above, the power conferred by subsection (3) shall not be exercised unless the constable reasonably believes that the person's sole or main residence is in Scotland.
(5)The power conferred by subsection (3) above shall not be exercised where the person has previously had taken from him or been required to provide relevant physical data or any sample under section 19(2) or 19A(2) of this Act unless the data so taken or required have been or, as the case may be, the sample so taken has been, lost or destroyed.
(6)The power conferred by subsection (3) above shall not be exercised where the person has previously had taken from him or been required to provide relevant physical data or any sample under that subsection unless the data so taken or required or, as the case may be, the sample so taken—
(a)have or has been lost or destroyed; or
(b)were or was not suitable for the particular means of analysis or, though suitable, were or was insufficient (either in quantity or quality) to enable information to be obtained by that means of analysis.
(7)The power conferred by subsection (3) above may be exercised only—
(a)in a police station; or
(b)where the person is in legal custody by virtue of section 295 of this Act, in the place where the person is for the time being.
(8)The power conferred by subsection (3) above may be exercised in a police station only—
(a)where the person is present in the police station in pursuance of a requirement made by a constable to attend for the purpose of the exercise of the power; or
(b)while the person is in custody in the police station following his arrest or detention under section 14(1) of this Act in connection with any offence.
(9)A requirement under subsection (8)(a) above—
(a)shall give the person at least seven days' notice of the date on which he is required to attend;
(b)may direct him to attend at a specified time of day or between specified times of day; and
(c)where this section applies by virtue of subsection (1)(b) or (c) above, shall warn the person that failure, without reasonable excuse, to comply with the requirement or, as the case may be, to allow the taking of or to provide any relevant physical data, or to provide any sample, under the power, constitutes an offence.
(10)A requirement under subsection (8)(a) above in a case where the person has previously had taken from him or been required to provide relevant physical data or any sample under subsection (3) above shall contain intimation that the relevant physical data were or the sample was unsuitable or, as the case may be, insufficient, as mentioned in subsection (6)(b) above.
(11)Before exercising the power conferred by subsection (3) above in a case to which subsection (8)(b) above applies, a constable shall inform the person of that fact.
(12)Any constable may arrest without warrant a person who fails to comply with a requirement under subsection (8)(a) above.
(13)This section does not prejudice the generality of section 18 of this Act.
(14)In this section, “the 2003 Act” means the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (c. 42).”.
19ABSection 19AA: supplementary provision in risk of sexual harm order cases
(1)This section applies where section 19AA of this Act applies by virtue of subsection (1)(b) or (c) of that section.
(2)A person who fails without reasonable excuse—
(a)to comply with a requirement made of him under section 19AA(8)(a) of this Act; or
(b)to allow relevant physical data to be taken from him, to provide relevant physical data, or to allow a sample to be taken from him, under section 19AA(3) of this Act,
shall be guilty of an offence.
(3)A person guilty of an offence under subsection (2) above shall be liable on summary conviction to the following penalties—
(a)a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale;
(b)imprisonment for a period—
(i)where the conviction is in the district court, not exceeding 60 days; or
(ii)where the conviction is in the sheriff court, not exceeding 3 months; or
(c)both such fine and such imprisonment.
(4)Subject to subsection (6) below, all record of any relevant physical data taken from or provided by a person under section 19AA(3) of this Act, all samples taken from a person under that subsection and all information derived from such samples shall be destroyed as soon as possible following the person ceasing to be a person subject to any risk of sexual harm orders.
(5)For the purpose of subsection (4) above, a person does not cease to be subject to a risk of sexual harm order where the person would be subject to such an order but for an order under section 6(2) of the 2005 Act or any corresponding power of a court in England and Wales or in Northern Ireland.
(6)Subsection (4) above does not apply if before the duty to destroy imposed by that subsection would apply, the person—
(a)is convicted of an offence; or
(b)becomes subject to the notification requirements of Part 2 of the 2003 Act.
“risk of sexual harm order” means an order under—
section 2 of the 2005 Act; or
section 123 of the 2003 Act;
“the 2005 Act” means the Protection of Children and Prevention of Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2005 (asp 9);
“the 2003 Act” has the meaning given by section 19AA(14) of this Act; and
“convicted” shall be construed in accordance with section 19A(6) of this Act.”.
(3)In section 19 (further powers to take samples etc.), in subsection (1)(b)(i), for “or 19A” there is substituted “ , 19A or 19AA ”.
(4)In section 19A (power to take samples etc. from sexual and violent offenders), in subsection (3), for “or under this section” there is substituted “ , under this section or under section 19AA(3) of this Act ”.
(5)Section 19B (power of constable in obtaining samples etc.) is amended as follows—
(i)in paragraph (a), after “Act” there is inserted “ , or under subsection (3)(a) of section 19AA of this Act where that section applies by virtue of subsection (1)(a) of that section ”; and
(ii)in paragraph (b), after “Act” there is inserted “ , or under subsection (3)(b) of section 19AA of this Act where that section applies by virtue of subsection (1)(a) of that section ”; and
(b)in subsection (2), after “Act” there is inserted “ , or under subsection (3)(c) of section 19AA of this Act where that section applies by virtue of subsection (1)(a) of that section ”.
(6)The Sexual Offences Act 2003 (“the 2003 Act”) is amended in accordance with subsections (7) to (9).
(7)For sections 87(4) and (5) (power to take fingerprints etc. to verify person's identity), there is substituted—
“(5A)Where a notification is given in Scotland under section 83(1), 84(1) or 85(1), the relevant offender must, if requested to do so by the police officer or person referred to in subsection (1)(b), do one or more of the following—
(a)allow the officer or person to photograph any part of the offender,
(b)allow the officer or person to take from the offender, or provide to the officer or person, such relevant physical data as the officer or person considers appropriate,
(c)allow the officer or person to take from the offender any sample mentioned in any of paragraphs (a) to (c) of subsection (6) of section 18 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 by the means specified in that paragraph in relation to that sample,
(d)allow the officer or person to take from the offender any sample mentioned in subsection (6A) of that section by the means specified in that subsection.”.
(8)In section 88 (interpretation of section 87), after subsection (2) there is inserted—
“(2A)“Relevant physical data” has the meaning given by section 18(7A) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995.”.
(9)In section 91(1)(a) (offence of failing to complying with certain provisions of Part 2, including section 87(4)) for “87(4)” there is substituted “ 87(5A) ”.
78Sex offender notification requirementsS
(1)Section 83 of the 2003 Act (which requires certain offenders to make an initial notification of certain information) is amended in accordance with subsections (2) and (3).
(2)In subsection (5), after paragraph (g) there is inserted—
“(h)whether he has any passports and, in relation to each passport he has, the details set out in subsection (5A);
(i)such other information, about him or his personal affairs, as the Scottish Ministers may prescribe in regulations.
(5A)The details are—
(a)the issuing authority;
(b)the number;
(c)the dates of issue and expiry;
(d)the name and date of birth given as being those of the passport holder.”.
(3)After subsection (7), there is inserted—
“(8)In this section, “passport” means—
(a)a United Kingdom passport within the meaning of the Immigration Act 1971 (c. 77);
(b)a passport issued by or on behalf of the authorities of a country outside the United Kingdom, or by or on behalf of an international organisation;
(c)a document that can be used (in some or all circumstances) instead of a passport.”.
(4)Section 84 of the 2003 Act (which requires certain changes to notified information to be notified within 3 days) is amended in accordance with subsections (5) and (6).
(a)the word “or” immediately after paragraph (c) is repealed;
(b)after paragraph (d) there is inserted—
“(e)his losing or ceasing to have a passport notified to the police under section 83(1) or this subsection,
(f)his receiving a passport which has not been notified to the police under section 83(1) or this subsection, or
(g)the occurrence, in relation to information required to be notified by virtue of regulations made under section 83(5)(i), of an event prescribed by the Scottish Ministers in regulations,”; and
(c)for “(as the case may be) the fact that he has been released” there is substituted “ the fact that he has been released, the fact that he has lost or ceased to have the passport, the details set out in section 83(5A) in relation to the passport or (as the case may be) such information as the Scottish Ministers prescribe in regulations ”.
“(1A)In subsection (1), “passport” has the same meaning as in section 83.”.
(7)In section 87 of the 2003 Act (method of notification and related matters), after subsection (5A) (as inserted by section 77) there is inserted—
“(5B)Where a notification is given in Scotland under section 83(1), 84(1) or 85(1), the relevant offender must, if requested to do so by the police officer or person referred to in subsection (1)(b), produce each passport he has to that officer or person, for inspection by that officer or person.
(5C)In subsection (5B), “passport” has the same meaning as in section 83.”.
(8)In section 91(1)(a) of the 2003 Act (offences of failing to comply with certain provisions), after “(5A)” (as inserted by section 77) there is inserted “ or (5B) ”.
(9)In section 138 of the 2003 Act (orders and regulations), in subsection (2), after “21,” there is inserted “ 83, 84, ”.
79Information about release: power to require giving of specified informationS
(1)Section 96 of the 2003 Act (information about release or transfer) is amended in accordance with subsections (2) and (3).
“(2A)The regulations may make provision requiring the person who is responsible for an offender, in giving notice under the regulations, to provide—
(a)any information about the offender, or
(b)a photograph of any part of the offender.
(2B)In subsection (2A), “photograph” is to be construed in accordance with section 88(2).”.
“(4)The regulations may make different provision for different purposes.”
80Police powers of entry to and examination of relevant offender's home addressS
After section 96 of the 2003 Act there is inserted—
“96AEntry and examination of home address
Police powers of entry to and examination of relevant offender's home address
(1)A sheriff may, if satisfied on the application of a senior police officer of the relevant force as to the matters mentioned in subsection (2), grant a warrant authorising any constable of the relevant force to enter premises in the sheriffdom (if necessary using reasonable force) and to examine and search them, and the things in them, for the purpose mentioned in subsection (3).
(2)Those matters are—
(a)that the premises are either—
(i)premises whose address has been notified by a relevant offender as his home address in his most recent notification of a home address under this Part; or
(ii)premises whose address has been notified by a relevant offender as the address of any other premises at which he regularly resides or stays, in his most recent notification under section 83(1) or 85(1) or in any notification under section 84(1) given by him since that notification;
(b)that the offender is not one to whom subsection (4) applies;
(c)that it would assist the carrying out of the purpose mentioned in subsection (3), for a constable of the relevant force to examine and search the premises and the things in them; and
(d)that on more than one occasion, a constable of the relevant force has attempted to examine and search the premises and the things in them for the purpose mentioned in subsection (3) and has been unable (whether by not being able to search and examine the premises and the things in them, or by not being able to obtain entry to the premises) to do so.
(3)That purpose is assessing the risk of the offender committing a sexual offence.
(4)This subsection applies to the relevant offender if he is—
(a)remanded in or committed to custody by an order of a court;
(b)serving a sentence of imprisonment or a term of service detention;
(c)detained in a hospital; or
(d)outside the United Kingdom.
(5)A sheriff is to determine an application for a warrant under subsection (1) without hearing from the relevant offender or any other person who has an interest in the premises.
(6)A warrant under subsection (1) does not confer power to seize anything in the premises to which it relates.
(7)A warrant under subsection (1) must be executed at a reasonable hour.
(8)A warrant under subsection (1) continues in force until the expiry of the period of one month beginning with the date of the warrant's grant.
(9)A warrant under subsection (1) authorises entry on one occasion only.
(10)This section does not prejudice any other power of entry, examination, search or seizure.
(11)In this section—
“the relevant force” means the police force maintained for the area in which the premises are situated;
“senior police officer” means a constable of the rank of superintendent or above; and
“sexual offence” means—
an offence within any of paragraphs 36 to 59C of Schedule 3; or
any other offence in circumstances in which it would be likely that a determination such as is mentioned in paragraph 60 of that Schedule would be made in relation to the offence.”.
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Part 3 U.K.Mergers
Modifications etc. (not altering text)
C1Pt. 3 excluded in part (29.9.2008) by The Bradford & Bingley plc Transfer of Securities and Property etc. Order 2008 (S.I. 2008/2546), arts. 1(2), 40
C2Pt. 3 modified (1.7.2012) by Health and Social Care Act 2012 (c. 7), ss. 79, 306(4); S.I. 2012/1319, art. 2(3)
C3Pt. 3 applied (with modifications) (29.12.2004) by 1991 c. 56, Sch. 4ZA paras. 1, 2 (as inserted by Enterprise Act 2002 (c. 40), ss. 70(2), 279, Sch. 6); S.I. 2004/3233, art. 2, Sch. (with transitional provisions and savings in arts. 3-5)
Pt. 3 (ss. 22-130) applied (1.10.2005) by 1991 c. 56, s. 17M(4) (as inserted by Water Act 2003 (c. 37), ss. 56, 105(3), Sch. 4 para. 2); S.I. 2005/2714, art. 2(h) (with Sch. para. 5)
Pt. 3 applied (1.10.2005) by 1991 c. 56, s. 17Q(9) (as inserted by Water Act 2003 (c. 37), ss. 56, 105(3), Sch. 4 para. 2); S.I. 2005/2714, art. 2(h) (with Sch. para. 5)
Pt. 3 applied in part (N.I.) (1.4.2007) by The Water and Sewerage Services (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 (S.I. 2006/3336 (N.I. 21)), arts. 1(2)(3), 23(4), 27(9); S.R. 2007/194, art. 2(2), Sch. 1 Pt. 2 (with Sch. 2)
C4Pt. 3 (ss. 22-130) modified (20.6.2003) by 1998 c. 41, Sch. 7 para. 20(3) (as substituted by Enterprise Act 2002 (c. 40), ss. 185, 279, {Sch. 11 para. 11(2)-(4)(8)}; S.I. 2003/1397, art. 2(1), Sch. (with art. 8)
Pt. 3 modified (E.W.) (29.12.2004) by The Water Mergers (Modification of Enactments) Regulations 2004 (S.I. 2004/3202), regs. 2-35
Chapter 5 U.K.Supplementary
MiscellaneousU.K.
120 Review of decisions under Part 3U.K.
(1)Any person aggrieved by a decision of the OFT, [F1OFCOM,] the Secretary of State or the Commission under this Part in connection with a reference or possible reference in relation to a relevant merger situation or a special merger situation may apply to the Competition Appeal Tribunal for a review of that decision.
(2)For this purpose “decision”—
(a)does not include a decision to impose a penalty under section 110(1) or (3); but
(b)includes a failure to take a decision permitted or required by this Part in connection with a reference or possible reference.
(3)Except in so far as a direction to the contrary is given by the Competition Appeal Tribunal, the effect of the decision is not suspended by reason of the making of the application.
(4)In determining such an application the Competition Appeal Tribunal shall apply the same principles as would be applied by a court on an application for judicial review.
(5)The Competition Appeal Tribunal may—
(a)dismiss the application or quash the whole or part of the decision to which it relates; and
(b)where it quashes the whole or part of that decision, refer the matter back to the original decision maker with a direction to reconsider and make a new decision in accordance with the ruling of the Competition Appeal Tribunal.
(6)An appeal lies on any point of law arising from a decision of the Competition Appeal Tribunal under this section to the appropriate court.
(7)An appeal under subsection (6) requires the permission of the Tribunal or the appropriate court.
“the appropriate court” means the Court of Appeal or, in the case of Tribunal proceedings in Scotland, the Court of Session; and
“Tribunal rules” has the meaning given by section 15(1).
F1Word in s. 120(1) inserted (29.12.2003) by Communications Act 2003 (c. 21), ss. 389(1), 411(2)(3), Sch. 16 para. 22 (with transitional provisions in Sch. 18); S.I. 2003/3142, art. 3(1), Sch. 1 (subject to arts. 3(3), 11)
C5S. 120 applied (with modifications) (20.6.2003) by The Enterprise Act 2002 (Protection of Legitimate Interests) Order 2003 (S.I. 2003/1592), art. 15, Sch. 3 para. 1(1)(z)(21)
C6S. 120(6)-(8) applied (1.9.2004) by Energy Act 2004 (c. 20), ss. 141, 198(2), Sch. 18 para. 15; S.I. 2004/2184, art. 2(2), Sch. 2
C7S. 120(6)-(8) applied (N.I.) (3.7.2007) by Electricity Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2007 (S.R. 2007/321), reg. 28
C8S. 120(6)-(8) applied (N.I.) (prosp.) by The Electricity (Single Wholesale Market) (Northern Ireland) Order 2007 (S.I 2007/913 (N.I. 7)), arts. 1, 5, {Sch. 1 para. 15}
C9S. 120(6)-(8) applied (N.I.) (15.4.2011) by The Gas and Electricity (Internal Markets) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2011 (S.R. 2011/155), reg. 1, Sch. 1 para. 14
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Part 6U.K.Immigration Procedure
Immigration controlU.K.
141 EEA ports: juxtaposed controlsF1U.K.
(1)The Secretary of State may by order make provision for the purpose of giving effect to an international agreement which concerns immigration control at an EEA port (whether or not it also concerns other aspects of frontier control at the port).
(2)An order under this section may make any provision which appears to the Secretary of State—
(a)likely to facilitate implementation of the international agreement (including those aspects of the agreement which relate to frontier control other than immigration control), or
(b)appropriate as a consequence of provision made for the purpose of facilitating implementation of the agreement.
(3)In particular, an order under this section may—
(a)provide for a law of England and Wales to have effect, with or without modification, in relation to a person in a specified area or anything done in a specified area;
(b)provide for a law of England and Wales not to have effect in relation to a person in a specified area or anything done in a specified area;
(c)provide for a law of England and Wales to be modified in its effect in relation to a person in a specified area or anything done in a specified area;
(d)disapply or modify an enactment in relation to a person who has undergone a process in a specified area;
(e)disapply or modify an enactment otherwise than under paragraph (b), (c) or (d);
(f)make provision conferring a function (which may include—
(i)provision conferring a discretionary function;
(ii)provision conferring a function on a servant or agent of the government of a State other than the United Kingdom);
(g)create or extend the application of an offence;
(h)impose or permit the imposition of a penalty;
(i)require the payment of, or enable a person to require the payment of, a charge or fee;
(j)make provision about enforcement (which may include—
(i)provision conferring a power of arrest, detention or removal from or to any place;
(ii)provision for the purpose of enforcing the law of a State other than the United Kingdom);
(k)confer jurisdiction on a court or tribunal;
(l)confer immunity or provide for indemnity;
(m)make provision about compensation;
(n)impose a requirement, or enable a requirement to be imposed, for a person to co-operate with or to provide facilities for the use of another person who is performing a function under the order or under the international agreement (which may include a requirement to provide facilities without charge);
(o)make provision about the disclosure of information.
(4)An order under this section may—
(a)make provision which applies generally or only in specified circumstances;
(b)make different provision for different circumstances;
(c)amend an enactment.
(5)An order under this section—
(a)must be made by statutory instrument,
(b)may not be made unless the Secretary of State has consulted with such persons as appear to him to be appropriate, and
(c)may not be made unless a draft has been laid before and approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.
“EEA port” means a port in an EEA State from which passengers are commonly carried by sea to or from the United Kingdom,
“EEA State” means a State which is a contracting party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area signed at Oporto on 2nd May 1992 (as it has effect from time to time),
“frontier control” means the enforcement of law which relates to, or in so far as it relates to, the movement of persons or goods into or out of the United Kingdom or another State,
“immigration control” means arrangements made in connection with the movement of persons into or out of the United Kingdom or another State,
“international agreement” means an agreement made between Her Majesty’s Government and the government of another State, and
“specified area” means an area (whether of the United Kingdom or of another State) specified in an international agreement.
F1Act extended in part (Isle of Man) (with modifications) (13.3.2008 for specified purposes, 1.5.2008 in so far as not already in force) by The Immigration (Isle of Man) Order 2008 (S.I. 2008/680), art. 16, Sch. 7 (with art. 5, Sch. 2) (as amended (29.6.2011) by The Immigration (Isle of Man) (Amendment) Order 2011 (S.I. 2011/1408), art. 1, Sch. para. 6; and as amended (14.3.2019) by The Immigration (Isle of Man) (Amendment) Order 2019 (S.I. 2019/562), arts. 1, 5, 14)
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Category: Newsletter Library, Unbelievable Pets
Your pets probably don't understand that in nine months a new baby will be joining your family, but dogs and cats do detect differences in mood, posture, behavior, and body chemistry that clue them that an enormous change is happening. Your dog or cat will pick up other signs, too: Our four legged
Assistance Dogs Offer Many Benefits
Assistance dogs are not just for blind or visually impaired people. Today, these dogs help people with a range of conditions enjoy full lives. Guide Dogs Guide dogs, also known as Seeing Eye dogs, help blind and visually impaired people live independent lives. These dogs "see" for their owners and
New Uses for Animal DNA
Advances in science have enabled the decoding of several animals' DNA. Knowing the genome of a species has enabled medical professionals to detect some diseases that have a genetic basis. But it also has other uses, even in the criminal justice system. The Veterinary Genetics Laboratory Forensic Unit
White House Pets
A surprising issue that has arisen in the American political arena is not foreign policy, but rather which breed of dog the Obama's chose to join their family in the White House. Barack Obama has announced that his family narrowed their breed choices to a Labradoodle, a mix between a Labrador retriever
The Incredible Sense of Smell in the Dog
There are many ways in which people and dogs are similar, but an area in which dogs are much superior is in their olfactory ability, or their sense of smell. Dogs can smell 100,000 times better than humans. In tests, dogs have been able to detect a chemical in a solution diluted to 1 to 2 parts per trillion.
Among the many heroes in the days and weeks following September 11 were search and rescue dogs. These dogs and their handlers were brought in from all over the country to help at the New York and Washington, D.C. disaster sites. Many people are not aware that the handlers of these dogs are not always
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City Council Rescinds Jobs Tax
JOBS Coalition plans to work with the City Council and Mayor to develop a sustainable and effective affordable housing financing plan
SAN DIEGO - The San Diego City Council voted unanimously today to rescind the jobs tax. “The City Council heard the voices of small businesses and job creators in San Diego and voted to rescind the jobs tax,” said Jerry Sanders, President & CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. “We believe housing affordability is a critical issue and we will work with the City Council and the Mayor to find sustainable solutions that do not hurt our local economy in the process. It’s important to note that both sides need to work together to find a solution that is best for San Diego.”
Numerous members of the Coalition told the City Council they stand ready to work collaboratively to create a comprehensive plan to fund affordable housing in San Diego.
“In order to be the world-class city we all know San Diego can be, the city needs affordable housing, but it also needs to foster affordable manufacturing and job creation policies,” said Mark Cafferty, President & CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation. “Now that the City Council has decided to rescind the fee, I am confident we can find a sustainable solution to subsidized housing that will also safeguard our local economy. Together, we can make San Diego a better place for both businesses and residents.”
Joe Panetta, President & CEO of Biocom, said: “Biocom thanks the City Council for listening to the citizens of San Diego and rescinding the jobs tax. At a time of increasing regional and global competition for life science companies, the City of San Diego cannot be creating barriers to companies wanting to come to or expand in San Diego."
In January, the JOBS Coalition turned in nearly 53,000 signatures it collected in less than 30 days from San Diego voters, signifying significant public opposition to the jobs tax. Once the signatures were verified, the City Council had to either vote to overturn its decision to tax job creators by 375 to 750 percent, or put the issue on the ballot for voters to decide.
The JOBS Coalition announced in December it would work to overturn a decision approved by a 5-4 majority of the San Diego City Council to significantly increase the jobs tax. Supporters called it a “linkage fee” because of the so-called link between some jobs and subsidized housing paid for by the tax. The Coalition called it a jobs tax because businesses of all kinds — both large and small, as well as nonprofits, hospitals and private educational institutions — would have faced an additional tax on all new business development, expansion and some remodeling.
No other city in San Diego County charges a similar tax, which is why several neighboring cities began courting Qualcomm and other San Diego businesses when the massive jobs tax increase took effect. If it had not been overturned, the tax would have increased automatically every year without any approval by elected officials or voters.
Contacts: Tony Manolatos 619.549.0137 & Ashley Hause 303.919.6050
About The JOBS Coalition: The JOBS Coalition is a group representing more than 50 regional organizations and San Diego small businesses that provide thousands of middle class jobs and billions of dollars to the economy, and opposes the Linkage Fee increase. Created in 2011 to oppose a similar increase and support robust funding alternatives that would actually provide a stable source of revenue for affordable housing, the Coalition announced a signature gathering campaign in December to overturn the City Council’s decision to raise the jobs tax by approximately 375 to 750 percent.
Paid for by Stop the Jobs Killing Tax, a Coalition of Jobs Creators, Economic Development, Business and Real Estate Organizations Concerned About the San Diego Economy, 402 West Broadway, Suite 1000, San Diego, CA 92101. Major funding provided by NAIOP San Diego Chapter and the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and its sponsored Political Action Committee.
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Home Government / Civic Government Monaco co-chairs UN session in Geneva on strengthening Human Rights Council
Monaco co-chairs UN session in Geneva on strengthening Human Rights Council
HE Valentin Zellweger Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations Office at Geneva; Eric Tistounet, Head of the Branch of the Human Rights Council of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and HE Carole Lanteri, Ambassador, Representative of the Principality to the United Nations Office at Geneva. Photo: DR
HE Carole Lanteri, Ambassador and Representative of the Principality to the United Nations Office in Geneva, participated in a Divonne-les-Bains retreat on Thursday, February 1, in the Francophone Group, dedicated to strengthening the Human Rights Council.
Ambassadors and experts from the member countries of the Group of Francophone states discussed the current challenges facing the UN Human Rights Council. Topics – such as the effectiveness of decisions taken, budgetary constraints, the efficiency of working methods and respect for multilingualism – were on the table.
Ms Lanteri co-chaired, together with the Ambassador of Switzerland, the session on challenges related to the internal functioning of the Human Rights Council. This session discussed the problems of delegations following the work of the Council, in particular the multiplication of the number of texts negotiated and adopted as well as the large number of meetings necessary to respect the calendar. The discussions held during this session threw up some solutions to meet the challenges.
The Human Rights Council is a subsidiary body of the United Nations General Assembly. As the main United Nations forum for the promotion and protection of human rights, the Council is based in Geneva, where it holds three annual sessions. It is composed of 47 States elected by the General Assembly for a period of three years.
Diamonds: the need for progress in the Kimberley Process
Upbeat start to school year
Education Staff Writer - September 12, 2017
[caption id="attachment_21585" align="alignnone" width="984"] Photo: Manuel Vitali/DC[/caption]
On Monday, Isabelle Bonnal, Director of National Education, Youth and Sports, accompanied by Marie-Cécile Moreno visited Collège Charles III and the École de la Condamine in order to follow closely the start of the new school year, marked in particular by two highlights.
At the Collège Charles III, a rehearsal took place in a musical atmosphere. The students of all classes had the privilege to benefit from a musical reception. A group of the Academy of Music and Theater Rainier III, composed of three musicians playing guitar, bass and drums, conducted by Ludovic Tallarico, professor at the Academy, performed famous jazz tunes.
At the École de la Condamine, Mrs Bonnal was able to see the implementation of the dress code for classes CP, CE1 and CE2. In accordance with the request made to the parents, the pupils had all donned a white polo shirt bearing the coat of arms of the school, expressing their belonging to the school of Condamine and highlighting their Monegasque identity.
Consuls hear about Vienna Convention
Government Staff Writer - May 3, 2017
[caption id="attachment_16152" align="alignnone" width="640"] Serge Telle, Minister of State and Moustapha El-Solh Honorary Consul of Lebanon, President of ACHM. Photo: © Manuel Vitali/Communication Directorate[/caption] The Association of Honorary Consuls of Monaco (ACHM) has held its General Assembly in the presence of HE Serge Telle, Minister of State. Also present were HE Philippe Narmino, Director of Judicial Services, Lieutenant-Colonel Laurent Soler, Chamberlain of HSH the Sovereign Prince, Isabelle Rosabrunetto, Director General of the Department of External Relations and Cooperation representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Ambassadors of France, Italy and the Order of Malta, and many other personalities. On this occasion, Minister Telle was appointed an Honorary Member of the Association, as well as Panayotis Touliatos, Jacques Orecchia and Laurent Wasteels, former Honorary Consuls and members of the ACHM. The event closed with a lecture by Agnès Von Der Mühll on the theme "The Vienna Convention, Diplomatic and Consular Rights and Duties." The ACHM was created in 2003 under the leadership of Prince Rainier III, with the objective of federating the foreign consular corps accredited in Monaco and facilitating the integration of new Honorary Consuls when they were appointed to the Principality. The Association currently has 80 honorary consuls, and Moustapha El-Solh, President of ACHM, is the Honorary Consul of Lebanon.
http://www.monacolife.net/?p=12791
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DVD Review: Remains
Frightfest preview: Sinister
Features, Film4 Frightfest
Streaming channels online has become popular with people that no longer want to pay for cable TV services. The main reasons behind the demand for online streaming are better access to quality internet services and the availability of content on demand across the world. Fortunately, there are many streaming providers to choose from, making it possible for TV lovers to select the most suitable one. These online streaming providers offer both free and paid channels to meet the needs of their clients, locally and internationally.
Are free streaming channels worth it?
Online streaming services have taken the viewing of content to the next level with many people signing up to access various type of content at their own time. The growth of on-demand content is likely to grow in the future prompting service providers to offer packages that add value to clients. One of the ways they have done this is by offering free streaming channels. These channels vary in number and availability depending on the streaming service provider and have proven to be a favorite of many TV lovers. Some of the benefits of the free channels include:
Offers convenience
Viewing content using a streaming device at your own time and pace provides the flexibility that is appreciated by most TV lovers. It even gets better when you are watching your favorite programs at no cost resulting in an enhanced viewing experience. Although offered for free, viewers can start, stop or rewind a program as they desire at their convenience. Whether you prefer watching live shows or recorded shows, free channels are an excellent option for you.
Majority of services providers that provide on-demand content require payment for access to the various types of entertainment they have on offer. In some cases, the cost can be out of reach making it impossible for you to watch your favorite TV series, movie or documentary. However, with free channels, you never worry paying before viewing any content resulting in saving of money that would have otherwise gone to subscription costs. Additionally, some streaming services allow for access to free online content without signing in to their platform.
Accessible across multiple mobile devices
Streaming free channels is possible across more than one mobile device without losing the overall quality in sound as well as visuals. Most streaming services have no restrictions on the channels one can watch as long they are within the free category. Whether you want to view content on a smartphone, tablet or digital TV; the service will be excellent depending on your preferred service provider.
Builds confidence for paid channels
Free channels offered by various service providers give TV lovers a glimpse into the on-demand content they can access at the paid plans. It is common to find many people that started by watching free channels signing up for paid content. If you are unsure of signing up for paid on-demand content with a service provider, you can start with a free trial to help you make an informed decision.
Top streaming providers for free channels
Streaming channels at no cost is possible no matter your location in the world. However, to enjoy free channels, you need to find online companies that offer the service and guarantee high-quality content at all times. Some of the websites that allow you to stream channels for free are listed below.
Roku is one of the most sought after streaming services because of its different packages geared towards providing all-round on-demand entertainment. The Roku channel is offered for free by the service provider and can be viewed on TV and other mobile devices. Viewers can watch a wide variety of movies with advertisements popping up on the screen at different times during the movie or program. However, since the selection is quite engaging, the ads become a simple distraction that can be ignored over time. Additionally, when looking through the selection of titles and TV shows on Roku, you will realize that you are getting high-quality content free of charge.
Pluto TV is well known online streaming service for its great content that is diverse and inclusive for all. The site has over a hundred types of online content which includes movies, TV shows as well as other free channels. When watching the various channels, it is common to come across several commercials which often do little to dampen the enjoyment of the available content. In most cases, the free channels can be viewed on a regular TV set, website browser or handheld devices of your choice.
If you are a fan of the content shown on Hulu and are looking to stream similar channels for free, then Yahoo View is your best bet. The free streaming offered on the site includes popular TV shows, both recent and those that have been part of prime-time television. The wide-ranging programs on the site include anime sagas, sci-fi adventures, older programs and sitcoms that have been household names for years. Apart from programs, you can also stream popular movies at no cost all day and night without worrying about getting disconnected due to lack of payment.
The best place to get original productions as well as syndicated online content is on Crackle. Its wide array of movies makes it the ideal choice for film buffs that enjoy watching them one after another. You can be assured of quality on-demand content for free when you sign up on the streaming services. Lovers of old TV shows are often elated to find some of the familiar; titles they used to watch as teenagers; available on the service enabling them to relive childhood memories. In addition to movies, Crackle provides television shows on the channel making them one of the most robust platforms in the free channel streaming space.
In general, finding free channels on various streaming services is possible with a little bit of effort. Most times, these channels offer engaging content that is similar to those provided on paid options.
Simon is a journalism tutor in London, who also just happens to be a movie fanatic, with a craving for the darker side of cinema. He has written three books - on the horror films of director Bob Clark (2014), the history of the character Norman Bates (2015) and the work of British exploitation director Pete Walker (2017). He is currently working with director Richard Loncraine to explore all avenues in a bid to orchestrate the re-release of 1978 Mia Farrow chiller Full Circle
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The Moving Image Source Research Guide is a gateway to the best online resources related to film, television, and digital media.
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International Association for Media and History
The International Association for Media and History is an organization of scholars "dedicated to historical inquiry into film, radio, television, and related media." The website provides information on current publications by members as well as volume information on the association's journal The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.
International Index to the Performing Arts
An index of scholarly performing-arts periodicals.
The website of critic Jonathan Rosenbaum contains an archive of reviews published in the Chicago Reader between 1987 and 2007 as well as reviews and articles for other journals and publications. There is one featured text per week as well as a regularly updated blog.
JSTOR offers easy-to-use, full-text searching of more than 700 periodicals.
Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media
Examining moving image media and cultures from an explicitly "nonsectarian left, feminist, and anti-imperialist" political stand, the website of the journal Jump Cut provides a chronological, searchable archive with access to full-text essays, reports, and features going back to its first issue in 1974.
A journal for film and audiovisual media established in 1993 at the University of Waterloo, Kinema semi-annually publishes film and media criticism and reports on international film festivals and conferences.
Lexis-Nexis Academic
Search the full text of selected newspapers, wire services, and business sources for historical film reviews, business information, or other primary sources.
Media and Communications Studies Site: Film Studies
A bibliography by scholars at the University of Wales that links to full-text articles available online. Browse by subject.
Providing online access to the histories of cinema, broadcasting, and recorded sound, the Media History Digital Library digitizes collections of classic media periodicals that belong in the public domain for full public access.
Media Theory and Digital Cultures Bibliography
From UC Santa Barbara's Digital Cultures project.
Mediascape
UCLA's journal of Cinema and Media Studies looks at various moving image cultures including film, television, and digital media. Full-text articles are available for all past issues.
MedieKultur
MedieKultur is a multi-disciplinary peer-reviewed journal of media and communications studies aimed at scholars, teachers, students, and professionals. It publishes research into mediated communication in various contexts: political, economic, cultural, historical, aesthetic, and social.
Millennium Film Journal
Published since 1978 by the Millenium Film Workshop, the Millenium Film Journal focuses on avant-garde cinema and practice, and covers a range of moving image technologies. The journal's website fully indexes past issues by both author and filmmaker. All issues are available for back order, and almost all articles after 1992 are available in full for free.
Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism
This online, refereed publication, a joint venture of the Universities of Warwick Reading, and Oxford, aims to create a forum for film- and television-related analysis, debate, and discussion.
National Cinemas Bibliography
Browse bibliographies on international cinema, organized by region. Many of the sub-pages on regions have links to bibliographies on individual filmmakers. The resources listed are available in the UC-Berkeley library, but many of the books can be found elsewhere.
New York Times: Movies
A complete, searchable archive of New York Times film reviews. The search function links to an extensive database of profiles on individual films, filmmakers, and actors.
This Canadian journal features interviews, festival coverage, and essays on directors, Asian cinema, European cinema, documentaries and other topics. Offscreen and its French language sister journal Hors Champ have been online since 1997.
P.O.V. is a peer-reviewed online journal published biannually. The articles in each issue reflect a common theme, and recent issues have covered Danish television, the western, and short fiction films.
PFA Cinefiles
The Pacific Film Archive conducts primary source research for the films it shows and has posted the results of that research. The database includes reviews, press kits, festival and showcase program notes, newspaper articles, and more, covering more than 30,000 films. Materials that are not copyright-protected are available (usually as .GIF or .JPG files) for download.
Ray Carney
The official website of Ray Carney, a leading critic and scholar on American independent film and art film. The website has three sections with selections from Carney's lectures, interviews, and writing: the John Cassavetes Pages, the Independent Film Pages, and Film and Other Arts Pages.
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Filters: Author is G. R. Hamell [Clear All Filters]
Hamell, G.R., 1983. A 19th Century `Apostle Potter': Heber Kimball, Mormon Leader, `Received the Spirit' in His Upstate New York Pottery. The New York-Pennsylvania Collector 8, 12B-14B.
Hamell, G.R., 1981. Earthenwares and Salt-glazed Stonewares of the Rochester-Genesee Valley Region: An Overview.. Northeast Historical Archaeology 7-9, 1-14. doi:https://doi.org/10.22191/neha/vol9/iss1/1
Hauptman, L.R., Hamell, G.R., 2003. George Catlin: The Iroquois Origins of His Indian Portrait Gallery. New York History: Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association 84, 125-151.
Starna, W.A., Hamell, G.R., 1996. History and the Burden of Proof: The Case of Iroquois Influence on the U.S. Constitution. New York History 77, 427-452.
Hamell, G.R., 1994. Introduction, in: Syracuse University Press, (Ed.), Skunny Wundy: Seneca Indian Tales By Arthur C. Parker. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York, p. xv-xx.
Hamell, G.R., 2007. The Iroquois and the World's Rim: Speculations on Color, Culture, and Contact, in: Kerber, J.E. (Ed.), Archaeology Of The Iroquois: Selected Readings & Research Sources. Syracus University Press, Syracuse, New York, pp. 306-320.
Hamell, G.R., 1992. The Iroquois and the World's Rim: Speculations on Color, Culture, and Contact. American Indian Quarterly 16, 451-469. doi:10.2307/1185292
Hamell, G.R., 1998. Long-Tail: The Panther in Huron-Wyandot and Seneca Myth, Ritual and Material Culture, in: Saunders, N.J. (Ed.), Icons Of Power: Feline Symbolism In The Americas. Routledge, New York, pp. 258-286.
Hamell, G.R., 2005. A Look Back: "Old Indian Life Groups.. Legacy: The Magazine of the New York State Museum 1, 5.
Hamell, G.R., 1984. Metaphor, Myth, and Contemporary Iroquois History. The Iroquoian 9, 24-31.
Hamell, G.R., Rogers, W.B., 2001. A Mohawk Iroquois Village: A Virtual Exhibit at the New York State Museum. Albany, NY.
Hamell, G.R., 1987. Mohawks Abroad: The 1764 Amsterdam Etching of Sychnecta, in: Feest, C.F. (Ed.), Indians And Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collections Of Essays. Editions Herodot, Rader-Verlag, Aachen, Germany, pp. 175-193.
Hamell, G.R., 1987. Mythical realities and European Contact in the Northeast During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Man in the Northeast 33, 63-87.
Miller, C.L., Hamell, G.R., 2000. A New Perspective on Indian-White Contact: Cultural Symbols and Colonial Trade, in: Marshall, P.C., Merrell, J.H. (Eds.), American Encounters: Natives And Newcomers From European Contact To Indian Removal, 1500-1850. Routledge, London, pp. 177-193.
Miller, C.L., Hamell, G.R., 1986. A New Perspective on Indian-White Contact: Cultural Symbols and Colonial Trade. The Journal of American History 73, 311-328. doi:10.2307/1908224
Hamell, G.R., 1981. North Bay Pottery. The New York-Pennsylvania Collector 6, 3-4.
Starna, W.A., Hamell, G.R., Butts, W.L., 1984. Northern Iroquoian Horticulture and Insect Infestation: A Cause for Village Removal. Ethnohistory 31, 197-207. doi:10.2307/482621
Hamell, G.R., Fox, W.A., 2005. Rattlesnake Tales. Ontario Archaeology 79/80, 127-149.
Hamell, G.R., 1987. Review of "Onondaga: Portrait of a People" by Dennis J. Connors, Laurence M. Hauptman, and Ray Gonyea. Ethnohistory 34, 407-410.
Hamell, G.R., 2004. Seneca Iroquois Carved Wooden Ladles. Members Update 15, 6.
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Buildings which started life as a joke
July 23, 2018 /0 Comments/in Industry News /by Ellen
Modern architecture is full of surprises but some of the interesting buildings around the world started life as a joke. Shaun Soanes investigates.
In the 1930s, a British traveler in Southern California spoke of his confusion at the fantasy world he discovered there, created by local architects.
Last month a new, updated version of California Crazy, a book first released in the 1980s, recounts the unnamed visitor’s puzzlement.
“If, when you went shopping, you found you could buy cakes in a windmill, ices in a gigantic cream-can, flowers in a huge flowerpot, you might begin to wonder whether you had not stepped through a looking glass or taken a toss down a rabbit burrow and could expect Mad Hatter or White Queen to appear round the next corner,” he wrote.
It’s an accurate way to describe the delights of what is now known as novelty architecture – the a splendidly patronising name for buildings shaped like hot-dogs, animals, items of clothing or built to mimic other famous landmarks.
When did it begin?
According to Cristina Carbone, a professor of art and architectural history at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, this type of design dates back to at least the Renaissance. By the 18th century, says Carbone, English gardens were sprinkled with follies, such as dining pavilions masquerading as pagodas, churches, and pyramids.
In America however, the first known example was a six-storey wooden elephant which towered over the seaside community of Margate, New Jersey, in 1881.
Since then, the home of this type of architecture has become California where such roadside curiosities are more densely clustered than anywhere else in the world.
It was at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, held in San Francisco in 1915, that a “Fun Zone” included a 120-foot golden Buddha and a two-storey horse.
Then, over the ensuing decades, advertisers jumped on the bandwagon, creating essentially usable buildings in eccentric form to highlight brand messages.
Constructing novelty architecture near to roads became one way of attracting motorists to a diner or coffee shop for example.
One of the most famous remains the gigantic, knobbly doughnut visible in Inglewood, near LAX, mounted on the roof of what is now Randy’s Donuts.
Is it just a joke?
Far from it.
In California Crazy’s essays and photos, Jim Heimann, executive editor of Taschen America, and late architecture historian David Gedhard make a compelling case that these crazy buildings are more than just gimmicks.
They argue that in fact, they’re cultural artifacts of a period that changed the landscape of America.
Mimetic buildings were, for a time, both functional architecture and large, loud advertisement.
Gebhard writes: “why not cultivate a set of architectural images which would instantly catch the eye, and which we would continue to remember?”
And let’s consider the Statue of Liberty for a second.
This is a replica building that is part sculpture and part monument, which like many subsequent examples of novelty architecture, has an accessible interior and has become a tourist attraction.
Most people would agree that it is not just a beautiful building – but has become synonymous with New York.
The trend for creating unusual buildings has been adopted around the world – and often they prove to become huge talking points.
The Tete au Carre in Nice, France was designed by architect Sacha Sosno Tete au Carre and literally translates as ‘Thinking Inside The Box’.
The 26 metre building is a Central Library of Nice which is located in the ‘head’ comprising three storeys of books.
The Banna Park Bird Watch on Ishigaki Island, Okinawa, Japan is an egg-shaped building used as a birdwatch point. The watch point has a shape of a hatched egg with an egg-shaped entrance and it was made to track the migrating birds at Banna park.
Bremen is a science museum located in Bremen, Germany that has around 250 exhibits. The building designed by Thomas Klumpp has an interesting shape that reminds of a grinning whale, an association that’s reinforced by the water source it stands on.
Another museum is from Curitiba, Brazil which has an eye shape standing on a pedestal. The focus of the museum are visual arts, architecture and design.
An office building called “1000″ or Banknote was completed in 2008 in Kaunas, Lithuania and is shaped as a 1925′s Lithuanian Litas 1000 banknote.
The closest thing we have to novelty architecture in the UK is probably the Blackpool Tower – a replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
It is 518 feet (158 metres) tall and is the 120th tallest freestanding tower in the world.
The entertainment complex in a red-brick three-storey block comprising the tower, the ground floor aquarium and cafeteria, Tower Circus, the Tower Ballroom and roof gardens that was designated a Grade 1 listed building in 1973.
We also have areas of the UK where we incorporate large scale novelty factors based on the historic roots of mimetic architecture – advertising.
In Camden Town for example, where we have worked on a redevelopment scheme, many of the shop fronts boast artwork to include a giant pair of trainers on a show shop, a huge dragon above a Chinese takeaway, a crashed airplane over a leather store and an angel towering above a clothing outlet.
What’s your favourite quirky building?
http://www.njarchitects.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/9925237753_d3b430d802_z.jpg 455 640 Ellen http://www.njarchitects.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/njalogo_large-e1415634265118.png Ellen2018-07-23 09:54:572018-07-11 10:22:08Buildings which started life as a joke
Hostile architecture sits uncomfortably – quite literally Architecture is getting a bit more “hip hop”
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It’s Spooky To Be Young
February 4th, 2010 | Published in news
Meredith’s latest record is now available! Produced by Bill Racine, Meredith’s latest record It’s Spooky To Be Young has been quickly gaining acclaim. Her song ‘Video Game Girl” was named #53 by Indie 103.1’s top 103 songs of 2009 from LA bands, and is also featured alongside artists Metric and Butterfly Boucher on the soundtrack to The Seven Rays, the new novel by Jessica Bendinger. Available on Itunes, this site, and CDbaby.com.
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Brexit weighs on UK fintech investment
THE IMPACT of Brexit on UK fintech was laid bare, after new figures showed a 26 per cent slump in investment in the sector’s start-ups in the months following the vote.
Research from trade body Innovate Finance showed that venture capital investment in UK fintech was down 26 per cent at $532m (£428m) in the third quarter year-on-year, although this was an improvement from the second quarter, which was down 33 per cent year-on-year.
The continued decline will be a blow to the UK government, which is keen to maintain London’s position as a global fintech hub. Last month, the government announced that it is planning to hold a new, annual fintech conference in London, to attract more international investment.
Despite the decline, the UK still attracts more deals than most other countries. The UK attracted 76 deals, the highest volume outside the US at 457. And it was still third in terms of total investment of $532m, behind US at $5.27bn and China at $7.12bn.
On a global level, investment in fintech start-ups soared by 27 per cent in the three months to September, with the average deal size increasing from $14.3m to $18.1m – partly due to large Chinese investments such as Alipay.
“While the UK still attracted a high number of deals for fintech there’s been a significant drop in investment year-on-year to the third quarter of 2016, possibly due to the referendum result on Brexit and the future uncertainty of the relationship between European markets and the financial services sector,” said Lawrence Wintermeyer, chief executive of Innovate Finance.
“The UK government needs to be bold and use the tools it has at its disposal such as the British Business Bank to support the sector. This will become increasingly important with the potential loss of EU funds such as the EIF.”
The European Investment Fund, which invests EU money into small businesses, has scaled back its investment into UK venture capital funds due to uncertainty surrounding the UK’s relationship with the bloc.
Wintermeyer added: “While Brexit uncertainty may continue to have an impact on investor behaviour, remaining attractive to international talent is just as important to maintaining the UK’s current position as the world’s premier fintech hub.
“Ahead of the Autumn Statement, Innovate Finance urges the chancellor to ensure the UK continues to drive investment and innovation, attract talent and maintain an open trading relationship with the EU and globally.”
City minister Simon Kirby is on a trade mission in Singapore this week, alongside a number of UK fintech firms including RateSetter and Crowd2Fund.
He told CNBC on Wednesday that London still has a lot to offer fintech firms and said that he was confident the UK would get a good deal from its Brexit negotiations.
“We are listening very carefully to fintech businesses’ concerns about access to capital, access to high-skilled labour and also their concerns about Brexit,” he added.
RateSetter recently told Peer-to-Peer Finance News that Brexit has had a positive effect on the UK’s peer-to-peer finance sector.
For more on Brexit and how it could impact P2P, make sure to check out the full feature in next month’s print edition of Peer-to-Peer Finance News, out at the start of December.
Alipay Brexit British Business Bank Crowd2Fund EU referendum vote European Investment Fund fintech investment Innovate Finance Lawrence Wintermeyer Ratesetter Simon Kirby UK fintech venture capital investment fintech
Late payments are killing small businesses, warns FSB
Lending Club’s Laplanche to set up rival firm
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Money & Medicine
State economics: Budget recipes
President Obama continues to dine with GOP politicians and everyone with a budget plan has hit the news circuit. The word “entitlements” is on everyone’s lips. But to what end? Do you need a degree in the “dismal science” to parse the competing budget plans?
Below you’ll find links to the actual proposals and a collection of comparative analyses.
The Democratic Plan: “Foundation for Growth: Restoring the Promise of American Opportunity”
This plan, presented by the head of the Senate Budget Committee Patty Murray, includes $100 billion in targeted jobs and infrastructure package; $975 billion in spending cuts, including $242 billion in saved interest payments; and $975 billion in deficit reduction by “closing loopholes and eliminating wasteful spending in the tax code.”
Counting the $2.4 trillion already passed by the Obama Administration, Murray argues that she surpasses the $4 trillion target set by the Simpson-Bowles Commission in 2010.
The House Republican Plan: “The Path to Prosperity: A Responsible, Balanced Budget”
Commonly known as “The Ryan Plan,” after the Committee chair and former Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, this plan deems to reduce the deficit by $4.6 trillion over the next 10 years. More than half of those reductions $2.7 trillion – come from cuts to big health-care programs like Medicaid and Obamacare expansions. The plan includes “simplifying the tax code to make it fairer” and substantially lowering tax rates for individuals, “with a goal of achieving a top individual rate of 25%.” The ‘Ryan plan’ does leave the door open for some new tax revenue, but does not include specifics.
Updated Simpson-Bowles Plan: “The Moment of Truth Project”
Taking as its base the “Moment of Truth” report from the President Obama’s bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, is a project of the non-profit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The budget, presented to the public by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who headed the President’s commission, calls for an additional $2.4 trillion of deficit reduction over the next ten years.
Roughly one quarter of the deficit reduction should come from health care reforms, another quarter from tax reform. The remaining savings should come from mandatory spending cuts, discretionary caps, and changes like chained CPI for inflation-indexed provisions in the budget.
The Republican Study Committee: “Back to Basics: A Budget for Fiscal Year 2014″
This plan aims to balance the budget in four years and raise the retirement age to 70. The proposal would make deep cuts to discretionary spending, capping the level at $950 billion – the 2008 level — and freezing it there until the budget is balanced.
President Obama’s Budget:
Although it will reportedly seek many of the same proposals as last year’s $3.8 trillion budget, the President’s plan will not be submitted until the week of April 8 — more than two months past due. For further reading, we recommend the Congressional Budget Office, which has a very detailed analysis of President Obama’s 2013 budget.
Patty Murray vs. Paul Ryan, in one chart, Wonkblog, The Washington Post, March 12, 2013.
Opening bids: Congress finally restarts the budget process, The Economist, March 16, 2013.
Budget Battles Aren’t Just About Money, but Different Visions of Government, PBS NewsHour, March 21, 2013.
Last modified: March 28, 2013 at 2:54 pm
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‘I’m not driven by money or fame’
December 3rd, 2012 Latest, Sports
Pukaar Magazine’s sports reporter John Sinclair speaks to Leicester Tigers’ star George Chuter about his time at the club and what continues to motivate him.
George Chuter has spent the last twelve years at the Leicester Tigers rugby club and recently became the first player to make his 250th Premiership appearance. The 35-year-old Londoner has also won the domestic title five times with the club, along with the Heineken Cup and the Anglo-Welsh Cup twice.
Photo Credit: Tiger Images
The Tigers’ hooker greets all this with his dry wit, which is just as evident when asked about his pre-season preparations. “I’m still in pretty good shape and still enjoying it. Mentally I’m where I was 15 years ago, but it’s still physically challenging. For instance getting out of bed can be tricky as is going downstairs and even putting the kettle on,” he joked.
As a long-standing member of the Tigers’ squad, Chuter knows all about the ‘Leicester Way’ and helps new players adapt to what’s expected. He added: “Players have some pre- conceptions when they come here but head coach Richard Cockerill will tell any new player and agent what’s expected and it’s something that’s been handed down from the days of Peter Wheeler and Dean Richards etc.”
Chuter joined Saracens as a 19-year-old and played there for five years before deciding to take a year out in 2000. He decided to travel and took part in the Sydney Olympics before signing for the Tigers. When Richard Cockerill left in 2002 he competed with Dorien West for the first choice hooker spot.
On the international scene Chuter had to wait until after his 30th birthday to win his first England cap, which came as a replacement (substitute) in 2006. He then scored a try in his first international start in the next fixture and went on to be a World Cup finalist in 2007.
The physical demands of rugby are very high and Chuter accepts that he’ll never be hundred per cent fit. He said: “I’ve had niggles over the years but that’s part of being a sportsmen. I prepared as mu ch as I could in the summer and hopefully I’ll be in contention for selection.”
The one thing that helps the Leicester Tigers players is playing in front of the big crowds at Welford Road, but Chuter knows only too well that their mood can swing either way. He added: “They’re passionate and knowledgeable about the game and they’ll let you know if your good, but be prepared to hear their wrath if you’re not!!”
So how much longer can he carry on? “I enjoy the game as much as I used to. I’m not driven by money or fame or anything like that. I like the competitive side of the game and I love being at this club and that’s what drives me. But when that fire dies down, that’s the time to hang up your boots and hopefully that won’t be for a while yet – certainly not this year,” he said.
George Chuter
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Film review: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Our strength lies in our diversity
Creating opportunities
A tribute to mothers
Bollywood’s Unconventional Star
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Athena Vida aka Gitte Schäfer
(Stuttgart, Germany, 1972)
Athena Vida, born as Gitte Schäfer (Stuttgart, Germany, 1972), lives and works in Oberwil im Simmental, Switzerland. She studied at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee with Hanns Schimansky and Katharina Grosse and at Chelsea College of Art in London. If Schäfer’s works openly acknowledges a tribute to artists who inspire her, particularly the Surrealists, like Meret Oppenheim, the encounter with Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Tarot and his ideas about the Psychomagic, deeply influenced the artist and her work. The work of the artist, who used to set up ‘objects trouvés’ with surprising results as funny portraits, useless machines, geometric and colorful patterns, turned into more complex installations in which every single element has a meaning as part of a syncretic mythology. As Gitte Schäfer, the artist had solo shows in galleries based in Berlin, Paris, New York, Rome, Copenhagen and Zurich. She showed in institutions and exhibited in group shows all around the world, like in the ICA, Philadelphia, USA (2006); FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, France (2006); CAPC, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France (2008); CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA (2009); Château de Chamarande, Centre d'Art Contemporain, France (2010); LACE Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, USA (2010); Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp, Cully, Switzerland (2014); Kjubh e.V., Cologne, Germany (2014); Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland (2015). Athena Vida currently works with Mehdi Chouakri in Berlin, Germany, Lullin + Ferrari in Zurich, Switzerland and with Studio SALES in Rome. Credits photo: Marc Latzel.
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democrats, media, politics, progressivism
Where have all the progressives gone?
As a quick question to start, how sad is it that upon hearing that Pakistan’s president had declared a state of emergency, suspending the constitution and indefinitely postponing elections, my very first thought was that somewhere Dick Cheney was scribbling down notes? And that were the Administration to take similar action, a fair number of pundits would think it was alright, what with the unprecedented threat and all? I just keep imagining the President making the announcement, quickly followed by a host of talking heads making like Mary Sunshine. It ain’t the happiest train of thought.
Anyway, tonight I wanted more to post about a fantastic piece running on Salon right now about this bloke (who does a freakishly good Donald Duck impression, by the way):
It’s terrifically written and the tone is perfect, so I’d very likely have linked to it anyway, but when thinking about it in conjunction with Paul Krugman’s op-ed for the Times for Monday morning about the Dems’ unfortunate reluctance to be as liberal as the electorate would like, it became imperative.
(A brief aside: this isn’t going to be a post which argues in favor of voting for Kucinich. Partly because I’m not going to vote for him, but mostly because I’m going to bend over backwards on this blog to avoid endorsing individual candidates. That isn’t what politricks is for. When a candidate does something noteworthy, I’ll certainly mention them for it, but that’s all.)
Anyway, the Salon piece got me thinking a great deal about why it is that no mainstream candidate will put forth the kind of unapologetically progressive views that someone like Kucinich will. Especially with the public so clearly in favor of (among other things) better environmental regulations, universal health coverage, and a swift exit from Iraq. And it can’t just be a matter of traditional “I’ve got a real shot, can’t afford to offend the center” calculation, given that the prominent GOP candidates are falling over each other to figure out who can be the most hawkish on Iran or the most opposed to “socialized medicine.”
Part of it, certainly, is that we’ve been pounded on by the right, called “elitist” and “out of the mainstream” for so long, that we’ve started to believe it. Another big part is the simple fact that when your worldview allows for disagreement and debate, it’s hard not to seek compromise. It’s hard to imagine a progressive candidate being satisfied with the Bush-style “turn out enough of the base to eke out 51% and then ram your agenda down their throats” method of governance.
Still, it’d be nice, just once, to have a Democratic candidate for president who didn’t feel the need to flee from the “liberal” tag as though it were a plague rat. To watch a candidate asked about same-sex marriage say simply that everyone has the right to marry whom they choose, and that enshrining bigotry in the Constitution would be despicable. To say about global warming that leaving behind a flooding, drought-ridden world to our children, when all it would take to prevent it is a little ingenuity and sacrifice, is downright criminal. I know Jed Bartlet isn’t going to spontaneously burst forth from the annals of fiction anytime soon, but I’d at least like to have some reasonable facsimile around.
More than that, though, I want to know why, were someone along those lines to run, he or she would instantly be tarred as unelectable by the press, when a quasi-dictatorial ex-mayor and a former governor who hasn’t met an issue he couldn’t flip on are considered viable, even impressive candidates. And here I’m seriously asking, because I have no idea. Anyone who can explain it, please do.
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One thought on “Where have all the progressives gone?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7080433.stm
Apparently [and thankfully] there are people in Pakistan who think this whole ‘to hell with the constitution’ thing is bullshit and are making moves. Unfortunately, people in the US may be too apathetic and lethargic to do the same should the need arise. Can you imagine people rioting because the president cancels elections? Nobody seemed to care when he stole that first one…
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A wolf in hero’s clothing
Available on: GameCube, Wii, WiiU (HD remake)
In the Zelda series, Ocarina of Time (or OoT) stands tall as a monument of greatness. It’s the most famous and the best-loved opus, and for those who have played it before Twilight Princess, it almost invariably wins by comparison. Well, not for me.
Of course, I recognise the older game’s merits and fully agree that it has earned its status. I’m aware of how heavily it has influenced the series, Twilight Princess included. In fact, you’ll find many elements from OoT peppering the game: from Epona the horse, to the Gorons and Zoras, to the Temple of Time. Link also gets a female sidekick, although she’s a distinct step up from Navi. Even the controls are largely similar, involving quick-button mapping, lock-on targeting and so on. There’s also a musical element involved, although it’s less prominent than in OoT (or in Majora’s Mask, or in The Wind Waker, for that matter). Still, even with all the borrowing going on, Twilight Princess is my favourite Zelda game to date.
The first reason, shallow as it may sound, would be the graphics. I’m sure that even the most diehard OoT fans will agree that N64 graphics weren’t exactly of the highest quality, and that they made numerous NPCs look really ugly. I mean nightmare-fuel ugly. Not so here: Twilight Princess is, first and foremost, lovely to look at. It couldn’t hold a candle to some of its contemporaries on beefier consoles, and even though the recent HD remake gives it a much-needed brush-up, it’s still aeons behind what, say, a PS4 can do. That’s not really the point, though. To me, the Zelda series has always had a fairytale-like quality, and this game does it ample justice. Whether it be the quaint Ordon village, where Link resides, the lush forest which surrounds it, the green fields of Hyrule, the sweeping expanse of Lake Hylia or the grandiose architecture of Hyrule Castle, every environment is bright, warm (well, except Snowpeak) and alive, striking what I find to be exactly the right note for this kind of game. All these locales are populated with quirky, colourful characters who (mostly) no longer look like they’re auditioning for the latest Tim Burton film. Most importantly, the graphics greatly help in the expressiveness department, which is vital in making a silent protagonist relatable, and Link’s baby blues and sharp features have never looked so good. Especially since he spends the entire game as a teen, rather than switching between being 7 and 17, as he did in OoT.
The second reason is the gameplay. While the basics are essentially a direct copy of OoT, there is one major innovation. According to the storyline, the Twilight Realm, a dimension that usually exists in parallel to the ‘normal’ world, suddenly begins to manifest directly into it, shadowy black monsters included. It appears as a golden glow with dark particles rising up from the ground and transforms Hyrule’s inhabitants into spirits. However, Link, who holds the Triforce of Courage, as he usually does in the series, reacts to it in quite a different way: he transforms into a large wolf. And while this feature unfortunately dwindles in importance as the game progresses, it nevertheless lends a welcome change of pace to several of the game’s sequences. Wolf Link may not be a genius swordsman or a master bowyer, but he’s fun and original to play as, no matter what the naysayers maintain. Adding to the charm are his idle animations, which are essentially those of a big dog (scratching his ear, rolling around on his back). Paradoxically enough, Wolf Link is also instrumental in learning sword techniques: peppered around the world are stones with holes in them, which look like Gossip Stones from OoT and produce a melody when the wind blows through them. By howling along with the melody (there’s your musical element), Wolf Link can trigger sequences that allow vanilla Link to perfect his swordplay. Some of these techniques are particularly handy, by the way, lending an extra layer of sophistication to combat.
One of the main features of any Zelda game are the various gadgets Link picks up during his travels, such as a boomerang or bombs. While the selection available in this game is fairly run-of-the-mill, it does feature three highlights. Bomb arrows–which, as their name implies, can be created by attaching a bomb to an arrow–allow for long-range destruction without the iffy aim of simply throwing a bomb (they can still detonate in Link’s face if not fired promptly, however). The double clawshot turns Link into a Spiderman-wannabe and allows him to perform aerial stunts. It is acquired and abundantly used in the infamous City in the Sky dungeon, which I must praise for its originality (especially the boss battle), but also curse for its setting, as I’m afraid of heights. Finally, the spinner, which is best described as a clockwork hoverboard. It can attach itself to grooves in walls, propelling Link along at high speeds, which makes the boss battle in the Arbiter’s Grounds a lot of fun.
The third reason is the supporting cast. I’m sure Navi was created with the best intentions in mind, but “hey listen!” got infuriating after a while. Tatl, her successor in Majora’s Mask, did little to improve the score with her rudeness. This time around, Link is (literally) saddled with Midna, a mischievous, imp-like inhabitant of the Twilight Realm who has a bone to pick with the game’s main antagonist, Zant. She finds Link in his wolf form and proffers help by riding on his back and using the decidedly strange properties of her hair (which can turn into a large hand…) to help him execute certain manoeuvres. When he is in human form, she hides in his shadow and continues to supply guidance. Sounds like just another variation on the annoying-yet-lovable sidekick, but Midna trumps her predecessors by dint of being a fully-fledged, sympathetic character and one of the main protagonists of the game, second only to Link himself. Sure, Princess Zelda’s in there too, and she both offers and requests assistance as well, but she takes a backseat to the driving duo, whose dynamics are one of the game’s main qualities. Other than that, there’s also a handful of resistants to Zant’s rule who try their best to help Link, making him feel a bit more integrated than his ‘lone ranger’ persona in OoT. And I must also put a word in for the pair of yetis he runs into during his travels: the female one, aptly named Yeta, is all kinds of adorable. Even though she’s a crack snowboarder and may give you trouble in the minigame that involves challenging her and her mate Yeto for a piece of heart (the typical health unit in a Zelda game).
One of the things that Twilight Princess received complaints about was unnecessary bloat, with Link being forced to do random mundane tasks during the introduction in Ordon Village before the action proper kicks in. However, I thought that the point of those sections was to round out Link’s character and make him more relatable than his usual faceless hero persona. It gave him a life besides his heroics and people to care about. When you think about it, OoT had something similar (even though it was far shorter and felt more perfunctory). So did Wind Waker, which, after the initial backlash against its graphics, has been praised for giving Link a distinct individuality, a lot of which was due to the characters that surrounded him.
With all this in mind, the game does have its flaws, or, at least, points of contention. For one thing, the Wii and GameCube versions are mirror images of each other: as Link is traditionally left-handed, but the Wiimote isn’t, the developers solved the problem by flipping the entire game over (so what’s east on the GameCube is west on the Wii). I’d classify it as a nitpick, but Link purists may disagree. Moving along, strange creatures called Oocca have been introduced, their main gameplay purpose being to serve as quicksave points within dungeons, allowing Link to exit and come back in where he left off. I suppose this could be handy, if you found you needed to leave a dungeon for whatever reason, but I don’t think I’ve ever used them, so I find it a supremely superfluous feature. Not to mention that they look profoundly disturbing.
There are still minigames, as mentioned above, usually for winning heart pieces, but if you were looking for a challenge, you may be disappointed. None of them reach the punishing heights of the archery challenges in OoT or Majora’s Mask. I actually thought that was a good thing, but your mileage may vary. However, if you were getting tired of the formulaic nature of the Zelda series, this won’t be the game to change your opinion, as it is not only the spiritual successor to OoT, but retains many traditional elements of the series as well. This notably applies to the villain department. While Zant is a successfully nefarious presence for the greater part of the game, his charisma takes a nosedive towards the end, and Ganondorf gets shoehorned in at the last moment as the real big bad. That being said, you do get the satisfaction of a bona fide, one-on-one swordfight between him and Link.
All things considered, the game’s drawbacks are still outweighed by what it does right in my eyes. And, in fact, you could put the similarities to OoT and other games in a different perspective. Twilight Princess could be perceived as the culminating point of the OoT formula in the series. That’s certainly what it felt like to me.
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Death In The Desolate
Excavate
Head-Space
Sean Michael Mueller
In Charleston, South Carolina, at The Middleton Place, there is an enormous tree my family used to visit. The tree is said to be at least 400 years old, but some believe it to be much older. Looking at it, you can observe steel rods surgically inserted, preventing its massive branches from collapsing. Cement is poured into the voids of the trunk where it has weathered and rotted away. It seems as though it is slowly becoming something inanimate. Something between a living organism and a synthetic body–perhaps something of a sculpture.
The tree re-emerged as a motif in my work as my grandparents’ health started to decline. As the similarities between the tree and their aging bodies became more apparent, the increasingly synthetic tree became a way to think about my relationship to my family and the difficult questions that come with facing the loss of loved ones.
Confronting these questions through my sculptural practice, I seek to create a landscape that exists somewhere between the virtual and the physical. At the center of the work, a life-sized shell, constructed of reclaimed wood, encases a mystery. A casket, a seed, a shelter– its hardened shell and grounded form functions as both a symbol for death, and a site for growth, or potential. Dispersed around the shell and emerging from the earth, on the floor of the gallery, the colorful 3D printed trees evoke new life and energy towards growth and resolution. In the space between the saplings and the shell, I think of their relationship to one another. A site for contemplation of life and death, it reveals a method for coping with the most difficult questions we must ask ourselves; creating a mechanism for processing the final stages of grief as a means to seek optimism.
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Laporte wants to join Barcelona
Unknown 0 Athletic Bilbao, Aymeric Laporte, Barcelona, Football, La Liga, Rumour Mill, Transfers 20:53
Athletic Bilbao defender Aymeric Laporte has been on the radar of various clubs in this season due to impressive displays for the Spanish club. However, the French defender has only one club in his mind.
Turns out Laporte is waiting for Barcelona's phone call after all.
It seems that the French International wants a move to La Liga champions Barcelona. He stated that he is in contract with Bilbao but will not rule out a move to the five time Champions league winners.
He also added that Barcelona is the best team in the world but he has not received any call from the Catalan giants.
He is patiently waiting for any response from Barcelona's side but is solely focused on the season ahead with Bilbao. The Bilbao defender has been impressive for the Spanish side and was recently linked with the likes of Manchester United and PSG.
However, he stated that those are just rumors and there is nothing concrete with respect to those links.
Barcelona has been looking out for a defender and they may look at the French defender as an option considering the experience of Laporte in La Liga. The Spanish side can use Laporte on the left hand side of the defence in order to complement Pique.
Athletic Bilbao defender Aymeric Laporte has been on the radar of various clubs in this season due to impressive displays for the Spanish c...
Manchester United want to make a move for Laporte
Unknown 0 Athletic Bilbao, Aymeric Laporte, EPL, Football, Man Utd, Rumour Mill, Transfers 15:27
Apparently, Manchester United want to make a key investment in their defensive department. The Premier League giants are very much keen in strengthening their defence in the summer.
United are considering a move for Athletic's Aymeric Laporte as their planning for next season.
It seems that the club has identified Athletic Bilbao centre back Aymeric Laporte as a prime candidate to add the much needed stability to their defence. Currently, the left hand side of the defence is occupied by Daley Blind, who has struggled at times due to his lack of pace. As a result, the United management is very much keen on the left footed Laporte.
However, the key hindrance to the deal would be the transfer fee. It seems that the defender has a release clause of around £32 million. This may deter the Old Trafford outfit from signing the Frenchman. United have also identified John Stones and Raphael Varane as potential candidates, in case they are not able to get Laporte.
It is very much clear that the United management are on the look out of young promising center backs in order to accompany the equally young Smalling in defence. John Stones has also been valued at around £40 million and Varane will also not come for cheap for the Premier league club. Hence, it is a good possibility that young Laporte may be the most viable option for the club.
Apparently, Manchester United want to make a key investment in their defensive department. The Premier League giants are very much keen in ...
City target Inaki Williams signs new contract
Unknown 0 Athletic Bilbao, EPL, Football, Inaki Williams, Man City, Rumour Mill, Transfers 23:39
Manchester City target Inaki Williams has signed a new contract at Athletic Bilbao. The new contract will now run till 2021.
Inaki Williams has signed a new long-term deal at Athletic Bilbao, stretching to summer 2021.
Pellegrini would be disappointed by this news considering the fact that he felt the striker could be a good back up to Aguero and was about to make a bid for the striker.
The earlier contract of the forward had a release clause of around £15 million and was only till 2017. However, the new contract of the forward would have a release clause which is estimated to be around £38 million. This huge amount pertinent to the release clause would certainly put City off from the deal for the 21 year old.
At the moment, City have Bony and young Iheanacho as a backup to their star striker Aguero. With Bony frustrated with his lack of chances and Iheanacho still quite raw, the City manager had considered the signing of Williams by sending his recruitment head Worthington to watch the player. The Bilbao striker has been in good form scoring about 10 goals in 22 games for the Spanish side.
City would now have to look for other alternatives and Pellegrini would also have to deal with an unhappy Bony in order to sustain their title challenge.
Manchester City target Inaki Williams has signed a new contract at Athletic Bilbao. The new contract will now run till 2021. Inaki Wil...
Nacho Monreal rewarded with new contract
Unknown 0 Arsenal, Athletic Bilbao, EPL, Football, Nacho Monreal 18:50
Arsenal full back Nacho Monreal has signed a new contract with the club to put an end to the rumors linking him with a move to Athletic Bilbao.
The 29 year old was offered a deal by Arsenal last month and after some negotiations, he has finally signed the new deal which will keep him at Emirates. Monreal has now usurped Kieran Gibbs' position as the first choice left back for the club and has not missed a single minute of this year's league campaign.
Monreal joined Arsenal from Malaga in 2013 but struggled to cement his place in the team initially. But a run of consistent performances have seen him seal his spot and he even looks like one of the best left backs in England at the moment. The Spaniard has been consistent all season for the Gunners and has become a fan favorite at the Emirates.
He was linked with a move back to Spain in the summer, with Bilbao looking to take him back to his home country but a move failed to materialize.
Monreal's previous deal was due to expire in 2017 and this new deal is reported to keep him at the club for one more season.
Arsenal full back Nacho Monreal has signed a new contract with the club to put an end to the rumors linking him with a move to Athletic Bil...
Manuel Pellegrini wants Muniain at Manchester City
Jatin Chadha 0 Athletic Bilbao, EPL, Football, Man City, Rumour Mill, Transfers 02:45
According to Goal, Manuel Pellegrini wants Muniain at Manchester City in this summer and the Spaniard may be available for €18 million.
The Athletic Bilbao midfielder's contract expires in the summer of 2015 and it does not look like he is interested in signing a new improved deal.
Bilbao were tying to make Muniain sign a new deal which would have include a €50m buy-out clause. It does not look to happen at this moment and the club is concerned their prize asset could leave for way less than that amount.
Manuel Pellegrini wants Muniain at Manchester City According to Goal, Manuel Pellegrini wants Muniain at Manchester City in this summe...
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Standex Reports Third-Quarter Fiscal 2015 Financial Results
SALEM, N.H.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Standex International Corporation (NYSE:SXI) today reported financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2015.
Third Quarter Fiscal 2015 Results from Continuing Operations
Net sales increased 3.9% to $181.0 million from $174.2 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2014. Organic sales increased 1.5%, acquisition growth accounted for 6.1% of the increase and foreign exchange had a negative effect of 3.7% year over year.
Income from operations was $17.8 million, compared with $14.4 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2014. Net income from continuing operations was $12.8 million, or $1.00 per diluted share, including tax-effected $0.3 million of restructuring charges primarily related to plant consolidations. This compares with third quarter fiscal 2014 net income from continuing operations of $13.3 million, or $1.04 per diluted share, including tax-effected $1.0 million of restructuring charges, $1.0 million in non-recurring management transition expenses, and a gain related to insurance proceeds of $3.4 million. Excluding the aforementioned items from both periods, non-GAAP net income from continuing operations was $13.1 million, or $1.02 per diluted share, compared with $11.9 million, or $0.93 per diluted share, in the third quarter of fiscal 2014.
EBITDA (earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation and amortization) was $22.2 million, compared with $21.5 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2014. Excluding the previously mentioned items from both periods, adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of fiscal 2015 was $22.6 million, compared with $20.9 million in the year-earlier quarter.
Net working capital (defined as accounts receivable plus inventories less accounts payable) was $149.5 million at the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2015, compared with $128.2 million a year earlier. Working capital turns were 4.8 compared with 5.4 a year earlier.
The Company closed the quarter with net debt of $45.8 million compared with net cash of $12.4 million a year ago and net cash of $29.2 million at June 30, 2014. The increase in net debt was primarily due to the acquisition of Enginetics in the first quarter of fiscal 2015.
A reconciliation of net income, earnings per share and net income from continuing operations from reported GAAP amounts to non-GAAP amounts is included later in this release.
Management Comments
“We performed well in the third quarter, reporting 3.9% overall growth, 1.5% organic growth and an increase in non-GAAP operating income of 10.0%,” said David Dunbar, President and CEO. “We continued to make good progress on the strategic growth initiatives we are executing in each of our businesses.”
Segment Review
Food Service Equipment Group sales increased 8.1% year-over-year, and operating income was down 13.1%.
“In Refrigeration, the year-over-year growth was driven by small footprint retail, which is providing positive momentum into the fourth quarter,” said Dunbar. “We also saw declines in sales to national chains, which was offset by growth in lower margin sales through our dealer networks. Cooking Solutions was profitable in the quarter and sales increased by approximately 20% year-over-year, including the Ultrafryer acquisition. Excluding the acquisition, sales increased by 4.3%. We saw sequential margin improvement from the second to the third quarter, indicating that the business has begun to turn the corner in terms of profitability improvement. Pricing improved, freight costs are coming down, and plant productivity was solid. We continue to focus on productivity improvement initiatives at Cooking Solutions.”
Engraving Group sales decreased 1.4% year-over-year, including a 9.5% negative effect from foreign exchange, while operating income decreased 3.4%.
“Our Mold-Tech business grew at a mid-double digit rate in China,” said Dunbar. “We believe there is good long-term potential in both automotive and non-automotive markets in the region1. We also grew sales in Europe, despite the negative currency effect. North America was down due to a difficult year-over-year comparison, but backlog was strong. In our roll, plate and machinery business, sales increased year-over-year due to a large project from a major tissue and towel maker.”
Engineering Technologies Group sales grew 10.0% year-over-year, and operating income decreased 14.9%. Acquisitions contributed 30.2% to growth.
“The organic sales decline in the quarter was primarily due to significantly weaker sales to the oil and gas market, which had a 14% impact on sales and a 30% effect on operating income,” said Dunbar. “The launch vehicle market remained steady, and we continue to pursue new opportunities in that part of the business. We continue to ramp up capacity to support growth opportunities in aviation, and we are excited about our prospects in that market1. We will begin production on our Airbus contract by the end of calendar 2015. We are exploring various options to further expand machining capacity in either our existing facilities or at a greenfield site.”
Electronics Products Group sales were down 8.7% year-over-year, while operating income was up 0.3%.
“Sales in the third quarter were negatively affected by foreign exchange and a difficult year-over-year comparison due to the timing of North American project shipments,” said Dunbar. “Our operating margin improved despite the sales shortfall due to successful operational improvements and cost reduction programs. We remain optimistic about sales growth opportunities at Electronics going forward1.”
The Hydraulics Products Group reported an 8.4% year-over-year sales increase, while operating income rose 16.7%.
“We experienced strong demand across our dump truck, dump trailer and refuse markets,” said Dunbar. “Our facility in China is helping to strengthen our global competitive advantage by enabling us to bundle telescopic cylinders from North America with rod cylinders from China. We are shipping and booking orders at record levels at the China plant, leading to continued strength across the business. Looking ahead, we are focused on capitalizing on strong customer demand in our end markets and leveraging operational excellence to increase throughput1.”
“Our end markets continue to be strong with the primary exception of oil and gas. We are proceeding with our planned investments to support increased demand. Our strong balance sheet allows us to pursue both organic and acquisition growth. We will continue to execute against our strategic plan, control costs and focus on our operational excellence initiatives as we move the business forward,” concluded Dunbar.
Standex will host a conference call for investors today, May 1, 2015 at 10:00 a.m. ET. On the call, David Dunbar, President and CEO, and Thomas DeByle, CFO, will review the Company’s financial results and business and operating highlights. Investors interested in listening to the webcast should log on to the “Investor Relations” section of Standex’s website, located at www.standex.com. The Company's slide show accompanying the webcast audio also can be accessed via its website. To listen to the playback, please dial (800) 585-8367 in the U.S. or (404) 537-3406 internationally; the passcode is 23424862. The replay also can be accessed in the “Investor Relations” section of the Company’s website, located at www.standex.com.
EBITDA, which is "Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization," non-GAAP income from operations, non-GAAP net income from continuing operations and free cash flow are non-GAAP financial measures and are intended to serve as a complement to results provided in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States. Standex believes that such information provides an additional measurement and consistent historical comparison of the Company's performance. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in this news release.
Standex International Corporation is a multi-industry manufacturer in five broad business segments: Food Service Equipment Group, Engineering Technologies Group, Engraving Group, Electronics Products Group, and Hydraulics Products Group with operations in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, South Africa, India and China. For additional information, visit the Company's website at http://standex.com/.
1 Safe Harbor Language
Statements in this news release include, or may be based upon, management's current expectations, estimates and/or projections about Standex's markets and industries. These statements are forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may materially differ from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Among the factors that could cause actual results to differ are the impact of implementation of government regulations and programs affecting our businesses, unforeseen legal judgments, fines or settlements, uncertainty in conditions in the financial and banking markets, general domestic and international economy including more specifically economic conditions in the oil and gas market, the impact of foreign exchange, increases in raw material costs, the ability to substitute less expensive alternative raw materials, the heavy construction vehicle market, the ability to continue to successfully implement productivity improvements, increase market share, access new markets, introduce new products, enhance our presence in strategic channels, the successful expansion and automation of manufacturing capabilities and diversification efforts in emerging markets, the ability to continue to achieve cost savings through lean manufacturing, cost reduction activities, and low cost sourcing, effective completion of plant consolidations, successful completion and integration of acquisitions and the other factors discussed in the Annual Report of Standex on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014, which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and any subsequent periodic reports filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, any forward-looking statements represent management's estimates only as of the day made and should not be relied upon as representing management's estimates as of any subsequent date. While the Company may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company and management specifically disclaim any obligation to do so, even if management's estimates change.
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Home | News Sunday 19 August 2012
Israel deports Sudanese asylum seekers as S. Sudanese nationals
By Toby Collins
August 18, 2012 (LONDON) - Sudanese citizens seeking asylum in Israel are being issued with South Sudanese documents in order to deport them, according to a report published on Saturday.
Sudanese refugee in Israel (AFP/Getty)
The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) claim that over 100 asylum seekers currently in Israel, holding passports or birth certificates which show them to have been born within the territory of Sudan, have been issued with documents which classify them as South Sudanese citizens.
Israel has no repatriation agreement with Sudan making it impossible to send asylum seekers to Khartoum. Since South Sudan seceded in 2011 Juba has established a transitional constitution and independent diplomatic ties, including agreements of cooperation with Khartoum’s old foe, Tel Aviv.
Four Sudanese citizens were recently flown to South Sudan, where they were refused entry and returned to Tel Aviv according BIJ.
The African Refugee Development Center, an NGO operating in Israel, claims to have seen the documents of 70 Sudanese citizens who have now been re-classified as South Sudanese by Israel, thus legitimatising their deportation.
Many of those facing deportation are from the embattled Nuba Mountains; a region of Sudan near the border with South Sudan. Conflict between the Sudanese army (SAF) and rebels has killed and displaced thousands of its people.
In May Human Rights Watch reported that “according to Sudanese civil society and humanitarian groups,” more than 350,000 people have been internally displaced within South Kordofan; the region which includes the Nuba mountains.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said in April Yida refugee camp, across the border in South Sudan, was receiving 200 new refugees a day.
The Nuba people being re-nationalised as South Sudanese have been informed that if they do not leave Israel voluntarily they will face imprisonment.
In June the Jerusalem Administrative Court ruled against a petition filed by human rights groups aimed at preventing the expulsion of people classified as South Sudanese and arrests began.
In the same month hundreds of African asylum seekers marched on the UN offices in Tel Aviv, calling for fair treatment in the face of incendiary political rhetoric.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that “the breach of our borders by infiltrators could threaten the Jewish and democratic state […] we will begin by removing the infiltrators from South Sudan and move on to others.”
Also, Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, has said “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.”
Amid violent, 1,00-strong anti-immigrant protests in May in which African residents were attacked, Miri Regev, a legislator and member of Knesset (the legislative arm of the Israeli government), said that Sudanese refugees are a “cancer in our body.”
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Letters & Diaries ( 247 )
Literary ( 215 )
Nonfiction ( 6,899 )
Biography & Memoirs ( 2,461 )
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
By Vincent Starrett
An indispensable biography of the world’s most famous detective from Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Vincent Starrett
In a boarding house at 221B Baker Street, a genius is at work. With the help of his tireless companion, Dr. Watson, the peerless Sherlock Holmes solves one impossible mystery after the next. Many of his adventures, such as “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and “The Red-Headed League,” are world famous, while others, including “The Adventure of the Tired Captain” and “The Singular Affair of the Aluminum Crutch,” remain strictly private, simply because Watson cannot find the time to write them down.
This glimpse into the secret case files of England’s greatest detective is just one of the fascinating tidbits included in Vincent Starrett’s landmark book of Sherlockiana. A founding member of the Baker Street Irregulars, Starrett enriches his meticulous research with a true fan’s delight. Whether he is discussing Arthur Conan Doyle’s real-life criminal investigations or detailing the layout of 221B Baker Street and its surrounding neighborhood, Starrett’s deep appreciation for the stories and their inimitable hero is infectious. Countless companion volumes to the series have been published, but none offers as much insight and entertainment as The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes does.
This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
ISBN: 9781497690899 |
Hardcover: 208 pages |
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road |
Publication date: Nov 25, 2014 |
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Holland Agro-Economic Zone to earn $1.26 billion in 2019
The University Chorale hosts benefit concert for Autism awareness
Loop News Created : 30 October 2017 Our Endz
The University Chapel will be the scene of much fanfare as The University Chorale hosts a benefit performance entitled ‘Eclectic Roots’ on Sunday, November 5, 2017, at 4pm.
Patrons will be exposed to a heightened taste and style from a broad and diverse range of musical pieces. The focus remains on the Spectrum of Hope initiative, which is an awareness campaign and benefit concert to raise funds for the Jamaica Autism Support Association.
The University Chorale started doing concerts in 2005 with other clubs at the Creative Arts Centre. As the choir grew and developed an individual identity, it became known for performing authentic Caribbean cultural pieces and music from other regions of the world.
Today, The Chorale prides itself on being one of the official campus choirs, producing aesthetic Caribbean choral performances at the University and the wider Kingston area.
Shawn Wright, current Musical Director of The University Chorale, spoke fondly about this concert of musical ensembles. “Eclectic Roots is first in a series of performances that lead up to the Spectrum of Hope Initiative in April. It is a benefit concert to raise funds for the Jamaica Autism Support Association to help spread awareness about Autism in Jamaica.
Our aim is to help spread awareness by using our voices and the creative arts.”
Carla Hinkson, a member of the chorale stated, “The hope initiative campaign is a powerful initiative to evoke the awareness of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Jamaica. I love the support we are receiving so far and believe that on the night of the event our patrons will be quite pleased with the production and helped to spread awareness and make a difference in Jamaica.”
Eclectic Roots is slated for 4pm on November 5, 2017 at the University Chapel. Admission: Adults: $1,000, students with I.D $500, children 12 and under $300. Tickets are available at Nardos (UWI Humanities and Education Block) and the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, Music Unit.
The University Chorale
Jamaica Autism Support Association
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